Arts Education

My students like a paper calendar. I use Google calendar and our class calendar is embedded on my website and on my Schoology page.  Every year I threaten to stop printing the paper version, but the students always ask me to do it, so then I do. This creates a bit of a hassle because Google Calendar doesn't print nicely, so I end up typing all the information into a calendar twice - once for Google, once to print. Yesterday I tried out Print My Cal . This service allows you to print a Google calendar with some limited format choices. In the very easy process, you sign in to Google and make a couple choices for your formatting. Then choose the calendar (or calendars) you want to print and download the file to print.  I have tried out a couple of different fonts and I haven't found exactly the right thing yet, but I think with this one I am on the right track. It's very plain and the formatting isn't perfect, but if it means I can stop typing the calendar twice, I am happ...

This week something exciting happened on A Lever and a Place to Stand ! During this past week, my blog has had more pageviews from readers in Russia than in the US. This week marks the first time that any country other than the US has been the top of the pageviews list. Welcome, Russia! I can't tell by looking at the analytics which post brought this increased international traffic, but I am so intrigued. If you are a Russian chemistry teacher or a Russian teacher of young children and you might consider partnering with me on a project this year, let me know by commenting below. I would love to connect with an international classroom!

Another new coding app entered the scene recently. This one is another app brought to us by GoldieBlox . If you aren't familiar with GoldieBlox, this is a line of toys worth checking out. Founder Debbie Sterling is an engineer who cashed in everything she had to start this line to encourage girls to make and build and engineer things. When she was just getting GoldieBlox off the ground, every time I watched her talk about the company, I teared up. This subject hits home with me, so we own many GoldieBlox sets and the Movie Machine app . Needless to say, I was very excited about the idea of a GoldieBlox app that teaches coding. Open the app and you have four options: play the coding adventures, go to the coding sandbox, play the mini-games, or watch Goldie videos. I went directly for the Goldie adventures. The premise of the game is goofy - someone is having a birthday but we don't know who so let's deliver cupcakes to everyone we know in town to cover all the bases.  I rec...

During an inservice this past year, I was introduced to a strategy called My Favorite No . We watched this video about the strategy and I really liked it (video AND strategy!). If you don't have time to watch the video right now, here is the gist: Give kids a quick bellwork assignment to complete on an index card. Collect and quickly sort into right and wrong answers. Then choose the best wrong answer and use a document camera to project it to the class. Ask the students to identify everything that is done well in the incorrect response. Then ask them to suggest a correction and identify why the teacher chose it as her favorite "no." I like how quick it is, how it emphasizes that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, how the class starts with what is good and corrects the mistake. I like that everyone gets better at editing his or her own work. Today I stumbled upon a way to do with without index cards or document cameras. One of my favorite web tools (and apps) is The A...

This week I have been reading with great interest a discussion in a  chemistry teachers' Google Group . It started with a post about whether or not teachers find it acceptable when students give answers as 3.6e-4 instead of 3.6 x 10 -4 . There were a couple of back and forth ideas about whether or not this is acceptable practice on its face value: Then the conversation  shifted away from that and to a more important idea: does writing an answer as 3.6e-4 tell a teacher something about a student's understanding of the math and/or the chemistry? This is where I was really drawn in. In my experience, students arrive to chemistry in tenth or eleventh grade with little understanding of scientific notation despite its inclusion in the 8th grade standards of the Common Core (emphasis mine): CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.EE.A.4 Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used . Use scientific notation an...

I have written twice before about how much I love the templates at flippity.net . In fact, the first blog post I ever wrote was about the cool flashcards you can make from a Google Sheet when you grab the template at flippity.net . Then last July I wrote again about how more templates have been added. Well, here it is July, so it must be time to write about the other great tools that are available. The template I am most excited about is the Random Name Picker . Though it sounds like it only does that, it actually is a random team maker too. You can choose from one name, a lineup of all names, or teams of up to 12 kids, or up to 12 teams. With a click of a button, they can be instantly scrambled. There is also a spelling list maker and a mad lib generator . Click on a student's name and you can see, practice, and test on spelling words. With the mad lib generator, you see a list like the one pictured and you fill in words. Then, presto! A mad lib! Another great template is the b...

The best part about leading PD is finding great new tools and ideas by sharing with other people. During the past two days I have taught a Google class at a local college. When introducing Chrome, I talked about extensions and then we all sifted through some extensions to find some that we might like. One that I found was Stencil . Stencil allows you to "create images faster and easier than ever before." I will have to agree with that claim because I created the image above in about 4 minutes. Given 5 minutes, I might have been able to match the reds better!  The process couldn't be easier. Select a background. There are almost 700,000 to choose from. Type some text. Or select a ready-made quote. Drag it to where you want it to be. Resize, change color - all with easy, intuitive clicks. Save the image, download it, share it on social media. Easy, easy, easy. The free account allows you to save 10 images every month. You have a selection of backgrounds and icons to use in...

I'm going to let you in on a secret. I sort of hate what happened this year to Google Forms. Until this week, I have tucked my head in the sand and ignored the new Forms. I have persisted with the old Forms because 1) there is more functionality and 2) the menus and processes are more consistent with the other main Google apps.  This week I am teaching a graduate workshop on Google apps, so I felt compelled to embrace the new Forms. I took an old assignment and tried to fix it as a new Form. That was a colossal failure because of some things you can't do, like rearrange sections. Still, I wanted to show the new Forms, so I rebuilt the assignment. As part of that process, I made 5 videos that quickly (< 2 min each) show an aspect of new Forms. Because my last post - on creating auto-graded quizzes without add-ons in Google Forms - has been a popular one, I decided to share the videos here. Make a Form and Add to a Folder Choose a Theme for your Form Add Questions to Google F...

It's never been easier to create a quiz using Google Forms. Now you can give a multiple choice quiz that is auto-scored without an add-on like Flubaroo or Super Quiz . Here is a step-by-step guide: When you create a new form, look for the gear icon in the upper right hand corner. Click it. This opens the settings for the Form. There are three tabs - General, Presentation, and Quiz. Click Quiz and you will see this: Click the switch to "make this a quiz" and then select any of the other options that you want. Make sure to look at the choices in the other tabs (General and Presentation) too so you can collect usernames if you want or restrict students to one response (one chance at the quiz) or allow many responses. Click the plus sign to add questions. In order to have the questions operate as a quiz, you will need to choose one of the objective question types - multiple choice, checkboxes, or dropdown. These are the only ones that will allow you to mark an answer for the...

Last month I read a post, " Your GPS is Making You Dumber ," by Dan Meyer with great interest. In it, Dan explores the dichotomy of providing steps for students to use in solving math problems vs. providing the problem without the steps to let students grapple with how to solve it. If you haven't read it, the post and the 40+ comments are a great read. I highly recommend it. I mention it here because this year I tried something different when I taught stoichiometry, the mathematical relationships inherent in chemistry. I blogged about my new approach here and here . To summarize, instead of showing my students exactly how to solve stoichiometry problems, I presented the problems and suggested they figure it out. I helped and prodded and eventually showed several different systems. This post is the end of the story. At the end of the year, my students take an end of course exam. It's a fourteen question test over the big ideas in chemistry, written and graded by me, t...

This is a post that I have been kicking around for almost a year, but I saw an announcement this week that moved it to the top of my Drafts pile. More on that in just a minute. Last August I signed up and tried out TeacherCal by EduSync . TeacherCal is a teacher planning calendar that syncs with Google Calendar and Google Classroom. Once you are signed up or signed in, you can create terms of instruction and add courses to the terms. Then click on dates on the calendar to create assignments. All the assignments auto-post on the Google Calendar that you designate. If you click on an assignment, you see something like this: Notice the Google Classroom icon if you want to add the assignment to your Classroom too. You can attach a link or a file from Drive or somewhere else or create a new doc, sheet, form, or slide from the assignment with the click of an icon. I also really like that you can click a button and message all the students in a class. When you do, you get a window like this...

Last week a colleague and I had a great time hosting our district's first ever coding camp for rising fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Until we attended a free workshop by code.org , we had a long list of resources and ideas. After the code.org workshop, we decided to lean heavily on their amazing tools and also use little programmable robots called Ozobots . We structured each 4 hour day around a concept and word of the day. Here is what we did each day: Day 1: Algorithm We started with some unplugged activities by code.org - Paper Airplane Algorithms and Graph Paper Programming. Both of these help students practice the idea of algorithms and sequences. Starting with these allowed us to quickly see who followed directions instinctively and who needed help. After the unplugged stuff, we got everyone logged in to accounts we created for them at code.org and we started online activities as part of Course 2 . We finished the day with about an hour of drawing mazes for the Ozobot'...