Category Archives: STEAM

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Class dynamics and culture are really time consuming AND really worth every minute!

When you visit awesome schools, it always the culture you notice and talk about

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about assuming students have collaboration skills and building class culture. These vital learning pieces were greatly deemphasized and cut (even ridiculed as a waste of time) during the last 15 years or so of school “reform.” I meant to include a paragraph or so about how time consuming building class culture and group dynamics is (what tends to be called “Social Emotional Learning” today) … which is one of the reasons they were vilified, since making sure every piece of every “researched based” ELA, math, intervention and writing program must be implemented with absolute fidelity, and that took up the whole day … no time for anything else (even apparently  science, art, social studies, PE …..).

I was fortunate to be part of a staff long ago that was told in no uncertain terms before school started, that we should take 4 to 8 weeks to focus on building a supportive, collaborative culture in our classrooms. The principal was looking for that happening from the first day of school and the staff worked together on lessons and activities and literacy pieces and projects all designed to foster and build that culture. I remember my first year at that school wondering how that would take 4 to 8 weeks (with follow ups throughout the year). BTW it wasn’t like we didn’t teach reading and math and science and everything else … its just that we took some of the time for those subjects, especially early on to teach whole lessons and discussions and talk about what we were reading (Crow Boy, Maniac Magee, and others were favorites) that centered on respect, collaboration skills and more.

My students even produced some award winning video projects that sprang up around our work in these areas: Don’t Laugh At Me and Being Different come to mind as student initiated projects. And these took a lot of class time for students to produce. But the language and discussion and writing and creativity they spawned were incredible. And if we had problems come up later in the year it wasn’t unusual that we would watch and discuss these videos and revisit discussions about books and activities we’d experienced. IT TOOK TIME! Valuable time, but valuable time well spent (and note the arts and hands-on technology use … and when I run into these students from time to time (now past college graduate age whether they went to college or not) these projects and others are what they want to talk about.

So my message here is it shouldn’t just be that you have a Social Emotional Learning program at your school with siloed lessons …. we should be spending the time to make this kind of learning and work part of the culture at school and in our communities. I think we are currently experiencing the results first hand of cutting these experiences because ELA and math were more important.

Learning is messy!

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A year ago today everyone was talking about and viewing the eclipse

Observing science "live" is an important piece of learning, asking questions, being curious

A year ago today I was very fortunate to be part of a NASA sponsored team launching high altitude balloons in Idaho to record data about the total eclipse.

This is the shadow of the Moon from about 23,000 meters (75,000 feet) above Camas, Idaho

Meantime back in northern Nevada where I work, thousands of students and members of the general public were using the tens of thousands of eclipse glasses science educators had acquired and passed out to local schools. The eclipse in Nevada was not total, but it was still a site to see.

 

Total Eclipse 2017, Camas ID, USA, by Dr. Jeffrey LaCombe

The eclipse took the nation by storm and millions took to staring into the sky and learning about what was really happening. When we got back from our Idaho trip we processed the photos, video and data and made it available to anyone that wanted it. We also shared the experience with students and teachers when we did teacher trainings or classroom visits. Students and teachers would not only express awe at watching our video of the Moon’s shadow moving across the Earth’s surface, but eager hands would shoot up begging to share their own experiences watching the eclipse and the various ways they monitored it.

Providing access to experiences like eclipses, but also snow falling, or a thunderstorm or leaves changing color in fall and then allowing students to unpack them, express their awe and interest and even giving the time to research on their own are great ways to have students utilize technology to learn. Having students then publish their learning and photos and other media through blogs, photo sites, web pages and other places is where edtech is at its best. If your students are mainly doing everything Google and only publish in house or to your classroom walls you might want to consider publishing to the world to leverage the motivation to learn and polish what they publish in creative, expressive ways.

Learning is messy!

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Our Annual High Altitude Balloon Project Is Coming Together

We'll launch your "High Hopes" for the world!

NOTE: If you’d like to be part of this project you and your students can send us their “High Hopes” for their school, community and the world and we will launch them up high to 100,000 feet where they will be released to slowly drift down to the ground and become one with the Earth. We’ll print your hopes on biodegradable paper designed to compost. Send your “High Hopes” here or you can tweet them to us by using the hashtag #hhpSTEM. 

We had planned on launching May 17, 2018, but somewhat unusual spring rains have made the high desert dirt roads we rely on a bit sloppy for recovery. Our current launch date is June 1, 2018, weather permitting.

This year Virginia City High School students are designing the engineering and science payloads that will reach altitudes of 80,000 to more than 100,000 feet.

Every “high hopes” launch includes payloads to carry and release the world’s high hopes that are printed out on biodegradable paper. Past designs have attempted to be mechanical in nature using a timer or altimeter to trigger a motor to spring a latch and release the “hopes.” However no group has successfully completed that kind of design, usually because of class time constraints, so they end up with a payload that relies on the chaos that ensues post balloon burst as the payloads plummet to the ground (before the parachute gets enough atmosphere to slow things down) to open flaps on the sides and release the “hopes” … which works well, but engineering motors, Arduinos, pulleys and all is intriguing, so we’ll see what happens.

Engineering payload motor driven latch release for world’s “high hopes.”

Another group is looking into gluing seeds to some of the high hopes in order to spread some flowers around the desert. They are researching what seeds they can distribute that way (don’t want to plant invasive species) and have contacted the local authorities about their idea. They are developing a water soluble glue that also might provide some nutrition for the seeds as well.

Mixing a trial batch of bio-degradable glue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A payload designed to see how sound is effected by the thin atmosphere at high altitudes is taking on a Star Wars theme. The plan is to play the theme music from Star Wars while a camera records the image, but more importantly the sound during flight through a speaker that is insulated from vibrating the payload, so the sound must travel via the air. Does the thin air effect the sound? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This should be an interesting payload to fly!

 

 

 

Yet another group wants to test a design to protect plants from the freezing, dry conditions they’ll encounter during the flight (actually very much like conditions on Mars). They’ve set up a group of plants to launch and a identical set to stay on the ground to compare with. They are trying several different ways to insulate the seedlings and seeds they will launch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students have also set up a social media campaign including Twitter and Instagram to ask for others to submit their high hopes. Please send us your high hopes and we will launch them high into the stratosphere!

Learning is messy!

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Bee-Bot Cadre 1st Meet-Up

Last spring I was able to purchase, thanks to some unspent funding from a grant, 3 Bee-Bot “Hives” – they are about $600 each – each “hive” includes 6 Bee-Bots, a charging plate and a yellow backpack for transporting them. With time short before the school year ran out I taught/facilitated a quick class with 6 teachers from 3 schools to gauge teacher and student interest and learning using robots in the primary grades.

The idea was to facilitate teachers in their use and then loan a hive to each school – the participating teachers shared the hives at their site. Teachers and their students loved them and didn’t want to give them up. We even came up with a “STEAM” activity that I shared here.

With that success I was able to get funding for an additional 6 “Hives” this fall. Last Wednesday we started a year long cadre of Kindergarten to 2nd grade teachers (I couldn’t get any Pre-K teachers to join). There are about 27 teachers in the cadre from 9 schools and a local children’s museum.

I included the teachers from last spring, and although I feared what they might do if I didn’t include them, the reality is they are all excellent consultants and have already added much to the class.

In preparation for class I charged 54 Bee-Bots (9 “hives”) so they’d be ready to go.

We learned how Bee-Bots work and saw a few short videos showing them in action. Next teachers were given some time to get “messy” with them. Lots of button pushing, discussion and laughter ensued.

Then I passed out large sheets of foam board and let them work in school groups to design straw mazes so they could experience firsthand what their students would be doing (but you can use blocks and lots of other materials you might already have in your classroom).

I also shared a Bee-Bot wiki resource we started last spring and will add to as the year goes on. I was able to include a yellow digital camera in each hive (the color match is awesome). The cameras are NOT part of what comes with a hive, but I wanted a way to collect and archive data and ideas and the cameras were available.  I’ll also set up a Flickr account for this class, like we had last spring. We’ll collect data on how long a program students write without prompting to see their progress during the year.

The teachers were sent out with their hives to get started and set-up how they want to manage and utilize the Bee-Bots in their classrooms – the teachers from the spring cadre shared some of their experiences which should help. We meet again next week. More later.

Learning is messy!

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Da Vinci Mechanics Exhibit – Machines, Engineering, “Making” and More

Inspiration for "making" in your classroom

Da Vinci A few years ago (2015) my wife and I were in Christchurch, New Zealand, and we came upon this hands-on Da Vinci Mechanics Exhibit at the Canterbury Museum.  I’d meant to share a post about it when we returned and I was reminded of that when I came across the Flickr album I had set up just the other day.

NOTE: Click on any photo in this post to enlarge it. Then you and your students can read the descriptions and see the drawings in more detail.

From the museum web site: “He studied the workings of nature’s devices and sought to recreate these as practical machines: machines for moving water, for war, for excavating, for drilling and, perhaps most famously, for flight. Exhibition highlights include the tank, the spring powered car, the hang glider, the air screw (the precursor of the helicopter) and a robotic drummer.”

What intrigued me were not only the devices themselves, but Da Vinci’s drawings that accompanied them (careful drawings of plans easily turn a STEM activity into STEAM). The fact that this was a hands-on exhibit multiplied the engagement exponentially.Da Vinci

 

Da Vinci’s designs and devices are a great model for a class engineering/making STEAM experience. What devices and the drawings and explanations that go with them could your students design? Then share them online through Flickr or a blog or wiki or video-conference or … too many ideas to list. Many more photos here.

Da Vinci
Da Vinci
Da Vinci
Da VinciI noted online that this is a traveling exhibit so maybe see if it is scheduled to be coming to a museum near you. And I bet students could find just a bit more about Da Vinci if they search even a bit. Please share other ideas and links to any “Da Vinci inspired” devices your students “make.”

Learning is messy!

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Bee-Bot Collaborative Dance

 Awhile back I (well, the place where I work) was able to purchase 3 Bee-Bot “Hives.” A hive is 6 Bee-bots, a charger plate and a yellow backpack to carry everything around. Once I had them I quickly put together a class for Pre-K – 2 teachers. The first class met about a month ago and our next class met last night.

Along with the teachers sharing out what their students have been up to (they are so excited!!!) and me sharing a few more resources on our class “Bee-Bot” wiki page, I asked them to try out a collaborative Bee-Bot activity I thought up. Now to be fair I don’t know if others have thought of this before and done this already – so I don’t want to take undue credit. I was thinking about how to make what you do already with Bee-Bots have an even stronger collaborative bent when I came up with this:

Pair 2 pairs of students and their shared Bee-Bots and have them work together to choreograph a “dance.” Start on opposite sides of a table or facing each other on the floor. Start out having the Bee-Bots approach each other until they are face to face. Next keep adding to your program so the Bee-Bots go around each other, back and forth etc. They can keep adding commands to make their dance longer and more intricate.

Here is a video of one of the teachers “coding” her Bee-Bot with the program she and her partner designed:
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Here is a clip of their Bee-Bot dance:
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And here is a dance choreographed by another pair of teachers:
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I’m looking forward to seeing their students taking on this challenge in the weeks ahead.

Learning is messy!

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2017 Math & Science Institute – for teachers

In New Orleans ... and it's FREE!

Earlier this year I agreed to lead two grant funded STEM professional development courses for teachers sponsored by Metairie Park Country Day School, June 7th, 8th and 9th, 2017. The courses will be held at Tulane University in New Orleans as part of the 2017 Math & Science Institute. AND NOTE THIS – You just have to get there – tuition is FREE! (note the flyer to the right for more information). Note: private school teachers have to pay $149 per course.

Each course is about 6 hours long spread over the 3 days (2 hours per day, per course). Here’s a page with all the course descriptions.

I’ll be teaching 2 courses: “Powerful, Connected, Collaborative and Global STEM Learning” and “STEM: Hands-on, Minds-on, Creativity-on” –

From the online course description:

STEM: Hands-On, Minds-On, Creativity-On is a six-hour course designed to help teachers integrate powerful STEM learning with a focus on engaging, hands-on engineering lessons. Participants will not only experience the lessons firsthand, but also how to collect and analyze the rich data the lessons produce. Strong connections to science, language arts, technology, art, the Next Generation Science Standards and three dimensional learning will be included. Most lesson activities utilize easily obtained materials.

Powerful, Connected, Collaborative, Global, STEM Learning is a six-hour course designed to allow you to see how the power of STEM inquiry projects are leveraged when students are connected and collaborate globally.

There are several Common Core State Standards that require students to utilize technology to collaborate starting in elementary school. This course will provide hands-on engineering lessons and phenomena – coupled with free or cheap collaborative online tools that promote sharing and analyzing data, explanations, global awareness and much more. Participants and their students will learn to collaborate and share through powerful writing, oral language, photography, math, art and other media. Online safety and ethics will be featured.

Check out the 2017 Math & Science Institute home page to see all the courses being offered.

Hope to see you there!

Learning is messy!

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WyTECC Keynote

STEM Is A Culture, Not a Time of Day or Day of the Week

So much going on right now so my plans to blog more often have taken another hit. One of the things going on that I’m really looking forward to is my participation in the Wyoming Technology Engagement Curriculum Connection (WyTECC) in Rock Springs, Wyoming in early May. May 6th to be exact.

 

I’ll be providing the keynote and 2 to 3 breakout sessions. They asked for a “STEM-ish” theme so I’m redesigning my “STEM Is A Culture, Not a Time of Day or Day of the Week” presentation and plan to build in more STEM experiences. My sessions will focus on STEM inquiry and the important parts that get left out too often because the activity is engaging, the students get excited, time runs short and we skip the parts that really make STEM learning powerful.

Hope to see you there!

Learning is messy!

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Cantilever Spans Supplies / Cost

WashersPaintsticks

 

For those of you that have been in my trainings or read about our cantilever spans lessons, and wondered about supplies for them, I recently ordered 100 pounds of washers ( two 50 pound boxes – about 2200 washers total) and 1,000 paint stir sticks (or really as I found out paint “paddles“) and today they came in.

 

 

WasherBoxThe washers cost $254.00 ($127 per box) and 1,000 paint paddles printed on one side were $125. (NOTE: blank paddles were about $85 per 1,000). The washers we purchased locally at R&E Fasteners in bulk. The paint paddles we purchased from American Paint Paddle Company.

You don’t need this many for just one class. This is enough washers to make at least 3 class sets of washers – that’s 8 bags of washers per class (1500 grams per bag – around 75-85 washers) 1,000 paint paddles is enough to make 66 sets of 15 per set (That’s enough for 8 classes)

(These numbers are based on 8 groups of 2 – 4 students, per class – so a class of 32)

This is a typical set for a group of 4 students along with a tape measure and data recording sheet to keep track of length measurements.

This is a typical set for a group of 2 – 4 students along with a tape measure and data recording sheet to keep track of length measurements. 1500 grams of washers is a usable, general amount, enough to build a structure, but limited enough to encourage re-engineering to strive for more length. However, depending on circumstances, we sometimes allow more to almost unlimited amounts.

(NOTE: In the past we have gotten paint paddles for free from one of the big box hardware stores I won’t mention here (*see bottom of page). Not wanting to count on always being able to get free paint paddles we checked into the cost (see above), which is fairly doable if the free option isn’t available. The materials should last for a long, long time as well, there isn’t a repeated cost every time you do the activity.

The washers are fairly expensive, about 11 cents each if my math is correct, so we are always on the lookout for a free or really cheap alternative. Please share any ideas you might have.

Remember – much more on this lesson available here – cantilever spans lessons.

 

Learning is messy!

 

 

 

  • Home Depot is the place …  Lowes, and other stores’ paint paddles tend to be warped, not straight, we’ve tried them all. So you can ask at your local Home Depot – we’ve had success when we explain what we are using them for.
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New STEM Lessons / Activities Wiki

STEMLessonsActivities

 

Per request I recently set up a new wiki page as a kind of “clearinghouse” of the different STEM lessons and activities I write about on this blog and elsewhere to make them easier to find. I’ll update it regularly and perhaps add support links for the different lessons as well. There is also a link to the wiki on this blog under the link at the top of this page “STEM Lessons/Activities.”

Learning is messy!