Mr I's Digital Domain

Today is the first day of our Lego Robotics club. We are registered in the First Lego League. This program existed at my school under a former teacher, and I'm resurrecting it.

Got to say what a terrific program the FLL puts out. As I've said a zillion times, robotics is so much fun we shouldn't even call it school.

It's that time of year again, and I have a new class of fresh-faced 6th graders in my computer class. We meet 3 times a week for a trimester, then I get the next set of students.

Last week we started Scratch. If you're not familiar with Scratch, it's a programming environment built on Squeak from the Lifelong Kindergarten lab at MIT. Actually, I don't even tell the students that they're programming. All they know is that it's fun!

The start of a new year, and all upper and middle school teachers have their classes set up in Moodle. It's amazing how the level of participation rises when tech initiatives are required.

Now that school is finished, I'm ramping up my own learning. Taking a grad course from San Diego State University online: Advanced Teaching with Technology. So far, we've had one chat, gone over Google Reader and how to set that up (review for me), and started reading The Project Based Learning Handbook from Buck Institute of Education. So far, the book looks very cool, and is aimed at middle and high school teachers, so will become an indispensable resource.

And I just had to write something about it. Ironically, both of these conversations followed a presentation I gave recently to parents of middle schoolers on Facebook. My message: it's an amazing communication tool. And these conversations are a good example. Read on for more.

I'll be at school from 2-4pm on Sunday and available for tutorial help. You can email me or reply here if you're interested. Also, if you have a gmail account, you can chat with me: bobirvATgmail.com. Replace the AT with @. Just a spam avoidance thing!