Today’s post shares my resource prepared for #gafesummit London ON (May 28/29, 2016. It was a great day of learning, making new connections and of course had many of those special ‘sparkle’ moments when you meet an online connection face to face for the first time. This particular summit had a special connection for me as a Saunders SS graduate.
Over the long weekend my wife and I were thumbing through a stack of magazines and I came across a fall 2014 professional journal that had an article about this top 10 classroom tools list.
In contemplating how fast technology changes and the considering the emphasis on changing classroom practice, what are your top 5 tools now?
I intended to share this blog post much sooner than today, but life has been a little crazy.
On a recent (March) visit to Ryerson P.S. I had an opportunity to visit the grade 1 classroom of teacher Jenni van Rees. The excitement in the room was obvious as it was coding day! Learning goals for the session were clearly laid out and reviewed with the students.
Students were clearly comfortable using both iPads and Chromebooks as they worked in groups of 2 or 3 for collaborative learning and problem solving.
The students really did work collaboratively, and it was great to see their joy in planning, testing, reviewing results and determining next steps.
Fast foward to April where I had an opportunity to attend a Sphero Challenge event organized by teachers Scott Dickie and Chad Lloyd from Westmount P. S.
I arrived early to see the first of 4 sphero tracks being marked out in the gym. The remaining tracks were laid down as teams from a variety of schools began to arrive.
As was evidenced in Jenni’s classroom, the energy and excitement was in abundance. Teams were eager to embrace the challenge: planning, measuring, calculating, comparing, testing, observing, collaborating, communicating, iterating … “all in” problem solving for sure.
I hope this highlights video give you a good sense of the Sphero Challenge event.