| When: | Week 3, 6 Oct 2014 |
| Where: | CIS, Hellerup |
| Records: | Notes |
| Background: | Middle school design and technology teacher |
Insights
Values of teaching:
- Learning to problem solve
- Understanding the design process and why this structure is useful
- Developing creativity and confidence
A classroom setting involves organization of different skills at different levels
There are a huge range in the kids’ technological skills. Some have never even used a computer. We paired her with a very computer savvy classmate who could help her along the way.
“Brain, Board, Buddy: Ask these things first before you ask the teacher!”
Perspective, 3D construction, and 3D modeling are hard concepts to grasp for grades 6-8
3D is challenging, we’ve played with it, but 3D is hard
Independence and curiosity are traits that are inherent in some children, but are trained and practiced for others.
It takes some kids 3 years to stop needing to be handheld by the teacher…
We provide a lot of scaffolding for grade 6. We have less scaffolding for grade 7. Then in grade 8, 9, 10 we ask them to be more independent.
Teachers appropriate tools to fit education structure, creating their own symbols/language.
We use Google Presentation for our agendas, but we’ve had to create special “corner folds” to assign different slides to different teaching blocks.
Variety of methods used to explain the same process.
There will be a video, a step-by-step list and demonstration, and a checklist, so that kids can follow any one of these (or multiple) depending on their preference of learning.
Content
6th grade geometry:
- Recognizing shapes
- Fractions with shapes
- Shapes in structural strength (Marshmallow challenge)
3D printing:
- Free end-of-year session
- Google SketchUp
- Create a keyring that represents something about yourself.
Tools used
- The “agenda”
- Khan Academy
- Pixela
- Video tutorials (created by teachers)
- Tinyurl
- Google Classrom
- Google Drive