Tag: stem

  • Media Kit Lesson

    Media Kit Lesson

    Today in my middle school web design class, we wrapped up a multi-week unit and project I call our “Image and Video Media Kit.” In this post I’ll summarize the unit and share the techniques I used for student presentations this semester, which went smoothly. You can access this full lesson (including sample media kits…

  • Coding Mars

    Coding Mars

    This is an audio recording and the presentation slides from “Coding Mars with Minecraft Makecode and Scratch,” my presentation on March 25, 2025 at the NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The session description was: Build a Mars Colony In Minecraft with Robots and Code? YES! In our middle school computer programming class,…

  • Wisdom from Heather Smith

    Wisdom from Heather Smith

    Heather Smith is the 2024 North Carolina Teacher of the Year! She teaches 8th grade math teacher at Waynesville Middle School in Haywood County Schools. These are my notes from her presentation, “Teachers: The Ultimate Influencers“ at the March 24, 2025 NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference MY THOUGHT AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. In this…

  • Visualizing Off-Planet Habitats

    Visualizing Off-Planet Habitats

    My middle school computer programming students are continuing to work on our “Coding Mars” unit, in which they are using Minecraft MakeCode to simulate the 3D printing of structures and habitats which Icon of Austin, Texas, is under contract with NASA to do first on the moon / the lunar surface and (ultimately) on Mars.…

  • Reflections on PD Hackathon 2023

    Today I’ve had an opportunity to participate, facilitate, and volunteer as a judge in our fall 2023 Hackathon at our school, Providence Day School of Charlotte, North Carolina. This is the second time I’ve been able to be part of the Hackathon, and in this post I’d like to reflect a little about some of…

  • Reflections on Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy (Part 1)

    This week I am attending a 4 1/2 day robotics workshop at Carnegie Mellon University, learning how to teach middle school robotics with the “Lego Spike Prime” robot platform. This is based on the Scratch programming language from MIT, which I love and have been using for over 10 years. In this podcast reflection (from…

  • Sharing My Enthusiasm for Space Exploration

    Last week when Shelly and I were attending the NASA Space Exploration Educators Conference at Space Center Houston, our students and colleagues were out of school with 3 snow days in a row! Today we were all back in class, and I took about 10 minutes in each of my classes to share a little…

  • Amazing #STEM Animated Visual Notes by Dominic Walliman

    I agree and resonate with many of the things Jaron Lanier shares in the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” but I disagree with his advice on YouTube’s “recommended videos.” Jaron advises we should never click on “recommended videos” on YouTube, since that furthers the dystopian economic model of “surveillance capitalism” upon which many of Silicon…

  • The Orbital Perspective: Inspired by Chris Hadfield, Ed Robertson, the Wexford Gleeks and Rod Murray

    Thanks to a recommendation from my Canadian friend and fellow educator Rod Murray (@mrmuzzdog), this morning I started my day with an inspiring, co-created song by Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield), Ed Robertson (@edrobertson,) and the Wexford Gleeks (@wpa_to) recorded together when Commander Hadfield was orbiting our planet as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station in…

  • Twitter Documentation of Classroom Folio Observations

    This year faculty at our school have utilized Folio Collaborative (@foliocollab), an outstanding framework encouraging teacher peer-coaching and mentorship relationships among educational professionals. I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a “Folio coach” for three of our faculty, and today I worked on website documentation of the classroom visits and observations I completed last fall…