Upper School Algebra 2 Desmos project

Thank you to Mariah and Christine for coming in over Spring Break to hang up the results of this year’s Desmos Project. Students in Algebra 2 and Algebra 2 Honors worked on this project prior to Spring Break. The goal of the project was for students to transform basic parent function graphs to form a picture. Students used transformations to move graphs up, down, left, and right, and to stretch or shrink them. To create their pictures, students had to restrict the domain and range on the functions in order to get the portion of the graph they want. The project was completed using Desmos which is the “next generation of the graphing calculator” and instantly plots any equation.

-Katrina Fuller

Upper School Students Release Scheduling App on iTunes Store

Today at morning assembly, members of the Upper School Mobile Application Development (MAD) Club, announced the release of their new app "BB&N Knight Life."  According to the app's description on its iTunes Preview page, "BB&N Knight Life allows BB&N students to keep track of their daily schedules. Knight Life updates each student on their upcoming blocks, schedule changes, mandatory assemblies, and much more!"

Users of the app can navigate through three screens by swiping left and right: a day view, a week view, and settings.  MAD members can also update the schedule to notify users of changes in the schedule, like those caused by special X block assemblies.  Below are images of the app screens:

Upper School Tech Byte #7- Haiku and Google Drive

In this morning's Upper School faculty meeting, English teacher Sharon demonstrated two blended learning strategies she uses in her classroom to enhance her students' learning experience: peer to peer feedback and asynchronous discussion.  Teachers in the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom are typically bound by the constraints of time and space, but Sharon is using technology to break down her classroom walls, leading to more efficient and deeper classroom discussions.


Sharon showed colleagues how she has students share their written work through a google drive folder linked to from her Haiku website.  After reading one another's writing, they post initial thoughts in an online discussion.  Having this pre-work done before entering the classroom the next day leads to a more effective use of the face-to-face time in the classroom and therefore deeper conversation.

Haiku Master on Campus!

Congratulations to Rosario Sánchez Gómez! She has been selected as one of three winners of Haiku Learning's "Raise Your Hand" contest, a best practices contest for Haiku-using teachers!  To enter, teachers accessed Haiku's Community Forum and described their most effective project, lesson, or assignment done using tools in HaikuLearning and why it was so effective.  As a reward, Rosario has earned:

• Goodies! Haiku is sending Rosario the following: a Haiku Learning knapsack filled with Haiku Learning stickers and a Haiku Learning t-shirt. 
• Blog post: Haiku will publish a blog post on their website showcasing Rosario's idea, so blog subscribers will see it as well as people who respond to their various social media postings about it. 
• eBook: Haiku will publish Rosario's best practice within an eBook “Best Practices for Using Haiku Learning” that all Haiku Learning educators will be able to download. 

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Check out the Haiku Learning site to read Rosario's article:
A PBL Approach to Teaching World Languages. 

You can see Rosario's haiku page here.

Upper School Tech Byte #6- Haiku

Woodworking teacher Paul showed his colleagues how he uses Haiku to create slideshows showcasing both his students' artwork and that of professionals.  He also demonstrated how to use the Haiku gradebook to leave students comments on projects completed offline.  For more information on the Haiku gradebook, check out this HaikuLearning site.

Congratulations to BB&N Upper School Computer Science Students

Earlier this week a team of four BB&N computer science students attended Providence College's annual High School Computer Programming Contest, and they won second place!

The team also won 3rd place at the MIT Blueprint Hackathon this past Sunday.  Way to go programmers!  below is a summary from one of the participants:

Blueprint was basically all day Sunday. We (Cassandra, Aaron, Jack, and I) made a game for iOS called Gravity 4. It is essentially connect 4 except one may press a button and the board rotates and the pieces likewise fall according to the rotation. Cassandra and Aaron worked on the UI and game mechanics. Jack and I implemented wireless multiplayer using Parse as a backend. We had around 10 hours to code the whole thing and by the end we had a good product with only a few bugs. Three judges reviewed our app and we ended up getting third in the advanced division!

Providence College was a problem solving contest. There were a total of 9 problems, which one had to solve using either Java or C++... It was a lot of fun, but  it could have been better with more challenging problems and more teams (there were only about 14 teams of 4 people each). 

-Vishnu