Collaborating and Building a Better Beast

My first love has always been teaching students to be better humans. We create projects to be inclusive and we actively seek ways to bring more voices to the table; I am passionate when underrepresented people become part of the landscape of STEM jobs. My second love is working with people and making something I […]

#2 – Darrington-STEM: From a STEM Student’s Eyes

Marshmallows flew everywhere. Mini rockets soared across the room. I was handing out gumdrops, straws, and toothpicks. Yes, this was for the engineering program of the Darrington-STEM partnership. And yes, I swear this was educational. Today was the day the Darrington kids got to come over to Tesla STEM High School. Last time, the STEM […]

From a STEM Student’s Eyes: Darrington-STEM

Guest blogger: As I look outside the bus window in the morning, the scenery flies by. We pass by more industrialized cities with Targets, Boeing plants, and large stadiums. Soon, the landscape morphs into gorgeous views as we drive by flowing rivers and giant Douglas fir, and even spot two bald eagles. This is how […]

MinecraftED by students

Tesla STEM High School and Darrington Middle School have started something mutually beneficial. We are partnering together to create more opportunities for mentoring and delivering effective training and future planning. High school students from our high school traveled to Darrington Middle School students and broke into teams to teach coding applications, and provide a community […]

Drop Down Menu for Rubrics

I consider myself an evangelist when it comes to Excel. I love it when teaching students the application and they get excited about the charts they create. I was making bedazzling charts long before infographics. That being said, after all this time, I have finally started creating drop-down lists in Excel. I love the functionality […]

Gaming like real life Ted Talk

Educators have a strange road ahead of us when we do not experience the same world that our students do. Their level of immersion is hard to understand because I am not a native gamer. Michael Highland’s excerpt was interesting as well because of the quality of the video as well as the content. One […]

Bring the game to me!!

Choice is a really big idea to add to any classroom. Differentiation is the term that is kicked around a lot but the idea is that projects can be completed in a variety of ways. I often provide too many options so there are so many projects going on at the same time, my class […]

Quest basics

This diagram is taken from Chris Haskell’s 2012 research. The idea is that there is a lot that goes into making an interesting quest for students (learners). I would also add that in order to sustain effort, the quests need have variety. For some of the quests that I have completed there have been […]

Links for Software

OSPI’s links for free software: http://www.k12.wa.us/EdTech/EdSoftware/default.aspx Keep this in mind as you are looking to develop your own technology goals for next year.

Professional Development

As we talk about professional development, you should look into updating your technical proficiency since most professional development includes technology for the class room. I recommend these resources for your own development: edutopia pbs educators google educators This is no exhaustive resource. Will you please share resources as you come across them? The state of […]