It's Not That Hard!

I always make it a point that my students know that we don't "play with robots."  I like to tell them, "We don't play in Mr. Dunlap's room.  We work really hard doing really fun stuff."  As my 5th grade class wrapped up for the day, one of my girls made it a point to tell me that, "it's not really that hard."  Whatever... 

I thought about the kids in the room who struggled (and learned) how to construct Cubelets robots to drive through a maze or the ones who labored with Sphero code to learn how to make it drive in a rectangle.  I can't even describe to you the amount of deep thinking that goes into rising to new challenges with robotics.  Sure, it comes easier to some kids than others, but I love celebrating with them when they meet the challenge head on and conquer it.  (We celebrated, but I forgot to take pictures.)

One of the girls in my room has been a rock star for me for years, and I handed her the loaner Finch I have in my room.  "Here, see what you can do with this."  I would check in on her every once in a while and give her a nudge in the right direction.  By the end of Thursday, she figured out how to draw a square and play "Hot Cross Buns."  Friday, she thought out loud, "Can I make a circle?" -- a thought that I have never had.  We worked together and came up with a solution.  We were both super proud of ourselves when we produced a few circles.  

 

I love what I do! Yes, it's a blast and it feels like playing, but I love it when the kids accomplish a task that seemed impossible just an hour earlier. 

Robotics Rockstars

Hello.  It's been a while. So much to catch up on, but now's not the time.  I have a great story to tell from today.  Maybe we'll catch up another day.  

In the past 3 years, I've done a lot with robotics and coding.  Well, I'm not sure how much I've done compared with other elementary teachers around the world, but I've done a lot for my little corner of the educational world here in Boone County, Kentucky.  While I have thoroughly enjoyed using Cubelets, Spheros, and Ozobots, there is a part of me that wants to explore something new.  

This summer, I won an mTiny robot from a vendor at ISTE.  Cute. Right? I have no idea how to use it. And to be honest, I didn't have time at the beginning of the school year to figure it out. So, it sat for weeks. 

Not long ago, I started to research new robots to see what I could add to my room.  Through Twitter, I stumbled upon BirdBrain Technologies, and they let you borrow demo robots for free! So, I asked for a Hummingbird and Finch to try.  And, you guessed it, I haven't done anything with them. 

Not wanting an awesome opportunity to slip by, I decided to do something about it.  I contacted my 5th grade teachers and gave them 8 names of handpicked kids to come to my room today.  Most of these kids have been in and out of my room since 2nd grade and we know each other well. They excel at technological tasks and were up for the challenge.  

I laid it out for them. I know almost nothing about these robots. I own one of them and am borrowing the other two.  My goal for them is to learn how to use the robots and tell me if they are worth buying. They would have to work together, read user manuals, and research on Chromebooks to figure it out.  The kids were all like, "Yep. Got this. Let's go!"  Really?!? No fear?!? Oh! To be a kid again!

This was one of those teaching moments that just got me so excited. The mTiny kids were a bit stumped till we discovered that the coding tiles look like the belong in Scratch Jr. The BirdBrains use micro:bit which none of us know anything about.  We quickly realized that we were dealing with a coding language that none of us knew, but it kinda looked like Scratch.  Did not faze the students at all.  I cheered when I saw the Finch moving.  I had to talk to anyone who would listen and care. This is what makerspace robotics is supposed to look like, and it was so refreshing! 

I have two more days of these kids learning the new robots, and I cannot wait to see what they will be able to do by Friday!

Now, will we buy these products?  Maybe.  That's a blog for a different day. 

MakerSpaces on TV!

Right before school started, I got an email from my friend, Emily Greene, the administrator of NKY MakerSpace. Kentucky Life, a show on KET public television, wanted to do a spot on makerspaces in Kentucky.  Emily asked if I would be willing to bring a class to her makerspace for the filming.  It didn't take me long to respond with a big resounding YES!!!!!

We got our fifth grade on board, and had to move quickly with permission slips, letters home, and media releases.  There's nothing quite as crazy as having a field trip on the sixth day of school with TV cameras rolling. Oh, and for an extra bit of stress, the district superintendent was wondering through the classes as well.

While Emily taught about electrical circuits in one room, I was teaching Makey Makey in another. Of course, it was a chaotic mess. If you've ever used Makey Makey, you know that things can get loud. You know what? It was fun! Students earned badges.  They explored. We all learned. It was an amazing day, and I'm so glad we did it!

Of course, I have to remind myself that the real reason for Yealey Elementary being at the makerspace was to create a realistic look for the cameras.  But, it's always nice when someone shares the spotlight with you.

Below is the video that aired on KET. And, I had no idea Duncan Hines was a real person or that he was from Kentucky.  Wow! (We come on around 4:00, but I was really into the Kre8Now segment before it too.

Hey, Hey, Hay! We're starting Book Commercial Today!

It's that time of year! I'm very excited to start our second grade book commercial project again this year! One thing we want to do is connect our students with an actual published children's book author.  This step is so very important in the process.  It helps our students see that authors are real people and how they go about writing their books.

A few weeks ago, I searched Nepris.com for a children's book author who I thought could connect well to our second graders. I was very happy to find Christy Mihaly who seemed like just the right fit for our room. Mrs. Mihaly recently published two books, one of which is called Hey, Hey, Hay!  I sent her a message through Nepris and she agreed to be our author this year. 

Today was our first of hopefully a few chats where we talked about her books, her writing process, and how books are promoted.  Mrs. Zureick and I were so pleased to see that she related beautifully to the students, talked through the entire writing and publishing process, and even talked about how she needs to promote her books.  Wow!  I was surprised how much work goes into making a book successful. 

As she said to us, "My book isn't doing its job if no one is reading it." In other words, the book promotion is just as important as the writing process.  What an amazing segue into our commercial process.  Soon we will be working hard to promote good books in our school library and (hopefully) in local book stores. 

As an extra bonus, Mrs. Mihaly was even nice enough to take her laptop into her Vermont backyard to show us the fall colors in New England -- a welcome change to our unseasonably warm October days here in Kentucky.

Thank you, Mrs. Mihaly and Nepris for making today happen!

How I Gamified My MakerSpace

I became a makerspace teacher in the 2017-18 school at the request of my principal.  As an elementary teacher masquerading as a technology teacher, I had no clue what I was doing. Of course, that didn't stop me from tackling a crazy cool assignment.  I had researched a few new maker gadgets and purchased what I could. I also brought in some of my old coding standbys I've used the past.  But, to be honest, I had no idea how to run a makerspace.

That year was a blur.  The room needed to be transformed from computer lab to makerspace.  I had to learn the new devices and find ways to talk my colleagues into bringing their kids to me.  Since my class isn't in the specials rotation, I had to rely on teacher buy-in and that was hard.  When I did get a class in my room, the focus was mainly on exploration and trying to avoid tears and hurt feelings.

At the very end of the school year, my district went through a major project looking at success criteria and mastery learning for all standards in all content area.  That's when an epiphany hit me... a badge system!

I spent the summer working on breaking down all my gadgetry and apps into smaller bite-sized pieces. Each of those levels were designed to bring students from novice to expert in the field and eventually using multiple devices together. What started as a nugget of an idea turned into a website that has turned my makerspace into a game for the students and an organized curriculum for me.

Click Picture for Web Site

As you navigate the site, you can see numerous options for student choice and growth in various disciplines.  In general, the badges start out very teacher directed but wind up with ways for students to explore ways they want to use the technology. I knew that digital badges would win their hearts and give them a chance to display what they know and can do.  

The next step was teacher buy-in.  Getting students excited means nothing if I can't get them in my room.  That's why I am hosting a Maker Monday once a month after school.  Any employee in the school is given the opportunity to come in for an hour, learn the technology, and earn badges for themselves.  My first Maker Monday had 10 teachers, earning 5 badges, in 4 disciplines.  I call that a win!

Students are encouraged to tackle any device or app that interests them.  I try not to direct them to any one thing unless it's a request by the teacher. This gives students the opportunity for student choice.  It also means I frequently have students working in four or more disciplines. 

 

While I am anticipating a lot of traffic this year, my most consistent class has been third grade.  They are sending me 12 kids for about three weeks and rotating groups throughout the year.  I am amazed at the results already.  One girl who I remember as painfully shy as a second grader is my rock star.  She is knocking out badges left and right.  I love watching as another girl -- wonderfully sweet and bright -- struggles and works her way through something that -- finally! -- doesn't come easily for her.  We've had talks about this being a MAKERspace, and I expect them to MAKE.  MAKING is where the learning is.  It's OK to PLAY a bit, but this isn't a PLAYERspace because I want them to create. 

Soon, it will be time for this group to rotate out, but I'm having two overlap days.  My outgoing class will buddy up with the incoming class to show them the ropes.  I am so excited!

Moving forward...

• My next job is to align these badges to standards. While this program helps tap into another intelligence and helps teach the whole child, the teachers need to see how this work helps them teach students in their curriculum
• I'm constantly working on adding more devices to the list.  At this typing, I'm working on badges for Kodable, a coding game for non-readers. 
• I'd like to make a "The Making of..." post to show how I made the badges and the site. 

I'd love to hear how you have organized your makerspace and how you think I could improve our badge program. 

Three Months, a Bunch of 7 Year Olds, and 99 Book Commercials

Without a doubt, the highlight of the fall semester of this year for me can be summed up with this video.

Yealey Elementary Book Commercials from Steve Oldfield on Vimeo.

Mrs. Zureick and I worked together to help our second graders create book videos to promote reading with younger children.  This is a project we did on a smaller scale last year, but we ramped it up during a Project Based Learning seminar this summer with the Buck Institute for Education.

I'm really excited about this project, the time I spent with the second graders, working with the second grade team, and the final product.  This blog post will serve as a means to hit the highlights, and I'm fairly certain it will be a long one.

A solid PBL unit will have a strong driving question to guide the process. The question we posed to the students at the beginning was...

How can we as readers and book reviewers help beginning readers pick interesting books? 

I think this was a hard concept for the students to think about when we first talked to them.  We got a lot of answers like, "Well, I just tell them what I thought of the book."  I remember how we would explain to them that we couldn't just have them sit in the library and explain each book.  "Oh, well they can just call us on the phone and we'll tell them." Finally, we guided them to the idea of creating book commercials that would be available through the Internet and QR codes inside book covers.  They loved the idea!

We spent a lot of time talking about success criteria for good commercials, watching and critiquing other videos, and modeling the process ourselves.  Finally, we got to survey kindergartners and first graders in our school about books they liked before our local public library brought us a massive stack of books to work with.

As part of our project, we were able to have a video chat with an author who told us about her books, the writing process and how to create a good book promotion.  Tricia Stewart Shiu and Nepris were a huge help in our process of growing from readers to book reviewers.

If you've ever written anything you know the writing process can be lengthy.  If you've ever watched second graders handwrite anything, you know it takes forever.  I watched as students would write up a paragraph, get feedback from a peer, cross it all out and rewrite the whole thing.  It was at that point I got a crazy idea.  Let's teach second graders how to use Google Docs.  I don't know when your school starts working with cloud computing, but these kids just got their fingers on Chromebooks a few weeks earlier.  This was huge! I think it took two days to get them on Docs and type up their commercials, but it was a massive step forward in our process.  We got to teach the editing process without waiting half a class period between drafts.

Finally, the students were ready to record their videos.  We use WeVideo in our school for video creation and editing.  I love how it's quick and easy to create videos in the cloud and sharing is super easy. One goal we had for the video aspect of this project was not to just hold their hands as they created videos but to train them to be the teachers.

Once videos were completed, I did a bit of tech work in the background.  I downloaded the videos to my hard drive then immediately uploaded them back to our Vimeo page.  Then we created QR Codes for each commercial.  Finally, I sent everything to our public library for them to process on their end.

As the first round of 24 videos were being completed, we started up plans to continue the project through the rest of the second grade in our school.  Since we trained these students to be the teachers, we were able to sit back and watch them help their friends. It was at that point that Children Inc. found out about our service learning project and wanted to create the video you saw at the top of the page.

The end result was astounding! Ninety-nine book commercials were put on display at the library!  We hosted an open house a week ago for students and families to come and see the videos.  It was such a great culminating event to celebrate all this hard work! I wish I could tell you all the stories of self-confidence found, leadership skills honed, and love of reading kindled.  I am so glad I got to take part in this amazing project!

Now, for a reward for reading this far, I'm going to share with you some of my favorite commercials.


HI FLY GUY from Donna Logan on Vimeo.


Farmyard Beat from Donna Logan on Vimeo.


BAD KITTY DOES NOT LIKE THE SNOW from Donna Logan on Vimeo.


Spider Man V.S. Doc Ock from Donna Logan on Vimeo.

How We Talked to an Author 2000 Miles Away

I am currently working with our second grade to create book commercials that will be posted in our local public library as well as our school library.  I worked along with one of our teachers to do this project last year, but we wanted to make the project bigger and better for this year.  I'll get to the whole project in a future post, but today I want to focus on our author chats.

Over the summer, I contacted Nepris about our project.  If you've never heard of Nepris, you should hop on over there right now and create an account.  They will connect you and your class to a professional who can talk with your class about whatever topic you are discussing.  Think of what your next unit will be about.  Would you like to talk to a person who works in that field but don't know the perfect person to chat with? Don't worry. Nepris will set up a video chat with a professional so your kids can learn more from an expert.

Nepris connected us with Tricia Stewart Shiu who is an award-winning author, book reviewer, and motivational speaker, living in the Los Angeles area.  I had never heard of Ms Stewart Shiu before but I can honestly say she has quickly become a favorite in our school.  I have now been a part of two sessions with her and have a third scheduled in a couple weeks.  

Tricia has everything you could possibly want in a guest speaker for your class. She knows her profession well.  She understands the writing process and how to promote books and is able to communicate these skills to our students.  Not only is she knowledgeable, but she is able to bring that knowledge to the students' level.  Some people may accidentally talk over the heads of primary-aged students, but Ms Stewart Shiu doesn't do that.  She knows her audience well.  Finally, she is enthusiastic about her work and genuinely loves to talk to the kids about it. As we know from working with kids, enthusiasm is contagious.  As she displays her excitement about writing, the kids start to pick on that and get more excited for their projects too.  

I'm so glad that I was able to connect with Nepris and with Tricia Stewart Shiu.  I encourage you to find your professional expert today!