If you were asked, ““If a visitor to your school was to walk into a typical room, what might they see students doing with technology?” what might your answer be? Using unplugged activities can help develop computational thinking in your students, allowing that use of technology to maybe look a little different. This blog will give some ideas of ways to integrate these activities into your classroom.
The idea of digital integration is one that we get asked about a lot! Many teachers are unsure just how they could bring coding, robotics, digital activities or technology in general into their programmes without making it a stand-alone ‘something else’ they have to find time in their day to fit in. This blog will give you three easy ways to get started.
Why is it that in schools, more often than not, we simply ask students to ‘write’ their story. In many cultures, their traditions and histories are passed on mainly through the rituals of oral, not written, storytelling. This blog looks at a more creative way for students to tell their story.
The BBC micro:bit is an amazing tool but what is the most effective way to introduce it to students? By initially focusing on the hardware could we support the students to be more creative in the long term?
Integrating STEAM and robotics in the classroom can be expensive. Thankfully there are many low-cost options such as the BBC micro:bit which, with a little resourcefulness and tinkering can be a great tool to get started with. If you are new to the micro:bit be sure to check out this great overview. One issue with
Coding is a great way for your students to put computational thinking into action. The Hour of Code resources are an exceptional place to explore and be guided through some coding activities. Awesome for teachers who may be feeling uncertain and great for students to get stuck into some cool coding challenges as the tutorials are clear and easy to follow.
How do we use STEAM tools and ideas in our everyday classroom programmes without it being just one more thing we have to include in an already incredibly busy environment? The micro:bit offers an excellent entry point. With some subtle adjustments we can begin to incorporate coding into what we are already doing.
Scratch 3.0 is available to try in beta version and it has some awesome new features. I’ll show you a couple of them in this video. If you’ve never used Scratch before or are an old pro you’ll be delighted by how much computational thinking can be developed in this user friendly system to design games, animations and stories.
This review is about Makeblocks new addition to their robotics lineup, the ‘Codey Rocky’, which the team at Makeblock have been kind enough to give me an advance trial of.
Have you been engaging your students with STEM or STEAM projects and experiences but wondering how you can better focus the learning? Here are two simple ways you can maximise the learning outcomes for your students and they both begin at the planning phase.
The STEAM learning approach can look incredibly different from school to school. Here are some different approaches that we see in schools, and some positives and negatives about each approach.
Which low cost STEAM tools should we buy for our school in 2018?” I’ve got some thoughts about that, plus two tools I highly recommend.
