Note: As of 1 Oct 2026, this is a FULL STATIC COPY of all 6,390 posts shared on this blog since 2003. Updated content and ideas from Wes Fryer are still available!

Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wes Fryer

Category: design

  • FREE Oklahoma City STEM Workshop: June 4-5, 2014

    Amy Loeffelholz and Wesley Fryer are excited to announce FREE registration is available for a 2 day, hands-on, elementary STEM workshop Wednesday, June 4 and Thursday, June 5, 2014, at Independence Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma. The workshop will be led by Amy and Wes, who are both current grade 4-5 STEM teachers at Lakeview…

  • Learning and Recovering From Failure in STEM Class

    Today in my last STEM class of the day the students and I had a magical moment. These don’t happen every day, and this will definitely “go down” in my personal memory bank as one of my highlights of the entire past year.   by  Wesley Fryer  This is the second week of we’ve built and launched…

  • iPad Apps About Rockets, Spacecraft Design, and Astronomical Engineering

    This week my 4th and 5th grade STEM students are starting a two week unit on rocketry, spacecraft design and astronomical engineering. If that sounds too grandiose, here’s a simpler lesson plan explanation: We’re building and launching water bottle rockets using empty 2 liter soda bottles and a borrowed PITSCO “Aquaport II Water Rocket Launcher.”…

  • Create an iPad Stand for Stopmotion from Cardboard

    Jackie Myers, the 4th and 5th grade art teacher at Independence Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma, explains how to create a functional iPad stand using a cardboard box, duct tape, and a box cutter. Jackie used cardboard iPad stands like these with her students in April 2014 on a stopmotion video project. View examples of…

  • Fun Scratch Projects Today in STEM Class

    I’m continuing to teach my 4th and 5th graders in STEM class about coding and how to create projects using Scratch software. Last week students got started with coding using tutorials on Code.org. For our first lesson of this week students completed the “Step-by-Step Intro” to Scratch. I recorded a screencast of the instructions for…

  • Introduce Students to Coding with Hopscotch for iPad

    Update Dec 13th: The archived recording of this webinar in Adobe Connect is available. These are my presentation slides for today’s free ISTE SIGML webinar, “Introduce Students to Coding with Hopscotch for iPad.” The webinar starts at 7 pm EST. Introduce Students to Coding with Hopscotch for iPad from Wesley Fryer The session description is:…

  • FREE Hour of Code Webinars with Wes

    This week as part of the 2013 “Hour of Code” and Computer Science Education Week I’m sharing two different FREE webinars on Wednesday and Saturday. Please mark your calendars so you can join one or both events! Introduce Students to Coding with HopScotch for iPad Wed Dec 11, 7 pm EST FREE Adobe Connect webinar…

  • The Hour of Code

    This is a short paragraph I submitted for our school’s December newsletter for parents, discussing what we’ve been doing in STEM class in November and are doing this month supporting “The Hour of Code.” IES Students in STEM in November learned to “code” on our class iPads using the free app, Hopscotch (www.gethopscotch.com). A free…

  • Learning More About Visual Notetaking (Authorized Drawing in Class!)

    Yesterday at the 2013 Tablet Summit in Montreal, Quebec, I shared a two-part breakout session on “visual notetaking.” These are visual notes created by two of the workshop participants, Tanya Avrith and Audrey McLaren. Visual notetaking is a great learning strategy to demonstrate, practice, and promote with teachers for many reasons. First of all, we…

  • A Fourth Grader is Inspired by Oklahoma Artist Danny Gordon

    Today was momentous in the life of my 4th grade daughter, Rachel: She was able to meet and spend some time with the amazing Oklahoma artist, Danny Gordon. Danny presented a session yesterday at the 2013 Oklahoma Technology Association and EncycloMedia Conference in Oklahoma City, and when I learned part of his story I knew…