Saturday, August 1, 2015

AKTeach Conference: Final Project / Plan of Implementation

What I am going to do with what I learned... 


My vision for the implementation of the acquired knowledge has 2 related yet different plans:
The first focuses on sharing the acquired knowledge with peers educators, while the second focuses on sharing this knowledge with my own students. 
  1. Plan 1. I believe in the importance of sharing acquired knowledge with fellow educators (teachers and administrators) for promoting and nurturing an environment of cross curricula project based learning in line with the makers movement.
    I am planning to share with fellow educators presenting a session the following events:
    • Professional Development workshop with  educators of my school district,  KPBSD - Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. I have already emailed my administrator and the PD coordinator presenting my intention of offering this workshop. I am waiting to hear back from them for planning the details of this events.
      I would like to offer this workshop to teachers of various subjects, especially I would like to involve the Art, Science, World Languages and Language Art teachers since this could promote some collaborative cross curricula projects for our students.
      The material I am planning to use in this workshop is a basic kit formed by: copper tape, copper wire, conductive paint, multimeter, led lights, and batteries.
      I am planning to ask the district for financial support in financing the kits, especially for the purchase of the multimeters. We will have to decide if this material will stay with the teachers or if will be used during the workshop and then returned for further use.
      I would like to use the templates created by Jie Qi for making a simple and handmade notebook for the participants with the patters to use for getting started and learning how to create a simple circuit, a parallel circuit, and a switch circuit.
      More complex circuits will be shown as model using videos, and explain the material needed for those creations.
    • Webinar for ASTE Creativity and Communication SIG. This webinar will be offered to ASTE members using Goggle Hangout. I would like to offer this webinar at the end of August or beginning of September. This is a max. 1 hour webinar in which I would like to offer an introduction to Paper Circuitry explaining what it is about, and showing the material used for realizing it and some of the examples I have created, and, if I can organize it some examples made by other participants of the Kodiak AKTeach Conference.
      The nature of the webinar does not allow hands-on practice, especially for the short time-frame of the session, however it will be a good start for getting people interested in learning more about Paper Circuitry.
      I will provide links to web resources for learning more about this technique.
    • AFLA (Alaskans For Language Acquisition) Conference, September 18-20, Anchorage. I will present a session at this conference in collaboration with Lindsey Glenn, Spanish teacher at the Kodiak Island School District.
      This session will be an hands-on workshop of 4 hours in which we will first introduce the concept of Paper Circuitry using some YouTube videos, such as the video of Jie Qi of the interactive painting of the dandelions, then using the material for getting familiar with this technique and challenge the participants in coming up with some creative solutions for a second language course project.
      The material I am planning to use in this workshop is a basic kit formed by: copper tape, copper wire, conductive paint, multimeter, led lights, and batteries.
      I am planning to try to find financial help (gofundme/donorschoice) for purchasing the kits. We will have to decide if the multimeters will be given to the participants or if will be used during the workshop and then returned for further use in other workshops fsince this items are the most expensive of the kit.
      I would like to use the templates created by Jie Qi for making a simple and handmade notebook for the participants with the patters to use for getting started and learning how to create a simple circuit, a parallel circuit, and a switch circuit.
      More complex circuits will be shown as model using videos, and explain the material needed for those creations.
    • ASTE Conference, February 2016, Anchorage.
      I am planning to collaborate with a team of other 4-5 teachers who participated to the Paper Circuitry strand at AKTeach Conference, so that we can provide a variety of experiences with application of this technique in various levels of educational environment both in traditional classroom and online.
      I am planning a full day workshop, using the strucutre used for the AFLA conference, but allowing more time for creative production. Depending on the financial support received, either with a grant or from ASTE itself, we could purchase some more tools for our kits.
      I would like to see if during this conference we could have as guest through video-conference Jie Qi, David Cole, and Natalie Freed.
  2. Plan 2. Implementing the use of paper circuitry projects in one of my foreign languages courses.
    I would like to pilot the application of this technique with a small groups of students, so I will use only one of my course and use it for one project.
    Working with a small group will allow me to troubleshoot my delivery methodology and the possible problems that could arise since I teach online and I will have to orchestrate the delivery of the material to various sites in my school district.
    I need to have the numbers of the enrollment in my courses for deciding which course use for this pilot.
    I would like to start with a simple project, such as image/word matching.
    I will probably have this project done around the month of October, when students are finally sledded in their school routine and  they can focus better on more complex activities.
    My hope is to engage some science teachers, so that students could do a cross curricula project.

In my opinion these 2 plans are connected and somehow sequential in a vision of sustainability since  promoting and supporting the makers culture in our school districts with our administrators and our fellow teachers of all disciplines is fundamental for being able to implement cross-curricula project based learning with our own students.
I will keep tracking the progress of these two plans in this blog, and I am looking forward to collaborating with exceptional educators in the presentation at the various conferences.



3 comments:

  1. Emma, You have some very specific targets for your continued venture into the Maker's Culture. I hope your district will allow you the opportunity for professional development because it will help others close to you become enthusiastic like us!

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  2. I love your plan to share with other educators. I am excited to work with you re AFLA. Take a look at my PoI and tell me what you think. This is what I wanted to do the first little bit of school with Spanish II to bring to AFLA to show other educators. What do you think? I'm seeking input/ criticism/ improvements/ comments/ etc.

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  3. Emanuela, I love how you have a twofold plan! It's exciting to see how you intend to share and spread your knowledge...helping others to implement paper circuitry in the classroom! Please keep blogging! I'd love to hear about how your plan goes!

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