Friday, June 20, 2008
STEM Grant Experiences
It is with a certain sense of nostalgia that I read the introduction I wrote for my teaching website almost two years ago. I have since completed 33 credits of graduate school, learned much, and have two more years' life experience including working for NYIT to coach teachers directly in a Title IIB STEM Grant, Phase II of the Digital Immigration Project.
This has been an exciting time and I have had such great experiences and successes doing this teacher training. I've met dozens of new people, been in numerous schools in the Bronx, created and delivered science and technology workshops, taught kindergarten and 4th grade classes, and had class discussions with students in grades K - 5 as I worked with their teachers on integrating science and technology throughout the curriculum.
This time has been very rewarding and satisfying. I was warmly received and appreciated by many - both teachers and students - and shared some of the joys of teaching and learning that are so dear to education professionals.
In some kindergarten classes, I worked with teachers to deliver a wheel-and-axle experience by building wooden models of cars, covered wagons, bulldozers and bi-planes with the students. In another kindergarten class, we got out the laptops and went online to hear the sounds of animals and label the parts of animals. The kids dragged and dropped boxes and jumped with delight when they got them all in place. 4th grade students "oohed" and "aahed" watching a video of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon in a lesson about life cycles, or as they found the iron in their ground-up cereal.
Teachers of all grades and subjects participated in science workshops, and brought some of those resources into their classrooms. It was wonderful to hear of their successes. And to think I hadn’t taken a science class in over 20 years - I presented earthquakes and plate tectonics, hurricanes, simple machines, Newton's laws, the scientific method, and our planetary neighborhood, with videos, podcasts, online interactives, hands-on experiments and added some computer software training. My ratings were excellent and I am very pleased with these accomplishments.
I now live in Rutherford, New Jersey in a house I purchased with two of my friends. I still do the budgeting, coordinating and business work of the FunMasters entertainment company, and occasionally get to perform myself, face painting or doing temporary air brush tattoos. As I near completion of my degree, and have been immersed in elementary school environments and a couple of middle schools as well, I am a better-rounded educator, more seasoned and even more prepared to tackle new challenges.
To teach again would be great, as a cluster teacher in elementary school, even a science cluster teacher, seems a reasonable aspiration, or to get back into a high school and facilitate learning about, and how to use technology to bring new life to students projects. But beyond that, I strive to have a greater influence on bringing technology to a learning community, to collaborate with other educators on making their classrooms more in-tune to the 21st century.
Who knows what challenges await our students? This increasingly complex world needs well-educated students who can think critically, use technology without a second thought as part of their toolbox, collaborate well with others, and navigate a world whose resources are being stretched and whose boundaries are being constantly challenged.
With world population approaching 7 billion people, it is, as Aldous Huxley penned, A Brave New World. Educating our children is an urgent endeavor, and I am anxious to continue my part in it.
I'll be cross-posting to http://bronxdip.edublogs.org/
to all you other educators out there.. keep faith ...
all the best,
Lynne
This has been an exciting time and I have had such great experiences and successes doing this teacher training. I've met dozens of new people, been in numerous schools in the Bronx, created and delivered science and technology workshops, taught kindergarten and 4th grade classes, and had class discussions with students in grades K - 5 as I worked with their teachers on integrating science and technology throughout the curriculum.
This time has been very rewarding and satisfying. I was warmly received and appreciated by many - both teachers and students - and shared some of the joys of teaching and learning that are so dear to education professionals.
In some kindergarten classes, I worked with teachers to deliver a wheel-and-axle experience by building wooden models of cars, covered wagons, bulldozers and bi-planes with the students. In another kindergarten class, we got out the laptops and went online to hear the sounds of animals and label the parts of animals. The kids dragged and dropped boxes and jumped with delight when they got them all in place. 4th grade students "oohed" and "aahed" watching a video of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon in a lesson about life cycles, or as they found the iron in their ground-up cereal.
Teachers of all grades and subjects participated in science workshops, and brought some of those resources into their classrooms. It was wonderful to hear of their successes. And to think I hadn’t taken a science class in over 20 years - I presented earthquakes and plate tectonics, hurricanes, simple machines, Newton's laws, the scientific method, and our planetary neighborhood, with videos, podcasts, online interactives, hands-on experiments and added some computer software training. My ratings were excellent and I am very pleased with these accomplishments.
I now live in Rutherford, New Jersey in a house I purchased with two of my friends. I still do the budgeting, coordinating and business work of the FunMasters entertainment company, and occasionally get to perform myself, face painting or doing temporary air brush tattoos. As I near completion of my degree, and have been immersed in elementary school environments and a couple of middle schools as well, I am a better-rounded educator, more seasoned and even more prepared to tackle new challenges.
To teach again would be great, as a cluster teacher in elementary school, even a science cluster teacher, seems a reasonable aspiration, or to get back into a high school and facilitate learning about, and how to use technology to bring new life to students projects. But beyond that, I strive to have a greater influence on bringing technology to a learning community, to collaborate with other educators on making their classrooms more in-tune to the 21st century.
Who knows what challenges await our students? This increasingly complex world needs well-educated students who can think critically, use technology without a second thought as part of their toolbox, collaborate well with others, and navigate a world whose resources are being stretched and whose boundaries are being constantly challenged.
With world population approaching 7 billion people, it is, as Aldous Huxley penned, A Brave New World. Educating our children is an urgent endeavor, and I am anxious to continue my part in it.
I'll be cross-posting to http://bronxdip.edublogs.org/
to all you other educators out there.. keep faith ...
all the best,
Lynne
Labels: aspirations, education, educational technology, instructional technology, stem grant, teacher pd, teacher training, teaching
Monday, September 24, 2007
Dining Out Math Lesson Plan
Last week I had the pleasure and honor to conduct a guest math lesson at the Arturo Schomberg Bronx facility of Satellite Academy High School. [You can also read more about the Satellite Academies here. Shawn Welcome is the Principal.] The lesson I created is called "Dining Out" and this idea can work well particularly well with older students in a consumer math, personal finance, and/or basic algebra review class. The primary activity involves ordering dinner from a menu and getting as close to $50, without going over, including sales tax & gratuities.
Some envision a curriculum around the topic of EveryDay Math. With my personal experience and background in finance (I worked on Wall Street for a number of years, as a Mortgage Office after that and for a financial planning firm), I really know a lot about this and it is one of those things I really like teaching. Too often our students graduate high school knowing nothing about credit cards, bank accounts or budgeting. There are all kinds of financial decisions we make - from picking a cell phone plan to furnishing an apartment - and a class like this can give students a real jump on dealing successfully with these situations.
At The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, NY I taught a similar class, and I really enjoyed the students and their engagement with the subject matter. There were equations, too, of course, but it all fit into Math in Every Day life. The school has a computer lab & mobile laptop carts that can be used, too. Students can learn to use a spreadsheet program, research investments, and tap into an online Mathematical Skills plan to practice and create their portfolios. Dan Stein, college professor and consultant, has developed a spreadsheet that students can use to track their progress and link directly to AAAMath.com for topic reviews and practice.
I published the lesson on the web using google pages and used a calculator widget from Lab Pixies. Widgets are great... and this one cames in handy! Lab Pixies has something new call "moodgets".... I'm sure you'll be seeing this one on myspace ... and it could be great to use with little kids when learning about expressions and feelings..
For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.
Some envision a curriculum around the topic of EveryDay Math. With my personal experience and background in finance (I worked on Wall Street for a number of years, as a Mortgage Office after that and for a financial planning firm), I really know a lot about this and it is one of those things I really like teaching. Too often our students graduate high school knowing nothing about credit cards, bank accounts or budgeting. There are all kinds of financial decisions we make - from picking a cell phone plan to furnishing an apartment - and a class like this can give students a real jump on dealing successfully with these situations.
At The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, NY I taught a similar class, and I really enjoyed the students and their engagement with the subject matter. There were equations, too, of course, but it all fit into Math in Every Day life. The school has a computer lab & mobile laptop carts that can be used, too. Students can learn to use a spreadsheet program, research investments, and tap into an online Mathematical Skills plan to practice and create their portfolios. Dan Stein, college professor and consultant, has developed a spreadsheet that students can use to track their progress and link directly to AAAMath.com for topic reviews and practice.
I published the lesson on the web using google pages and used a calculator widget from Lab Pixies. Widgets are great... and this one cames in handy! Lab Pixies has something new call "moodgets".... I'm sure you'll be seeing this one on myspace ... and it could be great to use with little kids when learning about expressions and feelings..
For more teaching ideas, lesson plans and articles, see my Portfolio page at LynneMBailey.com.
Labels: consumer math, instructional technology, lab pixies, lynne bailey, math lesson plan, numeracy, Prof. Dan Stein, sany hs, satellite hs, teaching, widgets
Friday, April 06, 2007
Open Educational Resources: OER
You may have read that MIT has made all their courses available online .. and so have many other institutions .. and they are searchable at www.oercommons.org. ISKME (The Institute for Study of Knowledge Management in Education) has created this new learning portal with more than 8,000 digital classroom materials from top university faculty available free of charge. But it's not just a higher ed resource, K-12 materials are available, too. They have aggregated a lot of course here and there are also some other searching resources for technology resources and news that you can use. I'm sure they will continue to expand and look for additional contributors.
Open Education Resources, or OER, offer new ways to engage with free-to-use learning content.Users can create their own portfolios of materials. " With a free membership, you can add tags, ratings, reviews, comments and favorites to your own portfolio. You can also post to discussion, blog and wiki areas and see how others are using OER."
Labels: free course materials, free university course materials, ISKME, OER, open educational resources, teaching
Saturday, March 10, 2007
NASA World Wind: Zooming in on Earth
I was at a Region 10 (NYCDOE) Technology Liaison workshop on Friday and we were introduced to this terrific open source program. It's lot like Google Earth on steroids! On the left is a screenshot of Mt. St. Helens from the 3d application and a visual of Maximum Temperatures. From their site:"World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara." Go to the website: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/index.html
What's so special? It is truly amazing. Historical data, data is updated every 24-72 hours, layers you can turn off and on that show political boundaries, weather events, pollutants, place names, fires/smoke events from volcanos, all kinds of things. There's even a Lewis & Clark expedition layer with links to a website. People can create their own layers, too, with a little xml programming. Some layers get you close enough to see the cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. There is an abundance of educational opportunities here from all disciplines. All teachers should check this out.
What's so special? It is truly amazing. Historical data, data is updated every 24-72 hours, layers you can turn off and on that show political boundaries, weather events, pollutants, place names, fires/smoke events from volcanos, all kinds of things. There's even a Lewis & Clark expedition layer with links to a website. People can create their own layers, too, with a little xml programming. Some layers get you close enough to see the cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. There is an abundance of educational opportunities here from all disciplines. All teachers should check this out.Labels: educational software, Geography, intructional technology, NASA World Wind, satellite imagery, teaching
Friday, December 22, 2006
PowerPoint for Teachers
Jeopardy Game Template !I just redid my web pages at www.lynnembailey.com with a new page, PowerPoint for Teachers. You can download my Jeopardy Game Template to use with your classes. You will have to customize the template for your school, subject and grade. There are tutorials to assist you. Perhaps your students can help write the answers & questions.
Send me your Q&A's and I'll post them on my website. Hope you have fun using it.
Labels: education, instructional technology, powerpoint, powerpoint game, teaching
