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.
Jan 13
I’ve caught glimpses of this thing going on in the blogosphere. I’ve seen other bloggers get tagged and have to write a post answering a bunch of questions, asking a bunch of questions and selecting others to tag to do the same thing. I’ve been enjoying just watching from the outside while secretly hoping I’d …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/01/13/sunshine-award-blogging-meme/
Dec 19
This week we spent our last three days just playing WoW to level up. Almost every 8th grader had a blast. Two 8th graders complained about having to play WoW at first but then I never heard from anything negative from them again. Another 8th grader pretty much let me know everyday that she didn’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/19/days-7-8-9-wow-in-science/
Dec 18
I thought this was funny. Eighth graders are learning how to use microscopes to learn about cells. We started with some basic lessons on how to use the fine and coarse focus, field of view, and focal plane. Then students began their exploration of the microscopic view of living things by looking a elodea leaves. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/18/plant-humor/
Dec 12
I was somehow thinking most students would be level 10, 11, or 12 already and we’d all be arranging to meet near a big town or city to begin classifying living things. Yeah, that ain’t happening. I don’t even know if we’ll get there by next week! So six class periods and all we’ve done …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/12/day-6-wow-in-science/
Dec 10
My morning class went much more smoothly today. I had a talk with the student whose account lost characters and reviewed the need to not delete characters. I’m not sure he deleted the characters. As I played on two different computers today but the time I went to the second computer World of Warcraft started …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/10/day-5-wow-in-science/
Dec 09
I expected today to go smoothly. Not so much. Four kids in my morning class needed their password reset due to account being accessed elsewhere. I don’t know what else could cause that so I reminded kids why I ask that they only play the Science accounts during Science class. Battle.Net was down so it …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/09/day-4-wow-in-science-gbl/
Dec 09
I wanted to try out making an infographic while at the same time taking some of last year’s Speak Up Survey data and making it a little easier to use for our district tech committee. I used Piktochart and made the following infographic just using the teacher data. There is so much data and even …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/09/speak-up-2012-teacher-results/
Dec 06
I came across this blog post this morning by Mark Barnes, author of ROLE Reversal and a valuable member of my PLN: Teachers still struggle with rules and consequences. I have been running my classes as Results Only Learning Environment (ROLE) after reading Mark’s book and having twitter discussions with him and reading his blogs. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/06/rules-and-consequences/
Dec 05
What is the allure of gaming? In thinking about this I wondered what things I would do instead of playing games. When the weather is nice (and it’s not dark by 4:30 pm – Pacific Northwest short days) I could be doing outdoor things. Being outdoors and exercising beats out gaming so there needs to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/05/why-game/
Dec 04
Every 8th grader in both classes has figured the game out to the point that they are all playing and don’t really need me anymore. Kids playing the same race characters are helping each other so they are experiencing successes. So I was able to start a character in each class! There are some perks …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/12/04/day-3-wow-in-science-gbl/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
