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
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 22
On July 29, 2021, PocketLab hosted the ScIC6 Science is Cool Unconference that focused on esports and game-based learning (GBL)! On Dec 31, 2020 I wrote about a contest for teachers to submit lessons incorporating Fortnite Creative hosted by Epic Games and about the lesson plan that I submitted that got second place! Because of …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/08/22/fortnite-in-science-class/
Apr 24
Part of our outdoor science education program includes learning to identify benthic macroinvertebrates. Macros are good bioindicators of stream health because they can spend up to two years living in the water in their nymph and larval stage! The scud pictured here is a macro that has some tolerance to water pollution so even though …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2021/04/24/macro-identification/
Dec 31
In my 30 years teaching I’ve gotten 48 grants in 24 years totaling just under $371,000. In the last 22 years straight I’ve gotten at least one grant per year every year. That’s quite the streak and the Ocean Guardian Schools project is one of those grant opportunities that I can apply for year after …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2020/12/31/grants-and-prizes/
Dec 26
Before I share an amazing resource for getting some awesome gamified Science lessons, I wanted to share a cool resource for having students request photos to be taken of locations on Earth from the International Space Station (ISS)! Yes, the students choose where the ISS camera will take the photos based on the ISS’s orbit! …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2020/12/26/gamified-science/
Dec 26
I’ve written and shared quite a bit about Classcraft as not only a full-fledged Learning Management System (LMS) but also as a way to easily gamify any class and content for students. I’ve mentioned before and it’s worth mentioning again that of all the edtech tools I use with students this is the only tool …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2020/12/26/gamification-of-online-teaching/
Apr 30
I just heard of these FREE STEM video lessons from Dr. Erica Saint Clair. She has been running free online Science classes, and starting next week the online video classes have a Harry Potter theme! Sounds like so much fun! The Harry Potter series starts this Monday, May 4, as Week 8 of the Homeschool …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2020/04/30/stem-meets-harry-potter/
Mar 02
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) separate the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) from the Cross Cutting Concepts (CCCs) and from the Science content known as the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs). Those three distinctions, the DCIs, CCCs, and SEPs are what the NGSS refer to as the three dimensions of Science. It is our job …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2020/03/02/science-or-engineering/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
