Michael Kosko - Blog

Figure Skating Stop Motion

2/17/2018

If you are anything like me you've been a little sleep deprived this week from staying up too late watching the winter Olympics. Inspired by the incredible performances I've watched, I created this figure skating template in Google Slides. Share with your students or create your own performances.

You can view and make a copy of the template by clicking here. Step-by-step instructions are included.

We Are All Technology Teachers

1/24/2018

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.

LED Gingerbread Houses

12/19/2017

Last year my students finished their end of unit presentations two days before winter break. Rather then start a new unit, I wanted to give them an engineering challenge that reinforced circuits, a concept that we were having difficulty with in class fully understanding.

Looking through ideas online and given that it was the holiday season, I quickly decided on presenting them with a challenge where they had to build a gingerbread house and wire it with LED lights.

With that, I was off to the $1 store to stock up on supplies.

The haul from my supply run

3D Printed Cookie Cutters

12/6/2017

One of my favorite projects last year was a design thinking challenge where students had to design and 3D print cookie cutters for teachers in the building. Our theme for the year was empathy, and this challenge required students to create a design for a specific client, ask for feedback, and iterate on that feedback. The best part of the project was all the plates of cookies we received from happy teachers!

Digital Elf on the Shelf

12/1/2017

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.

My elf helping my favorite prehistoric friend, SUE, get into the holiday spirit.

The C.A.S.E. Teaching Method (And Why We Need to Do Better)

11/4/2017

When I was going through my pre-service training my facilitator passed an external hard drive containing all of her curriculum around the classroom for us to copy onto our laptops. She jokingly told us that the key to being a successful teacher is to follow the C.A.S.E. Method: Copy and Steal Everything.

Fast forward ten years and I am presenting at an ed tech conference. Scrolling through the hashtag for the event between sessions I see someone delivering parts of a presentation I gave at an earlier conference using the same templates I had created. Intrigued, I pulled up the deck on the conference website and was surprised that these resource weren’t credited to me. This individual, like many of us, was following the C.A.S.E method and like many of us, don’t always attribute where we are getting our resources and ideas from.

Using Memes to Set Classroom Norms

9/22/2017

Thanks to social media memes are ubiquitous in our culture, but they aren't a new phenomenon. From illuminated manuscripts to Killroy memes have entertained us for generations, but how can we use them in the classroom?

My brilliant friend Taneesha Thomas (@T_A_Taneesha) inspired me to think of new ways to use memes in my classroom. Last school year, my students used a meme generator to develop our classroom norms.

Designing Bespoke Jewelry in Tinkercad

9/13/2017

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.

AR Apps for Breakout EDU

9/6/2017

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.

Dear Data

8/29/2017

This year we are welcoming a new STEM school to the district, William H. Brown Elementary School. When planning for their introductory professional development, as a team we knew that we wanted to have the teachers participate in a high-quality STEM activity that incorporated the five elements of a STEM unit: STEM standards, authentic (real world examples), STEM careers, transdisciplinary, and the Four Cs).

My colleague, Chris Nho (email, twitter) had the brilliant idea to have the teachers participate in an activity inspired by Dear Data. Dear Data was a year-long project by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, two award-winning information designers. Once a week the designers sent each other personal data in the form of hand drawn postcards and through these messages, they learned more about one another. You can watch a short video about the project here.