Information Technology Education

With a new school year comes new students who have not had a chance to meet one another, much less work together.  In order to build a community of learners who are ready to communicate, collaborate and work together productively to solve problems, it is critical to provide them with opportunities to do so.  This is where the marshmallow challenge comes in.  Learn more about it here: So, I had my students take the challenge.  I started by creating the 'challenge brief' in the form of a short video with a 007 theme, created using Powtoon: The emphasis was really on applying the engineering-design process which my classes explored last week to this hands-on challenge.  It was great to see the conversations and iterations as well as teams not content for their tower to stand at 45 cm and work to increase the height of it.  Pictures are here from the plan to build phases.

Click here  to learn more about Google CS First, an amazing opportunity for students in grades 4-8 to learn and do computer science.  All the information is provided to be successful is included and they are even networking and connecting volunteers in the community to help out with the student computer science clubs.  Just signed up for my school.  Excited to see where this will go!

Article is up on ISTE's hub - 3D printing in the elementary classroom http://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=115 

Next major stop was two weeks spent on the beautiful (yes, beautiful) campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX.  Turns out it is the second largest campus in the United States, second only to the Air Force Academy due to its runways.  This is where I met with my cohort and professors to finish up summer coursework.  The highlight was a project-based learning course - again, learning by doing.  The best part was getting into the research and history of PBL as well as refining the practice side of it.  Starting with the launch activity, and continuing with driving questions and need to knows. we were all immersed into the world of PBL and learning from the literature, but also from one another. Here  is the link to the Buck Institute for Education's YouTube channel full of amazing resources to get started, dig deeper, or learn from practitioners. I am reminded of another quote by Dewey that continues to guide me as an educator: “The belief that all genu...

It's been a busy summer full of learning by doing, to quote John Dewey.  I started off with presenting at a STEM club conference in Phoenix, AZ on computational thinking, creativity, and PBL integrating technology such as coding and 3D printing.  It still amazes me when I see where we are in education now and what my third and fourth graders are doing.  Truly creativity and collaboration in action and a reminder that:   “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”   John Dewey It is great that organizations  within the state such as Helios Education Foundation  working together with businesses and educators to bridge the STEM gap.  STEM clubs are a great way to directly impact the lives and futures of our students.  From Phoenix, I spent living for two weeks at the Biosphere 2 (B2) in Oracle, AZ attending an APS-sponsored educator workshop where we lived, breathed, and did STEM.  We tru...

Throughout this school year, my class has been using telepresence to connect with Ari, a student at University of Arizona majoring in Russian.  He has been giving weekly sessions on various aspects of Russian culture, politics, current events, and history.  These have been so inspiring, in fact, that one of my students' companies that called themselves Sug-Art (3D sculptures printed from sugar), decided they wanted to create a prototype of a sugar sculpture modeled after one of Russia's most beloved animated characters - Cheburashka.  This was the biggest challenge so far for my students to design on Tinkercad.  The big ears that stick out to the side were giving them issues... We attempted a total of 11 versions before we finally got Cheburyashka just right.  So many lessons learned along the way and nuances in using Tinkercad.  In the world of education where it seems like things are black and white, right and wrong, it is so refreshing to inspire in my s...

Another student company idea got their inspiration from one that 3D prints edible sugar cake toppers.  They called themselves "Sug-Art" and set off to create a company that custom creates sugar sculptures.  In doing so, they had a lot of research and cost analysis to do.  What better way to do research than to write to the company from whom they got their inspiration?  We got their contact information from their site: http://the-sugar-lab.com/ What started out as a quest to use 3D printing in meaningful ways in the classroom has led to interdisciplinary, authentic inquiry. Here is the students' request for information: Dear Ms. Vonhasseln,   We are third graders in Phoenix, AZ.  We are working on coming up with a business idea as a school project and am interested in your technology for creating sugar art.  We are wondering about what type of machine you use, where and how much the sugar floss costs, and what it would cost to buy a 3D sugar printer. ...