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!

Category: stem

  • Explain Everything Minecraft iPad Project (Treehouse Challenge on Area & Perimeter)

    Today in STEM class my 4th and 5th graders used the iPad app “Explain Everything” for the first time to start narrated slideshow videos about the “Treehouse Challenge” project we’ve spent three lessons on last week and this week. It went great!    by  Wesley Fryer  This is the third semester I’ve taught students a variation of an…

  • Join Our 10th STEMseeds Google Hangout Saturday April 4th

    (cross-posted from STEMSeeds.org) Please plan to join STEMseeds’ tenth live, Google Hangout with elementary STEM teacher Kylie Sanders on Saturday, April 4, 2015, at 10:30 Eastern / 9:30 Central / 8:30 Mountain / 7:30 Pacific time. Kylie is an elementary STEM teacher in Piedmont, Oklahoma, and is finishing up her first year in this fulltime…

  • Great Class Castle Build in MinecraftEDU

    This afternoon after school we had our first meeting of “Makers Club” at our school for the semester. Generally we learn something new together and then students break up to work on different projects in our STEM classroom “Maker Studio.” Today, however, we opted to build a 64 x 64 block castle together (or at…

  • Thanks to Donors Choose Supporters of Classroom Sphero Project

    Today I finalized the thank you letter and submitted photos for our fall classroom Sphero project on Donor’s Choose. Thanks to the generosity of our donors we now have THREE additional Sphero robotic balls to use in Makers Studio during STEM class. Here’s the letter I submitted to our donors along with six photographs. If…

  • Cool iPad Art & STEAM Apps & Hacks

    Wednesday after school I shared a few different iPad apps and a great STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) drawing device with our art teacher at school whose classroom is just down the hall from me. Here’s the list of links I sent her afterward as a follow-up, along with a few other videos and…

  • Embed Twitter Widget in Dot Net Nuke (DNN) Website

    Here’s my geekiest post in awhile: I figured out how to embed a Twitter widget in a Dot Net Nuke (DNN) website. The company my school district pays to host our official website uses DNN as our content management system, and it can be a little tricky to embed certain kinds of HTML code on pages. I…

  • Group Building Design Challenge in STEM Class

    (cross-posted with permission from STEMseeds.org) This semester in STEM class as one of our first lessons, I’m using the following “Group Building Design Challenge” to get my 4th and 5th grade students collaborating, designing, communicating, and creatively constructing in groups. This lesson idea originally came from an Oklahoma A+Schools workshop my wife, Shelly Fryer (@sfryer) attended,…

  • Inspirational STEAM Video by Janna Levin

    This week for our first 10 minute “curiosity links” time in STEM class this semester, I’m sharing the video, “Janna Levin: I’m Still That Same Kid. It’s part of the series NOVA’s Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. Janna’s description of how she felt challenged growing up because she loved BOTH art and science makes this a…

  • 2015 Classroom Challenge: STEM Curiosity Links

    As 2014 draws to a close and we look forward to what 2015 will bring, I’d like to share a simple and fun classroom challenge with you: STEM Curiosity Links. For the past two semesters, I’ve made a point of sharing several STEM “curiosity links” with my students at least once per week. On days I share…

  • Play with Sound Using Singing Fingers for iOS

    Singing Fingers (free on the Apple App Store) is one of my favorite iPad apps. It invites whimsical creativity. A few years ago when Gail Lovely (@glovely) put together a panel of folks at ISTE (in Philly, I think) to share favorite iOS apps, Singing Fingers was one of my selections. Today thanks to some video…