Using the Raspberry Pi

We've just started using the Raspberry Pi this week. Yesterday, I had all 5 periods send out a tweet via the Oakridge Tech Center Twitter feed using the Raspberry Pi and Python.

We watched this video and followed along:

My students were successful in programming and getting the Tweets out!

My students were pretty excited to get to use the Raspberry Pi. Up next is getting the Tweeting weather station going, but first we need to solder a couple of very small pieces of technology together. 

Preparing a MakerSpace

Next year, we will have a brand new MakerSpace at The Oakridge School!  I am excited for this!  We are turning what is currently the conference room, which is located next to the Tech Center, into a MakerSpace.

Conference Room

Conference Room

Raspberry Pi B

We will be filling the space with all sorts of goodies, including Raspberry Pis, Hummingbird Robotics Kits, 3D Printers, and other tech-type goodies.  We will give the students the ability to be able to create a wide variety of different gadgets.

Hummingbird Robotics Kit

What I believe will make this space extremely cool, is that students are going to be getting hands-on learning, building skills, and practical applications. Students will need to be self starters, but I envision the majority of kids who sign-up for the Tech 2.0 class to already be self-starters.

We will have the ability to put up weekly, monthly, and yearly contests, that will be fun and challenging for the students.  As we start to make progress on turning the old space into a new space, I will update with pictures of the progress of how the new room will be outfitted.

Right now, to help get us started, I am getting in a Raspberry Pi and a Hummingbird Duo Robotics kit to see how interested the current students are with these things. We are going to start with a basic project, building a Tweeting weather station, and then see where it takes us from there.  Once the components I ordered arrive, I will post pictures and updates of the students exploring and building with the materials.

Exciting things are happening at The Oakridge School!

Student Presentation of Kahoot

A while back I had mentioned that I had my students do presentations to the faculty about some new apps that could be effectively used for education, one of those being Kahoot.  Below are my 2nd period Honors Tech 2.0 students presenting how to set up you Kahoot.  Enjoy!



Kahoot Presentation from Melissa Triebwasser on Vimeo.

Exercise and Alzheimer's Disease: Will it help?

Alzheimer's Disease has been in the news quite a bit lately, and with Julian Moore winning the Oscar for Best Actress in Still Alice, more attention has been paid to a disease that rightly deserves more attention.

The reason for this blog post, my wife's paternal grandmother, Deloris, we all know her as 'Mania,' is currently suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.  In addition, my step-grandmother, Ellie, whom my brother and I always knew only as 'grandma,' because our paternal grandmother died before either of us were born, also suffered from Alzheimer's Disease.  I've seen and am seeing what this disease can do first hand to someone you love.

I present some research findings. I am not a physician/doctor, and what I write is not intended to help, prevent, or cure any disease.   What I write here is merely a summary of the research findings from articles published in scholarly journals.

I decided to do a little digging and find out if there is any research evidence to support exercise helping, or delaying onset, or potentially preventing Alzheimer's.  A recently published study by Loprinzi (2015), found that there are beneficial effects from exercise in not only helping to prevent Alzheimer's Disease, but also to prolong the survival rate for those with Alzheimer's Disease.  In addition, Schloesser et al. (2015) found that higher levels of physical activity are associated with a decreased risk of future diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's Disease.  Remember, association is not causation, a common theme that I have to remind my students.  Also, Hernández et al. (2014) conducted a meta-analysis of exercise and Alzheimer's Disease research over the past 10 years, and found that exercise can be beneficial for Alzheimer's Disease.  They found that exercise may be beneficial for improving cognitive function in patients with Alzheimer's Disease.

In addition, I present this video:




This is Carl W. Cotman, Ph.D., and he explains how a diet rich in antioxidants and regular exercise may benefit the brain.

This is just a sample of the research ongoing on Alzheimer's Disease.  For more on Alzheimer's Disease I cnourage you to visit the Alzheimer's Association webpage.

A Fantasy Draft for History? Why Not!

As we are moving forward with our Learn21 initiative at Oakridge, one of my history teachers came up with an extremely innovative way to get the kids to be engaged with European history.

This lesson started out with a historical fantasy draft, that's right, the students were split up into teams, and they had to draft a team made up entirely of historical figures from European history (e.g., Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Louis XIII, etc.).

First, the students created a Google Doc which they shared with the members of their team. Once each team member was on the Google Doc, they were able to open up a chat session to discuss their draft strategy without other teams being able to hear what they were saying. Next, each team drafted 4 players as starters, and then they were able to add 1 more on their bench.  Each team had 1 minute per round to decide who they were going to draft.  Teams that were very one-sided (i.e., consisted of historical figures all from the same country or historical figures that had very similar political beliefs) were evened out by the teacher, as she added 'free-agents' to teams as deemed necessary to give the greatest breadth of historical views.  Once the teams were drafted, the teacher then gave the teams prompts (each team go the same prompt), and what makes this extremely innovative and interesting is that the prompts are not simply yes or no questions, the teams must come up with an answer to the prompt using the historical voice of one of the members of their fantasy team.  This is fantastic!!!  There is no set answer, each team must come up with answers to the prompts and then give a rationale for why they decided to have the historical figure answer the way the did.

Something super cool about this is how the students are able to collaborate with members of their team; not only during the draft and in class, but once they were given the prompts, they have the ability to discuss, edit, change, add in pictures, drawings, etc., to the Google Doc at any time, from any place, as long as they have an internet connection.  This gives the students the ability to collaborate outside of class in ways that were previously not possible.

For example, here is a prompt that she gave the teams this morning:

Economic

It is 1780.

Remnants of feudalism are still visible, economically, in parts of Europe, especially France and Russia. Serfs and peasants are the vast majority of these two states' populations.

They are the poorest of the poor.  They have no political voice or education. They have begun, in France to feel the changes of the Agricultural Revolution, as machines begin to slowly replace them as the workers of the land. Discontent is brewing amongst the serfs and vindictive leaders are beginning to emerge and organize this discontent against those imposing the slave-like conditions on the serfs and peasants.

Some of the rising middle class, and even a few landowners, are concerned with the horrific treatment of these serfs. Yet, while they may feel some moral 'tuggings' they are more concerned with the reality of all out rebellion.

What do you do to calm this discontent and prevent an all out revolution?

I don't know about you, but I find this pretty cool!  Having the students come up with rationales for why they gave the answer they did, really gets the students thinking outside of the box.  Especially when there is no single correct answer!

New Projects: Follow Up

Each Thursday at Oakridge, we have our Tech Thursdays, and on each Tech Thursday we show a technology education related video during tutorial/advisory period to the students.  This week, I am showing the video that we took of my second period Honors Tech 2.0 giving a presentation on how to make a Kahoot.  Hopefully, by next week, I will have all the permissions I need to post the video here and show everyone my students in action!

In addition, after I sent out a Google Form to the teachers to fill out for which presentations they would like to see, I received a great response!  A lot of the of the teachers signed up to come and see the students present on the new apps that can be used for education.

What was a very welcomed surprise, was that some of the teachers that could not make it to the presentations, went ahead on their own and tried some of the apps in class, and they found the students really like them! One of my chemistry teachers used Kahoot for an exam review and found that the students became very engaged and competitive once they learned they get more points for answering quickly and correctly.

EDpuzzle was another hot app that the teachers seemed to be very willing and wanting to try.  The fact that you can do a short flipped lesson, and get feedback as to whether or not the students learned what you want them to from the video was appealing.  I am currently working with some of my Upper School teachers to facilitate getting the EDpuzzle videos out to the students and then get feedback on it.

As you can see we have quite a bit cooking right now!