Integrated Learning - Year 8 ENSS - Shakespeare

Happy Birthday Shakespeare!

How can we provide our students with the opportunity to bring more technology into our programmes?

It was a pleasure to work with Aimie Sibson and her year 8ENSS class on an inquiry question: "Why is Shakespeare still relevant 400 years on…?"

The students had studied "Twelfth Night" this term and as part of their celebration of learning, they were asked to bring Shakespeare alive and make it relevant for the modern audience.

Below are some of the wonderful ways in which the girls presented aspects of the Twelfth Night.

3D designed and printed Shakespeare merchandise - Bobblehead of Shakespeare

3D printed QuoteHanger - "If music be the food of love play on"

Trailer for a recreated film of the Twelfth Night using the coding programme of Scratch

Papertronic gift cards using Shakespeare language and themes that flash and light up supported by Sarah Coursey

Music Video using iMovie and Garage Band

Recreating a setting from the Twelfth Nigh using Minecraft

Gamifying the plot using an app called "Sploder"

Using the classroom window to show the "Love Triangle"

Many students were challenged to learn a new skill and to learn alongside their peers.  The students sought support and guidance when they needed it.  They produced some absolutely amazing pieces of work and this class now understands the process of learning better.  When students were asked for some feedback on how we presented this unit, they understood why there were some 'dull' lessons in getting to grips with the Twelfth Night  - the language, structure, characters and story.  Looking back, the students have a deeper understanding of Shakespeare, his writing and the Twelfth Night.  We emphasized the fun, in doing, creating and making something related to this unit which elevated the hunger to learn and know more.

Integrated Learning - Year 7 ENSS Survivor Island

Collaboration with the ENSS (English and Social Science) teachers has enable us to redefine the learning tasks for the Survivor Island Unit.  In the past students have completed activities such as making the island from paper mache, cardboard huts and created board games to apply their survivor knowledge.

This year we have tried to integrate technology by using the 3D design programme called tinkercad to recreate the island.  Based on a descriptive paragraph, students worked in teams to recreate the island with all it's landmark features.  Students then captured an image of their island and used thinglink to add their stories of survival.  Students wrote their diary entries for each day they survived and then recorded audio or video to upload as part of their links on thinglink.
This task has given students an opportunities to :

• work collaboratively 
• show leadership and delegate roles
• be creative
• be self managing
• work to time pressures

I was impressed with the quality and accuracy of the work that the students produced in a 2 week period for the above activity which was one of several learning tasks that the students completed for this unit during this term.

Teaching Children to Code

Stephen Lethbridge presents at TEDx - Tauranga
Student asks, "What do I do next?" Teacher responds "How might you find out?"

Stephen presents how coding in context enable children to be bold and courageous in their learning.  They resilience, they are resourceful and divergent in their thinking.  He stresses that allowing children to copy, tinker and make mistakes along the way empowers their learning!
A "Maker Club" held after school where children must bring a parent means that this co-curricular group is not a drop-off centre.  Adults are encouraged to learn alongside children and teachers.

Stephen hopes that others can see the value in encouraging design thinking, collaboration, teamwork, and iteration spirals to solve real world problems.

"Do not limit our children to the world that came before them"

123D Sculpt +

I have been looking for different ways in which students can be creative.  Something that might be an alternative to paper mache, cardboard and tape may be 123D Sculpt+ app.

After watching a very brief introduction of how to use this app, I can see some cool possibilities across our curriculum.  Re-creating a character from a book study using this app seems to allow students to use their own original creativity to bring this character to life. There are many figures to choose from as your starting point from spiders, planes, horses, human, elephants, and frogs etc., Using this app means that there is no waiting for paint to dry or having to access water and clean up.  On the down side you can't get your hands messy, however, there is no chance of getting paint or glue on your uniform.  This app enables students to create an avatar that is 3D and can build from any 2D version we have had in the past.

Plastimake

Today the year 9's had an opportunity to experiment with this component called "plastimake".  Once the plastic is heated in boiling water, it changes its colour from white to clear.  In this state, the plastic can be moulded into whatever shape you want.  The beauty of plastimake is that it can be reheated in hot water over and over again and can continue to be remoulded.  We experimented with cutting it with scissors and rolling it out on the table. We discovered that making a specific shape required patience and lots of reshaping along the way to arrive at the end product.

Softening the plastimake beads so that we can mould it

The future of Clothing

Year 13 Design Class

Recently, I had the wonderful chance to work with the year 13 design students.  Last term, Sarah Coursey started this class off with an introductory course on papertronics.  The girls revisited their understanding of basic electrical circuits and created some simple switches and lighted circuits using paper as their base. 

Last week I followed up with some e-textiles.  The stick on LED lights from papertronics were replaced with light emitting diodes, the copper tape which conducts the electrical current was replaced with electronic thread and we used metal domes as our switch.  Both of these sessions have opened up the possibilities of adding some electronics into student design work.  Keen students may also want to extend on this, by adding light, touch, and sound sensors.  Further to this, are programmable sewable circuits such as the Gemma, and LilyPad.

RESOURCES:


Bridget McKendry Christchurch FabLab http://www.fablabchch.org.nz

Nice Gear https://nicegear.co.nz

Aliexpress http://www.aliexpress.com

Jaycar electronics http://www.jaycar.co.nz