Teaching Mrs. Ryan

     It has been a busy busy time since my last post!  Summer was filled with lots of great PD, brainstorming for a more innovative year, and some continuing education.  I spent my summer working on my STEM Education Certification through Texas A & M University.  We dove right in with a course on student centered learning environments and project based learning.  This really catapulted what I was already doing within my district.  I am in my districts cohort for project based learning and flipped classroom, so taking this course helped me prepare for the cohort and my classroom as well.  I also went to CAMT (Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching) this summer with my fellow teachers in San Antonio, TX and really focused on hands-on mathematics. I also attended training for the newest Promethean boards and a great emerging software program called  Class Flow .  I will post about  Class Flow  sep...

     I got some great news today strolling through the faculty lounge.  I saw I had some items in my teacher box and found a letter from AEP the power company.  I'm sure the secretaries were wondering why I would get my power bill sent to school!  But.. I opened it to see an awesome letter notifying me that I had been chosen for a grant I applied for call the Teacher Vision Grant.  I'm sure for many teachers out there, it isn't that big of a deal, but for me WOO HOO!  Man I am thrilled! My grant is for $500 for STEM/STEAM use.  What I am doing is going to be so much fun for the kids.  I used the grant to purchase an iPad mini , a protective case, an iPod touch , and a View Master virtual reality viewer .  My students are going to be making Aurasma's to turn our stagnant word wall into an augmented reality word wall.  Students will be making videos explaining the mathematical words and even solving problems for each word....

   First let me start out this post by saying, this is somewhat of a rant, and somewhat of a timeline that I've been through to find new things, cool things, and in some cases I may have bitten off more than I can chew!    I've been blessed to work at schools with plenty of technology, but not all technology is created equal.  More recently my challenge is making the Chromebook compatible with all the STEM projects I want to do for my students.  Recently we embarked on a Zoo creation project.  Students have spent the last few weeks researching zoos, animals, and habitats.  My ultimate goal was have students create a habitat using SketchUp and put that 3D habitat into a playground using the software Playing Mondo .  It is a bit of an ambitious project, but the student will be able to do so much with the Playing Mondo (PM) software as time goes by that I knew I wanted to try everything I could.  Enter the dragon... or Chromebook in my ...

Teaching with a lot of tech is a huge goal I have for my Math/STEM classroom.  The importance isn't just to say I'm using technology, but to bring real 21st Century skills into the learning environment while I'm still ensuring growth in my content area by covering my state mandated standards.  It doesn't matter what your state standards are, technology in the classroom is a must. Currently I am working on training with Google.  They have a really great program for teachers to get free professional development, and when you are done, you can be a certified Google for Education expert.  If you are on Twitter, you check out Google for Education's page and follow it. A really cool thing I learned today: Icognito Windows for Chrome - Who knew that you could make what you are doing private on a public computer!?  I sure did not. Whether you consider yourself tech savvy or a beginner, these are really great tutorials to learn about Google tech in the classroo...