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

US Film Students Draw With Light

Upper School students in Mr. Gaines film & video course recently produced a series of still images in which they used shutter speed effects and Adobe software to draw with light. These images are currently on display as large prints in the hallway adjacent to the theater...

Live Streaming Dr. Price's Entry Report

Thanks to the Communications Office, BB&N has started streaming important school events. On November 8th, Head of School Jennifer Price took to the stage on the Upper School Theater to share a detailed report of her extensive, four-month entry process. This event was live streamed to allow anyone to watch the proceedings in real time.

Dr. Price detailed the wide-ranging data flowing out of her entry process (survey and meetings) and highlighted for the audience the strengths and opportunities that have emerged from her findings.

BB&N Entry Report by Dr. Jennifer Price from BBN uKNIGHTed on Vimeo.

Old Technology in the MS MakerSpace

Our new Middle School technology integrationist, Bill Castell, has brought some interesting "antiques" into the makerspace for students to experience...

Student 1: "I think you put your finger in the hole and twist it."
Student 2: "This phone is sooooo heavy."

BB&N Faculty & Staff EdCamp is Well Received

On October 9th the faculty and staff participated in an "EdCamp" which is a participant-driven model of professional development. Members of the faculty and staff offered a variety of sessions for colleagues to attend. The tech department hosted several sessions including this one on fun favorite apps, and others on project-based learning and virtual reality.

There were also sessions on meditation, woodworking, clay, and even a drum circle hosted by BB&N's own Greg Fernandes.

This was the third time that this style of professional development was run at BB&N, following on the heels of edcamps run in 2015 and 2016. The survey data continues to indicate widespread satisfaction with this choice-based, participant-driven approach to PD.

6th Graders Create Novel Displays

Ms. Huff's sixth grade students were challenged in small groups to create a way to display important parts of the novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Each group took their own path on this challenge to bring to life an aspect of the novel. Students used the Design Thinking Process to generate an idea and guide them through the creation stages. They used various materials and tools available in the LS MakerSpace, ranging from hot glue guns, pom-poms, LED lights, laser etched images, and the 3D printer.

Kindergartners Build EcoSonic Playground

Ever since 1999, Lower School music teacher Sara Zur had been dreaming of creating a musical play space for kids that would open their imaginations and foster a love of music. During travels in England and Israel, Zur had witnessed sound installations and melodic play areas, including a junkyard in Israel that transformed everyday waste objects into a learning opportunities for children.

“There was something about playing with everyday objects that seemed to make kids be extra musical,” Zur says. “There is a collaborative element, and a stretching of the imagination that can’t be duplicated with regular instruments.”

Made from recycled materials, an EcoSonic playground is essentially a large, unique, music-making structure intended to promote collaborative play. Building one includes a curriculum component for elementary schools to teach students STEM skills through lessons in acoustics, physics, engineering, and design as they work with educators to build the structures themselves.

Zur, who holds a doctorate in musical play, quickly contacted her colleague Elissa Johnson-Green, a music professor at Umass Lowell, who heads up an EcoSonic team comprised of professors and graduate students. Over the course of the year, the EcoSonic team and Zur met regularly with the kindergartners to design and implement the play space. This didn’t just involve the nuts and bolts of putting the playground together.

The students studied sound vibrations in Carol Fine’s science class, and tested different materials with Lower School technology integration and makerspace mentor Mickey Hardt. They drew up designs in their homeroom, and, of course, they studied music proper with Zur.

Finally, this spring, the project came together when the musical playground was unveiled during the last week of school. PVC pipes, an old vacuum cleaner hose, a bike tire, and countless other everyday objects had been pulled together to create BB&N’s EcoSonic playground.

“There is this drumming thing, and there is a tube that you can listen to like a headphone, and you can hear everything, except the sound is smaller,” explains kindergartener Ryan McCullough excitedly. “But designing it was even more fun than playing it, because when you are designing it, you get to play with more people.”

The final result has been an EcoSonic playground that sounds at turns beautiful, cacophonous, and vibrant—but above all else, fun!

Ceramic Artist Students Wikis

In the 8th-grade ceramics courses, students contributed in creating an artist's wiki based on an individual ceramic artist of their choice. Each wiki page included a title page, biography, about the artist’s art and style, about them as a teacher and a video about the artist. This combined project became a classroom resource for students to learn about famous ceramic artists.

EZ Sound with Coil Pots in 7th Grade

In the 7th-grade ceramics course, the final project ‘Music Meets Large Coil Pots,’ students created a pot or sculpture based on their favorite songs. We enhanced the project by adding an Arduino sound module to play the song which the artwork is based upon. Students recorded their chosen songs and created expressive cards stating why they chose their songs and how they illustrated them through their artwork.

MS Drama Video Chats with School in Tanzania

For their second video chat with the school in Tanzania, students performed skits, asked questions, and sang their respective national anthems...

MS Drama Video Chat with Tanzanian School from BB&N School on Vimeo.