Blender 3D Modeling Resources for Education

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When I show Blender to educators, they immediately say show me how you do that so I can use that in my classroom!

When they see Blender's interface for the first time they want to run away. It is overwhelming but once you spend an afternoon with it you discover that it isn't confusing, its powerful and packed with features.

For those of you who have never heard of or used Blender, it is 3D rendering software allowing you to create models for video games, CAD printing, and now a movie! It was the technology behind the OVRP Virtual Bike and did I mention it is Free and Open Source?

I agree it has a learning curve but for many, this is an opportunity to learn a software that is highly applicable to their future career without costing them the thousands for a proprietary software like Maya.

Blender is the perfect software to prove what Patrick and I say about learning technology because you as the teacher have little if any experience with it.

We cannot wait until we are masters or pros to use a technology with the students. There are too many and it would take too long. You should not let that stop you from using it. Show it to your students and they will learn more than you ever thought possible. While the following are not all of the resources out there, these are the ones my students and I have used with success. That is the great thing about the Blender community, there are so many choices out there.

Video Tutorials:
HamsterHill - These are the tutorials that my students started using to learn Blender and they are great, his accent occasionally trips you up but they are easy to follow nonetheless.
IraKrakow -  For more advanced topics these were very helpful.
BlenderUnderground - Very well made and high quality. If you are looking to become a master of Blender, these would be a great first step towards professional level knowledge.
Tutorials for Blender 3D - If you are creating a video game or movie with Blender, these tutorials are for you. logic blocks, textures, and the Blender Game Engine are all covered well in here.
Blender Cookie - Excellent suggestion from Black Stormy covering a wide variety of concepts from start to finish as well as those concepts beyond modeling (particles/physics/lighting/etc)

Text Based Tutorials:
Blender 3D: Noob to Pro - An incredibly well done community generated wiki that will take you through all of the essentials. Patrick and I were at a conference together and spent much of our time working through the exercises in this book. It prepared us to make the Virtual Bike tour and Patrick's class' 3D movies. Go step by step or reference it (and yes I know it's spelled n00b, I'm just copying the website).

Keyboard Shortcuts - This is ESSENTIAL! There are so many commands and features possible and you will waste a lot of time trying to find them in the menus. After using Blender for a while you will remember them as well as the other Windows/Mac keyboard shortcuts you should be using.

I'll continue to add to this list as I come across them as I do with my Android, Free Software, Humanities, Math Science, Geogebra, and Programming Resources lists.

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How to Plan Projects that Make Jaws Drop

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It is no accident that this post is on July 4th, America's celebration of Independence. It is even more appropriate having just returned from Philadelphia, PA from the 2011 ISTE conference. Lisa Davis, and I were presenting our students' Virtual Bike Tour and the other incredible projects accomplished through the HP EduInnovator Grant.

What I saw and heard, was the same thing that happened at the National Science Fair and almost everywhere I talk or show my student's work. Double takes, jaw drop, questions as to which college my students go to (they are Freshmen in HS), and more or less disbelief that students are capable of doing these things. Unfortunately for me, the audience always seems to think it is something special that I do, or that I have specially gifted students (neither are true, nor are they absolutely false). I'll tell you my secret so you can go and replicate it with your students:

1) I always look at what the "real world" or colleges are doing and steal it for my classroom. If there is a professional software, I'll find a way to get it for them. Is ground breaking research occurring at Engineering universities, I'll take my students to go talk to them. I vehemently oppose a belief that students have a limit to what they can accomplish at any age. Countless professors, parents, executives, and project managers have come to me and said something like, "I never learned that until my Junior year of College," and yet here are these students doing graduate level research, creating software and designing interactive circuits.

2) The second thing to create amazing opportunities for learning (often referred to as projects) is to keep plates spinning. This is similar to a project manager in the corporate world, but sadly we don't do enough of this in High School. Shawn (of Think Thank Thunk) talks about this in his Education without Coercion Ted Talk.

When I hear that a student is interested in something, I will passionately (some would say obsessively) learn how I can help them to become better at it. If a student wants to learn 3D games, I'll learn Blender with them. If they have always wanted to learn to make Android apps, lets make one for our robotics team! He loves to play guitar, why not make our own. All of my favorite and best projects have come from students inspiring me to keep learning along with them.

Basically it comes down to three steps to creating a great project, do you believe in the students, can you listen to them, and are you willing to learn along with them or at least support them in doing so? If so then you and your students will have an amazing adventure. Along the way you will find many roadblocks to creating these amazing opportunities. Some will say that all students need to learn the exact same thing and we need to find a way to motivate them to be on board, others will say that students are not capable/ready/mature enough to handle a complex or professional project.

In the meantime you know that you have truly unlocked a student's passion and ability. You have forever changed their lives and empowered them to create. That is the purpose of education, don't let anything stop you from doing so because it is the best part of being an educator. The amount of freedom and empowerment your students feel they have, will determine how much they learn and do with what you are teaching.

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Cyberpatriot Student Competition Teaches IT Skills

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Learning occurs when there is motivation and resources, we prove this every time we get on YouTube. Students have so much competing for their cognitive surplus that many educators drive themselves nuts trying to compete with highly interactive video games, tv, or social networking. This is where the head fake comes in. While not coined by him, Randy Pausch brought this term into the education world when he referred to ALICE as a way for students to make stories and videos while learning Java Programming. While Robotics provides an excellent challenge for builders, programmers, etc, it is not frequent enough throughout the year so I sought out another way my students could get valuable computing skills.

Luckily, the Air Force Association brought it to my attention that they host a competition called CyberPatriot to encourage students to learn about IT, Networking, and Programming skills. This program began a couple of years ago when it was identified that our global community needs users who are aware of how to properly defend their computers and networks against cyber attacks such as viruses, phishing, and identity theft. Furthermore, there is a need for trained professionals to defend our larger infrastructure against cyberwarfare.

CyberPatriot involves groups of 5 or so students defending their computers against simulated attacks. These attacks occur within a virtual machine so they are harmless to the actual computer but students must defend themselves nonetheless and earn points for their team based upon how quickly and capably they do so. Check out the following promotional video for more info:

The registration cost is $350, but assuming you own a computer, that is all that you need to start a team and compete. All of the training resources and software is free and can be found at http://www.highschoolcdc.com/. While programming and engineering are too often neglected in our schools, IT, networking, and hacking have it all the more difficult. Students who learn these valuable skills are far too often labeled as criminals or thwarted by their schools IT department. But, this would be the perfect program to ask your school's IT manager to be a mentor. They would be given the recognition for all of the hard work they deserve, have eager students willing to learn, and be able to perhaps provide resources or practice scenarios. 

Mentors are hard to find for this program and the books explaining it clearly are even more scarce, which is why we need programs like this to flourish. When FIRST Robotics began 25 years ago, it struggled to gain a foothold in schools and gain the interest of companies. Cyberpatriot is just getting started and your students can be in it from the beginning. This is another opportunity for your students to have fun and learn skills that are highly applicable to the real world and translate into a career, please consider starting a Cyberpatriot team!

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Senior Project: Runaway Alarm Clock

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I never experienced Senior Projects in my high school (my wife did) but I wish I had. The opportunity to  receive professional feedback and receive credit for work you have always wanted to do is something I had to wait a long time to do. For a semester, I worked with 2 of my graduating robotics students as their mentor and although I am biased I think their projects are incredibly cool.

In this post, I share Amanda's Run Away Alarm Clock. When I sat through her presentation of her work, it was incredible to see how much she has grown since I met her as a Sophomore. She served as our robotics president for two years and our team will never be the same without her. With this project she took on electronics and programming, two aspects of engineering she had not focused on before.

She was creating no simple project, but what I love most about Amanda is how she has an endless supply of energy and will persevere through all obstacles. Randy Pausch's quote that, "brick walls are there to show us how much we want something," is personified in her. Her math teacher and she both agreed that she is much more capable at courageously approaching any problem she encounters and she continues to be interested in both Business and Engineering. I am so grateful to have women role models like Limor Fried to share with Amanda to inspire her. This project was made possible with Arduino, AdaFruit Industries, SparkFun, and the Arduino Cookbook for parts, resources, and inspiration. So without further ado, here is her project.

Run Away Clock

By Amanda Snyder

Can the new and improved Clocky help students wake up on time for school?

Given the number of students not coming to school on time, students clearly need a more effective way of waking up on time.  The purpose of this project is to improve the already existing Clocky to help students not only wake up on time, but to come to school awake and prepared.  The Run Away Clock will be able to tell time, run away from the user when an alarm goes off, and flash lights as it runs away from the user.  I created a program to implement all these features using an Arduino Uno and an accelerometer.  The accelerometer will cause The Run Away Clock to hit an object and, using a sensor, back up from the object it hits and start running away again.  After completing the clock, I gave three students The Run Away Clock and had them complete a feedback form so I could refine the product.  I have also created a pamphlet for students interested in creating their own Run Away Clock.   

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Khan Academy is Our Ally, Lets Work Together

This article is crossposted and in reference to The Time Has Come to Stop Playing Defense and Change Education but is in reference to many posts and tweets over the last few months.


I want to call our attention to a worrisome trend emerging in the online Education world. Our disagreements are leading toward division and preventing us from making effective change. Revolutions are doomed to fail when fear and strongly worded language is used to incite and stir up the masses. 

We do not need to burn someone else at the stake in order to have reform. Nor do we need an enemy. If you dislike that teaching has a bad rap or that students have poor learning opportunities you simply need to share what you do and let it stand on its own. What I am hearing is a lot of anger and frustration, and rather than tweeting and creating inflammatory posts that divide we should find our common ground and work together towards our common mission.

Frankly while I respect all sides on this discussion (and would consider many of you friends and colleagues) I feel like there is a lot of undue ire toward the Khan Academy. In my opinion, this will get us nowhere. From everything I have seen Sal is equally committed to helping change education for the better. If you disagree with it then like he said on HA post your own stuff. To be honest, I have exhaustively read and researched all of the interested parties posts about modeling and instruction as well as the books and resources out there (about 6 months of intensive research) and I agree with them, but they are what most great teachers would agree with anyways. Modeling is not this OMG pedagogy, it is taught in many University science education programs. However even the instructors of modeling pedagogy still suggest worksheets with questions that if they came from anyone else would be considered pseudocontext. If we are willing to promote that program even though it is still in need of refinement and growth then we should do the same for Khan Academy while it is in its early development stages. There is still much work to do and we can do more if we do it together.

We do have our problems. We have a huge population and the “teachers who care and are qualified” to “students” ratio is rather dismaying. There is an exponentially increasing amount of information and we agree there is not enough time to go through it all with students (far less so if you are trying to do any kind of deep and meaningful learning). The idea that we cannot use video technology to support learning flies in the face of everything we have learned about YouTube. Millions go on every day to learn something new and while it may not be deep learning, it was not intended to.

If we wanted Khan Academy to cover every viewpoint or concept, our world's surface would be covered by servers maintaining all of the data. The hope is that teachers will use these videos for students to support or review what is in the classroom and students will use it to take control of their learning. Of course there are those teachers who are going to use it as the primary teaching tool but that is not the fault of the Khan Academy any more than it is Facebook's fault that students get distracted. Tools can be inappropriately used but that does not mean they should be discredited. Some complain that his videos are the same as a lecture and do not change. This is no different than textbooks but textbooks are an incredible reference for students as they are working to understand just not as their primary learning tool. By that standard almost everything on the Internet is static and unfit for reference and instruction but we all know how silly that is. There is no technology that will or should ever replace student - student and student - master interaction.

There is hope, support, vision, and funding behind the Khan Academy, something that education reformers greatly covet. We can find ways to work with their very open development team: from the lead programmer Ben to Sal himself, to create a resource we can all be proud of. Having series of posts and webinars dedicated to tearing down Khan Academy will only lead to a pile of rubble and no progress. The number of us online and actively thinking about our pedagogy is sadly a small percentage of the teaching population, if we cannot support each other as allies then our mission is doomed. If you are going to propose something else, post concrete and specific things to support teachers. My philosophy is to give teachers something to think about but also something they can use tomorrow. Please try do the same and let me know how we can help because you are not alone to do all of the work. 

Having high minded ideals is one thing but when the students come in the next day, what are we going to do that meets the goals of our collective pedagogy while still (as long as we have to) meeting the State/Federal requirements that keep us employed. Khan Academy is not controlled by government organization so in fact they could be one of our best hopes for learning opportunities outside the classroom and for those who do not have access to the great resources that we all enjoy.

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Women Want to Change The World: STEM Can Make That Possible

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I had a great conversation with Shyno from WGBH Boston (makers of Design Squad and Fetch) about their organization's passion for increasing the involvement of women in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics). This is a personal goal for me, as I love to see the perspective and creativity that women bring to the field. She asked if I could share two links with you: Dot Diva and Engineer Your Life. Both sites are devoted to breaking down stereotypes and showing women what is possible in a STEM career.

Social pressures that we are all aware of in our culture tend to make STEM something uncool  (HA!) and the peer pressure drives women away from that. Not to mention the one sided portrayal of STEM as the lonely, male dominated, nerdy field of study. WGBH has researched what women want out of a career and overwhelmingly they want to make a difference and be a part of a bigger story. They want to create with their hands and ask why do we do what we do? So their sites and outreach events are intended to give a much needed makeover to STEM's image and show women everywhere the possibilities. The video below comes from the Dot Diva site and is intended to do just that. (By the way, I held a women-only premier for my students of the webisode and they loved it! They were so sad that there was no other episode, yet).

Wired Magazine did a great cover story about Limor Fried (aka Ladyada) and Make Magazine made an excellent observation about the negative role models women see everyday. We need more positive examples and opportunities for women to look up to.

This powerpoint came from the Dot Diva Resources Page

Some of WGBH's effective outreach has involved: role models, STEM + Art, using computers for storytelling, and generally being able to be creative and express their ideas. Keep in mind this is good for guys as well! The links throughout this post are great for sharing and using with your students. I did for mine and the women loved the videos and resources.

If you need ideas on getting started with programming, robotics, Arduino, Alice, and more, you can check out the BrokenAirplane programming resources page, Dot Diva, and Engineer Your Life. Discuss your successes or struggles in the comments and lets encourage women to join STEM fields, the World will be better for it!

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Learning Opportunities Come From Passion - A Student's Perspective

Victor was in my Freshman Math/Physics class. I was much more traditional then than I am now and although he did well in my class he was extremely bored. This plus other factors led me to deeply question my classroom and curriculum practices. Although he is a Junior now, his accomplishments dwarf that of many adults. He has embraced what Patrick and I talk about in terms of learning potential and is an amazing example of what is possible. He leaves for his Junior Internship tomorrow and I asked him before he left to share his thoughts with us:

Hello, I am Victor and I am a Junior. I am part of the school’s robotics team led by Phil which many of you probably know as the writer of this blog, you probably also know Patrick Yurick as a contributor to the Broken Airplane, but to me he is my mentor/publisher for the Graphic Novel Project. The things you learn through these courses are things that some people have to wait until their Senior year in college to learn. 


I have done a crazy variety of things ranging from creating a virtual world, to taking part in the San Diego Comic-Con as a professional. Both of these courses are amazing in their own ways, sometimes even in the same ways, but being part of both of them allows you to be able to pull information from separate sides of a spectrum and everything in between.


In robotics I have been able to learn many different skills including programming, building and designing. My first year I worked on the VEX robot as a builder/programmer, I was able to understand several different concepts important to programmers, for example, troubleshooting and universal commands like: if, else, while. 


In my second year, me and another student, Anthony created a virtual park in which I was introduced to the open-source animation/game engine Blender and scripting software, Python. Together we stayed countless hours after school to finish the program which we were able to take all the way up to Washington D.C. to present at the first National Science fair. We were able to stand next to professionals proudly presenting our project as Sophomores. This year I am back on building and we are taking a much more professional approach to the construction of the robot. I created three different robot designs and am currently working on a proof of concept. Robotics has made me realize that I really enjoy creating games and it is at the top of my “Majors I am considering” list.


I have also had a fair amount of success in the Graphic Novel Project. I have learned and mastered most of the Adobe Creative Suite CS3 because it is what we mostly use to ink/color our comics. I have become extremely proficient in Photoshop up to the point which I know what EVERY button does. Last year everyone in the project had to create their own comic. I discovered that I actually enjoy drawing and I might actually want to draw as a hobby or maybe a profession later on in life, something that had never crossed my mind, I have already had my first “Professional” job designing a t-shirt for Eco-Vivarium. I would have never been able to accept the job without the knowledge that the Graphic Novel Project has given me.


Being part of these two amazing groups has allowed me to absorb many valuable skills and given me many once in a lifetime chances some people would kill to obtain. The best part about these things is that the following years people will get a chance to live through the same experiences I have gone through. We already have a spot in the 2012 annual Science Fair and San-Diego Comic Con. Hopefully people will be able to pull as much information as I have.


Victor is a wonderful person and brilliant in his own right, but he would be the first to say  that everyone is capable of doing these amazing things if given the opportunity. Robotics and the Graphic Novel Project were born out of Patrick and my passion for these things. What are you passionate about and how can you provide incredible learning opportunities for your students? The world will be changed by those who are passionate and share that passion with others!

What Words Do You Live By?

There is nothing like a good quote. Sometimes it is attributed to the wrong person but it can stir one up none the less. For thousands of years of oral and written tradition, they were our sound bytes. They could spark revolution and awaken one to their life's purpose. Everyone has a pedagogy and educational philosophy even if they don't know it and many times it can be boiled down to something they heard or that someone said to them.

So I am asking, what quotes do you live by? In the classroom, in your life? What drives you everyday?

Mine are (in no particular order):

• Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. (Howard Thurman)
• It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used. (Gottfried Leibniz)
• It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. (Albert Einstein)
• No matter what you do, be the best you possibly can at it. (My Great-Grandpa)
• Be on time, do a good job, look presentable, and respect others. (An Admiral I met in the Navy)
• Smile, breathe and go slowly. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

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The New VEX Robotics Game Gateway is Out for 2011-2012

If you are on a VEX robotics team then I am sure you already know about the 2011-2012 new VEX Robotics game, Gateway. This year's game has a few really cool elements that should make the game as fun to watch as it is to play.

• Autonomous, the first 20 seconds of the match where the robot operates without a human driver, is determined not by who scores the most but by who scores first.
• There is one barrel that will double an entire goal's value and another that will negate it. This will make for some very exciting final seconds of play as everything can change in a heartbeat.
• The game takes its name from two gates which divide the field into 3 parts. Teams decide when they wish to raise the gate to open the field.

You can find out the full details by checking out the video below and/or the main site with manuals and descriptions. Oh and by the way, World Championship is in Anaheim, CA this year so we will definitely see you there!

Of course, I don't post this for teams, they already know about this and are hard at work getting their robots ready.

I post this for the vast network of people who can support these students in their quest to learn STEM. It is clear that if we are going to solve the issues our planet and species face, it is going to come from young minds thinking in incredibly creative ways. Robotics is simply the best way to get students interested and learning for the real-world. 

Parents, community members, corporations and businesses, potential mentors, and government leaders, this is your opportunity to step up and support these students and this program. Donate your time, talent, and treasure in whatever way you are able. Don't worry if you do not know much about building a robot, the students have enormous support at their disposal to help them succeed, they just need someone to help them make it a reality and deal with the details and logistics.

If you want to start or support a robotics team and you need help or ideas on how to get started, contact me on Twitter or by email and I promise to help in anyway I can. It is easier than you think. Please consider donating to Chaos Vortex and/or the team in your area. Everything helps and it will make a long reaching impact.

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Infinite Games: My Hope for Education

Whatever the reason, when someone asks me what I would like for a present, the answer is always either "something cool" or books. This causes my wife no shortage of frustration but she never ceases to surprise me with really cool  finds. Last year, she bought me James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games which is one of those philosophical books that applies to everything but is about nothing. Every page I found connections to education whereas an artist might have been inspired otherwise.

To put it simply and perhaps not do the idea its full justice, a finite game is one where there are rules to win and lose and ways to end the game with some being winners and others being losers. An infinite game is one that can have people winning or losing at any one point in the game but the rules are such that the game never ends and everyone is winning in what they are gaining through the game.

Now, don't take the words "game" too literally, this could certainly be applied to a sport, but is intended to be seen as a larger metaphor. As I said, I applied some of what was said to education because so much of what was said resonated with what I see. For example, a finite game ends and that ceases learning. We organize our classrooms into small blocks and one takes "physics" for a year only to sigh with relief that they have finished it and can promptly forget it. This is a finite game where people either win or lose and then the game is over and their grade is locked in.

I see a possibility for school to be reorganized as an infinite game, one where the learning never stops. I feel like the robotics program like VEX, FIRST, Botball, BEST, etc. are a great representation of what education could be. For those of you not familiar with it, there is a new "game" released every year. Sometimes it is picking up tubes, others it is throwing footballs or kicking soccer balls. The point is that there is a game with explicit rules on how one can win or lose. The difference is that the game changes each year. The robot that wins the previous year could not possibly win the next and so the learning must continue.

More specifically to my team, this is the third year of our team and our extremely talented and passionate seniors are leaving. This could be disastrous to the team if I had not thought of this situation long ago. You see, the position of robotics president can only be held by a Junior. This allows the previous president to train the new one while they are still at this school while still allowing the senior to challenge themselves in other ways. I have this policy for every other position on my team and it works really well to ensure that there is continuity and that wisdom and skills are passed on. 

This is an infinite game because there is no robotics team that will always be the winner, anything can happen. It is furthermore an infinite game because Chaos Vortex does not ebb and flow depending on which or how many students are in the program, continuity is maintained and we will always be able to do amazing things.

Case in point, in our first year I had a student who was very artistic and wanted to move into digital creation. I showed him what I knew about Blender (which wasn't a whole lot at the time) and in less than a week he had created a video game! This was incredible and I worked with him to continue to refine his skills, but what was even more exciting came the following year. 

A freshman entered our team and was learning how to use Blender. You should have seen our faces when he was able to recreate in an hour what had taken the other students six months! This is because the students were able to teach each other and support one another. Learning was compressed and less mistakes had to be made to reach the same level of mastery. That is the point of an infinite game, everyone wins. This is why Woodie Flowers of FIRST promotes Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition. Yes, we are playing against each other, but if we can help another team out to improve then the game becomes more fun because more people are playing at their best.

Imagine, our schools being transformed into areas where learning was not repeated/disseminated by the teacher over and over again to a new group of students but instead served as a mentor to inspire experienced members of the class and facilitated the training of the newer students. This would result in masters emerging and innovation like one cannot imagine. It already exists and it can be done immediately but there is one big obstacle to overcome and so I again return to Finite and Infinite Games:

While a finite game has clear winners and losers and is far less preferable to an infinite game, there exists an unspoken agreement among the players that keeps the game going. There are supposed rewards to playing a finite game (money, power, prestige) that keep even those losing playing the game. If we decide to walk away from the game of finite game of baseball to play a game of catch, away from the profits of wall street and become Social Entrepreneurs, and walk away from the classes that last for 180 days or so and then all learning in that area ceases, then perhaps we can save education. 

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What College Did I Go To?

The title of this post is a question that I get asked a lot. For my students it is a running joke because they know I won't tell them. What I will tell them is why I won't tell them (yes, I am a complex person).

College acceptance letters are coming right now which means that an entire generation of students are anxious and worried that their lives will not turn out as they planned if they don't get into XYZ college. The pressure is intense from the job market, parents, schools, and peers and the question I have is why? Not why do we push college, but why do we push the top universities as if they have something special that cannot be offered elsewhere?

When I was in high school, I hung out with the geeky/nerdy crowd. Yet I did not make the same choices as them in high school and so when our senior year came around, they received letters from Harvard and CalTech and I was accepted to the only school I applied to. I ended up joining the Navy and taking the long way around and while many of my friends were graduating, I was discharged from the military and just entering college.

I received a lot of training in the military, I was an Electrican's Mate (Nuclear) and learned a lot in a very short amount of time. I also continued my own research and learning during that time and so when I finally entered University about 5 years after graduating high school, I had already learned and experienced a lot. Looking around me, I realized that for many, college was just an extension of high school. The classes were structured the same, the homework was similar (perhaps slightly longer), and student's attitudes were much the same. There were those who cared and those who didn't.


What I learned was true for college is true for life. It is what you make of it.


My university was very small and while my peers were getting a "superior" education with class sizes in the hundreds, I learned calculus with only 5-10 fellow classmates. All of my professors knew me personally and we had incredible 1-1 talks for hours about physics, philosophy and educational pedagogy. Please tell me if any of your Ivy League buddies had a chance to do that?

Now this wasn't common at the college, I pursued these opportunities. I made my passion and interest known and worked harder than anyone else I knew so I could make the most of my time with these great minds. Yet, if I were to say where I went to college most of you have never heard of it.

Last year, our school was hiring engineering teachers and since I teach robotics I was interested in ensuring that the teachers would be as incredible as the students. I would have conversations with the candidates asking, "what would be the coolest project you could do" or "what are you passionate about"? After a while they would ask me, "what college did you study engineering at?" I always laugh when I hear that question and respond, "YouTube University" or the Library. Aside from the Navy Nuclear Power Training Classes, I never took an official engineering class in my life, but that has never held me back from helping my students learn to design, build, program, and innovate.

One day, I was talking to my Dad about whether or not he felt it was more difficult to be a cinematographer without having gone to film school. He said it was quite the opposite, because he had never been forced into a mold or a certain way of thinking he was always seen as thinking outside the box, when the truth was he had never been put into a box in the first place.

Here is my advice, if you are a student and you do not get into the college of your dreams, don't worry about it, make the best of it. You will not be held back by what college you went to. In fact very few people care which college you went to after you graduate. I know Harvard graduates who are unemployed and I work alongside colleagues who went to far more prestigious (and expensive) universities than I. I am achieving all of my personal and professional goals because I am working to make them happen. All of these supposed barriers like which college you went to, your GPA, financial status, etc;  these things will only hold if you let them, so don't!

Make your life what you want it to be and don't let anyone ever stop you from achieving your dreams.


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Increase Student Accountability and Responsibility

I am a strong believer in student's need to advocate for themselves. Almost to a fault, I believe that the sooner a student is able to find that confidence they will ask more questions, challenge themselves, set goals, and begin to create their own path. I feel like too often, students are talked about or talked at with the intention of supporting and motivating them. But when will a student be allowed to make adult decisions? Some would say after college or thereabout which is way too late in my opinion. Too many people can take advantage of you with long term repercussions.

School is a place where a student can learn such responsibility and need to plan. I was at a morning meeting and heard others sharing how they communicate with parents and although there are many options out there, this can be time consuming and it often takes the student out of the equation. So I set out to try an experiment and see what could be done to inform parents of their student's progress in a meaningful way that does not require a large portion of my week.

For a month now, I ask my students to write an email to their parents each week. In this email they copy and paste important dates and announcements that my teaching partner and I send to them in an email. The student accesses their grade online and pastes that into the email with a description of missing assignments and why. Then they reflect upon the week citing something that went well and perhaps an area of growth for them.

After they send it to their parents and cc my teaching partner and myself, I ask the students to respond to the email by Tuesday morning (they have sent it by Friday). The parent simply has to say, "I got it" or something similar in order for the student to get the citizenship points, but what I have found is that many parents write a longer reflective piece back about how they can help their student improve.

What saddens me is the direct correlation between parent involvement and student achievement and how many parents do not write back. We still follow up other ways but I feel so much pain for those who are not able to have as much interaction with their parents. On the other side of that, these students who were previously failing, are beginning to see their grades as their own and not something that the teacher "does to them" but a reflection of their work. I am seeing them begin to take responsibility and seeking out ways to recoup those points.

Now anyone of my students will tell you that grades are not the central focus of my classroom but if this is helping them to advocate and stand up for themselves and carry out an action plan for how they can succeed then I am extremely glad that they went through the frustration of the first semester and are figuring it out while they are still young enough to make these kind of mistakes and recover beautifully. I have seen so many students go to the edge of failing or dropping out and realize that they were better than that. But it has to come from them, no amount of browbeating, coercing, or punishment will make them see their potential. It has to come from them, we can only give them opportunities to succeed.

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Why do We Have to Learn This? Programming is the Literacy in the 21st Century

My friend Patrick says I encourage students to be rebellious. I know it comes from my Punk rock days and my defiant nature that was instilled in me ironically by my parents. So it comes as no surprise that I get the typical "Why do we have to know this?" question. What may come as a surprise is what they are referring to and that I have an answer.

The topic is programming. Every math/physics student that comes through my class is exposed to programming either through Python, Processing and Arduino, or Blender Scripting to name a few. Well one day I was asking them to come up with an algorithm that would generate the Fibonacci numbers and one of my students (female and an excellent student, as a matter of fact) asked me, "Mr. W, why are we learning this?" A couple of other students nodded their heads in agreement and I took a moment to gather my thoughts.

I replied, imagine you are in a classroom 150 years ago in America. You more than likely help out your family on the farm, because our economy and society was largely agrarian. Your parents are able to read but only do so as needed or for enjoyment. Now you are sitting in a classroom being asked to read a classic text and are frustrated as this is far beyond what is required for your life. It would be impossible for you to realize that your future would be dictated by your ability to read.

As opportunities opened up for more to enter college, the need for literacy increased and determined your earnings and perhaps the quality of your job. Many states realized this and prevented slaves from being able to learn to read and write because of the power that came from literacy. It was only because of influential individuals who refused to give up, that literacy essentially became elevated to a citizen's right in America. While literacy rates are tragically low especially in struggling communities, there is at least an understanding of the importance of it.

Flash forward to the present day. There are very few jobs that do not utilize technology. Farming was one of the first to broadly adopt technology which started the industrial revolution and the population explosion that we see in this century, but soon after other companies saw what would be afforded by using technology. Now nurses, teachers, chefs, and using technology in order to do their day to day job. 

If the shift was from a labor based economy to a knowledge based economy where everyone is expected to have basic computer skills then my prediction continues to be that we will need a large part of the population to be able to program. Programming is not about making software or about programs. It comes down to working with data and information is the basic building block of the universe.

Programming is art, it is creation. Even though technology adds a layer of difficulty towards creation in the learning process it enhances what we are able to do. Just as Adobe Photoshop makes the graphic artist's potential creative power grow so also with the programmers. Even more so since the artistic software is programmed. It is as Eckhart Tolle might say, "pure potentiality".

While I would never reduce life and its experiences to 1s and 0s, think about all of the data that we use. From our banking, medical information, communication, records, and the list continues. Programming is the ability to work with that data and interpret it in a way the fits your needs. The economy will be based upon how well we can adapt our data to various and innovative new situations.

So, I tell my students, that very few students in America are learning programming. Not because they shouldn't be, but because their teachers didn't see the importance in teaching it nor did they likely learn it themselves. This puts them at a huge advantage and if they decide that it isn't for them then they are free to dump it during summer vacation along with Newton's Laws and the Quadratic Equation if they so choose. 

But, many students are taking advantage of it and it is exciting. I have students create beautiful art and some have created software to encourage others to save the environment. One of the students who asked me that question is creating a motion based video game and the other is creating an animatronic teddy bear for a big exhibition (check out their work at Festival del Sol).

Programming is the literacy of the 21st century and the great part is how few barriers there are. If you can get on a computer you can program. Software to create is free, tutorials are abounding, support is everywhere. Get on board, learn it and share it with your students! All of the programming resources and tutorials that you need to start can be found on BrokenAirplane.com.

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Something Amazing is Happening, Join Us in Redefining Learning!

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.  -Albert Einstein

An excellent YouTube video called Rip Van Winkle goes to School powerfully drives home the point of how similar our classrooms are to their one-hundred year old counterparts. Even with all of the technology that we have in our classrooms, they still produce the same results (or lack of them).

Why have we not seen the technological revolution inside the classroom that we have seen in our society? It seems like we have adopted the technology to our old ways of doing things instead of letting the technology transform education and learning.

Case in point, there are an incredible number of online videos that universities have made available to everyone. The problem is that they are lectures and many of them are about topics that we would not watch unless we needed to. I am not saying that they are not interesting lectures but if I want to learn something, I am not going to sit through a semester's worth of videos, I'll get a book.

The New Library
There is an anecdote about Richard Feynman, the noble prize winning physicist, where as a teenager he is discussing with college students about a particular Calculus term. He mispronounces the name of it because he learned it from a book and they give him a hard time. He retorts how wasteful their education is if they spend an entire semester to learn what he was able to learn in the library in an afternoon.

I love libraries and always have. Before the Internet, I spent many days sitting there and enjoying a book and absorbing information. There was no pacing guide, no test at the end, and if I wanted to read an "adult" level book there were no prerequisites.

A community library was a relatively new concept, once reserved only for the elite. It grew in importance to society and the access to information became more and more necessary. Suddenly there was a push for literacy as a human right because it was going to determine what one's opportunities were. Knowledge was power.

However, we took this ideal to the extreme. We created an educational system that ruined the best parts of a library. What makes a library incorruptibly good is that it is voluntary and self-guided. We became obsessed with learning information and as the information increased, so did our standards. When one leaves our classrooms, what are they equipped to do? The answer is not a whole lot.

I hear and forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. - Confucius


Patrick and I wrote about a place called the Hub of Learning which was intended to provide the same freedom and opportunities as a library. Yet, we quickly found out that creating a school, even one with the best of intentions is difficult.

There are some schools who provide a highly personalized learning path like the School of One or a self guided curriculum like the Met School, but each of these have their drawbacks and limitations as they are still expected to do well on state standardized tests. It's as one official put it, a "false sense of freedom".

Yet all over, there are these learning opportunities emerging that are completely free from the restraints of the system. The Khan Academy allows students to learn at their own pace as much as they want for no cost.  Instructables and Make provide a community encouraging hands on learning and DIY. The Hacker Spaces provide a physical place of learning and TechShop provides all of the resources and knowledge that you need.

Is it impossible to conceive of a student who wants to become a molecular biologist and decides to embark on her journey at a young age? What could a student who was filled with intrinsic motivation and resources accomplish? Much like the tech revolution that began in the garages of Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates, people are analyzing the very fundamentals of life. These Life Hackers are defying all paradigms of learning by not waiting until graduate school to make discoveries worth one's time.

This is not unique to Biology, there are Rocket Scientists, Programmers, Poets/Writers/Graphic Novelists publishing their own work, filmmakers armed only with laptops, and the list goes on.

We could say that this is a new movement but it is not. We are just seeing more of it now because of our ability to share information quickly and the ubiquity of low cost technology. It is those two components that primarily fuel my vision for what learning will look like. However, in my opinion there is one more piece to the puzzle that is needed and that is community.

We are highly social beings but our online connectivity has not necessarily translated into increased community interaction. I am able to collaborate and enjoy myself with people around the world, but I honestly do not know any of my neighbors.

Imagine all of the resources that exist online. All of the information we can imagine is available to us instantly. Yet, without the ability to make a tangible difference in our community or lives it is worthless. I have already spoken about the power of online crowdsourcing and how powerful we are when we combine our efforts, this cognitive surplus is now our greatest resource.

This is a way of living that worked for thousands of years very successfully and now we have the ability to work in both a global community and also a local one. We must participate in both as the global community only thrives when the individual ones do as well. Many of our communities need help and it is we who need to stand up and do it.

How can we do this? I propose a new kind of library dedicated not just for information but for doing. The Internet reflects our love for information, but Web 2.0+ recognizes our need for doing and creating. Learning is already taking place online but it lacks a physical space to manifest and make. The desktop printer allowed for many to publish who had never before. Technology is available now that one can create almost anything from music to robots to movies to medicines.

This place of creating would have resources available for creation and to support those who want to learn. This would encourage job growth, innovation, and economic stimulus. It would give us a reason to learn beyond just knowing for a test. Workshops and exhibitions could be coordinated through meetups large and small. Discoveries and learning would happen far faster than any textbook or curriculum ever could.

The great strides that we made as a society came from the increasing availability of  information that started with communities, increased with Libraries, and found its peak in the Internet. In order to transition to a more sustainable and healthy society, we require not a linear increase of more of the same, but a quantum leap that begins as it always has with community. This time we combine knowledge with creation.

This has to be parallel and independent. It cannot be allowed to become a system for then it will lose its power. It must be a movement not a program. A great leap of faith was made with libraries in order to allow them to be independent and free. I ask for a similar trust to placed in the evolution from simply knowing to doing and creating. Our students need a place to go where they can explore and discover passions and interests as freely as one peruses the bookshelves. They need guides and mentors who can help them become masters. Only with motivation and resources can we hope to see innovation. Remember what you learned and gained by walking the hallowed shelves of the library, let us give to the next generation an equally powerful and meaningful gift.

What would transform our culture?

Here are my 4 suggestions for transforming our culture into what we say we want it to be:

1. Fund after school programs to help provide open and enriching opportunities to students. I believe that Robotics is the best way to teach students about math, science. and technology; but programs that support the humanities are equally important.
2. Support technology that removes barriers to innovation. Makerbot is saving lives in 3rd world countries, Khan Academy is providing anyone with a deep understanding of Math (see a video about Sal's vision for the future of math class). I also appreciate software like Autodesk who provide their incredible design software for free to Robotics students.
3. Create the 21st century Library that involves doing and creating. Providing mentoring and classes where the local community can teach, learn, support, and connect. Make them everywhere so that all students of all ages could participate.
4. Encourage community activities that celebrate creativity and learning. It would be an exciting world where events like Odyssey of the Mind, Robotics Competitions, Maker Faire were so ubiquitous that thinking, making, learning, and creating were everyday activities.

This weekend, "Waiting for Superman" was at my door. As my Robotics team worked, our school held Informational sessions about our school and how to apply and be admitted via the random lottery. Students aged 5-15 came to my classroom and their eyes were huge with the possibility that they could come to a place where they could do cool things like this. One little girl maybe 10 years old, bless her heart said, "Wow Dad, now I REALLY want to go here."

It is sad that only a small portion of the population experiences an empowering eduction either because of situation, location, or the system in general. There are great schools out there but far too few of our citizens are going there and being mentored to be leaders and innovators.

If we create a culture of learning that lives and thrives outside of school and does not end when one receives their diploma, then we will see dramatic transformation in our society in every realm. That is a bold statement but I stand behind it.

These four things will transform our culture in ways we cannot even imagine. Anyone willing to partner with me in implementing them? I am well on my way, but changing a culture requires many people to be on board.

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Water Rockets - Fun Physics Project

Almost every year that I have taught Physics, I have used the Water Rocket activity. They are relatively cheap and easy to build and launch and it never fails to inspire awe. Here are the instructions I created from experience and various sources (link).

I have used various water rocket launchers and they each have their drawbacks. This time, I bought the launcher from this site. It worked perfectly and never had an issue in hundreds of launches.

There are multiple options, you can either buy the launcher, buy a kit at a discounted price, or build it yourself for free. His customer service was awesome and to be willing to give the plans away for free is much appreciated to teachers not afraid to DIY.

As long as the students play by the safety rules, they are free to be as creative as they like. It is a great introduction or review for trigonometric functions and solving linear equations. Also students loved seeing a little cloud being formed by the pressure release after launching. Lots of great questions asked before, during, and after launch. Just a fun project all around.

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Use Puzzles to Promote Critical Thinking and Fun!

I think puzzles capture the essence of math and the scientific method. Sometimes it requires very logical steps and other times it involves lateral out-of-the-box thinking. I love to see students, especially those with an aversion to math, get into the fun and freedom of a puzzle.

I use math to encourage this kind of thinking but also to reduce the math anxiety that is so prevalent in our society. Everyone enjoys a game, but puzzles are non-competitive and allow for everyone to win. Here are some great resources for games to enjoy with your students.

Sudoku - Fill in all of the numbers from 1-9 horizontally, vertically, and in the box. Extremely popular. Play online or print out for class or home.

Kakuro/KenKen - Like Sudoku but with an added twist, the numbers inside a "cage" must add up to a certain total. Great for building number sense. I actually had a student shocked that they were enjoying math so much (she said she was addicted to the puzzles)!




Math Puzzles:
Dr. Math @ Drexel - From the famous to the obscure, I put up a problem from here every week to challenge my students. Problems of all levels and abilities are available and it is also an excellent resource for math help that students can submit their own questions.
Math Games - Broad assortment of casual games for class or at home with family. If you can get the family to enjoy math and encourage it at home, it is a proven fact their student will be more interested and stronger in their math skills.
Mr. L's Math - Already mentioned this in a previous blog post. Great ideas for a classroom filled with math and fun. Teacher to Teacher Press has some materials for sale which are well worth it.
Ken's Puzzle of the Week - While the site is no longer being updated, there are still many great puzzles to enjoy.
University of Idaho Math Challenge - No longer updated, but another great resource for fun mathematical brain teasers.

Word Puzzles:
East of The Web - General grouping of word puzzles.
Merriam Webster - The popular dictionary provides crosswords, scrambles, and word searches.
Scrabble - Play the popular game online
Word Games - This site touts itself as the place for the most popular word games.

General Puzzle Sites:
These sites include your riddles, math puzzles, visual, and otherwise.
BrainDen
Pzzls
Thinks
Riddles

Optical Illusions - This site is just too good to leave out  of a thought provoking post like this. They will blow your mind and your students will not believe their eyes.

Do you have another great site? List it in the comments below.

Middle and High School Culture - Simple Things You Can Do to Enhance It

These are some of the things I do daily/weekly/yearly to help foster a positive classroom culture.

Greeting Circle: I have my colleague Patrick to thank for this but on the first day of the week, we sit in a circle and we take turns answering a question about themselves. Some great examples of this are, "what super power do you wish you had?", "what word do you wish could be deleted from the English Language," or "if you were given one million dollars but had to give it away what would you do," (more great circle starters can be found in books like The Book of Questions).
In order to be effective (not take up a whole class period) you want to phrase the questions so they can be answered quickly in a sentence or less. There are also 5 rules of greeting circle that keep it respectful and sacred:

1. No talking when others are talking.
2. Do not comment on what others have said (even laughing is considered commenting)
3. Share seriously so others feel comfortable sharing seriously.
4. Use your Jamba Juice voice. I managed a Jamba Juice at one time and part of the training was helping new team members be loud enough to be heard by anyone.
5. You may pass once but we will come back to you.

             Some weeks the conversation is silly and lighthearted, some weeks it is somber and deeply reflective. But it is always powerful and a good use of time. The first couple of times it may take a little longer but if you are hard and fast on the rules it should take no more than 10 minutes.

Chair Ceremony: I have a very nice chair that the school purchased for me but just does not work for my back. The students were always asking if they could use it so I devised a little ceremony on Fridays that incorporated this as well as contributing to our culture. The first week I announce that someone in this class has really helped make this class a better place for people, then I will say a couple of examples. That student then receives the chair to sit in for the entire week. The next week that student will perform the same ceremony and pass it on to a new student. A couple of key points are:

• This is for culture not necessarily academics so it is not about best test score etc.
• If you don't want to give up your chair feel free to use something else that is awesome.
• After the official chair ceremony, I ask the students to honor others who have contributed to the class/school culture and made their week better. Often I have to pause for a minute while they reflect. I ask them to keep the ceremony sacred and not simply give shout-outs to their friends and they must say something more specific than "he is nice".
• This ceremony takes about 10 minutes tops once a week, but with News and media bombarding us with all the negative things in our world, I think it is worth it to highlight the good that people are doing.

Content Conversations or Geek Time: Geek has typically been applied to technology fanatics but it is actually a more general term applying to anyone who is exceptionally good or interested in a certain topic. So there are Football Geeks, Spanish Literature Geeks, Computer Geeks, and the list goes on forever. If you just became aware by reading that last sentence that you are a geek, welcome to an awesome club. 

You are most likely paid to teach a particular curriculum and adhere to very specific standards. Once in a while (I will leave the frequency to you), I encourage you to geek out with your students. The science/math curriculum in particular takes a few years to update itself with all of the new advances and so you might love Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, or a new technology but there is no established time to talk about it in your class. Whether it come up from a conversation, an article that you ask them to read, a YouTube video, please take the time to have a conversation about it. 

Students will feed off of your interest and energy and they might discover an interesting topic that they never knew about. You will form powerful connections with your students. I understand that if you did this too often you would fall behind or gain a potentially negative reputation so you need to be mindful about how you do it but please do it.

Note: If you don't have anything you can geek out about. I encourage you to immediately go to your bookstore/library and find something of interest (just wander around). BBC has incredibly interesting documentaries you can look at. Check out your local paper for groups or meetup.com to connect with others. No one should just go through life without something they are passionate about, and your students want to see you passionate about something.

Puzzles: I love puzzles and I have one up weekly in order to challenge my students. You can have one that is academically challenging as well but I also try to have puzzles that can be figured out and understood by anyone so the class culture is enhanced. This helps students see that math, science, literature is as fun as you consider it to be. You can find a tremendous number of puzzles online (I would suggest you slightly change the wording or your students will find them too), there is also great show on NPR if you get it called A Way With Words which provides a weekly puzzle as well.

Clean Up Procedure: Whether or not you work with power tools like my math/physics students, classrooms can get pretty messy. I discuss the Broken Window Theory with my students to stress how important it is to their learning that we keep our room clean. We spend the last 10 minutes of every class cleaning up my room. If you do not work with tools or computers you could shorten that a bit I suppose but it really makes a difference for students to come into a clean put together classroom. 

My jobs include computers, floor, desks, lab equipment, calculators, notebooks, etc with a description of each. There is also a supervisor who ensures that others do their jobs. The supervisor checks that each job is done and when they believe they are all done, they come to me and tell me that it is done. I excuse the other students and the supervisor will stay and clean up anything that isn't finished. This plus the rotation of the jobs each week ensures that the students do their jobs well and that my room is put back together. The supervisor allows this all to happen without me needing to be involved, which provides me an opportunity to prepare my classroom for the next group of students.

Saying Hello: Seems obvious but you would be amazed at how your relationship with your students will change if you hold the door open for them and greet them each morning by name.

One-on-One Conversations: Student are human beings, they are not just a GPA and every time they do not turn in an assignment or come late, there is a reason. Even if you think the reason is silly, they do not. Rather than acting in a vacuum and creating frustration with your students, seek them out and have a discussion. Some thoughts to consider:

• Don't make it about a specific assignment, make it about the person. Instead of saying, "Why didn't you turn in your  homework," perhaps you can ask them how they are feeling, are they really busy, how is the family, etc. A student who was typically doing well in my class, stopped turning in work. I asked him how things are and he told me a lot about how things are frustrating at home. Our students are human beings just like you with stress, concerns, hopes, and dreams.
• Try and have a conversation with all of your students at some point. All students regardless of their grade or status deserve to be heard and supported. Conversations should initially be a few minutes long so you can have more depth than one word answers.

Class Discussions: I try at least once a semester to have a class discussion about my class and school in general. You can do it sooner if you need to as Anne blogged about here. It can be as meaningful as you are willing to be open to. The conversation should focus on getting their collective opinions and thoughts on how a test went, a policy is working, a news story that impacts them, etc. They are already talking about it outside your class, the question is do you want to be a part of that conversation?

Habits of the Heart and Mind:

At our school our culture stems from our adoption of the Habits originally created at Central Park East Secondary Schools (CPESS) in Harlem by Debbie Meier and her faculty. The Habits are Refinement, Evidence, Mindfulness, Perspective, Perseverance, Cooperation, and Compassion. I will do another post about these in the future.

Isn't this obvious/Why do we need to do this?

You are right, many of these things are what you would do anyway with other people and perhaps you already do it in your classroom. However, many classrooms focus so much on the content and the impending standardized tests that they believe there is no time to acknowledge your student's personhood. I can tell you that your students will be happier and more able to do a great job if they know that you care and you will be able to better serve them if you are aware of what is going on in their lives.

If you have any additional suggestions for what works well in your classroom, please leave a comment!