Clips from “Yuck” - Battle of the Salads
So a 4th grader took a camera to his school for six months straight to record the quality of his school lunch. Then he made a documentary out of it.
(by Maxwell Project)
Abigail Besdin, from our Education team talks about Skillshare’s history and the future of education.
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Photo via designspiration.net
So, we launched Hopscotch last week, and it’s been quite a ride since. It’s been downloaded more than 20,000 times, we cracked the Top 10 iPad Education apps, and were featured in New and Noteworthy on the App Store. After the initial press we got all sorts of other great coverage on…
Hopscotch thanks for the awesome gift. My students think you all rock.
This is for my 8th grade girls working hard over spring break to learn MIT’s App Inventor without me. “And it’s okay if you want it in pink”.
Transform the students’ learning experience in your space.
(Source: from-student-to-teacher)
One of my girls told me she wanted to do something BIG. What does that really mean to an 8th grade student? She wanted to do the Technovation Challenge, an event run by Iridescent Learning. This program gets girls interested in STEM by having them learn to code an app and teach them entrepreneurship. The girls work in team of 4 or 5, develop their app which would help solve a community problem and pitch their idea to investors. My student came to me excited and said she wants to do this. It didn’t matter that registration was December 2012, she had no team, the team would have to learn how to program an app, none of the girls she knows or myself knows how to program an app, and the submission window closes in one month. She said email the director of the challenge, see if we can still join and she would have a team by the next day. Not wanting to lose her enthusiasm I emailed the director. My student had a team the next day of 4 extremely excited girls. I received an email back stating we could register the team. First order of business, picking a team name. I thought I would hear some techie name; like techgirls. They surprised me again with Tourchwood 5: Defenders of the Planet. It doesn’t matter to them that this challenge is designed for girls in grades 9-12 or that we are in way over our heads. My student team leader said in a challenge you are in over your head that’s what makes it a challenge. These are 8th grade girls who are taking 3 high school level courses, 2 EOCs (End of Course State Exams), and one IT industry certification exam all in April and they want to add a Technovation Challenge to the mix. Wii Cruzin Now!
I decided to try an experiment: Based on a video promotion, how many students would be inspired to do something they never thought of doing or they thought was too hard? Although 90% of my students agreed with this statement for one reason or another, the day after watching Code.org’s promotional video, 40% of them are using codeacademy to learn HTML. I did not say go to any website or go learn to code, I simply showed the video and allowed students to have spirited discussion. A week later, I polled the class to see how many are still coding. 40% are still coding. Some of my girls said they are learning HTML so they can modify their Tumblr layout or create their own.
Showed this video in my IT class today. Students had awesome discussion. They loved the workspace of the companies. Outcome, 90% thought it was a good idea for all kids to learn to code like learning to read. These are 8th grade students in a high school level IT course who will take an industry certification at the end of the year. No, they are not all boys. 21 girls 11 boys. No, they don’t all like the topic. So why take my class? High school credit before high school. Graduate early. Opportunity to be dual enrolled when they get to high school. Like the challenge. Just want to learn something new. Oh yeah, I work at a Title 1 school, where ALL students get free lunch. I love my students.
