Posting tinkercad to your blog

Below is a sample of a tinker cad model embedded in a blog and a how to do it

A great way to show that the learners have been able to work in three dimensions and a way to share what they have 3d printed or intend to print. Have a play with the model picture

Alongside this they could share picture of the finished result prototype from along the way.
Often with the prototype share they might be able to seek direct feedback from blog partners too.

I have made a quick video howto below
In the meantime - check out the wonderful 3d print school from Taranaki for examples of 3 d printing from young people.

Ulearn Roundup

The best thing about Ulearn for me this year was that feeling of a community working together.
Educators are a friendly bunch and there were great moments when the people around breakout tables 
added to and complimented what the Presenters had to say and do. 

Facilitators

Facilitators like Mark Osborne (http://theopensourceschool.blogspot.co.nz/ http://osborne.kiwi.nz/) and Amanda Signal (http://heymilly.blogspot.co.nz/) had alot of involvement from the teachers attending their workshops. 

In Mark's workshop he used  a collection of what research says improves learning. I like the simplicity of this idea with the effect size stripped away but how to be effective left. 

My "to do" from Mark's workshop is to make these visible somewhere in my learning environment and to try to make this a "theory in action" rather than an "espoused theory."


 


Amanda was working with a large group of teachers using the animation programme scratch. When I came into the room every one was hard at learning and when I consider the collection of  the effective above Amanda's workshop was a great example of many of these theories in action. 

• Working at their own pace
• Creating and using worked examples
• Learning co-operatively
• Teaching each other skills
• Guided and independent practice etc

Amanda had a great site she used with some starter tasks (or fun in other words.) https://sites.google.com/site/ulearnscratch/

I have had and seen alot of super learning using Scratch and Amanda's wasn't the only session looking at scratch unfortunately I missed Bob Bottomley's one but am pleased to see people getting in behind the kind of learning Scratch promotes, at Ulearn.

My "to do" from Amanda's workshop is to work with scratchers again at my school this term and to connect with the other educators scratching at learning.

Bob Botto

Scratching the Surface

I have always liked the idea of using scratch with students

• to help them think
• make them doers 
• instant feedback.

I have been looking at an inquiry to find out

Is the use of scratch a way to increase student understanding of geometry?

Here was the First Project Challenge I gave students. 1. Create a Scratch script which tells a sprite to draw each of the following shapes in succession. triangle square pentagon hexagon octagon So how did things turn out Well with just a few basic introductions like pen down Movement and turning they got cracking The group almost all were able to complete the challenge though it was interesting to see  how they achieved it. Quite a few of them had really repetitive code to achieve it which  presented a great opportunity to look for patterns and optimise it. Here is a solution that  works and underneath it working.

Learn more about this project

The inquiry is showing some promise for scratch. In my next post I want to discuss with students some of their thinking around Maths.

Credible Self Direction 1

One of the students at my school has just bought his own computer. He wanted a little bit of advice as to how to get it going. The computer was old and incompatible with even the most basic keyboard we had. What impressed me was the effort that Callum has put into finding out about what he need to do to get this going. I offered to give him a slightly newer computer in return for a couple of articles and received the following first installment by the end of the day.

My favorite quotes are

I acquired a desktop computer tower for $1 at a garage sale in Tauranga it looked in perfect condition. 

It was a pretty bad pc i discovered

I ask my friends in the ICT lab for help, they point out how useless it is (because before i didn’t realise), but I’m still going to use it.




There are couple of discoveries here.

• Students will persist when they are motivated by possible achievement.

• Students are learning independently of us in areas that we can either choose or choose not to support and encourage.

• Give students a chance to work and control real technologies let them show where they are at.

On Saturday 28th July I acquired a desktop computer tower for $1 at a garage sale in Tauranga it looked in perfect condition. Everyone asked me if I was going to take it home and open it up, I said I don't know. The next day I wired it up with the cables, power check, VGA check, sound check, usb for keyboard and mouse... there was none! So I opened it and saw a pretty empty case, but everything was perfect except no hidden usbs. I re-arranged all the ports so I could fit in an usb pci card and plug it into the motherboard.  However when I turned it on it gave a beep and loaded up the BIOS (basic input output system).  It was a pretty bad pc i discovered, no usbs because it is a Pentium 2, it has a quantum fireball hard drive, an Intel Celeron processor and 65536k of memory. I ask my friends in the ICT lab for help, they point out how useless it is (because before i didn’t realise), but I’m still going to use it.

System BIOS (Compaq screen is of another pc)

PCI card slot on motherboard

Pc turned on