A couple years ago at a MACUL conference (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) while wandering through the vendor booths looking for freebies, I came across the QBall. This is a ball roughly the same size and material as a dodgeball, but with a microphone inside. While holding a class conversation, students toss the ball to each other and speak into the microphone so everyone else can hear them. This speeds up the sharing process as opposed to passing around a traditional mic and adds value to the conversation because now everyone can hear the individual sharing. With some of the grant funding I had received in the spring, I purchased a QBall and am excited about the possibilities it could hold for my engineering enrichment class and my own students. I am trying to really emphasize productive talks this year in my class, and this is one easy way to increase productivity of the talk just by the fact more people will have time to share, want to share, and I won’t have to repeat those quiet students who can’t speak up loud enough for everyone to hear. Additional Note 1/21/19--The QBall sound system was extremely easy to set up in my classroom. I just had to plug in the box to my computer and that then transmits through the classroom speakers. I found that I did have to turn the volume up quite high in order for the microphone to pick up students’ voices, and that they had to hold the ball fairly close to their mouths while speaking. However, they seem to enjoy it every time I get the QBall out and I do have more volunteers to participate! The ball also seems to protect the microphone as it has landed on the floor a few times while being tossed from student to student.
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This year, thanks to a grant from the Tuscola County Community Foundation, I am teaching an engineering enrichment class each morning during our school-wide intervention time. The class is for 3-5th grade students who are meeting grade level benchmarks in math and reading and have an interest in STEM. With funding from the grant, I have purchased two Engineering is Elementary kits (eie.org), various robotics kits students can build, and 3D printing equipment from Northwest Arkansas 3D (nwa3d.com). For more information about the grant “Students Today, Engineers Tomorrow,” check out the Stem Grants and Projects tab. While I have worked with robotics and the EiE kits in the past, 3D printing was a new venture for me this year. I knew I needed to bring context to the printing students would be doing in addition to meeting the NGSS 3-5 band engineering standards and decided on a space-themed lesson, due to its wide appeal to students in this age group. The general premise was that we were traveling through space and unfortunately, 4 warning lights had come on. The issues on the ship included an unknown substance growing on the outside of the ship, a broken fan for circulating oxygen, a broken handle on an airlock door, and a small part had fallen into a critical engine so the engine was in danger of being damaged. Each group was handed a card that explained the issue and provided constraints for the task, one of which was a 3 hour time limit to design a solution and have it printed. Students also needed to fill out a sheet that showed their steps through the engineering design process. To most effectively meet the engineering standards’ mandate that multiple solutions to a problem are developed, I divided the class into 8 groups, so two groups worked independently on the same problem.
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AuthorThe STEM Sisters are Elementary Teachers working together on STEM related topics and projects. Archives
January 2020
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