What does your child need to succeed in the future?

Greetings.

As part of my teaching journey, I have been spending a lot of time using a tool, edmodo.com, that is new to me in order to connect with my students, share resources, and give assignments.  We had quite the awesome discussion about the new iwatch and its engineering design process.  I invite you as parents to create an account and get the parent access code so you can hopefully see some of the cool stuff we have been doing and the excitement for learning that students are doing.  It is this excitement for learning that I am trying to help foster as best I can in an ever more complicated world.

It is amazing that statistics seem to indicate that I am a teacher, a small cog in the machine, charged with the responsibility of educating our youth for jobs that don't even exist yet; and you thought your job was challenging!  It seems as educators and parents that we are trying to keep up with a rapidly evolving world that our children are growing up in.  I want to encourage students to learn even fundamental skills of a trade, even if for just home ownership purposes.  I want students to get outside and appreciate the natural world.  I also want students to be able to understand the technology behind the things that make them successful, be it mechanical or computer-related.  Lately, there seems to be a push towards students learning the fundamentals of writing the computer code that is the foundation behind every electronic gadget and gizmo.

The following video is an interesting take on some of the skills that many believe are necessary for our children to function in the future world.  I like how they discuss the importance of the thinking and problem-solving skills behind learning to write computer code.  My college physics professor once told me that many lawyers take physics courses as part of their law curriculum.  Not because they could care less about forces and vectors, but it taught them how to think.  Could learning to write code be to our youth as physics is to the lawyers?

Enjoy!

New student tool

Hello Parents/Guardians,

In an effort to keep up with the rapidly changing world that your child will live in, our science class is embarking on a new online journey with a program called Edmodo.com.  This is a secure, reputable online social networking tool used in the education world to get students to be engaged outside of the four walls of the classroom and to help motivate them to be lifelong learners and problem-solvers.  Think of Edmodo as being similar to Facebook (in fact it looks similar).  Each student has their own account that they created and joined my class group with a secret code.  From this website, I can make posts, share resources, start discussions, take quizzes, and submit assignments electronically.  I too am new to Edmodo and have had to persevere as I learn its features.  Last night, students had to create their accounts, watch a short introduction video, and then take a graded multiple choice quiz.  Tonight's homework is to go back to their Edmodo, read a current event article and relate it back to the engineering design process that we have been discussing regularly in class.  I am asking for your help to reinforce learning, not the tool, but the skills of being a dynamic learner.  These are especially important since your child lives in a rapidly changing world where they will have to constantly be willing to learn and relearn new skills in order to adapt.  We had a successful first night with Edmodo so we'll see how our first discussion goes.  

Each student has an access code that they can give to their parent/guardian.  I encourage you to create an account and see what the parent view is all about.  Thank you for your support and patience as I try to help make your child more successful learners.  As always, if you ever have computer problems, just send in a note and I will help problem solve alternatives.

Cheers!

Thank you

A special thank you to Mrs. Burke for coming in Friday during A block to share her engineering experiences with Gates and showed us design plans and the actual parts that were created from those plans.  I was able to then share her experiences with my other class and the other middle school science team as well.  Thank you!

Cheers!

Tonight's homework

Tonight's homework:  Actively study the 8 steps to engineering design that we have been discussing in class lately (see notes below).

TED - "Ideas worth spreading"

If you don't know about TED yet, you might be as intrigued as I was when I found out.  TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organization that has annual conferences where amazing people with amazing ideas congregate and their talks are recorded and published for viewing at TED.com.  The speakers must present in 18 minutes or less.  The lineup was recently shared for 2013 sessions on February 25th (Bono is one of them).  They have many speakers of all different topics.  Many of my students have at least heard of it.

TED.com

Cheers!

Welcome to the engineering curriculum!

Hello Parents,

Welcome back to science class this term.  As you may have heard, we are embarking on a new adventure this term as the 7/8 middle school science program incorporates "Engineering 2" which will emphasize many of the state standards that revolve around the central theme of the engineering design process.  This term, the students will be given challenges and asked to create solutions.  I will be working with students to emphasize many skills: sharing ideas and experiences, listening to other's opinions, carefully brainstorming, forward thinking, resource thriftiness, and being meticulous about drawing and  collecting measurements.

There are some supplies that we foresee using and can be sent in at any time:

• Blueprints:  If you work for a company that has these, we would like to hang them in the room to show the meticulous accuracy that goes into a plan before beginning to build (any plans would do, but if a middle school-aged student can recognize it, then it will be even better)
• Cereal boxes (or similar cardboard) - we are trying to use as minimally engineered supplies as possible so we are trying to stay away from corrugated cardboard for now.
• Newspaper (not the inserts)
• Plastic bottles from your recycle bin (e.g. soda, milk, etc)
• Popsicle sticks, toothpicks
• Aluminum foil
• Pasta (mainly spaghetti, but any type will probably be used at some point)
• Marshmallows (big and small)
• Anything else that you can think of that can think of as a "raw" material

Any expertise and/or suggestions would be helpful if engineering is your field (especially revolving around the central concept of the engineering design process).  I can brainstorm with you directly if you think you can contribute.

Thank you.
Michael Edwards
7/8 Science

Real world connection

It makes a teacher proud when students use words to...um, well...read.  It makes a teacher even more proud when a student relates a concept taught in class and recognizes and understands the significance of that concept in a situation outside of class.  Here is a short article that relates to our acid/base discussion in class.

Great find Sydney!  Well done!

http://news.yahoo.com/save-cathedral-marinate-olive-oil-205828193.html


Cheers!

Happy New year homework!

Happy New Year!  Tonight's happy new homework of the new year is to use the slides below to fill out the student copy of the teacher notes.

Cheers!

Click here if you need to print a student copy of the notes.

Class notes