Monthly Archives: October 2014

Be an everyday hero!

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We had the visit of a policeman today in the classroom.  Our police force do all kind of programs in the classroom in order to inform students about the dangers of bullying for example and how to prevent it.

He mentioned the mindset of the bully, who needs attention.  He mentioned that the bystanders are also involved.  It may seem, that they are not doing anything but bystanders are actually telling the bully: continue, I like what you are doing.  Bystanders should be involved in stopping bullying if it does happen.

If you are bullied, always talk to an adult.  They will be able to help.

His message today is to be an everyday hero.

 

Le chant de l’univers

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Today, on October 19, 2015  in the radio program Années Lumières, there was an interesting podcast by Prof Durant.  You can go to the links to get more information.  The podcast is in French while the links are in English.

http://ici.radio-canada.ca/emissions/les_annees_lumiere/2014-2015/

IMG_1273

Hopscotch code:
https://c.gethopscotch.com/p/kdraaql

Here’s the YouTube link to how to draw this using Hopscotch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjELanVCNEM

 

From grade 4 Math

• construct three-dimensional figures, using two-dimensional shapes;

Social Media in movies

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http://www.premiere.fr/film/The-Ryan-Initiative-3481668

In movies that young people are watching, we can have a glimpse of young people’s culture.  The movie Ryan initiative gives us a glimpse.  It is a very high tech action thriller where a financial analyst is trying to decipher a plot to decimate the US economy.  While working for the CIA, he does use his military training and analyst training to uncover and dismantle the plot.  While it is an interesting movie, I liked that the character searched social media in order to find the information needed to locate the culprint.  The following “quoted” picture shows where in the movie it mentions the social media used.  See the list:  Facebook, Instagram, Hopscotch, Reddit or whatever.  I was quite pleased to hear HOPSCOTCH mentioned as social media in the movie.

“ryan ”

While Hopscotch is a wonderful app for coding, it does have a large social media component where we can share our programs and learn from each other.

 

 

Science photo contest

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FLIR0041

I created an Instagram account today to publish some of my science pictures.  I will also encourage my students to take science pictures and discuss them in class.

Peel teachers are encouraged to participate in the science picture contest:

http://pdsbphotographychallenge.com/

I will perhaps find a suitable picture to participate as well.  Here’s an idea:  I sat on a sofa for 30 seconds.  You can see here the heat signature from where I was sitting using the infrared camera.

 

Spur of the moment discussion

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Students, especially in French Immersion, like talking.  They discuss what is on their mind and what they hear on the radio and television.  It was not planned but we had a short discussion about ebola.

http://www.lesdebrouillards.com/articles/se-proteger-virus-en-plantant-arbres/

We discussed briefly what is the cause of ebola and what can be done in the short term and long term to protect ourselves, as per the above article.  We mentioned the infrared thermometer the nurses could use to take body temperature.  Having an infrared camera handy was useful.  Using my iPhone and Flir ONE camera attached, we took a picture of our faces.  We can see that the body temperature is different.  In this image, I am the most colored one because I felt quite warm.   My student, who has a darker skin than me, has lower body temperature, and is therefore slightly lighter than me.

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My favorite math lesson

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My favorite math lesson was last year when we were doing math while we did not call it math.  We called it Art.

coder4

 

Students were happy.  I was happy.  We worked with the beta version of Hopscotch on the iPad.  There is now a new version, much improved Hopscotch.  I was not teaching mathematics, just French Immersion, science, social studies and art.  We called this art.  I must say it had a lot of mathematics involved and students just enjoyed it.

This is something I liked doing and was good at it.  My personal challenge was to recognize I could actually do coding in the classroom.  If I had thought for one moment I could do this in the classroom, I would have done it long ago because it is fun, easy and is useful to society.  I suppose changing my mindset, seeing things in a new way was what was most important.

 

From grade 4 visual arts:

Creating and Presenting: apply the creative process (see pages 19–22) to produce a variety of two- and
three-dimensional art works, using elements, principles, and techniques of visual arts to communicate
feelings, ideas, and understandings;

 

 

 

 

How many numbers can you write with 16 base 10 blocks?

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Students were asked to be creative and come up with as many numbers as they could do with 16 base 10 blocks of their choice.  It is an interesting differentiated Instruction strategy.  Students work at their own level.  I had some students working only with 10s and 1s blocks, while others were working with 1000s, 100s, 10s, and 1s.  They wrote on a white board as opposed to paper, just to make the activity more fun and differemt.  They drew the numbers with blocks and wrote the number with numerals.   Here a sample of student’s work.

 

photo 5 (3)

 

photo 4 (8)

 

photo 3 (12)

 

photo 2 (13)

 

photo 1 (11)

 

 

 

What is inside a cocoon?

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Here’s a picture of my classroom cocoon.  The caterpillar was brought in, in September, and made the next day a cocoon.  It is expected that it will become a moth or a butterfly by spring.  The following picture was taken with my phone camera.

photo (88)

 

I took another picture with my FlirOne infrared camera.

photo (87)

 

We can see that there is something generating heat inside the cocoon.  I do not want to disturb it.  We can keep watching it over fall, winter and spring to see how it develops.  I could make a time-lapse movie with it.  I could take for example one picture every week.  I can transfer each picture in iMovie on my iPhone and create a time-lapse video at the end.  It should show what is happening inside.

 

 

Creativity is the name of the game…

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photo (86)

 

Traveling is still happening in this world. This is what a car looks like in infrared after a long drive.  The infrared camera sees the heat of the engine and the tire; something that cannot be seen with the naked eye.  It was taken with the app and Flir One device attached to my iPhone.

The need for people in this area is tremendous.  From experience, I knew that technology companies hire people who learned to code and may be in second or third year University.  People get hired before finishing their degree.  What I learned this week-end while having a chat with a Flir engineer, is that they started hiring creative students who learn how to code while they are still in high school.  I must say my jaw dropped.  High school students work part-time, 3 or 4 hours a day in entry level positions, as coders.  Imagine a 17-year old working in a real tech company because they started young and were creative with their education.  Wonderful opportunity for those who had the chance to start young, because they enjoyed tech.