I teach 5th and 6th grade STEM in the lovely Pacific Northwest in a small, rural town called Chimacum. My goal is to help students discover that all learning is life-long and that 21st century tools can be used for work as well as fun.
Apr 07
Curriculum is a great guide. I’ve taught for years with no curriculum and all that freedom is a bit much and comes at a cost. When I’m designing all the curriculum I teach it takes a lot of time, especially since I have to make sure it fits within the scope and sequence of my …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/04/07/engineering-with-sphero-and-knex/
Apr 06
Sometimes I think Math teachers are lucky. While they have students who don’t understand certain concepts at least the students and their families don’t question or doubt or just plain not believe mathematical concepts. I guess the same is true for tech and engineering. But for the S in STEM, Science, we have to deal …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/04/06/becoming-scientifically-literate/
Apr 05
When I first heard that Storify was stopping its services I too was wondering what I would replace it with, and I only had 13 stories saved on Storify! I can’t imagine all the folks who had dozens or more stories saved. My concern was mostly for the blog posts I had written and embedded …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/04/05/my-storify-replacement-alternatives/
Mar 25
On March 14, 2018, Chimacum Middle School students gathered by the track in honor of the 17 people who died in the Parkland, FL shootings. It was amazingly well organized and students were attentive and open to listen. Not all students chose to come out. It was by choice yet most of the middle school …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/03/25/our-schools-march-14-walkout/
Mar 08
I finally got to see Black Panther! And I’m so glad I went. It was GREAT! So well done and the movie did a fantastic job of bringing the Black Panther characters to life. I’ve been a fan of the Black Panther superhero since I was reading comics growing up. After watching the movie I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/03/08/black-panther-movie-engineering-quote/
Mar 02
I’ve been looking for ways to engage ALL my students. It’s been quite a hunt with limited success at best. I’ve learned that you can engage all of your students some of the time or some of your students all of the time (pretty much) but the 100% total engagement has been elusive. And I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/03/02/100-total-engagement/
Feb 19
I was able to attend another NCCE (Northwest Council for Computer Education) conference this school year! I first attended an NCCE conference in 2002. It was great and I got to learn what was hot in EdTech, meet like-minded people, and bring home ideas and inspiration. It would be 12 years before I got to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/02/19/another-ncce-in-the-books-ncce18/
Feb 18
I curate SO MANY links of resources and blogs each and every day that I had to share. So I started auto-publishing my newly curated links to Diigo every week. It came in the form of long lists of links posts. I was just happy to share all the amazing things I was coming across. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2018/02/18/diigo-links-moved/
Dec 19
This post originally appeared on the CORELaborate blog. I’ve written about the state of the Scientific Method in the NGSS era and I’ve also written about the DOING of Science. Both those blog posts are about how the NGSS is helping teachers to educate students not only in the content of Science but how Science …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/12/19/science-and-engineering-in-the-real-world/
Nov 21
The culminating lesson of the first STEM Robotics 101 unit was quite enjoyable for me and for my students. This post will show how that engineering challenge aligned to the engineering standards. The Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) for Engineering, MS-ETS1 – Engineering Design, has four performance expectations for students (read this post to see …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2017/11/21/stem-robotics-with-faraday/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023 and 2024!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
