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.
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/14/technology-as-a-tool/
Nov 12
Sometimes I think I’d be a much better educator if it weren’t for being stuck inside the four walls of my classroom. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. There are things that I wish I had done better or differently that just wouldn’t be issues if we weren’t all trapped inside these same …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/12/limited-by-four-walls/
Nov 12
One of our high school teachers wrote a letter to our state’s superintendent of public schools sharing her concerns over the state’s decisions for testing Science this year and next year. I asked her if I could share her letter because the concerns that she raised are so blatant and Maren wrote such a great …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/12/letter-to-wa-state-superintendent-of-public-schools/
Nov 09
So while my 8th graders were researching the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill a few teams found youtube videos showing how hay could be used to soak up the oil. Yeah, they saw it with own eyes on the video. That was somewhat convincing but they were still curious. Could hay really soak up oil …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/11/09/quick-and-dirty-inquiry/
Oct 17
I’ve never been a fan of teaching to a state test. I don’t mind assessing my students and I think it’s all right if students take common assessments to see how they’re doing. When I start teaching in South Central Los Angeles back in 1991 students were taking the CTBS multiple choice test. Knowing that …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/17/ed-reform-okay/
Oct 10
My 6th graders are researching water pollution as part of our water quality project. I created a Google Doc for each team in each class for them to answer their questions and take notes. Each student in each team would type his or her notes into the Google Doc and once teams are ready the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/10/office2-hd-and-google-docs/
Oct 08
I enjoy learning things like this. Above is a screen shot of one of Office2 HD’s documents. Notice the floppy disk icon. I kept telling my 6th grade students to tap it to save their documents until I noticed that very few of them have ever even seen a floppy disk! Most didn’t know what …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/08/save-icon-needs-updating/
Oct 08
After the tragic fall and destruction of one our 13 iPads earlier this week, I’ve been very protective of the remaining 12. But yesterday I got confirmation of something I don’t ever want to see again. Another iPad fell. A student had her headphones connected to the iPad, she got up (forgetting the head phones …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/08/ipads-can-survive-fall/
Oct 06
After Monday’s epic webinar, I sent this email out to all the MS and HS school teachers in my district: If you missed the Elevating the Education Reform Dialog webinar and want to know what happened here is a link to the event recording page: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106358 The rest of the links came up during the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/06/future-of-ed-webinar/
Oct 06
[I sent this email yesterday to all the parents on of my current students, well all the parents whose email I have.] Hello Students and Families, You are getting this email because you have a child who has me for either 6th grade Science, 8th grade Science or Eagle Time or a combination of those. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/10/06/1st-email-to-parents/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
