STEM Students Do a Google Hangout with a Dyson Engineer

This is my school's first year implementing STEM for our middle school students.  Our 6-8th grade students take two trimesters of STEM and one trimester of art. When the students are in STEM, they participate in engagements (or projects) with a partner and have to relate each engagement with a career connection.  Our middle school students are having a difficult time making the connection between their engagements and relating it to a real-world career.  To help my students begin to understand that type of connection, I've decided to take our STEM class outside the four walls of our room and reach out to professionals within these STEM careers that my students are researching.

My first reach out was to the Dyson engineering company located right here in Chicago!  The first grade class within my school prevously participated in a Google Hangout with a Dyson engineer and I thought it was an amazing experience, especially for the students.  After that, I decided to reach out and The Dyson Company did a Google Hangout with my 6-8th grade STEM students as well.  We were able to communicate with a female engineer and ask her questions about her job and how she got where she is today.  The students were able to make connections with the work they did inside the STEM lab compared to what the Dyson engineer did at her job.  Thank you, James Dyson Foundation for alloting time for us to communicate with you! It was such a great experience and we look forward to putting something together again in the future!

Enjoy some of the questions we asked and pictures from the event below.

Paper Report Cards to Paperless

When I began my new job last school year as the technology teacher, I was in charge of managing the K-5th grade report cards.  We were filling in our report cards with the Apple program Pages and it was shared on a flash drive.  It was a hassle to schedule time for the specials teachers to have the flash drive first before the classroom teachers needed to complete them.  We also had a lot of issues with some teachers updating their Pages and some who didn't so when the flash drive was passed around, it didn't always work.

At the end of last school year, the technology director, library media specialist and I were brainstorming different ways to make the elementary report cards easier for the entire staff.  Since our school is a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) school, we thought that using Google Docs would be our best and easiest bet.

As we ended our first trimester, it has been the greatest decision we've made!  It was a journey transferring all of our report cards from Pages to Google Docs, but the library media specialist and I teamed up together and did it!  Our K-5th grade report cards are shared with the appropriate teachers and they can be edited whenever necessary.  There are no more flash drives to be shared between teachers.

Now the next question is how are we sharing the report cards with parents?  In previous years, the report cards were printed off from Pages and sealed in an envelope and sent home to the families.  Because we are in the 21st-century learning environment and working towards becoming a paperless school, we have changed gears with this as well.  Once the report cards are completed, each classroom teacher will email the report cards out to each parent (in a PDF format so the report card cannot be edited).  It is then the parents choice to print off the report cards or not.

Piloting Chromebooks

My school just piloted Chromebooks for the 2015-16 school year.  We have been mainly an Apple school, so transforming to Chromebooks has been quite the adventure.  Our school is 1:1 with iPads for K-2nd grade, 1:1 with Chromebooks for 3-4th grade, and 1:1 MacBook Air's for 5-8th grade. Our school has been slowly implementing Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and that's when we decided to test out the Chromebooks. Most of the surrounding schools are using Chromebooks, so we made the executive decision to implement them as well.

The technology director and I went through a long road then to decide on what model our school should go with.  We ended up choosing the Dell Chromebook 11 model.  We made a great decision and have been very happy with our choice. We are managing exactly 47 Chromebooks at the moment, which I know is not that much.  It just seems like a lot when we're managing our iPads on one management system and then our Chromebooks on another.  I recently completed my Level 1 Google Certification for Educators, so that is definitely helping with the management side of things.

The technology director, the 3rd & 4th grade teacher and I get together every Tuesday morning to hold "Chromebook meetings".  These meetings are extremely helpful to determine exactly what is needed inside the classroom in regards to the Chromebooks.  The classroom teachers and I collaborate to determine what apps and extensions they would like put on the Chromebooks.  So far we're using Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawing & Forms) and Google Classroom.  I think we're finally ready to tackle some more apps and extensions that will enhance the 3rd & 4th graders learning experience.  Excitingly, we also just figured out our solution to printing with the Chromebooks as well.

Along with the Chromebooks being new to us, it's also new to our families.  When we decided to launch the Chromebooks, we also decided that they would go home every night with the student.  Since our Chromebooks are the only device that goes home, we held a Parent Chromebook event so that our families could get acclimated with the device as well.  I think our parents found it extremely beneficial to have the Chromebook expectations explained to physically see how their child will be utilizing the tool. Below is the presentation I used (I stayed extremely simple with them) and some pictures of the event to go along with it.

Seesaw

Seesaw is a free learning journal app that is used to document students' work.  I piloted Seesaw with our 2nd grade class (@2ndgradekramer) last spring and it was an absolute success. Not only is there a free app for students, but there is also a free app for parents to view their child's work.  Seesaw is compatible for both Apple and Android products, so it can be used for everyone. 

This past week, I have worked closely with the Kindergarten (@MsFetzersKClass) and 2nd grade classes to integrate Seesaw into their classrooms.  The students went crazy over the app and they are beyond excited to start posting their best work for their class and parents to see.  When students post something, they have a variety of options.  Right now, our students are posting a picture they've captured and describing the picture by typing an explanation, using the microphone to dictate or using the drawing tool.  

Seesaw has a teacher dashboard where all activity can be managed and filtered.  Once a student publishes their post, it first has to be approved by the teacher in order for it to be public on the classroom feed.  Once the post is approved, students are able to "like" or comment on one another's posts.  Now when we went over this concept, we definitely had to go over what's appropriate to comment and what's not.  Please note, the teacher must approve all comments that are made as well. 

Seesaw is such an amazing application to use for students to document their work.  It's a great storage place for students to create an e-portfolio and to have an ongoing documentation of his or her work.  If you need ideas of ways to implement Seesaw, their website provides some great resources for all grade levels.  http://help.seesaw.me/hc/en-us 

If you'd like to learn more about Seesaw or are interested in seeing how my teachers are implementing it, view my Twitter feed @mswilliams0012.  Seesaw also has amazing and quick customer service and they provide Twitter chats (#seesawchat) every Thursday evening at 6:00pm central time.  

6-8th Grade STEM

We've begun the 2015-16 school year by implementing a new elective entitled Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) class.  Our 6-8th grade students have the opportunity to participate in two trimesters of STEM class, which is connected to our new, collaborative learning space. We have adopted our STEM program from Creative Learning Systems (CLS). CLS has provided our school with software and hardware to make the learning of our students more hands-on and practical for the real-world setting. In our STEM Lab environment, the students work collaboratively and concentrate on the following:

• Problem-solving
• Reflection
• Presentation
• Collaboration
• Productivity 

Below are the engagement (or project) options our students have access to. Each pair of students work for a 10-day period to produce something and then, once the 10-day period is over, they begin a new project. 

To hold our students accountable for every engagement, each pair of students participates in daily reflections, conducts a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant & timely or SMART Goal, learns new vocabulary, relates engagement to a STEM career by using www.ionfuture.org and assessing themselves using our five components stated above. This is all done within Google Slides and is shared with the facilitator for monitoring and grading. See below for an example outline of the presentation. 

Lastly, enjoy some images of my students hard at work during their first two weeks of STEM class.

Creating New 21st Century Learning Spaces

This past summer, my school went under a major construction project. A portion of that project was combining our old computer lab and library into one, collaborative learning space entitled the ICE Lab (the Innovative, Collaborative & Exploration Lab). This idea of creating one collaborative learning space is a fairly new idea in the 21st-century learning environment. Since our school has gone completely mobile (meaning our students use either iPads or MacBook Air's), there is truly no need for a computer lab anymore. Our school then decided to combine the computer lab with the library to create one, large, cooperative learning space where students can gather together to work on projects in a whole group, small group or individual setting. We made sure that we included all mobile furniture, including the bookcases so that students can easily use the space to its fullest potential. Speaking of furniture, a lot of time was taken to decide on particular furniture that was inviting and comfortable for both the students and the teachers to come in and utilize it in an exciting way. We also incorporated a connecting science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) Lab where students are able to problem solve, reflect, collaborate, produce and present. Below are some good resources about new learning spaces along with a video that I created about my school's transition.  Enjoy!

Resources:

• http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1551-pearlman-transforming-classrooms-and-schools-for-schools-for-21st-century-learners-by-design
• http://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-to-transform-learning-space-beth-holland
• http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-wow-worthy-learning-spaces-todd-finley
• Twitter: #iceilchat (look at the hashtag representing new learning spaces)

Blogging for Reflection

This past summer while participating in one of my grad school classes, I decided to read the book, Blogging for Educators: Writing for Professional Learning by: Starr Sackstein.  This was by far the BEST summer read!  The Corwin Connected Educator Series are a series of short reads that truly gets the point across and then, in turn is easy to implement inside the classroom or professionally right away.  This is what I did after reading @mssackstein book.  I now understand how important it is to blog as an educator to use as a form of reflective practice.  Sackstein (2015) states that by opening your thoughts, challenges, growth, reflection, or celebrations up to an audience, you add a collaborative element that can really change who you are as an educator and a person. (p.5) Blogging for educators can be a collaborative practice where it allows one to develop their Personal Learning Network or PLN.  I'm already an avid user of Twitter and Instagram, but blogging is a great way to share your expertise, strengths, weaknesses and showcase what's happening inside the classroom.  I am hoping that my blog will allow to share my thoughts and successes as a K-8 technology and STEM educator and present what my students are doing with technology.  To learn more about Starr Sackstein's book, visit http://www.corwin.com/connectededucators/bloged-book.htm.