Teacher | Virginia Trekker | Instructional Technologist

Tag: Old School

Method27- Week 2

This is what learning is supposed to look like!

The third graders completed their first experiment during my time in Brittney Royal’s class last week.  The students completed a simple experiment that used the old school combination of vinegar and baking soda.  We followed the basic recipe found at eHow.com. However, we increased the amount of each ingredient to cause a larger and more dramatic reaction.

To make this simple experiment more “21st Century” we did the following:

  • The students worked with their teammates to record their hypothesis and conclusions using a GoogleDoc.
  • After the experiments were conducted the students had to use internet resources to research the reaction that they just witnessed.  The students had to enter their individual answers on to the Method27 blog.
  • The students were also challenged with an additional question.  The question would lead them to discover the teams endothermic and exothermic reactions.  Both of which are not covered in the current 3rd Grade curriculum.

 

Paper Airplanes….. Any Questions?

This is my first attempt at creating an “Any Questions” video. The first place I saw Any Questions was on Dan Meyer’s blog. Any Questions can be followed on Twitter by following the hash tag #anyqs. The purpose of the #anyqs videos is to show a short video clip and let your students come up with their own questions to answer. It is important to let the students drive the conversation and their own learning. It doesn’t take any great video skills to make a video. All you need is something to film that will generate questions. Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed), an technology instructor from Michigan, found the craziest tree wrapping machine while picking out his Christmas Tree. I watched the video a number of times and had a bunch of questions to ask.

A friend and I are developing a bunch of lessons and a presentation that is based on paper airplanes and integrating technology into those lessons without “chasing something shiny”.  We want to take integrating technology back to the basics.  So here is my first Any Questions video. Any questions?