US Advancing Girls in STEM

This year, thanks to Dr. Long, BB&N's upper school has joined the GAINS network as a member school. GAINS is Girls Advancing In STEM, whose mission is to promote the inclusion of young women in STEM fields, including Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math, (which also incldues computer science, astronomy, robotics, health and medicine etc.) This provides young women at BB&N the opportunity to become part of this nationwide network and participate in their online platform, connecting us with other students as well as female mentors who have chosen to pursue STEM careers. At BB&N, this will be a new club/interest group that will meet every other week during Tuesday X block. 

At our meetings, we will get together, discuss topics related to STEM careers and host guest speakers, visit outside labs and develop a project of our own that we will do. Dr. Long will be recruiting both alumni and local mentors to join the network on behalf of BB&N and help students make connections with them for advice and the chance to get to know someone who has chosen a career in a STEM field. Contact Dr. Long for more info!

Here is a video from the GAINS website:

Cris West & Marissa Clark LS Launch Grant: Pre-K Digital Portfolios

Marissa and I applied for a Launch Grant to spend the year determining the best platform to help us create digital portfolios for each of our students. Our goal was to pilot something that could easily be used by all classroom teachers and Specialists in the Lower School.

Portfolio entries are currently kept in binders in the classroom and the children can access them anytime. We wanted to keep this same format with the digital portfolio, putting greater emphasis than before on making the student work come alive. We wanted to focus on the "child as documenter" and find appropriate technology for them to capture their own work and reflect on it.

One of our successes is finding much ease in using the Pages app and it's templates. Moving away from using MS Word, Pages affords us easier ways to format and layout portfolio entries in a functional and aesthetically pleasing way. One challenge that we are still faced with is the use of Haiku as the platform to digitalize our portfolios. We decided on using and exploring Haiku as a way to digitalize our portfolios because it is already an existing app that parents log into weekly and our Lower School faculty is using it as well. We think it will have the best chances at getting the most "foot traffic." Specialists will also be able to easily access each child's page and include content as well. In the process, we found loading portfolio entries into Haiku cumbersome to do. Uploading each file in each child's digital folder in was a multi-step process that required a lot of teacher time. Moreover, we continue to question whether children will want to look at their portfolios if they are digitalized vs. if they are hard copies on binder.

As we continue to work on this, we hope to continue working with children in reflecting on their work through their own documentations using the Seesaw app and/or Blogger Jr.. As this becomes a practice we hope to devise a system or a flow that children can easily engage in and become fully independent.

Daisy Pellant: Inner Balance Project Launch Grant 2015-2016

This year, 35 faculty members, PK-12, embarked upon a project to use technology to support mindfulness practice. Using a generous Launch Grant, Inner Balance iOS sensors were purchased to provide biofeedback in the form of heart-rate variability (HRV) when using the Inner Balance iPhone app. Two-hours of training focused on the goals of the year and the benefits of mindfulness practice, and the completion of a standardized, externally-validated survey kicked off the year. Throughout the year, participants were expected to be active in an online Haiku classroom both to respond to a bi-weekly prompt and respond to a colleague in the group. Mid-year, we had a face-to-face check-in and mindful practice session. The year ended with the completion of a post-survey. 

Compliance with training and initial survey completion was 100%. Compliance with participation in the Haiku site was only 25% and I would recommend a better accountability system for a future endeavor. Compliance with the post-survey reflects Haiku site compliance. Anecdotally, members who participated regularly reported benefits from the training, technology, and Haiku community. Additionally, most participants reported enjoying the training and the chance to support mindfulness practice using this accessible technology.              

To see the full project slideshow click here

GoPro in Kindergarten Launch Grant 2015-2016

Ben Goldhaber – Launch Project 2015-2016

This school year, I was lucky enough to receive a Launch grant to explore the use of a GoPro Camera in our Kindergarten classroom.  I consider the grant a huge success.  I created more videos than I ever had before as the GoPro allowed me to enhance both the level and quality of my documentation.  What was most exciting to me about this grant was implementing the GoPro using the same approach that the B-2 BB&N teachers have been learning through the Cadwell Collaborative. Part of the Cadwell philosophy is that children need high-quality tools in order to produce beautiful and exceptional work.  I believe in this concept and have seen it come to life in our classroom as we have taught the students how to use and value colored pencils, pens, paper, and paints that are intended to be marketed towards adult artists.  Keeping this approach in mind, the first thing that I did with the GoPro was to introduce it and its accessories to the students. We used the Responsive Classroom model of Guided Discovery to explore the camera and the various ways to mount it. We held discussions, watched GoPro videos available online, and brainstormed ways that we could use it during the school year. The first project that I used the GoPro for came along when we were studying our passions. We decided to create a class video depicting the students’ passions at school. In true Cadwell fashion, the children had to be the creators (come up with an idea for a passion they would like to depict), directors (choose a way to mount the GoPro based on the passion they chose), and camera operators.  I even got their thoughts on how to edit their clips and about what type of music they would like the film to be set to.  Giving the students the power to be the first ones (even before their teachers) to operate the GoPro was a special way to introduce the camera to our classroom environment, help them understand its possibilities, and show them that they are capable of amazing work.

Upper School Launch Grant- Website for Community Service

The primary goal of the launch grant was to work on the US Community Service website. I discovered rather quickly that I am not a web designer and had a lot of trouble figuring out what I wanted the website to look like and what it should accomplish. As I explored ways to improve it, an idea struck me that I would like a better way to show students where they could do local service. Students often ask me for ideas and the conversation leads to finding places that are near their homes or near the school. I thought a map would be really helpful. Then I thought that a map that had pins at different service sites would be even better. After some intense research and exploring multiple possibilities, Google Maps turned out to be the best option. I played around with the program, did multiple trial runs, and eventually figured out how to make it work. Now, students can click on a pin and the site name and type of work will pop up. Students can select whether they wish to work with youth, at a food pantry, at a shelter, etc. This has proven helpful in recent conversations as student see that they can explore their interests on their own time.

Link to the interactive map

-Meena Kaur

Beginners Blogging

In our Beginners (preK) classroom the students are blogging! Here is an excerpt from a recent post:

(click to enlarge)

And here is some information about how and why 4 year olds blog:

Check out this PDF to read more about it...

Upper School Launch Grant: 3D Printing

This year, Science teacher Jennifer Long and Art teacher Christian Tonsgard explored the possibility of implementing a 3D printer into their courses. The MakerGear M2 printer can extrude material at thicknesses as low as 0.1 mm, which is as thick as two sheets of paper! Our ultimate goal was to create an object with the 3D printer that we could then cast in ceramics.  While we didn’t quite get there, we were able to weigh the pros and cons of implementing this technology in two different subject areas.

We tried printing with two different materials, PLA (polylactic acid) and ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). PLA is made from organic material (cornstarch and sugarcane) and as a result, is more biodegradable. It has a lower melting point, requiring lower temperatures to print, but is a bit more prone to breaking. This can be useful as you can cut, file sand and paint it but it can limit its application if you want to print parts to bear weight. In contrast, ABS is an oil-based plastic that is both strong and sturdy. Unlike PLA, it tends to bend instead of break. It can’t really be painted or sanded easily, but it is possible to get a glossy finish if treated with acetone or other solvents after printing. ABS also has several cons in that its high melting point requires the print bed and extruder to be at higher temperatures. In addition, ABS produces fumes when melted during printing and needs to be in a well ventilated area. For these reasons, we primarily printed with PLA.

Our initial goals were to practice printing with free designs available online to evaluate the ease of use. There are several websites that provide free downloads of others’ designs and very little adjustments had to be made before using these files with our printer (www.thingiverse.com,

https://pinshape.com/, www.3dprint.nih.gov.) We discovered that the printer was relatively easy to use once the print began. However, before each print, the distance between the extruder and the print bed had to be adjusted. Most of the time, this was quick and easy, but at times could take nearly a full class period to tweak. We printed a range of files that required print times between 20 minutes and 6 hours. In the end, printing already available 3D print files was easy to accomplish and students were fascinated watching and learning about the process. The printer lived in an office next to one of the chemistry classrooms and the students always wanted to see what was being printed!

Our second goal was to investigate the variety of 3D modeling software platforms available.  These include Sketchup (which is used by Mike Willey’s Engineering class to design green building projects), Blender, TinkerCAD, Solidworks, 123D Design. Many of these platforms are free for basic use and there are dozens of available YouTube videos, online tutorials and even online courses through sites like Udemy to provide instructions and user tips. During the Launch Grant, we practiced with Blender as it is a free and relatively easy to use. We found the design process much more difficult than the actual printing. Even with the YouTube videos and online tutorials we found, learning the keystrokes, shortcuts and tricks needed to generate a viable 3D printable model took a significant amount of time. It is much easier to generate models that have polygonal structures, but we ran into trouble figuring out how to create freeform lines and shapes.  We explored whether it was possible to import 2D images into the software and then add volume to make it three dimensional, but found that this was not feasible. Christian designed and printed a simple vase, which took approximately 8-10 hours from the time he began learning to use Blender to final print. We are sure that the students’ learning curve would be much less steep than ours, but it still would take a significant amount of class time dedicated to software training and design before an actual print could be accomplished.

Ultimately, we found that printing already available designs was easy and was of great interest to the students. The design process was much more challenging and time consuming than we expected, as we had no prior experience with 3D modeling software. Implementing 3D printing into curriculum would therefore require careful consideration of the amount of time needed to teach students (and the teacher first!) how to use the software, as well as design and print time, vs. the added learning value that the project would bring.

Upper School Students Participate in Global Online Conference

Over 250 students from 10 countries in 9 different Global Online Academy classes are presenting their projects online this week at the very first GOA Catalyst Conference! Classes include Comparative Politics, Digital Journalism, Energy, Game Theory, Gender Studies, iOS App Development, Neuropsychology, Organic Chemistry in Modern Life, Advocacy, and Medical Problem Solving. The projects are focused on advocating for change in their local communities. The conference will be entirely asynchronous, allowing participants worldwide to attend and interact with the conference presenters. The student’s advocacy will fall into one of three categories: raising awareness, promoting grassroots action, or promoting institutional change. Within our BB&N community, Dr Cataldo's Neuropsychology class will present, as will BB&N students in the following GOA courses: Advocacy,Gender Studies, and Game Theory. If you are interested in following the conference and seeing what issues BB&N participants are tackling, register at http://goaconference.org/register/ And follow along on twitter with #GOAndchangeit

Upper School Tech Byte #9- Engineering Project

Upper School science teacher Mike shared a project completed by the students in his "Engineering Principles and Practice" course, which is offered as a Science elective.  Students used Google SketchUp, 3D modeling software, to design a space tackling the issue of urban sprawl.  The example Mike shared featured a 100% self-sustainable, all-inclusive community space complete with apartments, underground parking, a restaurant, a gym, a pharmacy, and a clothing store.  The building's highlights included solar panels as well as a geothermal system for heating and cooling.

Upper School Tech Byte #8- Prezi and Kickstarter in Science

Students in Leah’s Current Topics and Research in Science and Technology class completed a unit on climate change. Their assignment was to learn how climate change impacts populations around the world directly and indirectly then create a fundraising campaign to combat climate change impacts in Ethiopia. During the research process, students Skyped with representatives from NGOs.  The two-week project culminated with students' creating Prezi presentations describing the problem and emailing them to all BB&N students asking them to vote for one of three initiatives.

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. 

Subscribe to the Haiku Learning Blog to keep up with latest news, customer stories, and helpful tips from Haiku Learning.

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

Upper School Tech Byte #5- Kahoot and Padlet

At this morning's Upper School faculty meeting, Spanish teacher Caroline shared the tech tool Kahoot (whose tag ling is "Make Learning Awesome!") by simulating a game being played in the Spanish classroom along with the help of 10 volunteer teachers who acted as the students in her "classroom."  Teachers go to get kahoot to create an account and set up a game, while students go to kahoot it and enter the teacher's code during class to play the game.  This tool can be used as a form of formative assessment to gauge student understanding in a creative and fun way.  The volunteer teachers certainly had a blast this morning, as did many of the audience members!  If you have a minute, take a look at Edudemic's "Ultimate Guide to Gamifying your Classroom."  Richard Byrne, author of the Free Tech 4 Teachers blog, listed kahoot last December as one of "15 Good Tools for Quickly Gathering Feedback from Students."  Also included in those 15 was Padlet...

At the end of the faculty meeting this morning, attendees were asked to fill out an "exit ticket" by sharing one piece of constructive feedback regarding Tuesday's professional development day using the website padlet.  For more information on how to use padlet, check out this blog article by Richard Byrne on Free Tech 4 Teachers.  You can also check out "5 Ways to Use Padlet in the Classroom" by Education World.  Lastly, if you decide to use it in your classroom, view this step-by step guide on "How to use Padlet: A Fantastic Tool for Teaching" by Vicki Davis of coolcatteacher.com.

Upper School Spanish telenovelas

Students in Maggie’s Spanish II Honors class were recently tasked with writing, acting, and filming a telenovela. Their goal was to utilize the subjunctive along with vocabulary related to hospitals, body parts, and diseases. In general, students used either the World Languages iPads or their own devices to film the movie then edited the movies with iMovie, and will upload them to the class’ Haiku page. Students seemed to really enjoy the creative aspect of the project and were able to show off their newly acquired vocabulary. The image below is a picture of one group of freshmen acting out their scene in the Drama Room.

-Katrina Fuller

Upper School Tech Byte #4- Taking Attendance

This week history teacher Gustavo demonstrated how to take classroom attendance using an iPhone or iPad with the FileMaker Go app.

Upper School Students Starting Their Global Online Academy Courses

A dozen Upper School students are starting spring semester Global Online Academy classes this week. These students are taking seven different course offerings:

• Advocacy
• Bioethics
• Game Theory
• Japanese
• Gender Studies
• Medical Problem Solving I
• Music Theory & Digital Composition

We're lucky our students have access to GOA and can take such interesting electives!

Upper School Faculty Tech Byte #3- Embedding Google Forms in Haiku

In this morning's Upper School Faculty meeting Rosario shared how she uses google forms with her

students.  She walked her colleagues through the steps of creating and customizing a google form and demonstrated how to embed it on a Haiku site.  A few "ooh"s and "ah"s could be heard in the room,

as she displayed what the google form responses look like when viewed in summary form.  Lastly, she shared a few examples of how googles forms embedded in Haiku sites could be used my teachers.  The data collected can be anonymous, or it can record the students' names with their responses.  Data collection can be used as a way to see if students have completed their homework, such as by having them answer questions after watching a video or completing an assigned reading.  In class, teachers can give quizzes or use the questions as a form of formative assessment.

Upper School Faculty Tech Byte #2- Library Website

On Thursday Laura gave the Upper School faculty a virtual tour of the Upper School Library website, created in google sites, highlighting the embedded photo slideshow, links to local library catalogs, the webpage listing all of the hard-copy newspapers and magazines to which we subscribe, and a beautiful page highlighting the library's new titles, which links to their pages on goodreads.  Laura also shared the library blog created in blogger and the library twitter feed.

Upper School Faculty Tech Byte #1: Haiku in the Russian Classroom

In our weekly Thursday morning faculty meetings, several faculty volunteers will be sharing some of their uses of technology in the classroom with their colleagues.  They will be demonstrating their professional and classroom uses of technology, sometimes sharing tech tips and tricks and at other times showcasing best practices and classroom projects.

Our first volunteer was Russian teacher Josh who showed us student wiki project created in Haiku.  He also shared how he posts his class syllabus online and uses the calendar to post assignments for students and and the online grade book to give them feedback online.  He walked the faculty through the steps of creating an assignment in the Haiku calendar, showed them what the assignment looks like in the calendar, and demonstrated how to access the assignments in the grade book to leave grades and comments for students.

Upper School Current Topics in Research in Science and Technology Addresses Climate Change

Students in Leah’s Current Topics and Research in Science and Technology class recently completed a unit on climate change. Their assignment was to learn how climate change impacts populations around the world directly and indirectly then create a fundraising campaign to combat climate change impacts in Ethiopia. Students created a Prezi describing the problem and emailed the Prezi to all students earlier this week asking them to vote for one of three initiatives. The Prezi can be found here: Climate Change Prezi

-Katrina Fuller

Technology Integration in Upper School Spanish: Book Creator App in iPads and Skype

Several exciting activities have been happening in Rosario’s classes! Spanish III students recently created a story using the iPad app Book Creator. Stories were based on a crime scene set up in the classroom and required students to include a narration of the events using past tenses and utilize a video of a witness interrogation. You can check out their work here: Crime scene book

Meanwhile, students in AP Spanish have been Skyping with students at a school near Barcelona and discussing the Catalan independence movement happening right now. An example of their conversation can be found here: AP Spanish Skype

Students in Spanish 5 Honors have also been Skyping, but this time with two alumni who are currently in Spain studying on a semester abroad. The entire class period was spent discussing (in Spanish, of course) life it Spain and what it’s like to be a student there.

-Katrina Fuller

Upper School Rebel Writers

Susie’s Rebel Writers class (English 11) has been busy working on their Rebel Projects, a six-week long project in which students become rebels themselves by identifying and tackling an issue in which they want to effect change. Throughout their project, students document their thoughts online using a wiki or a blog so that peers can follow their work and offer comments. You can see the end result of a Rebel Project upstairs near the library. Two students created a “Humans of BB&N” bulletin board. Their goal in becoming a “rebel” was to find a way for BB&N people to have an opportunity to better know one another.

-Katrina Fuller