I offer up exam review and hints on my public Instagram account. A number of students have named this as my best teacher move of the year. I’ll take it — click through to see the student answers that started rolling in within an hour of posting on Sunday morning.
It’s usually the little things our kids notice. Ev, a genderqueer student, wore a suit to prom. And not to get all clickbaity on you, but you won’t believe what a teacher did in response:
A teacher who I had only seen passing in halls came over to the table where I was sitting during the dance and made a kind comment about my suit. That one comment may seem incredibly insignificant to other people, but it was incredibly important to me because it gave me an instant ally in the room.
Check it out: Ev’s story will take you about 5 minutes to read.
If you’ve ever wondered how you can support the LGBTQ students in your school, this is how. C’mon, even if you teach science like me and aren’t all in tune with feelings talk, you can do this!
hat tip to Becca M. for the story
Almost eight years ago, I was teaching a technology class to 6th graders — we dabbled in introductory programming, robotics, and debunking internet myths.
When the kids saw the Household Hacker’s video “How to Build Hover Shoes“, they asked to give it a try. So I ordered the necessary materials and one kid donated a pair of shoes to the cause.
Soon after, we got to work — laying out the magnets, plugging in the soldering iron, locating a battery, a glue gun, and all. It didn’t take long before we were playing the sad trombone *wah, wah, wah*.
“Why Megan? Did the internet lie to us?” they wanted to know. Looks like the Internet had given me the biggest teachable moment of my career!
The result was this charming video the kids wrote and produced themselves.
So, to Ryan, Peter, and Stephanos — I’m proud of y’all and I hope you’ve stayed curious.
 The school was tiny, and so was this class — just three kids.
 And it was also the kind of school where kids call teachers by their first names.
This is the story of how I worked with other faculty to develop a project rich in physics, service learning, and experiential education. My colleague, also named Meghan, asked if I’d like to design a project with her that met these goals:
- build empathy through addressing diversity in physical ability
- learn the physics of forces through examples at the challenge course
- design, analyze, and present building plans for new accessible elements
On the first day of the project, we took the entire class out to the challenge course where we have four elements up for study. The objectives were twofold: 1) experience the element and 2) consider ways that those various physical limitations might not be able to participate in the element as implemented.
For homework, I had students read about types of forces and draw a force diagram of some interesting part of their Challenge Course experience.
And finally, I’ll adapt my lessons and examples about types of forces to include the challenge course examples. So, for instance, I’ll be sure to explain torque so that the students working on the Whale Watch (teeter totter looking thing below) and others on Islands can see how the physics works.
Student Version of the Project
The big questions: How does the challenge course work, according to physics? How can the elements be universally designed so those with a range of physical abilities may be full participants.
The learning goal: Understand and apply knowledge of forces through the study of the on-campus challenge course. You’ll work on a team to redesign an element that’s accessible by those with physical handicaps.
Tull Hall Challenge Course
I’m sharing videos of the challenge element being facilitated from start to finish. I find it useful to watch for how other groups go about solving the challenge as well as looking for spots where a physical impairment would make participation impossible.
- Islands: move your team to the other side of the element by building bridges from provided boards that are too short at first glance.
- Nitro: move your team to the other side of the element using a rope swing that’s just out of your reach.
- Whale Watch: balance your team on the element in various challenges.
- Challenge Wall: get everyone on your team up and over a wall that’s over 12 feet tall.
- The Video: Your team will submit one video. One team member will be designated team lead on this part of the project and is presumed to have done the bulk of the video work, though everyone is expected to contribute.
- The Proposal: Your team will submit a written proposal. One to two team members will be designated team leads on this part of the project and are presumed to have done most of the proposal work.
- The Presentation: Your team will make a presentation to the Discovery Faculty in which you summarize your video and written proposal. One team member will be designated team lead for this part of the project and is presumed to have done most of the work on it.
Submissions Should Include
Your video and proposal must address all of these questions. Your presentation should address only those you feel are most important.
- Element name (include alternate names if applicable) and several photos of it.
- What’s the team-building point of your element? In other words, what is it supposed to teach a team? Be specific.
- What’s the trick to solving your element? In other words, what’s a team got to realize to succeed?
- Show us the element in action. Definitely show people working toward a solution on it, and people failing at it in all the common ways folks will do.
- What’s the solution for your element? Is there more than one?
- Fully describe the applicable physics behind your team’s element. You’ll be working with either Islands, Nitro, the Challenge Wall, or Whale Watch.
- Explain via free body (aka, force) diagrams
- Good challenge course elements have high perceived risk and low actual risk.
- What are the actual risks we must protect against? What sort of injuries could occur if we don’t?
- What is the perceived risk in this element? How can we heighten this sense of doing a risky thing so the challenge is more authentic and thrilling?
- How will you adapt your element so those with physical handicaps can participate?
- What mobility issues will you adapt for?
- How does the physics change? How does it stay the same?
- Is there anything else in the challenge course area that could be a potential challenge/hazard for the client you are designing for? What suggestions would you make to the Discovery team/Westminster do to address these challenges/hazards?
Some of the best we could find but by no means complete:
- Westminster Discovery Outdoor Leadership — the manual for Discovery leaders, includes descriptions for how they’re facilitated
- Universal and Accessible Design Symposium Review
- About Using the Terms Universal and Accessible
- Universal and Accessible Design Committee Activities
- National Center on Accessibility “A Universal Approach to Including People of All Abilities”
- Montreat Challenge Course
- Universal Design of Challenge Courses from ABEE
- Physics on the Ropes Course
- Adaptive Ropes Course Gear
- Example of how to adapt low elements
- Universal Islands Initiative
- Project Adventure Low Element Brochure– definitely use this!
- Universal Person Sender
Conflict Resolution / Equitable Work Expectation
Group work can be a challenge to participate in. When a team member doesn’t contribute, it can leave the remaining folks resentful at having to do the slacker’s job. Then the slacker gets credit without earning it. It’s not fair so I expect everyone to pull their weight in the project.
In an effort to allow a group to work as a team as well as keep everyone accountable, you’ll submit a project survey at the end where you’ll rate & rank your teammates’ contributions. Please attempt to resolve team conflicts among yourselves but know that you can bring your concerns to me.
Grades for the video, proposal, and presentation are group grades UNLESS significant team conflict is brought to my attention, in which case you’ll be graded on the portion of the project you led.
This January, I’ll be co-teaching Making & DIY Culture, a JanTerm course at my school. Today I’m sharing the projects my teaching partner and I have chosen for 2017. The course is 18 days long, students take one course in that time, and we have several field trips planned in addition to these projects. I want to stress that pretty much every project here is something we found online. Links in the titles.
The project: Build a small crate using hand and power tools.
Why we chose it: This project serves a utilitarian purpose — students need a crate to hold parts while other builds are in progress and overnight. We also want to teach them to use the mitre saw, a hammer, and a drill.
The project: Cut open and disassemble mechanical toys such as Tickle Me Elmo. Learn how they work. Reassemble working components into something else.
Why we chose it: We first learned of the Toy Take Apart from our lower school Design Thinking teachers but weren’t sure last year how the big kids we teach would respond. Yes, it was that popular. Kids hack apart mechanical toys to find motors, gears, speakers, and voice boxes. We challenge them to then reassemble those components into something totally new.
The project: Use Arduino LilyPad platform and felt to stitch a working circuit inside of a small plush toy.
Why we chose it: These little guys are so precious, they speak to a different type of maker than the more famous electronics or woodworking projects, and we get to to teach kids to sew. Side note: the most challenging part of this project last year was teaching 15 year olds to thread a needle. Who knew?
The project: Repurpose and personalize empty glass bottles into drinking glasses or candles.
Why we chose it: I’ve been dying to try this, so we added it. After a schoolwide wine bottle drive, we’re ready with over 100 empties (English teachers drink more than the rest of campus, combined, btw). My teaching partner and I have tested parts, but not all, of this project — which makes her nervous and me excited to finally get a personalized drinking glass.
The project: Build a working tabletop trebuchet out of PVC.
Why we chose it: We want kids to have some experience working with PVC and everyone loves a trebuchet project.
The project: Solder up a working LED matrix that’s controlled from an Arduino.
Why we chose it: It’s Arduino, a platform I love. Sure, LED matrices are available pretty cheaply but it’s got just enough soldering and Arduino programming in it to be interesting.
The project: Brighten up parties with a photo booth based on the Raspberry Pi platform.
Why we chose it: Because Raspberry Pi was missing from the course and it’s a popular platform for makers, the end product is usable by our school community, and it scales fairly well to a group of 4 students. We plan to split the group so 2 kids work on the RasPi and 2 work on the housing & props.
Thrift Store Lamp
The project: Design and build a lamp out of nontraditional materials. Given $10 in thrift store materials and a make-a-lamp kit, can our students make a whimsical and usable lamp? Fingers crossed.
Why we chose it: This is our final project and pulls together several skills we taught during the course. It’s also our first time giving the kids so much flexibility with the design process.
WebAssign is the most flexible question-writing engine I’ve ever seen. Today, I want to share how I whipped WebAssign into submission yet again.
I wanted to make a question where students self-report which type of musical instrument they built and the rest of the question asks them about that instrument. After looking up answer-dependent questions, I learned the documentation suggested they were for numerical values only. Writing my question took some wrangling but everything was documented (thanks, anonymous WebAssign tech writer!). Here’s the end result, an answer-dependent non-numerical question:
The question is shared on WebAssign under QID 3736476.
How would you teach html/css/js to students from grades 7 to 12 so they can create websites? Asking for a friend. Oh, and this friend tells me they meet for about two hours a week.
I was a webmaster before becoming a teacher. I ran a corporate website, organized early electronic marketing, and even set up webinars for my employer — from 1996 to 2004. Does that qualify me to teach a club of girls how to code for the web? Only a little, I’m learning. I don’t have to tell most of you that the web was a vastly different place 15 years ago than it is now. I’m working with a club leader, another teacher with similarly rusty html and strong google skills. Our base knowledge is so ancient, we’ve lost count of the depreciated tags we’ve run into.
Introduction: A First Web Page
I love to let kids dive in on new technology, so here’s how I structured a one-hour lesson on writing web pages:
- grab a good text editor: I’ve been using Sublime Text for Mac
- start with these four tags: paragraphs, links, headings, images
- learn a tiny bit of style notation: colors and fonts
- be ready to show whatever your club asks to learn — W3Schools has had an open browser tab on my computer all semester
- practice! make the world’s tackiest web page — sure it’ll look like MySpace or Livejournal but don’t worry, these kids don’t remember those days
Kids were super-excited about what they’ve learned. The younger ones are mostly interested in background colors, text colors, and fonts. We’ve played with these ideas for a few weeks and I think they’re almost ready to understand the value of separating content from presentation with css.
Next Level: Bootstrap, Templates, and Editors?
So this brings me to the weekend. We’re ready to take the girls to the next level. We figure that means finding some web space, teaching them about ftp and designing off of a web template.
Apparently Bootstrap is the “most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.” Sold. Well, it’s free, so does it even make sense to say “sold”? Anyhow, there are even free templates that use Bootstrap over at Start Bootstrap. I downloaded the Business Casual theme and started making a personal project website to practice.
Are there other frameworks I should look at before showing Bootstrap to the girls?
- Where do you go for basic web hosting? I’m looking for ftp access and NOT a wysiwyg-only interface.
- Who online is doing the best job teaching html & css? Looking for inspiration. We’ve used codecademy’s lessons but want to stay away from “welcome to club, now go follow a tutorial on your own” for now.
- Got any industry-standard tools I need to be showing the girls?
- Are you a woman who codes, especially for the web? Want to be a guest at a meeting?