Monday, April 15, 2019

Exploring the Respiratory System with Augmented/Virtual Reality & More in Seventh Grade Science

Students in Kaylene Boos’ seventh grade life science class at Minnetonka Middle School West are studying about the respiratory system. In the past the lesson involved a lot of lecture and note taking. Naturally students didn’t find this past method of content delivery very interesting. Teachers are always improving their instruction, and over the past few years, middle school science teachers have restructured the learning activities to be more engaging for the students. On Monday afternoon when I was present, students were rotating among eight different stations for five minutes each, very engaged in activities.

At one of the stations students used the Virtuali-tee app. This augmented reality app allows students to scan a special T-shirt with their iPad and see the body systems inside the torso of the person/shirt, including the respiratory system. Funds from the PTO were granted to purchase the shirts for each seventh grade science teacher. As pictured, students could hold their iPad like a window into the respiratory system. As they moved it around, they were able to see inside a lung. Augmented and virtual reality show a lot of promise in the opportunities that will be available for learning, and activities this seem to just be the start of what’s possible. 



At another station students watched a video about the respiratory system and answered questions, recording their answers in Notability. At a third station, students completed an online labeling activity in which they had to race to beat the clock identifying the parts of the respiratory system. Another station consisted of sorting vocabulary terms and then photographing and inserting the image of the result into the Notability file. Students also researched answers to questions online and took a Schoology quiz at two other stations and the last station had a model of a working lung made out of a 2 liter pop bottle.

These activities cover multiple dimensions on our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework: communication, collaboration, personalized learning, critical thinking, use of technology for learning, and more. Switching stations every five minutes kept the students active and moving around. They also worked on each activity in shorts bursts, so I did not see them losing interest or becoming bored with the learning. I certainly would have preferred to learn in this manner myself back in school. Plus when I was teaching, I should have designed more active learning opportunities like this for my own students!


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Monday, April 8, 2019

Student Innovation Teams- Part II: High School


Last week in Part I: Middle School, I explained how Minnetonka has added secondary student innovation teams over the past few years to our annual crowdsourced idea hunt  (for more on this, see Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan). This week I will highlight the work of our high school Student Innovation Team which recently presented to our School Board. The group is advised by Ann Kaste, Information and Digital Learning Coordinator and Nicole Snedden, Innovation Coordinator and Design for Learning Project Leader. One of my sons is on the high school team this year, so I have been able to hear his perspective, too.


As you will learn from the video of their presentation to the School Board, the high school innovation team is split into small groups. The group presenting was tasked with redesigning a newly created open space after the removal of an old locker bay. They used the Human Centered Design process to get to the final design pictured. They identified their challenge with “How Might We..?” statements:
  • How Might We design a quiet space that would allow for classes to remain uninterrupted while others were using this space?
  • How Might We construct the space to not only foster quietness, but also collaboration?
  • How Might We create a space that allows for easy maintenance and vigilance?   

The students met with different focus groups such as hall paras, custodians, students, and teachers. They learned about all sorts of concerns and hopes from the groups they interviewed, from the ease of cleaning the space, to the visibility of and collaboration opportunities for students meeting there, to the sound levels and the quality of the furniture. After gathering all this input and feedback, the students began to prototype options. 

They created two different prototypes and brought them to Intereum who designed a space using the student feedback. The final design includes movable walls that have acoustic panels to eliminate sound and whiteboard panels. The students explain in their proposal that “the panels allow the space to be separated and relatively private, but still allow for enough supervision that kids are kept safe. The walls also include school colors to blend in with the space around it”

The group applied for and was awarded a Design for Learning grant. Last week they were selecting fabric colors for the furniture. It should be done later this year and the team as well as all their classmates will be able to use the new space. Some quotes from their presentation show just how much the students learned from this process:

“Change takes work,” said Kristine. “It takes time, revisions, empathy… [I’ve learned] what it means to get things done. 

Lauren said she “improved my public speaking and presentation skills [and] learned through our own mistakes.” 

Colette explained that this work “pushed me to learn the value and benefits of seeing other people’s viewpoints.”

Nate described how “empathy is really important to the Human Design Process… Something’s that really stuck with me is the importance of talking with people and understanding their opinions and seeing where they come from...this will definitely help me later in life working on various projects… in college or future job. Empathy is the basis of everything.”

In addition to the locker bay remodel, student innovation teams at our high school are working on a variety of other ideas from improving the parking lot to therapy dogs. As I mentioned last week, students are engaging in motivating, real work meeting multiple dimensions on our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework during this process: real-world learning, communication, collaboration, creativity, authentic problem solving, use of technology for learning, and more. All students, not just here in Minnetonka, can have these opportunities. Districts outside ours are partnering with Minnetonka to do both crowd-sourced innovation and establish student innovation teams.

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Monday, April 1, 2019

Student Innovation Teams- Part I of II: Middle School

Image source
About eight years ago Minnetonka moved from traditional strategic planning annually done by a representative committee to crowdsourcing ideas from all employees to gather and rank needs and ideas--read more in a previous post, Innovation is Now Our Strategic Plan. Over the past few years we have started getting students involved in this process, too. Three years ago our high school launched a Student Innovation Team and two years ago these teams began at our middle school. Recently, both levels of Student Innovation Teams presented to our School Board about their work. There was so much content presented I decided to post about it in two parts--this week an overview of the middle school students’ work and next the high school.

As you can see in the video of their presentations, both middle schools have student innovation teams that meet regularly to identify, brainstorm, and come up with solutions to problems affecting their classmates and school. They learn about and use Human Centered Design which is grounded in empathy throughout this process. Students immerse themselves in the problems by interviewing and surveying classmates, teachers and other stakeholders to work toward a possible solution. After ideation, students prototype and test out possible solutions, then revise and repeat the process testing iterations. Students work cooperatively with one another in groups and communicate their efforts and progress. Throughout this process, students are engaging in motivating, real work meeting multiple dimensions on our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework: real-world learning, communication, collaboration, creativity, authentic problem solving, use of technology for learning, and more.

The student innovation team at Minnetonka Middle School West is named the WISH Team- West Innovation Student Hackers Team. It is led by Dr. Paula Hoff, Principal, Sara Hunt, Instructional Technology Coach, and Lisa Reed, Tonka Coders and Makers Teacher on Special Assignment. One of the projects they showcased in the video (watch here) was their work with Moving Minds, a branch of Gopher Sport, designing classroom furniture products that are comfortable and  allow movement. Students helped provide feedback and design suggestions on products. Students took a field trip to the headquarters and were able to and tour the facility, seeing the products they helped work on and meeting staff working to name the product, make a logo and photo shoot to bring it to market.

At Minnetonka Middle School East, over thirty students in grades 7 and 8 are part of the student innovation team. It is coached by Lisa Reed and Julie Baeb, one of our Innovation consultants. There are seven groups of students who work on team projects/tasks as part of the student innovation team. Students have worked to improve the lunchroom experience, redesign learning spaces, product design, and more. The group highlighted in the video (watch here), named the Innovation X Team, tackled ways to provide their fellow classmates with brain and body breaks throughout the day.

As Eric Schneider, Associate Superintendent and Nicole Snedden, Innovation Coordinator and Design for Learning Project Leader stated in the opening of the presentation, we continue to embrace innovation as a strategy. By engaging not only our staff but our students, we are helping all those involved in education be change agents. This will improve the educational experience for everyone and lead to even more innovative solutions.

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Monday, March 25, 2019

2nd Grade Book Creators Publish Their Learning


Last week I was in second grade teacher Traci Preciado’s class as students were working on writing books on a research topic of their choice. Students eagerly showed me their work and read their books aloud. The topics they selected ranged from animals like cheetahs and sabertooth tigers to Native Americans to British Soldiers. Each student was engaged and excited about producing a book on their topic and motivated to write and find images to illustrate their work using the Book Creator app.


A few weeks prior to this, students had been learning about polar animals, polar lands, and people who live in polar regions. Students had written summaries of each areas and then chose one area to publish as a book. Traci then showed them how to use the Book Creator app and they spent a couple class periods putting in their information. This was practice for their own research project.


The following week students choose an animal, person, or place to research. The wrote questions, researched and read about their topic using Pebble Go, and then wrote about it. They used Book Creator in iPads to type up their writing and insert images. When they finished the class has a publishing fair, inviting in their parents to come in and hear the books being read by students. Traci also emailed each students’ parents a copy of their book electronically as a PDF.
This is a great example of students having voice and choice in their learning as well as creating and communicating their work with an authentic audience, all components of our Minnetonka Teaching & Learning Framework. Traci tied in numerous nonfiction reading and writing skills throughout this project as well. Students were very motivated to learn and use technology to showcase their work.


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Monday, March 18, 2019

Amazing Creativity Shown by Student Animators

Animation by Fawaz, 5th Grader
Animation by Sophie, 9th Grader
I'm always amazed by our students and their creativity. When students use their creative skills combined with technology tools they can make some truly awesome products. Whether it is their artwork, skits done with green screens, stop motion, eBooks, or more, our students make some incredible projects.

A couple weeks ago I asked our grade 4-12 students with iPads for creative examples of animated GIFs they had made with the Animatic app. Almost 140 students submitted work. It was hard to choose some to showcase as so many were really well done! Here are over 20 examples to give you an idea of what Minnetonka students have made.
Animation by Ryann, 6th Grader

When asked to explain their work, 90 students stated that they made their submitted animation just for fun. One student wrote, “I watch animators on YouTube, and when I saw this post I was like: Hmm... I should try it! I like drawing and writing, I should like this! And I ended up really liking it, and will probably animate again in the future." Another stated, “I made this animation because, well, I felt inspired! Also, I wanted to show people my artistic abilities that can encompass technology all at the same time.”

I spoke with the co-founder of Animatic, Darren Paul, about a month ago. He and his team were very excited to have their app showcased in the Apple App Store and as a result saw an enormous jump in downloads. This, in turn, resulted in a great increase in the number of examples made with Animatic being posted worldwide. They are seeing all sorts of uses of their tool, not just by students but by professionals and adults in the workforce, too. Check out their Twitter feed and website to learn more.

 If you'd like to learn how to use Animatic from a professional, check out this four-part tutorial from a Disney animator with whom the Animatic team partnered. I shared these videos with our students, too, so we will likely see an increase in their abilities and created work in the future!

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