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.
Nov 23
Last Thursday and Friday we didn’t have school for regular classes so that we could meet with parents and students for conferences. Teachers were available Thursday from 8am to 8pm with a couple of meal breaks and Friday from 8am to 12noon. For me seeing and talking to over 50 of the 67 families I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/11/23/arena-conferences/
Nov 23
Samsung has a cool contest called the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow. Teachers are invited to submit ideas for how they will use STEM to solve a problem in their community. Out of all the teachers who apply they select five finalists from each state. The state finalists get two Samsung Galaxy Tablets for getting selected. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/11/23/solve-for-tomorrow/
Nov 17
When I first got a bunch of iPads, the first generation ones, and kids started using them, it was great. I slowly but surely built up to a 1:1 and I’m used to it now. As the iPads have gotten older I’ve been slowly but surely working to replace them with technology that can meet …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/11/17/problems-with-tech-google-classroom-with-older-devices/
Nov 07
Put together a new flyer for our middle school 1:1 Indiegogo Campaign. Please share, post, reTweet, and handout this poster and word of our campaign! We have about a month to go to raise enough money to get the Asus Chromebook Flip into as many middle school students hands as possible. 2015 CMS Tech Campaign …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/11/07/new-flyer-for-indiegogo-campaign/
Oct 27
Here’s a flyer my 1st period class helped put together to help get the work out around town: CMS 2015 indiegogo Campaign from Alfonso Gonzalez Here is our Campaign Website and here’s the post I wrote earlier this morning with a copy of our 1:1 Tech Plan.
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/10/27/indiegogo-campaign/
Oct 27
Our school, Chimacum Middle School, has had a tech plan for moving to a 1:1 student to device ratio. Originally, we devised the plan to have every student use an iPad. Then we decided iPad Minis would be more cost effective. Very recently we decided to give students Chromebook Flips. The plan is sound and …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/10/27/help-our-school-indiegogo/
Oct 17
The Washington Science Teachers Association (WSTA – @WSTAScience) is having their annual Science Conference on Oct 23, 24, and 25. I submitted a proposal and it was accepted! I was happy about it but now that it’s drawing close the realization that I’m presenting to adults, and Science teachers no less, is hitting me! I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/10/17/presenting-at-wsta2015/
Oct 13
[A comment was left on this post wondering if asking Bluehost, where my webpages and WordPress database are housed, if they could solve the problem. So I submitted a help ticket. One of the Bluehost database support dug around for and found the problem! He said that he had to repair the .htaccess files. Doing …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/10/13/wordpress-troubles-again/
Aug 28
I’ve been toiling over what tools to use this year in my Science classes. I’ve been making regular use of 3D GameLab as my main LMS (Learning Management System), Classblogmeister as our class blog for student blogs, Shivtr as our class discussion forum for online, asynchronous discussions, and Classdojo and Remind for parent communication (along …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/08/28/hard-decisions/
Aug 12
AND? OR? [Note: since the writing of this post Classcraft has undergone some major updates. I haven’t used it since the updates so I can’t speak to those. From what I’ve read and heard the free version is still a lot like what I write about here. In order to use Classcraft more like an …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/08/12/3dgamelab-and-classcraft/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023 and 2024!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
