The Innovative Educators

Ms. Marchetti’s grade 7 & 8 computer classes have been learning to code by using Sphero Robotics!  Students are writing programs using coding blocks. They have successful coded the robotic to simultaneously play music, move, light up, and interact with one another. The Sphero Robots were generously funded through a GEF grant!

At my colleague Ryan’s brilliant suggestion, we set out to organize and coordinate a non-partisa n voter registration drive with our junior U.S. History II students. Having a component of service learning AND civic engagement during an important midterm election year was too good of a thing to pass. Plus, getting high school students to register more people to vote AND get these individuals to show up to exercise that right would make this quite an accomplishment. Ryan and I met with several community outreach workers from our local representative’s office, and what we came away with is that they made an impressive voting machine. This was certainly something we would struggle to replicate with our limited resources - both financial shortcomings, and intangible resources like time to coordinate this massive effort. For instance, successful political campaigns use specific software, such as VoterBuilder , to target areas needing better voter registration and turnout, and they never

7th grade computer students in Ms. Marchetti's class spent the day today with Rebecca Attia a GMHS graduate from 2012. Today, Rebecca works for Root Robotics which is a small start up in the educational robotic market. Rebecca brought six Roots with her and worked with the students through various tasks. Students were able to make the Roots move, sing, write, erase, bump, and interact with one another by the end of the class period!  Students had a blast working with a real computer programmer.  Thank you, Rebecca for sharing the Root with our students today!  

These students have been working hard in the Makerspace to create a Rube Goldberg Machine that demonstrates the transfer of 8 different types of energies: Kinetic, Thermal, Electromagnetic, Gravitational Potential, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, and Nuclear energies.  The students worked on defining the type of energy from prior knowledge and identifying real life examples for each energy type. From there, the students began to bring it to life with items we have already in the Makerspace.  The students were very engaged today and excited when they finally accomplished their goal!  This project was not easy for them and required a great deal of patience and perseverance throughout the entire trial and error period. The students were able to utilize the materials in the Makerspace to creativity accomplish their goal.  The administration and a group of their peers came to see what they accomplished.  This was so much fun!