I had the fortunate opportunity to present at this weekend’s Google Summit in Kitchener. My session was the usual – pedagogy, assessment, making and coding. I call it “the usual” but it is never delivered the same twice. This time around I even added four new slides thirty minutes before I was up. You can […]
Edmettle is a project I have been working on for a few months now to support our Learning Skills and Work Habits here in Ontario. There has been a lot of talk around gamification in my world as of late so I thought I would share an example method of gamifying your classroom using Edmettle. […]
I have always wondered why learning stops at the end of a unit. Let me be more specific. When following a framework or guide, we group strands into timeframes. For example, three weeks will be spent on probability in math or this month we are writing narratives. Where I really struggle with this is early […]
Today the buses were not running due to the early morning snow. As such we had about 40% in attendance between our four intermediate classes so we decided to conduct an impromptu maker fair. Here are some of our inventions. If you have any questions, please ask! Makey Makey Drum Kit: Water Piano: Banana Phone […]
As we continue to have conversations about coding in schools I routinely am asked where to start. I usually mention an app or two but I always question whether this is the right approach – many students already have a more natural understanding of coding than their teachers and I know nothing about someones’s skill […]
In this article I would like to explore a new coding app called Robot School from Next is Great (@nextisgreat). What hooked me immediately was how this app teachings kids to block code, but then shows them the syntax written in Swift. If you are unfamiliar, Swift is a new programming language for iOS. I love the […]
That was the title from The Current this week on CBC. If you missed it, you can listen here: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-24-2015-1.3006711/kids-learn-computer-code-in-class-to-help-with-problem-solving-1.3006744 For the better part of the segment, I felt as though someone was reading my thoughts. I don’t mean to come across as arrogant, just that I have been coding with elementary students for close […]
“How do you assess the process of learning through makerspaces and coding?” I get this question a lot. After all, how can you truly assess a student’s creativity – or any of the other 6 Cs many of us now focus on? Obviously we can use rubrics or another point system to track the […]
Over the last few weeks we have been exploring new ways to incorporate the 6 C’s, Learning Skills & Work Habits, inquiry and challenges into our math and science classes. As such we have started to talk about makerspaces. Makerspaces, sometimes also referred to as hackerspaces, hackspaces, and fablabs are creative, DIY spaces where people […]
Jessica Konecny is a grade one teacher at my school. She is always willing to try new things and just recently began exploring coding with her students so I wanted to get a glimpse of what that looks like in her world. After all, I teach grade eight and am often far removed from primary […]
Valerie Volland (@MrsVolland1) is a colleague of mine who teaches grade 5 here in Chatham Ontario. Recently she has taken to Hopscotch as a tool for coding and demonstrating learning with her students. Val had never coded before this task so I thought I would ask her for a reflection. Q1) What made you decide to […]
If you haven’t seen this picture yet – kudos to you for avoiding the online world this weekend. As I continue to hear and read arguments over what colour this dress is, I consider the questions I ask students. With such varying levels of interpretation, it becomes incredibly clear how accurate I must be in […]
I haven’t removed a student from class in years. Partially due to the nature of our learning spaces (we don’t often work in a traditional class setting) and partially due to my own reflections. I must admit when I did send students out in the past, it was only because that happened when I went […]
In this post, we are going to determine plausible sizes of a Super Mario pipe. Let’s look at the curriculum expectations for grade 8 math: determine, through investigation using a variety of tools and strategies (e.g., generalizing from the volume relationship for right prisms, and verifying using the capacity of thin-walled cylindrical containers), the relationship […]
In this article we are going to write a tiny app to calculate the volume of a cylinder. My goal is to get students to deconstruct and understand the formula and then use their app to solve richer problems that require volume solutions. Let’s look at the Ontario curriculum for 3D Measurement – Grade 8. […]
I have been an active twitter-er since 2009 and have tweeted over 20,000 times. I’m not sure that is something to be proud of but I will archive it one of these days for a good laugh. Maybe I’ll publish it to some dorky book. “The tweets of Brian Aspinall”. Not worth reading… For me […]
Happy term two everyone. I have been spending a great deal of time reading and re-reading Growing Success lately. It truly gives us as educators a lot of freedoms on how and what we assess but I am not sure many of us truly take advantage of it. Let’s dissect it a little. Evidence of […]
In this article we are going to code an app to find the area or circumference of a circle. The focus is grade eight numeracy for Ontario but can easily be adjusted for different shapes and polygons. I have found the retention of the formula is a bi-product of this process. Let us begin with […]
In this article we are going to explore a lesson involving the creation of a student product using Minecraft to demonstrate a growing linear pattern. This lesson is applicable to junior and intermediate grades here in Ontario but we will focus on specific expectations from grade 8. Not only are we covering the expectations below, […]
In this article we are going to demonstrate grade eight mathematics (growing patterns) by using computational thinking to support student learning in the 21st century here in Ontario. It is understood you have some knowlege of block coding (eg: Scratch). To begin, let us take a look at the expectations this task will cover. Overall […]
In this article I want to explore having students use their computational thinking skills to code an app to assist them in making predictions about real-life events while exploring theoretical and experimental probabilities. It is assumed you have some knowledge of block coding (eg: Scratch). Let us look at the expectations for grade 8 math […]
Pedagogy Before Technology Indubitably, IT has changed aspects of the nature of knowledge and the way we access it. But what knowledge do we need in the 21st century? Before I go any further, I recommend reading “Pedagogy before Technology” by DERYN M. WATSON, 2001 and ask yourself what knowledge do we need in the 21st […]
For all the kids who grow up in a small town and think they don’t stand a chance. You do. I was once that kid.