Change in Plans

Teaching, much like life, throws us curve-balls now and again.
Sometimes those result in a a, "STIIIIIIIIRIKE!"
Other times we hit a home run....this week has bee a HOME RUN!
(See the baseball reference....)

Coming back from spring break (I had one day of break due to working for the Army...whomp whomp) I had the idea of getting out our Keva planks and building some bridges.  We haven't done that in a while. We have been doing a lot of brain work lately with dice and cards, and clay. I wanted to get some things moving with building and breaking things.

When I came into my room, I was happy to find some things I had ordered showed up!  Two big kits of K'Nex and some laserclasrroom light kits.  I received some ZOOB's earlier in the month and had been waiting on the K'Nex to show up so we could do stations.

I threw my bridge idea away and within about 15 min. had a plan to work with our new toys.
It has been a riot watching my students explore with our new gadgets!

I took the light kits to the middle school and it has been great watching 5th graders work together on different light experiments.

As always, you can see more on Twitter.

PODCAST!

While at MACUL 18, I sat in a session about podcasting.

I had a podcast back in 2007, but it died out. It was hard to record, then save, then upload, etc.
I didn't really have a solid topic and as a result, nobody listened to it.

Well, I'm giving it another try!

Listen HERE!!

I wanted to do something that would be sustainable, so I decided to talk about S.T.E.M. I figure that even if I leave my STEM job and go back into a general classroom, STEM is such a push right now I should NEVER run out of things to talk about! I currently have 8 episodes and have a few guests lined up for some more.

It is incredibly easy now. I can do it from my computer, from my iPad, or from my phone. I can bring in guests remotely and talk .

You can check it out on Anchor, Apple Podcast, and Pocketcast.
You can also get the links from my twitter: @Mr_JVD

Here are the episodes I have so far.