Thoughts on the Matter

I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to try out Ozobot Evos thanks to #Tryazon. These little robots are AWESOME!  Their sensors will follow lines, and you can program them based on the patterns that you draw.  It is literally so easy my three year old can do it!  Of course when it comes to programming there is sometimes things you have to debug.  When the lines are too thin, or the corner is too sharp things don't work out the way you might have planned.  What an AWESOME learning opportunity. To be fair we already had the Ozobot Bit before we received these awesome Evos.  My boys LOVED the bit.  It was interactive, fun, allowed for discovery, all in all a GREAT product. Then along came the Evo into our lives.  AMAZING!  These are so cool.  So you have the same basic features of the Bit but then.... da da duh... it interacts via bluetooth with the Evo App.... whole new level of cool. So, while my personal children, mostly the six year old, has dabbled with block codin

About a year ago a friend posted something on Facebook about a project at the school where she taught.  A volunteer group called Project Makeover from the local university came to her school and over the course of a weekend they created some amazing learning spaces on their campus.  The thing that really struck me was the outdoor classroom.  I think this is where the idea for needing an outdoor classroom at my school came from. Then last summer at Edcamp Magic the idea grew.  I was crammed into a session, which I don't even remember what the topic was, but a teacher spoke very eloquently about the students' need to be outside.  How research shows improvement in test scores of students who spend some time outdoors.  Then while at the same Edcamp seeing some of their learning spaces, and having conversations with my colleagues I knew I had to somehow make it a reality. When school resumed I told a parent about my idea.  This parent is AMAZING by the way.  She is helping to

I attended NEFEC's Science Instructional Materials Fair for K-5 educators, and my brain is just absolutely swimming.  In the process of watching these companies present their products, I might have jumped on to Amazon and purchased Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook. I'll be getting that soon with my 2 day free shipping. As for these curriculum materials, WOW.  There is so much out there, and to pick the BEST one for the ENTIRE district... a daunting task.  Especially when I can only truly represent how I teach, and what I do, in my particular grade level. Currently in my classroom I don't teach from a textbook.  I have lots of GREAT resources available to me, usually too many.  I use Discovery Education's Techbook, and I like it well enough.  I don't use all the pieces and I treat it as a supplement to what the students are learning in my classroom.  But as I sit an process today's experience I am coming back to the idea of, "What if I didn't ha

My students are awesome, yet sometimes difficult to teach.  It's sometimes hard to make the connections I want to make with my students during my instructional time.  I feel like I have to always be on, and have the students focused on their learning goals and objectives.  And well that just sucks the fun out sometimes. Last year I started inviting students in before school.  They'd "help" and come play with Rubik's cubes or robots.  I really enjoyed that down time with my kids.  I was able to appreciate them as people and not have to focus on making sure they were focused and on task.  I wanted to do something similar with this group of kids this year, but with a change in our start time, it just wasn't going to happen in the same way. Then something happened, something out of the ordinary, I assigned homework.  It wasn't hard homework, in fact we started it in class.  I was floored by the amount of students who flat out didn't do it.  So I mad