Each year for the past 6 year's Code.org plans and coordinates great things for #HourOfCode during Computer Science Week.
Almost if not every year since I've been in the library, I have tied it in to class library visits and looked for ways to help facilitate Hour of Code and coding. In recent years, I've also used it as an opportunity to bring in different Makerspace items. For example, last year students used Ozobots during Hour of Code. This year they had four options: Hour of Code activities, Tinkercad's Codeblocks, Specdrum rings, or UKit robots. Why tie makerspace into Hour of Code?
To prep, I typed up instructions to help with some of the setup steps and details. You can see those below. Also, I recognized that students wouldn't have time to both build the robots and code them, so we set to pre-building the robots. A science teacher's classes pre-built two of them, I built one to see how it works, and library aides built the remaining three. (Also to prep, I had to figure out how to number/track the Spectrum rings...but that's another story for another post.)
Here are some photos of the students in action. There are also some videos of the action on the HIJHPantherLib Instagram page.
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Last year I shared some work I did with integrating technology into different parts of our Global Read Aloud work with Refugee. This year my school read The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman for GRA 19.
I wanted to share the wrap up stations that I had set up in the library for students when we finished the book. Some students chose to try a few different things and some went all in on one. Some of these do require equipment/kits (i.e. Bloxels) or require a little digital setup ahead of time (i.e. Flipgrid grids), but none were labor intensive. These were the stations:
The most exciting part for me was seeing the Ozobot station going exactly how I had hoped with some students. In fact, some students exceeded my expectations! If you go to this Instagram post, you can see two videos of two different students talking me through the Ozobot path they had created with the color coded marker's to represent Viji's journey through the story. (Viji is the main character.) These videos show problem solving, analyzing literature, thinking metaphorically and symbolically, and communicating thinking! A few teachers have talked to me since about how to integrate them possible into their classroom, which is part of the goal, right? There are A LOT of reasons why I do these stations. It's intentional. But I'd be lying if I said one of the many reasons wasn't to demonstrate how hands on or technological making can tie into books and other subject areas.
The 2018 Hour of Code is getting ready to kick off this coming week. I tried out Hour of Code for the first time two years ago. I helped lead every student one ELA/Humanities class at a time through Hour of Code. We talked a bit about the importance of coding and ways it surrounds us. Then they were set loose to choose one of the many activities (I love the filters to help find what suits you.) The kids were engaged, trying new things, and learning. What I'm doing this year But this year I wanted to do something different. Some of them do the Code.org or Hour of Code activities in their classrooms. I wanted to provide a unique opportunity for them, not duplicate what another teacher may already be doing for Hour of Code in my building, and involve something from our Makerspace...so I decided I wanted to use our Ozobot Evo mini robots that we got last spring this year for Hour of Code. I was planning on coming up with an activity, but then I saw on Twitter (Seriously, I get a lot of my best resources and ideas from Twitter.) that someone posted about Ozobot sharing activities for Hour of Code. The timing of me finding that article a couple of weeks ago couldn't have been better! It was perfect!
Last week I got to lead several 5th and 6th grade classes through the Ozobot Dance-Off. Did I follow it to fidelity? Nope. I don't think I have ever followed a pre-made lesson 100%. I always tweak them to make them my own and often need to shorten them due to time constraints. So what did I do? Anytime I try to organize and re-organize items in the Makerspace, I always create a bigger mess before the order starts to appear. But that's just part of it! Sometimes you have to embrace the chaos to and get things out of order to recreate a better system. Here's a super short video I took mid-process and posted to Instagram. So in a previous post I had wrote about starting to repurpose some old, powered laptop/technology carts, so one of the things I needed to tackle this past Monday was trying to pick up where I left off with those two carts and finish that, and the other was to completely revamp the organization of our Strawbees. Sometimes you have to embrace the chaos to and get things out of order to recreate a better system. Repurposing carts part 2VR Cart
Last year we got in 10 phones to use for VR. These had already been barcoded and numbered. I had put the VR headsets in the cart and numbered them at the end of last school year. So the first step I needed to do for this was to get out the phones and chargers that I had locked away elsewhere for summer and set up the chargers in the cart and the phones. Then I added labels to the front of the shelves that said which phone numbers were in which slot (1-3, 4-6, 7-8, and 9-10). Then I added labels for which headsets are in which row on the other side. Then I put the IAP (it's a mobile internet access point to help with Google Expeditions) and an internet cable in the bottom shelf with labels. The only thing left to do for that cart is to type up and probably laminate some getting started instructions when I have time. Last year teachers could check out these headsets and phones, but they weren't all in one convenient location bundled together, and I didn't have an easy way to charge all of them. This cart takes care of all of that! I'm hoping that bundling it all together will encourage more folks to check it out and use it in their classrooms! A failure is still a success, because you've learned from it and grown from it. How can we create an environment where we talk about failures? First full day of ISTE, I spend the morning going to poster sessions and playgrounds. Then I go to my first session. I thought I would go to ISTE and learn ALL the educational technology things (cue the all the things meme guy). I thought people would only share their successes, because that's often what we hear at conferences and see on social media. Wrong. So delightfully wrong I was. And I started seeing that at my first session titled "#EpicFailures by Women Leaders in Educational Technology #oktoplayoktofail." The panel consisted of Kelly Sain, Heather Lister, Sarah Thomas, Rusul Alrubail, Kim LeClaire, and Diane W. Doersch. In addition to the two quotes above that were taken from this panel, Heather Lister also said this during the discussion, "If we normalize sharing our failures, if others see people they idolize sharing failures, we'll realize there's no such thing as a perfect leader, but until we see that, we hold ourselves to it. It's doing everyone a favor to talk about failures."
These brave, failure warriors gathered a large group of strangers in a room, shared their own failures, had us share out our career epic failures at our tables, and managed to make me feel empowered when I left the session. Talking about failure is vulnerable and scary, but once it's out there, and you see others sharing theirs, there truly is something freeing and empowering about that. Ironically I then proceeded to try to show up to my BYOD session an hour early, and then stumbled upon Carl Hooker having a Fail Fest in ISTE Central. One thing he mentioned was the barriers to creativity. He listed anxiety about being wrong, discomfort with unknown, fear of Do you have several little makerspace devices that need to be charged but also stowed securely? Me too! I was so excited to have funds to order 10 phones to use for VR and a set of Ozobots this year (which I still need to play with and learn how to use the Ozobots), but then I needed to think about where, when, and how to charge them. For this year, I plugged two power strips in on the Makerspace counter and kept the phone chargers plugged into that and charged the phones when I could keep an eye on them, but clearly that wasn't ideal. And then my Ozobots came in towards the end of the school year, and I thought I might just have to have the Ozobots and phones take turns charging when someone could keep an eye on them. Hmmm...what to do? Our building tech, who I often work with and our roles sometimes overlap, mentioned to me this spring that some buildings were getting rid of tech carts they no longer needed. They had been used for laptop carts, iPad classroom carts, etc. before our district was fully one to one. He asked me (and other folks in the building too) if there was a need for any. At first, I wasn't interested and thought it'd be one more thing to take up space, BUT then he mentioned several of them have locks AND outlets with power. And my interest went from low to through the roof! YES! Pick me! I'll take two! I immediately envisioned one being for the phones and VR and one for the Ozobots! I started putting them together and thinking this out a little bit on my last work day before summer break as you can see in the pictures below, but there's still some work to go for sure. The smaller one, I started fashioning to be our VR cart. As you can see in the third picture over, I put 33 cardboard headsets in it (11 per shelf) on 3 of the left shelves and plugged in the 10 phone chargers on the right side. Yes, I did write their on them in Sharpie in two spots on each of the VRs. They're cardboard! In July or August, I will plug the phones into those chargers, and I plan to put our portable AUP we use for Google Expeditions on the remaining open shelf to the bottom left. Before students start, I plan to put some labels in the cart about what pieces should go where in the hopes of keeping it organized. I will also type up some instructions or tips for teachers and put them somewhere in or on the cart.
The larger cart, I'm planning on using for our Ozobots. But I think I could easily fit the Ozobots in half of the cart space if that even with chargers, markers, etc. for a set of around 15. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with the remaining space. I might just leave it open until something else that needs a lot of chargers comes along. We'll see. I didn't have time to start that cart much due to other priorities that day, and I need to play around with the Ozobots more too and learn how to use them. I will hopefully do that towards the end of summer break. I try to make as many things in the Makerspace as I can able to be checked out. This will help make those items more mobile, while allowing for them to be charged and secured when not in use. I'm excited I had a chance to start this before summer began and am excited to see where this could take us next school year! I'll write a post with updates after they're done. There are so many ideas and things I tried this semester that I am itching to share. You'll hear about more of them over the summer in addition to topics I present about at or learn from Innovation Exchange or learn about at ISTE and nErD Camp Indy. I will also participate in EdChange Global for my third year and EdCamp Voice again. Both of which are free, entirely online, and a great way to connect. (I'll have to write a more extensive blog post about them.) But one thing I need to share right away is about how I started meeting with departments in the Makerspace like I mentioned in my posts "It's starting!" and "Do what you can, when you can." Back in the winter, I was at a meeting with other district librarians, and a small group of junior high librarians were brainstorming and sharing ideas about how to bring teachers and classes into a makerspace. One of the librarians mentioned using PLC (professional learning community) time to meet with departments about the makerspace. Eureka! This is the opening I was looking for! Our district implemented a new PLC structure this year. We have an early release on Monday's and then are to meet with our departments during that time to work intentionally on goals set as a group, data analysis, assessment creation, etc. I could use time departments already had to meet instead of adding an extra meeting and thing to do to their plate to get them into the Makerspace. Genius! Within a few days, I fleshed out my ideas for how to do this in my building and ran it past my principal. After getting the green light, I presented the idea at the upcoming department head meeting. Multiple departments scheduled times with me to meet in the Makerspace during PLC's second semester. I was so excited to have an opportunity to show departments how the Makerspace could be tied into their curriculum, so I wanted to have some of my preparation tailored to each group. the meeting's preparation Oh my gosh, folks! I just needed to share that I feel like it is finally starting to happen! A few years ago I had a distant interest in starting a makerspace. A little over a year ago that started to become a reality as I had funds and could began brainstorming, pricing, and ordering. About six months ago I began the process of organizing, barcoding, labeling, and beginning implementation steps. Then I started sending out information to teachers; then classes came through to try out items; then I started leading meetings with different departments and grade levels to show them what the items are and help generate curriculum specific ideas; and then I created a shared folder of all the documents I had emailed, shared at meetings, etc.
And this week, it happened! This week a 7th grade science teacher used one of my ideas and checked out 4 of my 5 sets of Bloxels as a project option for students to replicate the water cycle Another science teacher asked to chat about using Google Expeditions on fossils. A 6th grade Humanities teacher checked out several of our What and Why
I wanted to start having open Makerspace times for students to come and use the space outside of class time or instruction. I want them to just be able to explore and do what they're interested in or need in the space. I am in there and available to help or advise as needed, but I'm trying to be pretty hands off and let them guide themselves. Down the road I'd love to have some guided activities too during these times as some kids may prefer that or it might show them ideas of things to do, but that might be something to tackle next school year. When This was tricky for me. My school has a fixed library schedule, and I have a lot of meetings this year. We also have 4 different grade levels with 3 different schedules. Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are two of my most consistent open times (probably because people don't like having meetings then). So I am starting out with Monday's during morning homeroom time for our 5th graders and Friday's during SLT for my 6th-8th graders (guided study hall). So ideally each grade level has at least once chance a week to sign up. My 6th graders that are in band, orchestra, or choir are the tricky ones, because they're never free during SLT, so I don't currently have a solution for them unfortunately. Fall Whirlwind Wow! What a whirlwind the past few months have been! I started drafting a post a couple of months ago on the Adobe Spark apps I utilize most (which I will finish and share) and haven't had a chance to even sit down and start typing or editing a post since! Quarter 2 has been hectic and chaotic but also full of great opportunities and new adventures! I've worked on several projects including running a book fair, hosting an author visit, continuing to work on getting our makerspace set, and being one of the leaders for our first one school one book experience while simultaneously tying that into the Global Read Aloud. GRA with my whole school was an amazing experience I can't wait to write about. I need to work on finding a routine time to blog, but that's tough with my two unpredictable and small kiddos. I will definitely backtrack as I can to talk about some of those things, but in the meantime... time to try out the makerspace! On and off the last two weeks and continued into part of next week, I've been bringing ELA and Humanities classes into the makerspace during their last library visits before winter break. As I've probably mentioned before, I like to be prepared, and I like to feel like at least a partial expert before I try to teach a lesson. But with the makerspace, I have to throw that out the window! As we've discussed before, you have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone, learn along side the students, be okay with not knowing all of the answers, and jump in!
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