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.
Oct 30
At the end of December 2020 I was planning to purchase four Oculus Quest 2’s for students to use in my Science class and for esports. When I finally got the four quests in the spring of 2021 I ran into an obstacle that I thought would be easy to overcome – to make school …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/10/30/seriously-facebook-er-meta/
Oct 29
At the end of August, after attending an amazing Minecraft Education Edition Esports Camp, I shared their new esports worlds and how to access them. Yesterday I finally got the chance to try one of the Make and Model worlds to have my students practice building together in their teams! It was so much fun! …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/10/29/minecraft-education-editions-building-competitions/
Oct 29
I’ve been thinking about how we are working at leveling the playing field between our haves and have-nots. The pandemic has made extremely clear the advantages that our haves have over our have-nots. A couple of ways our district worked at leveling the playing field was to provide every student a laptop to take home …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/10/29/leveling-the-playing-field/
Oct 29
The Challenge! That is this year’s Minecraft Education Edition’s Global Challenge: Peace with Nature, a challenge partnering MinecraftEdu with UNESCO! Intro Deck In addition to the video, to get students excited and curious about this year’s challenge, here is a slide deck that comes with the challenge for teachers to introduce it to students: Perfect …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/10/29/sustainability-development-in-minecraft/
Sep 02
As I ponder how to begin this new school year amidst a more infectious strain of the coronavirus, I am thinking back to all the wonderful work my students did last year. I linked their different projects on the following Google Slide to share with the Ocean Guardian Schools program that we are a part …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/09/02/environmental-stewardship-student-projects/
Aug 27
I’ve been teaching at Chimacum Middle School for the past 24 of the 30 years I’ve been teaching. The last two years, it’s actually been Chimacum Elementary School because due to declining enrollment the middle school was closed and 6th grade was moved to elementary while grades 7 and 8 were moved to the high …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/27/how-to-start-the-2021-22-school-year/
Aug 27
They tell us there is no one silver bullet that will make our job as teachers easier. No one thing that will engage all our students so much that classroom management will no longer be necessary and every kid in our classroom will either pass all their tests or make one to two years of …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/27/looking-for-the-silver-bullet-keep-looking/
Aug 26
I am responsible for bringing Google Apps, now Google Edu, to my district by in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I have my Google Educator Levels 1 and 2 badges because I have seen first hand the power of Google’s suite of excellent tools for educating our young people. My district is also a …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/26/google-for-edu-ramps-up-age-restrictions/
Aug 25
As summer comes to an end with one more week to go before we come back together to prepare for the first week of school, which starts the day after Labor Day, I thought I’d reflect on all the great things that I’ve done. I am grateful that this summer was so much better than …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/25/the-end-of-summer/
Aug 24
For the 2021 Martin Luther King, Jr Day LA Works hosted a virtual tour of Washington DC during Dr. King’s 1963 march on the capitol in Minecraft Java Edition. The world built by Mike Washburn (@misterwashburn) and Becky Lattof (@STEAMcultivator) is amazing! I wrote about the tour and shared the tour on this blog post. …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/24/washington-dc-minecraft-tour/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
