Robotics in the Middle School

Learning how to code - and understand the relationship between software and hardware. This is where Digital connects with Analog!

Science Knight Work in the Maker Space

Students are spending days working in the Maker Space using every tool from the Glowforge (Laser Cutter) to old fashioned hand drills ... Come and visit next week to see the final results! Measure twice, cut once.  Also a good example of a lamp designed and cut on the laser cutter.

Using the Cricut Vinyl Cutter

Upper School art teacher Nicole Stone offered a workshop during ecobash to help students create vinyl stickers for their reusable water bottles. A lot of water bottles look alike, so she thought students might enjoy the chance to personalize them with a sticker.

Ms. Stone went to a workshop at MIT last fall that helped her learn how to use the vinyl cutter. This one is a "cricut" model, and can cut a variety of materials. The computer interface is very user-friendly.

Scratch

Middle School math teacher Camilla Lau brought the Scratch programming interface into her curriculum this year by way of a launch grant. Following a unit on polynomials, her students created games in scratch to quiz a user to find two integers when given their sum and product. Here Ms. Lau is explaining her launch grant process to colleagues, which is part of the format of the grant.

English Meets Maker

Our English classes have been reading "A Raisin in the Sun." To better project the work being done, the students are creating visual collages of dreams as they imagine the characters. To support this the English classes have come to the Maker Space (MS2) to sort and cut up old Life magazines and National Geographics from the 1940's and 1950s ... very collaborative. We will highlight the final work in the next post.

MS Students Making Puzzles

Puzzles ... with the laser cutter students are able to make their own puzzles. This one details statements about autism. It was created from scratch by a 7th grader.

Ceramics Students Making Stencils

From the new Glowforge laser cutter to soap dish in no time! We design patterns on the computer, but them with the laser cutter and then make clay objects ...

US French Students Create Audio Gallery Using Vocaroo

When Upper School French teachers Cécile Roucher-Greenberg and Candie Sanderson began outlining plans for the museum gallery of French artists that their AP class puts together each year, they were hoping to find a twist to enhance the project.

"Candie was terrific and found 'Vocaroo,' a website that let students record their voice, save it on the internet, and use a QR code for others to listen to with any cell phone QR reader app," Roucher-Ggreenberg explains.

The result was an audio-guide to comment on the various French arts displayed in the two teachers' classrooms.

"Each student chose a piece of art, recorded a comment/analysis, printed the QR code and brought it to class along with a print/reproduction of the chosen art."

Students from all French levels enjoyed the experience, roaming the classroom "galerie," scanning the QR codes, and experiencing a peer-led exposition of the art via their phones or mobile devices. 

MS Pasta and Marshmallow Challenge

One of the more popular design challenges is how to build a "structure" out of pasta (spaghetti) and marshmallows. The students are given 5 minutes to do the work after consulting as a team. They only get 5 marshmallows each. This is often done competitively in small teams. Many marshmallows somehow disappear! Great project for collaboration and a willingness to experiement.

MS Students Using iMovie for Science Classes

Middle School students have created a series of  news shorts using iMovie. What is interesting about this project, new this year, is that it is almost 80% about writing and creating a storyboard and script. The tech comes in at the end to pull it together and make it exciting. This keeps the students excited and helps those who learn differently and way to engage as never before.

MS Students Use Virtual Reality to Inspire Poetry

Students spend 5 minutes in VR using a 3D drawing tools called "Tilt Brush." Then they get a copy of the artwork they created, then immediately write a poem/story about their experience. At the end of the day the reflection is more important than the experience.

US Sophomores Create Podcasts in English Class

Ms. Bonsey's students created a new podcast on anchor.fm where they have posted a series of podcasts that discuss the books they've read.  You can see all the episodes here (to listen to it through a web browser), or you can download the free Anchor app to listen to it on your phone.

Here are a few of the episodes:

Show Notes: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G772hbcygO760SRTCM9nKnnCiiHCasT1P3LzX_tIfsw/edit?usp=sharing

MS Students Use Padlet for Brainstorming

Librarian Wendy Wunder used Padlet to have 8th grade English students brainstorm about their story projects. She said, "I used Padlet as a platform for a week-long class on Brainstorming the 10-Page Short story. Padlet is so accessible and flexible that it enabled the students to easily share their thoughts and ideas. As 'digital natives,' they were very comfortable beginning their creative process using this digital tool. Using Padlet broke down some barriers to accessing their creativity. They jumped right to it. It was wonderfully collaborative. The other students and I could give them feedback on their ideas. It also supported multimedia, in that they could post photos, videos, songs, links and any media that could inspire their stories. The could shuffle their notes and paragraphs around to help them with structure. It could be a great platform to use in research papers as well. Each 'post' could replace a traditional note card...citations can link right back to online sources etc."

Here are links to a couple of their brainstorm padlets...

https://padlet.com/acwu/shortstory

https://padlet.com/tholland7/75sv8ma4fcrc

https://padlet.com/psegovia/u6g8gvs97qly