Mia's Tech Blog!

  Link to my Lesson Plan: Solar System Scratch Coding This week I learned about Scratch : an online student-friendly programming app that lets students create virtual stories, games, and other animations through coding! This app would be great to help introduce students of any grade and age to coding as the program can be adapted to their level of understanding and skill level. For this blog I decided to use Scratch to teach Grade 6 students about the order of the planets within the Solar System and the movement of their orbits. I hope you enjoy it! 

  Link to my lesson plan: Exploring Trees in our Community     This week's blog post focuses on how we can plan learning activities that encourage "digitally connecting with nature". This lesson is specific to the Grade 6 Trees and Forests outcome for Science, but I appreciate how the focus can be adapted to other outcomes relating to nature and community walks. This lesson is very open-ended and students are given the opportunity to engage in active exploration and discovery. The use of technology in the form of online visual journals also gives students the creative freedom to express their findings and new found learning in a way they best see fit!

Click here to take my virtual field trip to Machu Picchu! For this week's blog post, I learned how to create a "virtual field trip" using Google Tour Creator . I have always been interested in learning about ancient civilizations so I figured Machu Picchu would be the perfect place to create my field trip about. It would be great if I could use this "virtual tour" of Machu Picchu to teach students about the history of Peru, which is one of the outcomes for Grade 3 Social Studies. Creating virtual field trips would be a great way to engage students when teaching them about different places around the world. It provides students with amazing 360° visuals and allows them to "explore" using a click of a button! Virtual Field Trips are also a great way to integrate other subject areas such as Science, ELA, and Social Studies, within classroom technology. 

 Get started with Kahoot!      The highlight of teaching this online lesson was getting to play and demonstrate the app to my peers! It was so great to be able to share this resource and discuss how both students and teachers can use it within the classroom to enhance learning. Kahoot! is so engaging and easy-to-use. It's great for presentations, projects, surveys, and can be used creatively for other things as well.      One challenge that occurred was that our link to the mini activity/assessment was not initially live and accessible to the peers we were teaching.      A lesson that I have learned for next time would be to double check the materials and links needed for the lesson to ensure that all are ready for when I need to teach! Link to our lesson plan .