Holt Think: Ed, Creativity, Tech, Administration

Squishy Circuits: Teaching Circuits with Conductive Dough

Squishy circuits are a project from the Thomas Lab at the University of St. Thomas. The goal of the project is to design tools and activities which allow kids of all ages to create circuits and explore electronics using play dough.

conductive dough, insulating dough and building circuits model

Thank you to the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering, the University of St. Thomas Young Scholars Program, and the 3M Foundation for supporting the undergraduate students working on this project.

Posted 6 months ago

Comments

1 note

education, science, ed tech, teaching and learnign,

iTeach Pad for iPad

For Teachers by Teachers !!!!!!! Supports iOS 5.0 and above only. We are committed to turning this app into a useful tool for teachers.

A Complete Organizer for Teachers. Includes Calendaring, Scheduling, Class Management, Lesson Plans and To Do Lists

Calendar: An easy way to add events to their calendar. These events are school related and the list of events is completely customizable for each user of the app. So adding things like PTA meetings, Conferences, IEP Meetings, Recess Duty and anything else school related is a simple drag n drop. Then these events are now part of your calendar and you can easily track them on all their devices.

Schedule: A drag and drop weekly schedule screen that lets you create a class period, name it, assign a color and drag it to the appropriate day of the week and time of the day. Then with a simple copy of the event to the other 4 days of the week the user can setup the entire week full of all classes for each day.

Students: A full list manager for Classes and then Students inside each class. Then with each Class you can take attendance and if you have an incoming Sub teacher the following day you can easily email out all of the student notes that are special to each student. For each student you can setup contacts with both phone and email to make it easy to contact them. And there is a free form Note entry for each student.

Lesson Plans: Again a full list manager for Lesson plans. You can create lesson plans and email them. Then you can sort them by Title, Class and Date

ToDo Lists: A full Folder/List manager so that you can more accurately keep track of your todo items. This lets you setup lists per class or function or organization.

Mobile Simplified Web Site iTeach Pad Support

Posted 1 year ago

Comments

educaiton, ipad, apple, teaching and learnign, teaching and learning, planning,

Part of my book: 180 Questions: Sage on the Stage

How do your students view the way you deliver information to them? Are you in front of the classroom giving them lectures, asking them to read papers and texts, and running the class like a conductor in front of an orchestra?

If you answered yes, then congratulations! You are a sage on the stage and can draw your teaching lineage back thousands of years to the like Aristotle and Socrates.

You have a fine, long tradition behind you.

Unfortunately, “behind you” is the operative term here. Study after study finds that students that are actively engaged in the learning process learn more, are more apt to score better on tests, and can recall items much longer than those that simply act as knowledge radio receivers.

You can use your own experience to see if being actively engaged is better than lecture style learning:

Think about the one science lab that really sticks out in your mind from all of your school years…go ahead, I’ll wait,

I bet it was the frog dissection wasn’t it? That icky, stinky, gooey lab where you cut open a poor preserved frog still is in your mind years later! That is because you were actively engaged in that learning.

So, don’t just stand in front of your students and tell them everything you know. Let them discover things on their own. After all, school is about their learning, not yours.

ASCD was talking about this way back in 1993:

http://tinyurl.com/6u8spdu

What will it take to move you off the stage?

Posted 1 year ago

Comments

teaching and learnign, education,

Google Lit Trips!

From the site:

So What exactly are Google Lit Trips?

The short version is simple. Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about “real world” references made in that particular portion of the story.

The focus is on creating engaging and relevant literary experiences for students. I like to say Google Lit Trips “3-dimensionalize” the reading experience by placing readers “inside the story” traveling alongside the characters; looking through the windshield of that old jalopy in The Grapes of Wrath or waddling alongside Mr. and Mrs. Mallard’s duckling family in Make Way for Ducklings.”

Posted 1 year ago

Comments

95 notes

literature, english, reading, classroom, teaching and learnign, education, Tim Holt, El Paso, Holtthink, timholt,

American Schools in Crisis?

If you read the news magazines or watch TV, you might get the impression that American education is deep in a crisis of historic proportions. The media tell you that other nations have higher test scores than ours and that they are shooting past us in the race for global competitiveness. The pundits say it’s because our public schools are overrun with incompetent, lazy teachers who can’t be fired and have a soft job for life.

Don’t believe it. It’s not true.

Posted 1 year ago

Comments

politics, education diane ravitch, education, teaching and learnign,