With the start of a new year we
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We thought that we’d appropriately create a stop-motion Happy Holiday animation … would love to see other holiday animations created this season!
This past weekend I had the honor of attending — as a panelist — the 1st annual EdTech Boston Conference. This event brought together both entrepreneurs and educators to engage in discussions ranging from how to break the barriers of integrating tech in the classroom to what role teachers and students can play in beta testing.
It was, I must say, one of the most positive education-focused events I’ve ever been a part of, and here’s a few of my top take-aways:
1) Ever too often when people gather in rooms together to voice their opinions/efforts/concerns/perspectives on today’s state of Education, a negative tornado erupts on why Education is “broken” and fingers fly to point to the causes. Saturday’s conference was far from negative and all fingers pointed to sharing information on great startups we should all know about and teachers hungry for beta technologies.
Here’s a list of edtech startups collectively texted from the audience – while not comprehensive, it’s a great taste of those represented.
Here’s a shout-out to BetaClassroom, a collection of teachers that fellow panelist Jennie Dougherty (English teacher of Brockton High) has fearlessly led to engage teachers’ voices early in the edtech development process. Phenomenal idea, phenomenal team leader (Jennie).
2) Flexibility. Empathy. Real. If an edtech entrepreneur has at minimum these 3 qualities, their traction of early product testing in classrooms will be substantial, as echoed by many speakers and panelists throughout the day. Answer the phone. Visit classrooms. Write thank you letters to the teachers AND students giving feedback on your new product(s). Listen to the teachers’ cries for compatibility with IE7. Yes, it takes time, but the time will pay off in the end when you have teachers vouching for your product(s) with their peers…at conferences, workshops, through published articles.
3) Freemium! Teachers are inundated with new tools through so many channels, so if edtech entrepreneurs provide FREE opportunities to just try out the product(s), this gives teachers a chance to dive in for themselves on why this product may/may not make a difference in the classroom. Really, teachers are kind of like VC’s — they are trained to think of all the risks associated with your product because at the end of the day they’re the ones responsible for 30 kids ($30million), and if *it* fails, frustration and embarrassment ensue.
Many other take-aways of course, but these stuck out for me — already looking forward to next year’s conference!
There has been plenty of buzz around STEM in the last few years — "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math" — with many organizations and policies looking at how we can improve our students' literacy in the STEM areas for an overall more innovative society. But, what about the Arts ? How can we make sure that creative expression is not entirely left out in this STEM movement?
Some schools — like local Boston Arts Academy (BAA) — are looking to STEAM. They are embracing the need for an increased focus on the technical side, but without losing the touch of creative arts. How are they doing this?
Since iCreate first launched teachers at BAA have been leaders in using SAM Animation, which their STEAM page references here. Their biology students are creating animations to illustrate mitosis … their physics and math students create rockets and rocket launchers to learn about quadratic functions and the forces of gravity.
The arts and sciences may be worlds apart on a fundamental level, but in almost every facet in life they have a place together. Whether it's launching and scaling a business or in the third grade classroom, the understanding and expression through both are necessary.
We have a teacher workshop model that has worked time and time again … and yesterday as I ran an iCreate to Educate workshop at the Meadowbrook School in Weston, MA I realized that what we do in the teacher workshops is exactly how we idealize the classroom — where the kids (teachers) are having the time of their lives, and learning from each other.
To those educators familiar with typical professional development (PD) sessions — especially those mandatory on an inservice day — I want you to picture this: 10-15 teachers….staying well beyond 3:30pm hardly noticing the clock….frantically trying to finish their animation…laughing, smiling, and jumping eagerly around the room to see their peers' creations. Sound like a typical PD workshop? Probably not. Sound like a blast? Absolutely.
In our teacher workshops we try to replicate how our tool looks in a classroom of students. We talk for just a few minutes about other ways teachers have integrated stop-motion into the curriculum, highlighting student-generated videos, then shut all computers down, bring out the storyboards and crafts, and it's hands-on time! First task is to create a story that begins and ends in the same place … a cycle if you will. It can be a poem. The water cycle. A butterfly. The perimeter of a square. An overhand throw. The list is endless! After spending a good 40 minutes on creating the storyboard, the props, and discussing the creation of the movie, teachers open up the computers, hook up the webcams, and start animating.
Often we will hear, "Wait, aren't you going to show us how to use the software after we do our storyboards?" Nope. Because it's not about the software, and that's intended by design: So simple and intuitive that the technology is really a nonissue while you're telling your story. And it tends to work everytime…just a few minutes after computers open you hear chattering, laughing, picture taking, and the time flies by. Just like it does for students in a classroom.
