Information Technology Education

I've been working on ways to have my students explore and reflect on the importance of mindset in the classroom.  To this end, they took Jo Boaler's course called " How to Learn Math " last spring.  It was definitely a highlight for many of my students. Many had never realized the importance of having a growth mindset and to not be afraid of making mistakes.  It was a freeing and empowering moment for so many of them. Image  link I really got to thinking about I address standards and practices (mathematical practices and science and engineering practices) in the classroom, but what about mindset?  So, to start off the school year, I returned to a series of videos from IDEO that I watched when I took a Human-Centered Design course.  It's a set of seven videos addressing mindsets that we must have as we design solutions:  learn from failure iterate, iterate, iterate make it empathy creative confidence optimism embrace ambiguity They can be found here. ...

Starting a new school year, establishing safe and appropriate online behavior is always a priority for me as a middle school teacher.  I searched many options for my students and it was not an easy task. Many of the secondary digital citizenship games and interactive sites covered topics such as phishing with details that I did not want to bring into my class.  Many of the elementary sites, however, were too simplistic and my students needed more content.  So, I was thrilled when I found Common Sense Media's Digital Compass.  It was in an interactive game format that required students to made decisions as the characters went through their day.  Each character faced unique challenges from citing sources to facing peer pressures.  Opportunities to explore the pitfalls as well as the 'upside' of digital media are included, which makes for a great learning experience for all students. The Educator Guide is full of great ideas to extend and the content covered ...

It's back to school time and with that, comes lesson planning and looking for new things to try in the classroom.  I just realized the other day that everything I share on this blog has to do with half of my job which is as a middle school STEM teacher currently.  The other half of my job, though, is as a teacher-on-assignment to support K-6 teachers.  To this end, I have created a resource site called TeachCreateInnovate, I made it my goal to provide links to quality instructional material.  I also included links to numerous STEM competitions and tech tools that they might find useful to integrate into their classrooms.   Here 's the link to this site: