When teachers arrived, we asked them to place them selves on a line from 0 to 100%, indicating their confidence with technology integration in the classroom. These intermediate and High school teachers were more confident than the previous group of k to 3 teachers. However, there was still a wide range of confidence in our group. Our goal for the day was to give these teachers the confidence to use coding and robotics to support math, science and language learning. In our school board, students from grade 4 each have their own MacBook, so we are lucky to have lots of access to technology. We have found, however, that not all teachers are using the technology in meaningful and pedagogical ways.
To help address this, we spent an hour in the morning to explore the newly released ASDT curriculum (ink to site). This allowed us to speak of the continuum and the importance of scaffolding knowledge. Many teachers were surprised to learn that there was a curriculum, and high school teachers worry about having to squeeze another course into the day for grade 8 and 9 students where technology wasn’t previously an option. Teachers also questioned the budget, asking if extra funds were going to be given to schools for ressources and material. The discussion we had allowed me to take notes of where teachers need support with regards to this new curriculum and what conversations we need to be having at the board level.
The new curriculums are based on a continuum and building skills throughout a students schooling. To demonstrate this scaffolding, we built our workshop as we did with our k to 3 group, putting away the technology to start with paper grids. We were worried that this may disengage many of the secondary teachers who are looking for more advanced challenges, so we decided to use this activity to also talk about group challenges and building community in the classroom. Group work and collaboration are a key concept in classrooms, but we still find students and teachers who struggle with this concept. By showing them how to lead a group challenge and to reflect on it with students, we hope that they can teach students the skills they need to work together. Here is the document that we used (French).
After lunch, we organized the teachers into smaller grade level groupes to rotate through a series of activities. We have found that because our schools are often isolated, teachers rarely get to discuss with other teachers of their grade level. Our grouping allowed them to exchange their thoughts with teachers who are teaching the same subjects and grades so that they could brainstorm together about the best uses of these ressources in their classrooms. We had 5 stations, 2 that involved Makey Makeys and 3 that involved Lego Mindstorm EV3.
For those of you haven,t heard of a Makey Makey, here is a great video that shows the possibilities.
The second Makey Makey station was an exploration of the ressources available. Teachers were asked to discuss how they could link this to curriculum and how they would use a Makey Makey in the classroom to support learning. It was great to see groups testing out their lessons!
The next station offered teachers a change to try to program the robot. With a few hints, they were to program the robot to execute a task, such as drive up to a obstacle and stop without knocking it down. It was great to see the progress in such a short period of time (15minutes per group). It was also great to see an outgoing group tell the new one what didn’t work in their program or what they had tried for them to build on their program on.
The last station offered teachers a chance to look at the rescues available, take a look at the teachers guide and try to connect robotics to classroom learning in science and mathematics.
Next year, I hope to add other programming kits to our ressource library. I am looking for suggestions on other programmable technologies that are appropriate for grade 4 to grade 12 students. What are you using in our classes and what would you recommend? I would love to hear your feedback about coding and robotics in your classes, schools, or in your school boards!
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