TCCA 2019 Presentations
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Many of the missions in my new book, Hacking Digital Learning with Missions, are aimed at inspiring students to think critically, focus on questions versus answers, conduct hands-on research, and make a difference in the world with their innovations. The field of Science, Technology, Engineering, ART and Math (STEM/STEAM) is at the heart of innovation, discovery and curiosity. Below find my TCCA 2019 slides and resources.
50+ Resources
- These are 6 characteristics of a great STEAM lesson I've adapted from EdWeek:
- Connect & integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, & Math
- Real world learning
- Hands-on inquiry
- Cooperative learning
- Multiple right answers
- Engineering Design Process (EDP)
- Where to find activities, projects and lessons:
- The Science Demo Guy's website has free STEM and Engineering Design Process posters and experiments to download and print.
- NASA has amazing resources for educators, including free projects, lesson plans, videos, and interactives! Students can join the competitions for free when you set up a free Future Engineers account for them.
- Sign up for a free Mystery Science membership and receive access to tons of awesome standard aligned lesson plans and projects.
- The Exploratorium lets you search by content area for experiments with inexpensive household items and materials.
- TeachEngineering is a free K to 12 STEM curriculum.
- Kidtown is a free comic with facts about science, nature, and people.
- Find STEM resources and projects with Google templates free to edit and use from the school I teach at here.
- The Driving Question Tubric is a free hands-on project to help students create driving questions.
- My school uses the Lulzbot Mini 3D printer.
- I recommend Tinkercad and Thingiverse for 3D printing projects, tutorials, and templates for K to 12.
- Find web apps and tools for students to design innovations in my article, Mock It Up! 9 Tools for Learners to Design, Blueprint, and Visualize Their Innovations.
- Some recommended tools are 3D Paint (software), Google Draw, Draw and Tell iOS app, Sketch.io and Pixlr (no registration required).
- Co-Spaces is a great educational tool to get students to design and create their own virtual reality and augmented reality builds.
- Get students to design using different types of paper and formats (blueprints, graph paper, grids, 3D, etc.) and give them different design challenges, such as designing for an amusement park, an art history mini-golf course, a future city, or a playground.
- The Kentucky Virtual Library has an incredible interactive infographic that walks students through the research process!
- Click here to make a copy of the Research Choice Menu template I created with recommended research websites for K-12. Edit as you like and discover kid-friendly search engines in my post, Top Research Websites, Search Engines, and a Research Choice Menu for K-12 Students.
- Students can add research and ideas to a Linoit/Padlet sticky note board, a Bubbl.us cognitive map, Livebinders, or Wakelet.
- Send them on field research. In Texas, I’d take my students collecting water samples with SAWS engineers, bird watching with park rangers, and fossil hunting with a paleontologist.
- Students can create games and learn coding! Check out my Coding Activities on my blog. Some suggested tools and apps, include Kodable, Tynker, Code Monkey, and Lightbot. Upper elementary to 12th grade will enjoy Code.org and Made With Code. Click here for more coding apps and web tools!
- Tiny Tap is an iOS app for students to create learning games, interactive presentations and quizzes.
- Math Science Music has several lesson ideas and interactive resources for a variety of ages that use music to teach math concepts.
- Desmos has several cool interactive and visual lesson ideas and resources for students, like this one about angles, graphing, and basketball.
- Citizen science is defined by Oxford Dictionary as scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.
- Find projects open to students and the public at SciStarter.com, Zooniverse.org, and the iNaturalist iOS/Android app.
- Get students to learn math and science through cooking. Find science recipes here!
- Science Bob’s site - Science recipes for fake blood, slime, and potions.
- Take them on walks exploring the nature around them.They can create digital books classifying rocks, identifying bugs, naming plants and potential uses, or capturing the sounds of various birds. Try Buncee or Book Creator to create your digital scrapbooks.
- Get students to design infographics to visualize data with tools like Genial.ly, Canva, Piktochart, Easel.ly, Visme, Infogr.am, and Smore.
- The Be Internet Awesome curriculum by Google has different activities and lessons on how to spot fake news.
- Common Sense Education has a free K to 12 curriculum that covers information literacy and digital citizenship.
- Students can create their own augmented reality experiences to encourage peers to explore the great outdoors using Layar, Aurasma, and Blippar.
- Find the Growth Mindset Self-Talk for students, Permissions, and other social emotional learning visual posters to print and use for free here!
- Download and print the free Self-regulation Coping Strategies For Students To Use At School poster!
- Emoji Bingo for students to identify and feel okay about their feelings!
- Z00 Academy is a free social emotional learning game for K-4.
- Stop, Breathe, Think has hundreds of lesson ideas and activities for students.
- I Can Cards from Mrs. Wideen to print and edit.
- Flipgrid AR station instructions students scan as much as they want to listen to the instructions again and again!
- Immersive Reader from Microsoft Education helps English Learners and struggling readers and writers.
- Accountable Talk Sentence Stems for higher level discussions.
- Fact Monster is a search engine that features Frank, the friendly monster, who helps with facts, homework, trivia, games, and quizzes.
- DOGO News is a website and iOS/Android app for K to 12 students to find current events and research based articles. Each article gives an easy citation for students to copy and include as well as images and videos.
- The Kids Should See This is probably the most engaging search results for students who will find viral gifs and videos about their topics.
- Science Journal for Kids has a pdf with assessment questions, videos, and an area for further research by asking a scientist.
- The Creative Commons Search Engine and WikiMedia Commons are two wonderful search engines to find images, videos, and other multimedia free to use in projects or presentations as long as the author is attributed appropriately.
- Kiddle is a safe visual search engine for kids.
- KidzSearch is a Google filtered search which features KidzTube videos and educational games on the front page.
- Ducksters is a search engine with different categories for a general subject search like history, science, geography, and more.
- NatGeoKids is a website with games, trivia, and articles about animals and the world. My students love this website. We also like learning more about countries with the interactive world map.
- Science News for Students provides vocabulary lists and readability scores for each article. This is for grades 6 to 12.
- KidsClick is a web search site designed for kids by librarians with kid-friendly results!
- Kid Rex is another kid-friendly search engine with a simple colorful interface.
- Safe Search Kids is powered by Google to deliver filtered search results.
- Kid’s Search is a safe and fun way to search the Internet.
- Choosito is a student search engine and digital library. Sign up for a free trial.
- The Library of Congress provides archived newspapers, patents, historical documents, and images for students to search and discover information about a topic.