Curriculum Archives | Page 3 of 3

How Nord Anglia International School is Using TechEd Curriculum

Posted on January 22, 2019September 20, 2022 by user

What are the MIT STEAM Challenges?

The MIT STEAM Challenges is a collaboration between Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nord Anglia Education to enhance the teaching and learning of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) by connecting MIT innovation and culture to Nord Anglia schools globally through project-based challenges.

Nord Anglia schools have been participating in three MIT challenges each year since 2016. The Challenges are in-school cross-curricular experiences for Nord Anglia students based on MIT research. TThe MIT Challenges provide a unique chance for every Nord Anglia Education school, teacher, and student to experience MIT. Each MIT Challenge embodies the teaching and learning culture of MIT, is rooted in the research of MIT faculty, and makes that research relevant and accessible to Nord Anglia students.

This Year’s Theme

The 2018-2019 MIT Challenge is themed “STEAM Superheroes”. Participants are encouraged to take inspiration from three MIT professors and their graduate student research assistants.

The three “STEAM Superheroes” challenges showcase the work of an MIT professor and a graduate student researcher. Nord Anglia students then tackle a project of their own, using the professor and their process as inspiration

The three STEAM Superheroes and their powers are:

Epic Identity featuring Prof. Leia Stirling: Students will learn about wearable technology and its ability to improve human performance.

Super Natural featuring Prof. Anette “Peko” Hosoi: Students will closely observe the natural world and understand the physics behind an animal’s adaptation, then apply that knowledge to engineering design.

Medical Marvel featuring Prof. Chris Voigt: Students will tap into the potential of applying engineering principles to biological problems to improve human health.

BSD Education and Nord Anglia International School, Hong Kong

BSD partnered with Nord Anglia International School, Hong Kong (NAIS HK) in 2017/18 to develop and deliver projects for the MIT STEAM Challenges.

As part of the partnership, BSD trained 4 NAIS HK teachers in 2017 and is currently training 8 in 2018. The 4 teachers developed in 2017, internally trained 4 teachers each, making a total of 20 teachers trained in 2017.

What students will learn to build using BSD Online in 2018-19

Year 3-6 students at NAIS HK are using BSD’s cross-curricular TechConnected to create their own MIT STEAM Challenge inventions. BSD’s cross-curricular TechConnected helps NAIS HK students construct MIT STEAM Challenge inventions. Creating digital artifacts and displaying their work are among the topics covered in this technology education course.

The BSD projects recommended can be used by students to showcase and present work or to apply their learning. For example, students will showcase their work by documenting their journey of researching and building their own STEAM Challenge and present this by creating a digital portfolio. Students learn about the challenges of space travel, the preparation required and what astronauts do when they face problems in space; then students apply this learning by creating a Mission to Mars theme Choose Your Own Adventure game.

All students will be building their own Personal Portfolio Showcase to document their learning and showcase what they have built. In addition to this, students will complete the following projects in each year group:

Firstly, Year 3: Introduction to coding in HTML & CSS followed by coding and designing their Online Poster with a Keep Calm and Carry On theme.

Secondly, Year 4: My First Website to explain and document their STEAM Challenge

Thirdly, Year 5: My First Website with the theme of “Into the Unknown” and Choose Your Own Adventure with a “Mission to Mars” theme.

Lastly, Year 6: Trivia Game and MicroBit Wearables with a “Medical Marvel” theme.

At BSD, we believe in and advocate for introducing technology education, including coding, to students during the primary years. This builds a strong foundation of skills, knowledge, and experience applying technology that they have created in a real-world context to make them future-ready and prepare them for technology first careers.

If you are infusing your regular lessons with technology skills we would love to hear from you.

Bring Technology Learning In Your Subject

Posted on January 22, 2019October 4, 2023 by user

Technology learning is already fundamental to every industry and this will only increase. We can’t ignore the way the world is going or the facts: 65% of children entering primary school today will do jobs that don’t yet exist.

At BSD Education, we believe there are three core reasons that more educators should bring technology into their subjects. This is especially true if those subjects aren’t traditionally technical. Read on for our top three!

1. It prepares students to be future-ready

For students to succeed in the future, it is critical they learn digital skills. Some schools believe that this can be done through a computing class or an after-school club. But in the real world, technology touches everything and impacts everyone.

It needs to be infused across subjects so students can make connections, follow their interests and understand how to apply technology to build solutions across contexts.

2. It increases engagement

Not only does it provide students the opportunities they need to succeed in the future, but teaching digital skills will also increase engagement with your subject. Teachers we have trained have reported that students are more engaged in classes using BSD Online and our curriculum. It can enable a more interactive learning environment and helps make the learning more authentic.

Students can struggle with the real-world context of some topics and a common question is ‘Why are we learning this?’. Allowing your students to explore, build and create with it helps to make the connection to the real world much stronger and helps to pique students’ interest.

3. It develops vital soft skills

Point 1 highlighted the importance of learning technical skills to help students succeed in the future. However, the skills developed by bringing technology learning into your subject don’t stop there. Technology learning expands the mindsets of young people by developing ‘21st-century skills. By focusing on designing real-world products, students are learning how to apply technology, developing a range of critical competencies. For example:

When creating a solution or product, students often have to work together to combine complementary skills and must always consider whether the end product is actually going to work for the end-user. Students, therefore, need to work with others to: determine who will do what; understand potential users’ requirements; request and act on feedback; and share information about what they have designed and built.

None of this can be done without communication and collaboration skills.

Creativity links to building with technology in two main ways: Creativity in problem solving and creativity in design. When solving a real-world problem, students need to think creatively about how to solve it using a technological solution. Once students have decided on the product or solution, they need to think about the best way to design it. Thinking about the end-user, they need to consider user experience and user interface – nobody wants to use a poorly design product.

Computational thinking takes complex problems and breaks them into tiny pieces, which is exactly what students have to do when they are deciding how to use technology to provide solutions. In a rapidly changing future, students will have to solve problems constantly to adapt to the world around them.

Bringing technology learning into your subject is a win-win. Your classes will be more inspiring and engaging, whilst also giving your students the skills and competencies they need to succeed in their futures.

To find out how BSD empowers all teachers to bring technology learning into their classroom and give their students the tools of tomorrow, get in touch!

The Missing Soft Skill: Empathy

Posted on December 9, 2018May 5, 2023 by user

The P21 Framework for 21st Century Learning states that ‘Learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as the skills that separate students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who are not.’ It is clear that people can no longer rely solely on knowledge and so education must now focus on giving students the skills and attributes they need to succeed in a whole range of different contexts and situations.

The P21 Framework highlights creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and collaboration. Other lists include abilities and competencies like flexibility, self-learning and initiative. But there is one skill that is often missing – empathy.

Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, and being sensitive to the experience of another from either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an explicit manner. It enables people to identify the problems others are experiencing and then design solutions that actually meet their needs.

Given future jobs are likely to have a heavy reliance on problem-solving, empathy surely belongs on the lists of skills that students should focus on. But how do you develop someone’s empathy? Many people suggest it is something you are born with, that can’t be taught, but we disagree. Empathy can be practiced and, to some people’s surprise, it can be practiced when learning to use and build with technology.

How do you do this? Get your students to build solutions for real-world problems using technology.

Ask your students to think about a problem they encounter on a regular basis. Once they have thought about a problem for themselves, encourage them to consider whether this is a problem for other people and how this problem might affect different people in different ways to arrive at a specific problem that really needs to be solved. Let them spend real time on this. Once they have identified the specific problem, task them to create a solution that will work for and be used by a range of different people. To do this, they will have to demonstrate empathy.

As soon as you introduce a problem that affects real people, students have to really think about those people and understand their needs, often within a context very different to their own, before even being able to start to develop an effective solution. If they don’t do this and don’t demonstrate empathy, they will likely finish with a product that doesn’t solve the problem, does not present a solution to something people really feel is a problem, or perhaps solves the problem in a way that nobody will use.

There’s a reason why the best innovators are empathetic and problem finders: you can’t come up with new ideas unless you observe the world with fresh, empathetic eyes.

Empathy is a fundamental skill and mindset that all students need to develop. At BSD we build all our projects that students learn and create with to be real world and product focused. By bringing the real world into technology learning and getting students to build real products for real people and communities, you will give your students the opportunity to develop empathy.

Bring Digital Skills into Your Classrooms All Year Round

Posted on November 30, 2018September 20, 2022 by user

The Hour of Code is a great way to introduce coding and digital skills to your students. As they learn what they can create and build, they will likely want to do more. With this in mind, providing opportunities to acquire digital skills throughout the school year will help them.

So, how can you incorporate digital skills and coding into the classroom more regularly?

Here are three ideas that can be used in your classroom immediately:

1. Encourage your students to “go digital” to complete their schoolwork and projects. They might create a website or a video presentation using Flipgrid instead of a poster. With digital tools, students can develop skills while also preparing for future jobs.

2. Encourage students to consider how technology relates to many subjects. Students must understand how technology is used to solve real-world problems. Prompt their thinking with questions. Doing biology? Ask about medical technologies. Art classes? Explore digital artists. That said, students should begin applying digital abilities to real-world situations as soon as possible.

3. Set up specific time for digital activities in your classroom. This could be weekly or monthly but make the time!

a.) You could use the slot for a combination of mini on-screen and unplugged activities throughout the semester.

b.) You could set your students a challenge that they can work on across the semester as a passion project.

Whatever format you choose, give students the opportunity to be creative and explore the many ways technology can be used by introducing them to a range of different resources.

At BSD we advocate for the use of real world technology projects in every classroom throughout the school year. We believe that regular exposure to technology in a range of different contexts is the best way to prepare students for using technology in their futures and to understand how to apply it in connection with their interests.

To see what BSD can do for you, contact us here.

Learning Through Play With Lego Mindstorms

Posted on November 23, 2018September 20, 2022 by user

In a recent article we released in Issue #7, we talked about the advantages of extracurricular activities like Technology Camps on student learning; how it helps students develop to become well rounded young adults and the real world skills students acquire in camps such as Game Development.

Looking for Technology Camps for kids younger than 8 can be a challenge. Many organizations are trying to provide options for this age group because they see it as a business opportunity. However, there are a number of child developmental considerations when choosing programmes for younger children that should be taken into account. For example, children as young as 5 for will likely have difficulties in using a mouse, typing, remembering where the letters on the keyboards are, understanding the syntax of coding languages and let’s not forget the much shorter attention spans.

For young kids, we would recommend keeping the phrase “Learning through playing” front of mind. It has been long understood, through practical experience as well as academic work by e.g. Lev Vygotsky and Maria Montessori, that learning through play is a critical element for young children to develop key skills in language, emotion, creativity and social interaction, it pulls together the logical and creative areas of the brain.

In practical terms, we have found that introducing Technology with Lego Mindstorms to young kids is more effective than making them code early on. Even in children as young as 6 years old, we have found Robotics with Lego effective to expose them to both the principles and ideas of coding, like logic, and elements of engineering through robotics. The small parts in Lego Mindstorms challenge younger students developing motor skills and coordination.

Here’s some of the key benefits of Lego Mindstorms and what kids learn and build in a Lego Mindstorms Camp:

1.) Boosts empathy and awareness
In our camps, we ensure to kickstart it with a few intriguing questions: “What type of problems do you face in daily life?” “Are there more people who are facing the same problem?” and “What can we do to solve it?”. Prompting these questions helps young learners begin to consider their environment. This helps them think about the problems they would like robots to solve, these can be as simple as “retrieving an item across the room without having to leave a seat”.

2.) Nurtures Imagination and Creativity
When entering the brainstorming process you’ll get a room full of energy and 100 possible answers, this is the time to introduce feasibility. For example, If you need to retrieve an item from across the room, “what will you need?” You will likely need something with wheels on it to move and arms to pick it up. “Do you have these resources available?”.

3.) Introduces engineering
Lego Mindstorms encourages kids to build with more variety like gears and levers. It promotes engineering where students can take the various plastic pieces to construct robots, buggies, or devices, while ensuring they can physically “move” or “operate” together to successfully and repeatedly perform a task e.g. making sure none of the pieces fall when the robot moves from a spot to another. Some people opine that the best way to stimulate the maximum creativity in robotics is to first take away the option of using the wheels!

4.) Emphasizes teamwork
Building a robot is not easy for kids to finish alone. We encourage them to go in groups to accomplish robots together, even to seek help where they can observe adults nearby or in their class. We help them identify their strengths, as well as start to think about ideas like delegation and having a team leader. One kid can be in charge of putting the pieces together, while another can be in charge of coding the robot.

5.) Teaches programming concepts
When building a robot, it is important kids are aware that computers don’t and can’t think for themselves. All technology is based on code, no matter how complex it is. Lego Mindstorms runs on a visual programming environment, which is intuitive for kids because they simply need to imagine what their robot will do, and drag-and-drop plain language blocks into correct sequences using logic. There are on screen technologies to do this like Scratch, however they lack the physical interaction and immersive multi-sensory experience that kids get in creating and using a robot.

6.) Camps are a great opportunity to Improve presentation and public speaking skills
At the end of any technology camp, we find it’s a critical capstone event for kids to be able to present their product. Presenting a solution is just as important as making a solution! It is the culminating part of reflection on their experience, reinforcement of their learning and demonstrating important soft skills and pride in their work.

Here we have used Robotics as our example. However, the benefits of play based learning will be quite consistent in any camp that is science or technology based. You can be certain that your children will have a lot of fun and be highly engaged to light the spark to learn even more in the future.

If you’re interested in bringing our Technology Camps or After School Programs into your schools, let us know here or request a demo.

3 Ways You Can Encourage Reflective Learning In Your Classrooms

Posted on October 2, 2018September 21, 2022 by user

It’s never too early to prioritize reflective learning in your classroom or online classes. To boost your student’s learning, incorporating early and frequent reflections can make a big difference. According to Peter Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel’s book Make it Stick, “reflection can involve several activities…that lead to stronger learning. These include retrieval (recalling recently learned knowledge to mind), elaboration (connecting new knowledge to what you already know), and generation (rephrasing key ideas in your own words or visually and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time).” In addition, frequent reflection brings greater awareness of the skills learned and helps solidify learning experiences.

Setting time for students to reflect and analyze their new knowledge frequently allows them to digest the learning objectives and activities and make it their own, whether through processes and experiences associated with retrieval, elaboration, or generation.

This is also an excellent time for teachers to identify areas where students need more support. Try the following tools and suggestions to help students document, verbalize and share their reflection responsibly:

They can then customize it as their learning blog. By keeping a reflective journal in this way, students can actively consider the real-world implications of their learning. Scaffold their reflection by using the following guiding questions:

What are the most interesting discoveries I made today? (It can be about global issues, applicable skills, themselves, new ideas, the community or others)
What were some of the most challenging moments today? How did I overcome them? What did I learn from this?
What useful advice did I receive from my peers?

Introduce a learning tool that is familiar to your students.

For example, Flipgrid (https://flipgrid.com/) is like Instagram Stories or Snapchat. Students can create short video blogs (vlogs) and post them into a group they make through your teacher account. Please encourage them to verbalize their new knowledge and align it with what they already know.

Start a forum by posting a statement of inquiry related to the topic/unit on Google Classroom.

This creates a focused and live discussion in and out of class and provides a platform for students who may be less vocal in class to participate.

Give these activities a try, and let us know how you get on. We’d also love to hear any exciting tools and techniques you have used to incorporate reflection into your lessons. Let us know here.

Launch Into Your New School Year With a Real-World Tech Project

Posted on August 29, 2018September 21, 2022 by user

Back to school is both exciting and, if we’re honest, exhausting for teachers! BSD is here to help you get your students motivated and ready to learn with a simple and versatile project. For the next month, you can try out one of our most popular projects – Online Poster – for free!

Using the Online Poster project (HTML and CSS) your students can create their custom webpage then share it on the web using our one-click launch button.
Your students will enhance their ability to think about new ways of communicating content digitally.
When your students share their projects with their friends, they can get feedback from and put it into action live, immediately seeing their changes online.
Ideas for projects: Creating a poster about their work lets you reinforce student understanding of new concepts learned in Mathematics, Art or History class.
How about their digital posters being the marketing solution to promote the next school play, the start of the sports season, or advertise after school activities and student clubs.

We have included a step by step guide on how we enhance our students’ learning experience using Online Poster in this project guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1miUEiK_wjLpzEKvT6RixFYE9Iv3qOts4/view?usp=sharing

To use this project today, simply click here to sign up!

Share your students’ projects on Twitter and Instagram with us using #backtoschoolBSD. The most creative projects, we’ll feature in this weekly EDM and we’ll send the featured teacher and student one of our awesome new branded “Build Something Different” T-Shirts.

Why Coding Has a Place in Every Classroom

Posted on August 10, 2018October 4, 2023 by user

What is the role of educators? Fong Ly, an educator from the US, sums it up well in his article for eSchoolNews: ‘it’s our job to figure out how to equip students with the skills they need to be well-prepared for college and careers. One of the best ways teachers can help kids prepare is by犀利士 developing softer skills to make them future-ready. Introducing coding to the classroom does just that.

What do we know about the careers we are preparing students for? This is a challenging question because the answer is fairly unknown. Industries are changing like never before, but we know that the world is digitizing. Technology skills are increasingly fundamental to the world of work. We also know that ‘softer skills,’ or 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, curiosity, and creativity, are held in higher regard than ever before.

Frequent misconceptions of coding include: It is only for students who are good at math, want careers in technology companies or ICT Classes. Irrespective of your interests, you will use code and the skills and thinking developed through programming. These include computational and design thinking, logic, and reasoning skills!).

Scenario:

A few restaurant owners are deciding what to put on their new menu. Before they make their decision, they need to consider what customers generally purchase from their restaurant. Technology enables people to collect data to make data-driven, tactical decisions. The Point of Sale (POS) system allows restaurant owners to see which menu items were popular among their customers. They find that the pasta was the most ordered type of food, so they start brainstorming on additional options, cooking, and testing out which ones perform the best. This is an example of design thinking being used in daily life:

Coders may use computational and design thinking every day, but so do restaurant owners. Everyone benefits from digital skills learning, regardless of their background or industry. This is why coding is the gateway to digital skills and the creation of solutions – it helps you become future-proof.

So what does more integration of technology learning in a school look like?

We believe coding should be present in all subjects, whether it’s a code club or a computer science class. Otherwise, not all students can develop these skills. However, by bringing technology projects into all subjects, we align these vital skills with the interests of all students. This helps to prepare them for their future. The subject becomes the context, and the projects create a more engaging way for students to either learn the concepts of the subject or become a content vessel to present what they are learning in the class.

Fong Ly and his school, Amana Academy, have the same ethos.

He shares their approach to their curriculum in his article – it is ‘based on an expeditionary learning framework, meaning that teachers develop curriculum that involves all content areas and encourages collaboration across subjects. This means we’re training multiple skills at the same time. So, for example, we identified that coding was a great asset that could be integrated into all subjects….’ Find out more about Long Fy’s approach here. Students can use it and benefit from it at school, home, and daily life, even after their formal education and into their workspaces.

Are you bringing technology projects into a range of subjects at your school? Tell us more by emailing us at info@bsd.education and have a chance to be featured in one of our newsletters!

Interested in learning bringing coding into your classrooms? Reach out to us here.

Bring Creativity into Coding

Posted on July 30, 2018October 20, 2022 by user

Historically, coding projects has been seen in isolation as purely a ‘tech’ skill, focused on logic and reasoning rather than creativity. However, this is changing as it becomes increasingly clear that technology needs to be part of every solution.

Students need creativity when coming up with solutions and designing end products. You can help your students understand and apply the creative elements of coding by giving the project a creative context or encouraging them to focus on the end product and user.

Making a project creative:

In 2018, we worked with 520 girls from local schools in Hong Kong on designing wearable technology. With a theme of creating things to enhance daily life, the girls had free reign over their designs.

They had to learn and apply coding skills and think about how they could use them creatively. As a result, we have seen light-up coats for dogs, light-up umbrellas for when it rains and gets darker, and temperature-sensitive flashing t-shirts.

By giving a more creative context for their project, students understood that coding could be used for many different things.

Focus on the end product:

At BSD, all of our coding projects finish with an end product. This isn’t just because it is fun for a student to build something, but it encourages them to think about who will use their product and why. So get your students to build an app by applying the design cycle.

As part of this, students need to prototype, get feedback and think about UI and UX. They need to be creative to build a well-designed, appealing, and functional product for the desired audience.

Have you tried coding projects that focused on the creative side of coding? We want to hear from you! Please send us your work/student’s work or project ideas at info@bsd.education!