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.
May 11
The short answer was best said by Malala Yousafzai, “Education for EVERY child.” [Emphasis my own.] Friday, May 15, Chimacum School District educators voted unanimously to join many other schools in Washington state in what are being called rolling walkouts. (See this article in a local WA newspaper, the Peninsula Daily News.) Schools all over …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/05/11/why-are-chimacum-schools-having-a-1-day-strike/
Apr 30
I just got a $300 grant from my school district’s educational support foundation, the Friends of Chimacum! I submitted a proposal to purchase a couple of Sphero Robotic App Controlled Balls! I saw a Science teacher at this year’s NCCE conference playing with one of those and he was telling me how he used them …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/30/robotic-ball/
Apr 28
Sometimes tripling something can be good. Maybe not all that good for you, but good. Other times tripling something isn’t all that good for you and isn’t good any way you slice it. Sometimes it only benefits those in power. That tends to be the case with the form of assessment known as standardized testing. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/28/sbac-triples-time-testing/
Apr 08
I took my Twitter Wakelet notes from NCCE 2015 and put together all the notes from the gamification and game-based learning sessions I attended. – Kids who dropout in HS actually became disengaged in middle school! (It’s our job to stop that from happening so the question becomes, how do we keep our middle school …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/08/my-gbl-gamification-ncce2015-notes/
Apr 06
I wrote a post for the Learn 2 Earn blog called How to Use Discussion Forums to Engage Every Student and it’s live! I share some tools that I have used with my Science students in grades 6, 7 and 8 over the years. Having a discussion forum for a face-to-face classroom allows for a …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/06/discussion-forums-in-science/
Apr 06
I took my Twitter Wakelet notes from NCCE 2015 and put together all the notes from the 1:1 implementation sessions I attended. I attended as many of those sessions as I could to best help my building prepare for our 1:1 initiative for the 2016-17 school year. Next year, 2015-16, will be our planning year …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/06/my-11-ncce2015-notes/
Apr 02
I was looking for water pollution images to make a Kahoot quiz to check my students’ understanding as they research to make public service announcements. I found an awesome image. It was so awesome that I had to check the website it came from. It is a copyright image and the website had a lesson …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/04/02/science-and-engineering-resource/
Mar 26
Here’s a copy of a letter I just wrote and emailed to my legislators regarding their upcoming vote on ESSB 5748, which would tie our student’s standardized test scores to our teacher evaluation. We can hold students accountable and track and report their learning without standardized testing. We can graduate students from high school without …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/03/26/do-not-tie-test-scores-to-teacher-evaluation/
Mar 26
The above video shows an example of how my 6th graders are playing World of Warcraft during the WoWinSchools course I am teaching this year. Slowly, especially in light of much research being done on the subject, people are starting to see that video games are not bad. They do not make kids violent and …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/03/26/game-based-learning/
Mar 25
Once in a while we take a break from questing in World of Warcraft, from questing in 3D GameLab, and from practicing our keyboarding skills and we just meet up in a big, virtual city to get together and dance. 🙂 These are some of my 1st WoWinSchools class 6th graders meeting up in Stormwind …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2015/03/25/wow-dancing/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
