Mr Hammerlund

The MYP Design course is really interesting for me. It is my first time teaching an MYP Course, and it is really fun. The course allows schools to adapt it to the resources available. The flexibility brings about challenges as well; there is no set curriculum. At KAS, we try as much as possible to give students assignments that allow them authentic experiences. When they learn about gathering statistics, students are asked to use multiple types of data collection. When they create a poster or a t-shirt for a club, I want them to actually print it. And when they code, I want them to make something they will actually use. This brings be to last year. We were coding, and I thought it might be good for students to apply the design cycle to a Chrome Extension. In the event someone had chosen that topic, I wanted to be able to help them if they got into trouble. So I started looking into how to make one myself. At that time I completed the tutorial I found . In the en...

A post shared by Thomas Hammerlund (@thomashammerlund) on Feb 8, 2017 at 4:49pm PST While a story is a good way to hook students onto a topic, sometimes you need a little more. Sometimes, it helps to see where the hip bone connects to the thigh bone, or where exactly the iron rod pierced a man's skull. One day our IB Psychology Teacher came to me with a request to print the above skull for her class. They were studying Phineas Gage and thought it would give students a better idea of the accident and show them exactly what occurred.  As the model shows, it was a horrific accident, but Phineas survived: " Phineas P. Gage  (1823 – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable  survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left  frontal lobe , and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior ove...

Geoboard was one of my favorite apps for the iPad, and I just found out it is also available as a Chrome App. (It is also in the Windows Store.) Geoboard is very slick, easy to use, and fun for students. Geoboard is a virtual geoboard, so no more rubber band accidents or clean up. It is a great hands-on activity and is really good for inquiry-based learning and asking open-ended questions. The help section (the i  symbol in the bottom right) is awesome, containing lessons and links to other useful apps . Some questions I might ask when using this with students might be ... Using one rubber band, what 3D shape(s) can you make? Can you make a rhombus with an area of x? (With a given shape) Can you translate this x spaces? Can you rotate it x degrees? What would it look like flipped? What do you need to know to determine the area of the above rectangle?

Courtesy of J Pilon The above directions are how to host your website on Github. The process is tricky, so pay attention to the directions and follow the steps exactly.