(Almost) all our content from 2006 to 2017 is archived and available online under a Creative Commons license. Please read this post from June 2018 for more background and updates about our conference and current status.

2014 2014-STEAM

Coding/Making/Writing with Connected Learners

Published by:

Presenter: Melissa Techman
Location: Charlottesville, VA, USA
@mtechman

Presentation Title: Coding/Making/Writing with Connected Learners

Presentation Description: An overview of how to use Mozilla’s Thimble with students for creative approaches to writing. Thimble allows for easy website building and fun remixing of existing website templates. Following the success of Webmaker events with teens at the public library, Melissa Techman shares her forms, templates and methods so you can experiment with Thimble in the classroom. This creative approach to writing builds interest in coding and allows students of all abilities to have fun and experience collaborative and connected learning. While intended for grades 6 and up, the approach and the templates can be simplified for younger students.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://mtk12online.weebly.com/

Announcements

K12Online14 Day Seven: October 28, 2014

Published by:

K12Online2014-500x500Welcome to day seven of the 2014 K-12 Online Conference! All presentations are listed and linked on our main conference schedule.

Week Two – More presentations to inspire you. Our STEAM keynote is now up. Passion can be found in the Passion Driven Learning Strand but also in those presenting so eloquently about STEAM. You can always come back to view sessions you missed or those you want to see again. Everything is archived.

Don’t forget to try playing the game created by Kevin Hodgson!

Today’s sessions:

PASSION DRIVEN LEARNING

A Key to Interest-Based Learning by Paul Allison

Grab the Mic by Mister C (AKA Kevin Cornell)

STEAM

The Keynote is here! Making, Tinkering and Design by Karen Wilkinson

STEAMmaker: Merging Classroom STEM with Maker Education by Ginger Lewman

If you’re not already doing it, be sure to follow us on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook. Subscribe to our email list if you’re not already receiving email updates from us. Also remember all video presentations are available in iPad / iPhone / iPod touch compatible format in our iTunesU Portal! If you tweet about the conference please use the Twitter hashtag #k12online14.

2014 2014-Keynote 2014-STEAM

Making, Tinkering & Design

Published by:

Presenter: Karen Wilkinson – Director, Tinkering Studio
Location: San Francisco, CA / United States
@TinkeringStudio

Presentation Description: The Tinkering Studio is a public space within the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where we design opportunities for people to “think with their hands” in order to construct meaning and understanding through STEM-rich learning experiences. In this talk, I’ll touch on some of the underlying ideas behind this work and hopefully show why a constructionist theory of learning is ideally suited to maker-centered education.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/coursera

Additional Information:
http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/blog

2014 2014-Passion-Driven Learning

Grab the MIC

Published by:

Presenter: Mister C
Location: Beavercreek, OH
@originalmisterc

Presentation Title: Grab the MIC

Presentation Description: Mister C shares and discusses the importance of Grabbing the MIC and using music in the classroom and discusses tips and tricks of music integration.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
www.learningfunforeveryone.com

Additional Information:
Mister C wants to make “Learning fun for everyone!” Visit: www.learningfunforeveryone.com or www.youtube.com/learningscienceisfun for songs and videos!

2014 2014-Passion-Driven Learning

A Key to Interest-Based Learning

Published by:

Presenter: Paul Allison
Location: New York City, NY
@paulallison

Presentation Title: A Key to Interest-Based Learning

Presentation Description: When we introduce Youth Voices to students we tell them: “We mean it! We really do want you to find your own area of inquiry, your own niche of expertise, exploration, and excitement. What are you already good at? What do you dream about, wonder over, and want to inquire into? What are you passionate about? That’s what good research is really about. Starting with 10 self and 10 world questions is a great way to begin!” http://youthvoices.net/questions

Next, we tell students: “Over time, along with your teacher and your peers you will be able to identify the “generative themes” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 3, pp. 96 & 97) that begin to bubble up in your writing. This type of really free, habitual freewriting is an important first step — and ongoing, underground spring — that allows your projects and essays to become “a practice in catalyzing passion and creativity,” not just another school assignment. Once you begin to write into an area of inquiry, your can take your next step “by finding niche learning communities that each kid might want to be a part of and build on that.” (John Seely Brown. Lecture, 1.18.05) Helping you to create and find these niches is what “creating discussions” in a school-based social network such as Youth Voices is all about.: http://youthvoices.net/freewriting

In this video, Paul Allison puts the “10 self/10 world questions” assignment into the context of the larger goals of Youth Voices, where we encourage students to allow their passions to brush up against disciplinary inquiry.

Learn more about this key to interest-based learning.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://youthvoices.net/questions

Additional Information:
http://youthvoices.net

2014 2014-STEAM

STEAMmaker: Merging Classroom STEM and Afterschool MakerEducation

Published by:

Presenter: Ginger Lewman
Location: Hutchinson, Kansas, USA
@GingerLewman

Presentation Description: If we truly believe that teachers teach how they are taught, then our professional learning should look radically different than most inservices and workshops currently do. This presentation outlines one approach to helping teachers learn and experience what a MakerSpace might look like inside either a STEAM classroom or as a club outside the regular school day.

At our STEAMmaker camp, students and teachers become true learners, as they experience a hands-on learning environment unlike their traditional school classroom. Here, they get to think, ideate, prototype, test, and publish answers to challenges that are issued to them, all while working on self-designed challenges. Students and teachers work in teams as parallel learners to create solutions to various challenges, all while fostering a sense of independence and joy inside collaborative learning. And as a result, both students and teachers develop understanding and leadership to be a core member of a STEAMmaker movement in their own schools/districts, should they choose to take summer camp back home!

If you want students and teachers to learn how to be risk-takers, to be hands-on tinkerers, to be active builders and growers, then you want a STEAMmaker Camp.

2014 Announcements

K12Online14 Day Six: October 27, 2014

Published by:

K12Online2014-500x500Welcome to day six of the 2014 K-12 Online Conference! All presentations are listed and linked on our main conference schedule.

Week Two has begun and with it two new strands: Passion Driven Learning and STEAM. So much to think about. You can always come back to view sessions you missed or those you want to see again. Everything is archived.

Don’t forget to try playing the game created by Kevin Hodgson!

 

Today’s sessions:

PASSION DRIVEN LEARNING

The keynote for this strand is presented by Joy Kir: Passion-Based Learning

Connected Learning Through Google Apps by Jennifer Bloomingdale

STEAM

Keynote: coming soon

Programming in Primary  by Sam Patterson

If you’re not already, be sure to follow us on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook. Subscribe to our email list if you’re not already receiving email updates from us. Also remember all video presentations are available in iPad / iPhone / iPod touch compatible format in our iTunesU Portal! If you tweet about the conference please use the Twitter hashtag #k12online14.

2014 2014-Passion-Driven Learning

Connected Learning Through Google Apps

Published by:

Presenter: Jennifer Bloomingdale
Location: Schuylerville, New York, United States
@Bloomingedu

Presentation Title: Connected Learning Through Google Apps

Presentation Description: This presentation will focus on specific how-to’s of Google Apps that support Connected Learning for teachers and students. Learn which features of Google Apps help students create, collaborate and share their work.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
www.goo.gl/X85Uvf

2014 2014-STEAM

Programming in Primary

Published by:

Presenter: Sam Patterson
Location: Palo Alto, CA
@sampatue

Presentation Description: Join Sam to talk about how we can start in k-2 teaching students to program using blockly code. Sam will demonstrate using Scratch Jr and Hopscotch on the iPad to support content area learning.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nfS5lcuEprkIZHMV0jWiU3H4_Wl8Pe8MshXJIWElj5I/edit?usp=sharing

2014 2014-Passion-Driven Learning

Passion-Based Learning

Published by:

Presenter: Joy Kirr
Location: Elk Grove Village, IL
@joykirr

Presentation Title: Passion-Based Learning

Presentation Description: What IS “passion-based learning?” It goes by many names, but it is authentic, student-driven time given during school hours. It is used to engage students in their learning, and let them know that their interests and inquiries matter. Once you start, you will find it permeates the rest of your teaching hours.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://tinyurl.com/PassionBasedLrngRes

Additional Information:

“About Me” Web Address – http://joykirr.wix.com/portfolio

“About Me” bio: I currently teach 7th grade English Language Arts in a suburb of Chicago. I was first a special education teacher working with deaf & hard-of-hearing students, and next became a reading specialist and National Board Certified. I’m on my 20th year of teaching, but it’s always like my first!