Category: Module 1

Creating an AR Sandbox

Here at YIS our grade 4 students are inquiring: “scientific investigations about the Earth are changing how humans understand it.” One of the lines of inquiry is “how Earth has changed and is continuing to change”. The unit is very hands on and includes a detailed look at how landforms are being created & changed due to weathering & erosion.

Thankfully we have amazing grade 4 teachers who really value authentic links to technology and are always innovating in their classrooms. One of those teachers introduced me to the UC Davis’ Augmented Reality Sandbox:

 

My first thought was what an awesome link to some of their related concepts of geology, erosion, weathering and a great way to allow students to have hands-on experiences with these concepts. My second thought, after reading all the extensive information online and promising my our grade 4 teacher to investigate further was that I just might be bitting off more than I can chew! The hardware and software requirements are extensive and require a moderate understanding of Linux and working with command line (something I’m lacking).

What I lack in Linux and command line understand, I make up for with willingness to research and ability to follow YouTube tutorials (which there are many)! I have a plan, and a bit of a deadline, so I’m motivated to make this happen.

My Action Plan

  1. Gather the required materials
  2. Install Linux on a spare computer
  3. Work through the calibration process
  4. Find a way to mount the projector and Kinect
  5. Build the sandbox and source the sand
  6. Develop a learning experience for the students to interact with the sandbox

Thankfully, I’ve already started this week and have made it through points 1 to 3 and am keen to make progress on the next few this coming week. I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty in both the soft skills of learning some of the necessary programming and the hard skills of constructing a sandbox and mount. We have a great IT team here at YIS who are also keen to help out and provide some guidance – along with a lot of great information from Twitter and YouTube.

I look forward to sharing how the project develops – stay tuned!

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Striving for balance

The potential impact of ICTs on children’s health and happiness is a matter of growing public concern – and an area that is ripe for further research and data.

– Children in a Digital World (UNICEF)

Copyright Activision, obtained from Wikipedia: Call of Duty 2.

My first year of university I spent countless hours playing Call of Duty online with a group of friends. I didn’t know their faces, but I did know their voices and we spend most evenings every week reenacting all the famous WWII battles. As you might imagine, spending hours online playing Call of Duty wasn’t overly helpful in my studies that first year (unfortunately, I wasn’t taking any classes featuring WWII history as portrayed in 2005 video games), so as I entered my second year I quit, cold turkey. I never really figured out how to balance my school life with my gaming life and my grades suffered as a result. I had no guidance on how to find this balance and that showed.

Now, as a technology learning coach, I’m constantly having conversations with parents about gaming and screen time. Every week I hear questions like: my child is addicted to their iPhone – what should I do? or how much time should I let my child game every day? or how can I get my child off their computer at home?

None of those questions are easy to answer – every parent and child are different and every approach should be catered for them. However, I usually try to reiterate the idea of balance. The UNICEF Children in a Digital World report mentioned “the ‘Goldilocks’ approach to children’s screen time – not too much, not too little” – something I haven’t heard yet, but sounded intriguing. My Google Scholar research lead me to an article from the journal Psychological Science titled “A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis: Quantifying the Relations Between Digital-Screen Use and the Mental Well-Being of Adolescents,” by Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein (PDF link for those interested). Przybylski and Weinstein obtained evidence that the links between digital-screen time and mental well-being are described by quadratic functions.

Scientific American summarized and graphed their findings quite nicely:

How do we teach this?

To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that part out. Teaching digital citizenship isn’t something too new – Common Sense Media’s K-12 Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum has been around for almost 10 years now and is my go to for digital citizenship ideas and inspiration. However, it isn’t perfect and it doesn’t fit every school’s context all the time.

At YIS we are currently rethinking our approach to digital citizenship. Over the past few months we’ve been meeting with grade level teams to discuss what digital citizenship (and just citizenship) looks like in their classes and what’s missing so we can help construct our next steps. Our conversations are based on three guiding statements that we constructed (based on the ISTE Digital Citizen indicators from the Standards for Students):

  • Students cultivate and manage their identity and reputation and are aware of the permanence of their actions in the interconnected world.
  • Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior with an awareness of how they affect communities locally and globally
  • Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.

So far, the conversations have been insightful as our teachers describe how their students develop as global citizens – I work with amazing teachers and it’s wonderful to hear them share how they are shaping young people.

I’m sure I’ll share how things are progressing later in my COETAIL journey – stay tuned!

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Stepping out of my comfort zone: Transitioning from a lurker to connector

If you managed to read my post last week about my learning communities you would have gathered an insight into how I see the value in professional online communities, but haven’t transitioned to become much of a connector.

Transitioning to a connector, for me, isn’t about believing in the value of connecting – I see those benefits everyday of teaching, but instead breaking out of my comfort zone. I’m a social media wallflower! Not just professionally, but also personally. I enjoy reading Facebook to catch up on what I miss when living overseas, but I rarely post (I haven’t done the math, but likely much less that the 1 per month Tweet).

For my personal social media, I’m not so worried about it, but professionally I want to practice what I preach. I want to further develop the connections I’ve made at workshops and conferences. I want to share my successes and learn from the dialogue with other amazing educators.

How can I break that habit?

My plan is to set a goal – 2 original posts per week sharing either a resource I’ve created that I’m proud of or something that was successful in my teaching. I want to share posts that are valuable to my followers, something that can spark an idea or challenge their thinking.

So, with that said, I’m starting with this Tweet. Fellow COETAILer and colleague, Flynn, invited me into his classroom yesterday to share one way he was transforming the way his students investigate how the earth has changed. Great lesson and a great way to get back into Twitter. Flynn takes complete credit for this – I only stopped by for a few minutes to share his success!

To jump to the other end of the spectrum, just last week I stumbled upon an article titled The Wikipedia contributor behind 2.5 million edits – the story of Steven Pruitt a 34 year-old Virginia man with over 2.5 million Wikipedia edits to his name. I think the tides are changing on how educators see Wikipedia (for the better, in my opinion) and it’s intriguing to get a better understanding on just how the over 6 million articles are Wikipedia are created and edited. An extremely valuable lesson for both our colleagues and students.

See you on Twitter!

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