David's Techsploration day - tomorrow 5/30

Techsploration Day 2014
Carpinteria Family School
12:30 - 2:00 pm (a half hour should be enough time to get the experience)
1480 Linden Ave, Carpinteria, CA 93013

from the north:
SB on 101
Exit Linden Ave.
Left over freeway towards mountains.
School entrance is on right, find parking in lot or street (not in bus turnaround!)
Get visitor pass at Canolino school office
Techsploration will be set up outside on grass area to the right on school grounds (southwest area)

from the south:
NB on 101
exit Casitas Pass Road
left over freeway towards ocean
right on Carpinteria Avenue (Casitas Pass road ends at this intersection)
down about 6 blocks to stoplight at Linden Avenue
Right on Linden Avenue towards mountains over freeway
School entrance is on right, find parking in lot or street (not in bus turnaround!)
Get visitor pass at Canolino school office
Techsploration will be set up outside on grass area to the right on school grounds (southwest area)

Students' Privacy Rights versus Data-Driven Learning

Some open-source software developer friends of mine have been discussing this article and I thought you might find it interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/technology/a-student-data-collector-drops-out.html?_r=0

Basically, the discussions were talking about the need to provide safe places (even on computers) for students to tinker and explore and how important this is while also needing to differentiate learning and how useful that could be. The difficulty is that once you start collecting data from students' tinkering, it can be used for anything and those uses compromise students' privacy rights. It seems kind of like the play that students need to have to explore and take risks only the computer version of that play.

 

Makey Makey projects

Check out these great projects on the video and the discussion about how to encourage people to tinker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLjxB7PXBJo&feature=youtu.be&t=5m34s

Play-Well Summer Camp Registration

Hello everyone!

Summer camp registration is now open for Play-Well.  I know someone asked about that during class this week.  Thought I would provide the link here: Play-Well Summer Camp Registration

Happy Friday :)

Ali's Blog

Thank you Ali for the chance to play with Legos and learn more about Play Well.
I am putting the link for her blog that she shared with us today here in case anyone wants to follow along on her adventures.

http://playingtolearnengineering.blogspot.com/

Video Resources for Engineering is Elementary

The video resources for Engineering is Elementary can be found here.

http://www.eie.org/engineering-elementary/resources/listing?resourceType=188

Please select a few and watch how the students engage in the engineering practices. The ones that are "lesson 4" are usually the full design lessons. The earlier ones test variables that will be important in developing their final design.

"The Overprotected Kid" and different kinds of playgrounds

This article is from a month ago so you might have already seen it, but the discovery learning paper reminded me of it. It's about playgrounds and how it's important for children to be able to explore and take risks.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

A family I used to babysit for went to the Adventure Playground a lot, and it's very similar to the one described in the article (no fires though!). It was really fun and I wish my parents had known about it when I was growing up!
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/contentdisplay.aspx?id=8656