Recently, Yarmouth High School was invited to take part in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program. This program uses virtual reality to take students on tours of different kinds of places they may never be able to visit in real life. There are hundreds of curriculum based “tours”. The Expeditions Team will be coming to YHS on Thursday, April 7th for the entire day.
Coincidentally, our Teacher Technology time on Wednesday March 30 will be about using Google Cardboard and virtual reality. Teachers will have some time to try it out and see what it’s like.
The idea is for a teacher to pick an expedition and then create a mini lesson around it. Many expeditions fit with what we are doing right now in our curricula. Google brings all of the equipment. The list of expeditions is here. There are over 180 options, so be prepared to browse! Use Command-F to search for keywords to see what is available (try World War, Rome, Asia, Biome, etc.).
EdCamp Western Maine was held at the Mt. Blue Campus in Farmington Maine yesterday (February 6th). There were quite a number of pre-service and first year teachers attending, which is really exciting!
Session 1) I brought a Google Cardboard. Most of the group hadn't seen it before. We played with a few apps, Cardboard, Street View and the NYTVR. I also showed the group Google Cultural Institute. Thanks to Sonja for taking the notes for the group. My resources are here. I will definitely bring a set to EdCamp Maine to play with.
Session 2) Sketch Noting with Dan Ryder. I was excited to finally learn more about this topic. I loved learning about visual vocabulary and once you have the six symbols down, the possibilities are endless. I have always written things in boxes and in a random fashion, so it was exciting to think about how Sketch Noting might fit into my own work. I also learned about Bullet Journaling which I would like to explore further.
What was also fun was it was the first time I used my Rocketbook. I learned about this from a tweet by Dan Callahan The Rocketbook uses Frixon erasable pens. You then scan the pages into your smart phone and it sends the page to any of your cloud accounts that you set up ahead of time. I sent my notes to my professional development folder in Google Drive. Example: Page 1. When I am done with my Rocketbook, I can microwave it and it will be erased to use again.
Session 3) Design Thinking with Dan Ryder. I read Creative Confidence this past summer and have tried some of the activities in professional development sessions, so I was excited about learning more about using this method with students. I wasn't disappointed. Dan talked about cultivating empathy in his classes and how he is designing activities so that students learn how to tell about learning. We participated in an activity about how to humanize the process and then participated in a Flash Lab where we had 7 minutes to create an artifact to solve a problem - in this case create something that brings joy. He also shared different ways of giving feedback, for example using legos during a gallery walk of projects to give feedback. A yellow lego is for laughs and giggles, a green lego would be for inspiring, a white lego raises questions. Here's his blog post about using design thinking and empathy.
A terrific day. Thanks to all of the organizers: @MichaelisMath
