What We Are Reading

Keri Smith is a bestselling author, illustrator, and thinker. Her books demonstrate a 'learn by doing approach', and are being used in school curriculums all over the world as a way of fostering non-traditional methods of exploration. She also teaches and conducts workshops based on her non-traditional techniques across North America. Her books include: Wreck This Journal, How to Be an Explorer of the World, This is Not a Book, Mess - A Manual of Accidents and Mistakes, Finish This Book, and Pocket Scavenger.  We have been using her books at GA as a way to get students to think outside of the box, to brainstorm, and to engage in creative play as a warm up to design Thinking exercises and applications.

Lower School Art Teacher Launches Website

Say Things With Color is the art site recently launched by Lower School art teacher Alia Tahvildaran where she blogs about projects, materials, inspirations, and good reads to help empower parents to create with their kids at home.  Educators agree that creative thinking and problem solving are critical to a student's success in school and life.  This is just one way to increase the amount of time students can practice creative play by bringing  the classroom studio home to anyone's playroom or kitchen table. When asked about the inspiration for the site, Tahvildaran reports, "I started my blog to visually archive curriculum and classroom goings-on, suggest art games and applications for kids, connect with fellow educators, and above all to empower parents to feel confident creating and discussing art with their kids at home. When you visit saythingswithcolor.com you can find a great art book to read with your children, an online art game to play, inspiration for a project, and links for my favorite art tools and materials to use in your home or classroom.

Flipped Learning in MS Mathematics

Middle School math teacher Matt Notary uses ItsLearning, our virtual learning environment to flip lessons to allow for more individual and small group work during class time.  Using SMART technology, he records 10-15 minute lessons, introducing a topic and showing sample problems. The students then watch the video at home prior to class on any device so that in class they can work through practice problems and/or extension and application problems at their own pace, with help. 

"I wouldn’t exactly say it has transformed the way I teach, but I think it has changed my perspective somewhat on how learning time can be structured both inside and outside the classroom.  I am able to be more flexible in the ways I communicate new material to students, as well as in the ways I use class time."  Notary continues, "I think the students have benefited from more interactive class time since on days when I “flip” the classroom less time is spent lecturing.  They have also benefited from having 24-7 access to the videos, so that if they want to review a topic at home or even during a study hall, they can watch the video."

College Guidance One Tweet at a Time

GA's class of 2014 has had some college application help from Twitter in the form of Tweets posted by college counselors Susan Merrill and Kendra Grinnage who have been using the social networking tool to remind students about key points in their application process. Grinnage reports having a lot of fun with Twitter noting that it's a light hearted way to keep students on task at a time when their concerns about the process are at an all time high.  Below are a few of the Tweets Grinnage and Merrill have posted this fall.

The new tropical storm is named Karen. Coincidence? We think not. Better get on those apps & essays b4 Mason comes for you #totaldestruction

That time when we had 100 followers and we were all like "Everyone wants this. Everyone wants to be us." #collegecounselingwearsprada

Test scores don't get to colleges via carrier pigeons or your counselor #collegeboard.com #sendthem #doitnow #besidespigeonssmell

#truthbomb:We had more fun at counselor school than Schellhas at morning meeting on Oktoberfest day #whatevergummiebears #wemetFiske

"But Ms.Kennedy I was just checking to see when @WakeForest1834 @HamiltonCollege @colgateuniv will be here" -GA student #phonetaken #bummer

"There is nothing I would rather be doing on this beautiful Sunday than working on my college essays." - GA Senior #truthbomb #planahead

Why We Collaborate: Dispatch from TED's Radio Hour

"The world has over a trillion hours a year of free time to commit to shared projects," says professor Clay Shirky, professor of Social and Economic Effects of Internet Technologies at New York University. But what motivates dozens, thousands, even millions of people to come together on the Internet and commit their time to a project for free? What is the key to making a successful collaboration work? In this hour, TED speakers unravel ideas behind the mystery of mass collaborations that build a better world." Over the last year, TED has launched a weekly radio hour modeled after their highly successful TED Talks. This collection of interviews, archived on the web, Clay Shirley asks: What motivates us to collaborate? And Jason Fried asks: Is too much collaboration a bad thing? , 

Stephens-Petrochko Geography App

When Tyler Pterochko GA class of 2014 was a freshman, he had a conversation with middle school history teach Mark Stephens that became the focus of his Academy Scholars Project developed over the last three years.  What began as frustration over finding good software to support middle school geography became Stephens-Petrochko An open-source project, designed to provide user-friendly and dynamic software for geography curricula.  Designed "to allow developers to create their own map packs without needing to know programming.  The software also allows teachers to customize their own quizzes, in support of a more collaborative, technology-empowered teaching community."  Petrochko is a self taught programmer and game designer who plans on pursuing a career in computer science.  He las already prototyped a Binary Array Linked - Data structure, and and an External Server Verification Method to Prevent Against SSL-Stripping.  And he reports that he regularly uses Design Thinking as his idea generation and development process.  As a Challenge GA Trainer in the Upper School, he became aware that the process he followed had a name in the design and engineering worlds.  To hear him tell it, "I was using Design Thinking the whole time I was developing the software even though I didn't know it.  I began this project because I empathized with Stephen's need for a better teaching tool.  Once I understood that need, I defined, ideated, prototyped, and tested. "

What We Are Watching

As a part of the TEDGlobal program novelist, Abha Dawesar adresses "Life in the Digital Now". She takes an interesting look at technology by talking about the self, immersive experiences, and our sense of time.  Her thoughts on this came out of her experience of living in Manhattan, post Hurricane Sandy where she lived without water and electricity for some time. Click here to see the TED talk where she she considers: "Have our lives become fixated on the drive to digitally connect, that we miss out on what is real?"