Registration
#CUE19 is going green! There wasn’t a lot of paper involved (thank goodness!). I really like the Sched app used to keep track of all the sessions I’m interested in. I also thought it worked much better than whatever NSTA was using last year. I’m sure that the use of an app for conferences are a relatively new thing, so it’s going to be pretty exciting to see where this use of technology goes!
Ditch that Textbook with Matt Miller
During #MERIT18 Summer bootcamp, we got the opportunity to Skype in with Matt Miller. I was intrigued to find out more, and I’ve spent some of my free time since then casually looking through his material. I have yet to get a copy of his book. (Note: You can only purchase books at a discounted rate at Cue when you have Premium Membership.) His energy totally reignited my desire to do more and do better for the students. I’m seeing all these teachers on the edge of their seats, and I think about how lucky these students are. All these teachers working on finding a way to be innovative in the classroom.
Coding and Science with Scott H. Moss
I’m going to chalk it up to this session happening right after lunch. This was mainly using Scratch to code. I really liked how he used the padlet to gather ideas from the attendees about how they can use coding in their curriculum.
We spent a lot of time working as a group working through the States of Matter code example. We looked at how to make our own sprites, how to code the sprites to do different things, and how to create variables and functions. I thought that the example was a good use of time and how coding can be written successfully for a class. The students can exhibit their knowledge of how fast molecules move in comparison to each other in different states. I was thinking that biology/chemistry could use it to showcase a movement of particles in different concentrations.
Scott also showed us a few examples of how students coded for meiosis and mitosis. I remember teaching these two in middle school, and I disliked how I taught the students. I think this would be an excellent use of coding.
Science: Hip-Hop edition
During lunch, Ms. B and I were looking through all the presentations available tomorrow. As I was going through the Twitter feed, I ran into @edcampOSjr’s tweets. I’ve heard so much about him through @LisaTeachesTech and through all the @KCI courses offered. It turns out he loves hip-hop as much as most of my friends do! So….it inspired me to create these series:
Yes, I created stickers for my classes. There will be a series of kinematic equations using the RUN D.M.C. format. I’m afraid I took my corniness to a whole new level. So far, I only ordered the Straight Outta Physics. I’m going to be very obsessed with these stickers. I think I might design one each for the science classes.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 