As part of our grad class we were asked this week to find examples of connected learning experiences. Here are my 6 for this week.
1. Tim Smyth is a social studies teacher, friend, and customer of mine at my job. He uses his passion for comic books to connect with his students. His website is here. Read more about him in a PBS article here.
2. I also have the please of knowing Anthony Tamacio, a science teacher at the Lower Moreland High School. He has put together a collaborative wiki site for his Science 2.0 class that has some entertaining and engaging rules to follow. They are listed here.
3. I regularly read Popular Mechanics magazine, and according to them it seems that the best way to teach your high school students skills is by asking them to do things. Here is an article about raising students with mechanical know-how who can work well together.
4. Most children who struggle with math problems have heard of Khan Academy, but I was pleased to learn that there is now a physical school that complements the virtual one. I was most interested to read about how students from different grades work together on projects. The article is here.
5. Blogging about blogging seems parasitic, so blogging about blogging about blogging seems ridiculous, but I found some useful teaching sites and apps here thanks to a blog about called Edutech for Teachers that I found at the bottom of the main Edublogs site.
6. I play the Magic: the Gathering card game, which is played with cards and the player chooses which cards go into the game deck. I’ve noticed that many MtG sites now feature apps that will calculate the probability of drawing a certain card or number of cards in the game by a certain turn. I like the idea of using interest in the game to teach players how to calculate statistics. Here is a link to a chat group where this topic was addressed.
Thanks for reading!
-Eric L