#MACUL17

I had tried to go to the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) for several years now, and this year was my year!  I finally got to go!  It was held in beautiful Detroit over a 2 day period last week.

View from my 68th Floor Room

First off, Detroit is about a 8 hour drive.  I drove with three other teachers from Kingsford.  That was a great experience and I was able to strengthen some friendships on the ride.
Nick and I were on the 68th floor of the hotel and we had an amazing view of the waterfront of Detroit, and Windsor (Canada).

Sir Ken Robinson

The first day of MACUL started with a keynote address from Sir Ken Robinson. He posted an interesting view on creativity in learning and energized the crowd for our journey through learning for the weekend.

I was able to sit in two conferences with a 3rd grade teacher named Mark Schlaudt (Follow him on Twitter) from Rockford, MI.  He has a great way of integrating STEM education into his students reading. "How Would you Catch a Giant Squid?"  That single question lead his students through research (What does a Giant Squid even eat?), design, prototype development, and production. His students started with zero knowledge about the Giant Squid, and ended with more understanding than Mark ever intended.

Mark also did a great presentation on creating dashboards on Google Docs in order to have a one stop shop for teachers, students, and parents to see how their student is doing and any trends in their performance.  I spoke with Mark afterward about using Google Classroom and how to possibly implement some of those concepts into my Freshman Football team.

I also saw a present ion by Mindy Lynch on blogging and how she uses it as a communication tool.  It works well for her in her position as the Ravenna Middle School Principal and Athletic Director.

Pizza Box STEM

I was also able to meet an amazing educator from Calumet, Mr. Chris Woods (He has a great Twitter Feed). He did a great presentation on how to find STEM in every day life and how to put int in front of students every day so that everyone becomes STEM minded. IT was great!

MACUL will be having it's UP event here in Kingsford on May 5th.  I am going to present.  I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to take the leap and present on Twitter.  My session will be called, "Twitter for non-Tweeters."  I will talk about how Twitter is a fast and easy way to share pictures, and ideas. It is also a fantastic tool for reaching out to other professionals.

MAGNETS!

We had a great time working with magnets over the past few weeks!
We learned about how magnetic fields influence iron, nickle, and cobalt.  We watched a video from BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY.

We played a game using magnets and paper clips (Nickle plated of course). All grade levels had a ton of fun using the magnets.

It was interesting to watch how students from kindergarten to fifth grade played the game and used different techniques to collect the paperclips. I especially liked the students who turned the magnate around and used both the North and South pole side of the magnate to collect the paper clips.

At the end of the first week, I showed students an electromagnet and how it worked. We then took a quick field trip to the POD door to see the electromagnets that hold our doors open. We talked about different drills that those doors close automatically.  To finish up the week we made a magnate maze for kids to follow.  It was a great activity and a fun way to end the unit. Magnetism is really cool!