This week the weather worked with us and we moved to a new location within wifi of the building. Mentors worked hard on making sure they were mentoring and not doing. It was amazing to watch how in a few short weeks what these 7th grade mentors have achieved in both their communication and leadership skills. Now it is time to print the designs for next week's bubble fest celebration. | |
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Week 3 was an opportunity for designers to test their Morphi bubble wands and start to design their Makers Empire bubble wand. Designer 1Designer 2Designer 3Too many times, we only blog what is working.... but today is a blog about pivoting in the midst of collaborating. This week 7th graders were tasked with being the designer for their client, their kinder buddy. It was an activity to help focus on communication, shapes, and size. I chose to have my 7th graders use Morphi as it allows designers to physically draw their designs.
So the snafu came when I realized that instead of my designers having access to the Morphi EDU version of the app, they had access to the free app which prevents us from printing the designs.
Stay tuned to find out how we proceed as we get the designers access to the EDU version. Designers then mentored their buddy with the training lab or challenge central to prepare for next week's design in Makers Empire. As the school year starts to wrap up and the crazy of a concurrent classroom poses its own challenges, I noticed that many of my designers lack purpose in what they are designing. So I reached out to one of my favorite teacher teams - Reed and Scanlon at our neighboring elementary school to pose an idea. Would you be interested in collaborating around a 3D bubble wand design experience?Now I should reveal that both Reed and Scanlon have in the past trusted me with some pretty crazy ideas and been prepared to help make it happen with their kinder learners. So of course they agreed to meet and listen to what I was thinking. So this is Week 1 of our next few weeks of working together.... and boy is everyone is excited! Our first step was making sure that our kinders had access to Makers Empire which is a 3D design program that I absolutely love using with young designers. It has an amazing training lab that really engages the designer in understanding how the software works as well as powerful tutorials to support the novice designer. Day 1In our 40 minute collaboration time, buddies introduced themselves, used commercially designed bubble wands, and introduced Makers Empire training lab. Extension for Middle School DesignersI have been using stories in my middle school content because I feel that it is an important way that concepts are shared so besides our day of meeting and working with the kinders, my designers had a STEM story that I have included. So this blog as always been my way of remembering and sharing what is happening in my classroom or the classrooms that I work in. To be honest this year has been one of the most difficult in all of my years in education.
I moved to the classroom and middle school after over 20 years at the elementary school level as first a 3rd grade bilingual teacher and then a K-5 Educational Technology Coach. Amid the start of the pandemic, I realized that it was time for me to move back into the classroom and actually practice what I thought should be happening in classrooms. I wanted to integrate technology, create personalized learning environments, and connect with a diverse group of learners with all of the challenges that are part of the constant changes in the classroom. The greatest challenge for me is that I run out of steam to actually document what is happening. So this is my reminder to myself that it is time to try harder so that I can look back at the ups and downs of this journey... even if it is the last few weeks of this school year. |
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