Day 14: Marble Roller Coaster
You will construct the ultimate marble roller coaster using cardboard, paper, and paper plates. If you don’t have a marble you can use any small ball you may have laying around. Here are some directions and ideas to get you started. 

Note: This was shared the Friday before spring break and is meant to take more than one day to complete. 

This was originally posted on the MSUrbanSTEM blog on January 18th, 2018

A few months ago I was leading a professional development for teachers on ways to support student collaboration via G Suite. On the feedback form at the end of the session one of the participants wrote, “I see how this is useful, but am I a science teacher or am I a technology teacher?” I admit this question gave me pause. Who is responsible for teaching technology? Just like like how every teacher is responsible for teaching literacy, given our technology-infused world I would argue that every teacher should be a technology teacher.

For many of my friends with children December 1st marks the start of finding new and creative ways to pose their elf on the shelf. Inspired by these photos, I created a template for students and teachers to build their own scenes using Google Drawing. You can access the template here. Please share your completed scenes with me via email or @MrKosko on Twitter.

Also, I would love to include a more diverse set of elves to this template. If you are anyone you know have PNG files of diverse elves (race and gender) in various poses please contact me. 

I've been hearing more about more about schools purchasing 3D printers, but teachers being unsure about how to actually implement the technology in their classrooms. Last year I built out a makerspace at my former school complete with three 3D printers. I introduced a series of design thinking challenges that asked students to 3D print artifacts for an actual user. One such project asked students to create and print a necklace pendant for a friend. 

​Last month, I was honored to present my jewelry design thinking project to my colleagues at our district's annual tech conference, Tech Talk & Googlepalooza. ​You can view my deck from the session here. 

Last month Gartner released their annual Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies and claims that augmented reality (AR) is two to five years away from reaching mainstream adoption. However, given the popularity of Pokemon Go; AR filters on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram; and the upcoming release of ARKit with iOS 11, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a giant leap in AR adoption much sooner.

​My love of AR and my colleagues geeking out with Breakout Edu over the summer led me to start thinking about ways that we might integrate AR into Breakouts. Here are some of my current favorite FREE apps (that aren’t Aurasma) and ways to integrate them into a Breakout.