MS English Launch Grant Project - Publishing Using FlipSnack

Middle School teacher Betsy Canaday did a launch grant during the 2015-2016 school year to explore ways technology can help students understand the complexity of the characterization in one of the novels within the curriculum. This novel, The Outsiders, is a story about high schoolers in the 50's. Ms. Canaday wanted students to explore physical and emotional characterization in today's tech setting, using social media and online communication. Her write-up of this project follows...

In Middle School English we are always looking for new ways to help students to connect with the reading.  A favorite book in our English curriculum is The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.  The book, as many of you will remember, has a rich character list of high school students who clash and connect according to their class status, the Greasers and Socs.  Inspired and helped by Svetlana Grinshpan, we developed an end-of-unit project, The Yearbook.   We first looked at archived Browne and Nichols and Buckingham yearbooks from the fifties, which was great fun.  (They saw how the students have changed (or not) and how the buildings have changed (or not.)  Students then created a yearbook page for their assigned character, which they complied into their own yearbooks.

Each student had to write a formal “goodbye” in the voice of the character that expressed that character’s perspective, wishes, frustrations, etc.

They also had to include a list of clubs and activities the character would be likely to have attended (car maintenance, sunset watching, peace negotiation, etc.) and what their future plans would be after graduation.

The piece of the project that was most engaging to students was the photographs.  Each page needed to include a formal portrait of their character (the students in costume) and a “candid.”  For the candid students employed the green screen and Photoshop in order to place their characters in a school hallway, or park, or church on a hill, etc.

Once each page was complete, the student groups assembled their pages into a yearbook, complete with title, table of contents, front and back covers.

The yearbooks were handed in digitally and we made them into books using FlipSnack and posted them on our Haiku sites.

Examples of yearbooks linked here:

http://bbn.flipsnackedu.com/browse/fzulrffn      

http://bbn.flipsnackedu.com/browse/fu307aam

The project was great fun, but more importantly, the students really had to dig into their character and his/her role in the novel, use textual evidence to support their ideas, write coherently in the characters’ voice, and practice tech skills that were new to many.

Thank you for the opportunity to create this project.  It was one of the highlights of the year.

Betsy Canaday

MS English Department Head

US Math & Physics Opportunities

On 9/29/2016, Harvard will hold a placement exam for the Boston Physics Circle. All high school students from Massachusetts are eligible to participate. A group of 50 high school students will be selected, and continuously instructed throughout the year, preparing them for the first screening exam for the US Physics Olympiad team, known as the "F=ma" exam, to be held in January 2017. The mentoring will be done by undergraduate and graduate students, primarily from Harvard, starting in October and continuing through January. For more info visit http://amir.seas.harvard.edu/boston-physics-circle

Upper School also has a math team that any students can join. These "mathletes" prep and competed in the following competitions. Contact Mr. Rollinson for more information. (Note: you do not have to be a member of the after-school math team in order to compete for BB&N at any of these events.)

• NEML (New England Math League) - monthly 30-minute contests offered during X-blocks (middle of Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar).
• Mandelbrot Competition - monthly 40-minute contest offered during X-blocks (early Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar). 
• AMC 10/12 (American Mathematics Competition) - annual 70-min contest consisting of 25 multiple choice questions offered twice in February. 
• Massachusetts Mathematics Olympiad Competition - late October - 90 minute multiple choice competition.

LS AfterSchool Engineering Class

One of the new offerings in the AfterSchool Programs this year is a "STEAM Team" class taking place Tuesday afternoons in our new maker-space. This after school class is exploring a variety of engineering challenges and principles. "STEAM" classes give students experience with challenges that integrate disciplines of Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, & Math. To date, students have explored expanding spheres, and strategies of building and launching a hand-held catapult.

An upcoming unit will focus on robotic bugs constructed with vibration motors and button batteries.

Sophomores Welcome Freshmen

The "sophomore guides" group created this welcome video for freshmen!

US Robotics Team Wants You!

Do you like problem-solving or building cool stuff?  If you answered "yes" to either of the above, you should consider joining the Robotics Team!!  No prior experience is necessary!  The team meets every day after school in the fall to build a robot that will compete in the VEX robotics competition. If you want to learn more about VEX, check out this year's challenge:

We have an Instagram where you can see what the robots we build are like and what we do on the team! Check it out @bbn_robotics https://www.instagram.com/bbn_robotics/. Here's a photo of last year's team:

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.