ISPP Secondary Technology Support

This activity is designed to help students collaboratively brainstorm and think about ideas. In this example they brainstormed steps they would need to follow to go out and take photographs that communicate a perspective on Phnom Penh. It can be adapted for different learning objectives. This activity gives students thinking time and processing time, and allows them to collaboratively exchange ideas and learn from one another. It is also fun. Learning Objective: determine and reflect on the planning steps for doing a photography shoot ATL: Social -Collaboration; Self-Management -Organization Media / tools: Google Docs, pencil and paper Time: 60 minutes Other possible learning objectives (second ATL would change): words related to a topic, main plot events in a novel, character traits, parts of a cell, periodic table of the elements (have them describe properties in the Google doc and write the elements on the bingo chart), multiplication (have them write multiplications in t...

Technology is frequently the target of complaints about the human inability to focus on relevant, meaningful, and productive tasks; yet this inability is as old as our existence. Check out Hamlet's Blackberry for a great exploration of human focus and tools of distraction through the ages. Technology provides us with a chaos of opportunity that can be distracting, but getting rid of technology will not cause us to tap into our focus. Our minds, untrained, have a chaos of their own. Learning how to tap into our focus takes thoughtful practice and reflection. We need to learn to 'clear the mechanism' as Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) does in For Love of the Game . In this clip, Chapel / Costner has to shut out the voices of critics, the noise of the crowd, and an annoying bull horn. He did not have a phone buzzing in his back pocket, but if he did, he would have needed to shut that out too. It would be lovely if there were a simple formula for engagement. In my experi...

In Grade 10 IBMYP Digital Design, our students explored the viability of 3D animation as form of communication. We canvased for clients to gather concepts to communicate, and students selected projects based on personal interests. They then used the IBMYP design process to create animations. Students found the unit extremely challenging. We used Blender to create our animations and students were provided with some basic instructions, but for the most part they needed to find learning resources online. Each group needed to troubleshoot their own issues, which were highly varied and complex. For every single student, this was a first attempt at creating a 3D animation. Many had never even considered the possibility of using this medium. While students struggled to balance their expectations of making professional animations and the reality of being beginners, I compared their use of Blender to a kindergartener's use of the hand written alphabet: monkish calligraphy would be unli...

Here's your chance to create a program on an Arduino robot, and make a movie of the robot doing the code! The best movies will be used to promote our upcoming Hour of Code activities in December! Here is our robot running some code. My idea was to make her arms move quickly and her eyes blink out of sync, and then have her arms slow down and her eyes get into sync and blink more and more slowly.  As you can see, my movie needs a lot of work. I need to give credit for the sources I used for my code, give it a title, maybe add music... what else? A voice over? What code would you like to run? What movie would you make? I will put the robot in The Loop, so that students can enter their own code to change the robot's behavior, and then record the robot running the code. To develop your own code, you can download the Arduino software here . You can find tutorials and even learn how to hack the Arduino here . I have also made a Git Repository here where you can share ...