I recently did an LED circuit project with a group of first graders. It was challenging to figure out a way to make it easy enough for their limited fine motor skills and attention spans but also engaging and fun. I experimented with my own first grader and came up […]
EdTech
38 posts
“…life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” This quote is often attributed to Kierkegaard but was actually written by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. The full quotation is: “Spiritual life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced. It is new birth […]
I love this essay by Syambra Moitozo about what it was like to have Steve Wozniak teach her computer class in 1995. Some great quotes from Woz: “It was less important to me what you teach, and more important to motivate people by making things as fun as you can,” […]
This is an interesting article. If Daniel Kahneman’s ‘dual-process’ theory is correct, it could be a useful way to think about technology education (and maybe even education in general). Maybe what teachers should be consciously focusing on is helping students develop their ability to access and use ‘system 2’ vs. […]
On the Wildness of Children. I’m not sure ‘unschooling’ is the answer but the more time I spend working in schools the more I am convinced that a greater proportion of the school day should be devoted to free play and exploration. I can imagine a school that would strike […]
I recently gave a presentation to parents at our school titled Children in a Digital World. The focus was current research on screen time, educational technology, and helping kids stay safe online. Here is the slideshow in PDF format. Some of the slides will not be that informative without the […]
I agree pretty strongly with the viewpoint of this article. When I contrast the computer science education I received in public High School (writing programs in BASIC and FORTRAN to solve real problems) vs. what I see a lot of now (drag and drop block programming environments like Scratch, Mindstorms, […]
I’m co-teaching the journalism/yearbook class this year. My part of the class focuses on graphic design and page layout. When I was studying design I had a grumpy old teacher who learned his craft from some of the original Bauhaus people in Chicago. Of course, all modern design work is […]
Our Lower School science teacher recently asked me to help her find a good system for creating a field guide for our campus. Our school is located in a semi-rural area on about 10.5 acres. There are lots of trees, flowers, bugs, and woodland creatures. I did some research and […]
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has published a report that attempts to identify key skills students need to learn now in order to be well prepared when they enter the workforce. The report was sponsored by Google and is based on polling of business leaders and students. It’s no surprise […]
I taught a beginning Python programming class this Spring using the Codecademy intro to Python curriculum (http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/python). The class went well and the students seemed to enjoy it. Here are a few things I would do differently next time though: 1. The codecademy curriculum is self-guided and each student can […]
This OS X command line tool is very handy. Every time I need it though I have to google it to remember what it’s called. So, I’m making a blog post to remind myself. Hopefully it will be useful to others who happen across this post. > sips -Z 200 […]