Learning in the Lou

I saw this today and I stopped cold. I thought I recognized it but I really wasn't certain, I didn't think it was possible for a colder climate to have such a thing. This one small change helps to solve a huge issue. When it rains too much of the water runs off and is dumped into the rivers and streams. While that might not sound like a big deal, it is! The rain should slowly filter through the ground and refill the aquifer. I was visiting some people at Dressel and saw that some of the parking spaces had a very odd looking surface. I just happened to see someone who was busy install various things and asked him to explain what I saw seeing. He stated that this surface allows the water to slowly filter back into the ground solving the aquifer issue. Such a small change with dramatic impact on the overall health of our state. This one tiny slice of the parking lot has the potential to push our kid in many STEM directions. I would bet we could take one parking lot s...

We have created a series of very quick videos to help you update your Schoolwires pages for the new school year. Requirements Make sure your Schoolwires has the following requirements ready to go:      Welcome Page - think of this as your modern business card. Anything I need to contact you is listed here. Make sure you add your social media/blog links on this page.      About Me - on this page you can list anything you think the students or parents need to know about who you are as a person.      Links - add some links to resources your students will need to be successful in your class. Maybe it is Google Classroom or some other site. This page is very helpful if you have kids that move into your classroom after the first few days of school.      SIS - add a direct link to SIS from the left side navigation bar.      Calendar - embedding your school and district calendar is simple and very helpful fo...

I came home to this package the other night. Two feet by four feet and it weighs seventy-five pounds. If you Google the name you will see it is a mattress, a queen sized one to be exact. We learned a number of things these past two weeks about how STEM is everywhere and to take what is around us every day to help our students realize that fact. If you took this modern mattress as an example, what would you say? Here are a few questions I have when I look at the box: Engineering      How do they compress the whole mattress that small?      How do the various levels of foam stand up to compression over time?      How do they measure the level of out gassing? Math      How many variables did they need to account for when designing one mattress for everyone?      How do they calculate shipping costs and times? Technology       How do they measure the impact of their social med...

There are three things that really hit over the past two weeks. These new ideas have me thinking about how I approach problems and then move to solve them. For years Mariano has been coaching me along this pathway and now it is all coming together. The big idea he was guiding me towards was to stop jumping towards solutions before fully understanding the whole problem. Water     Last week I was in a stream with a biologist studying the issues surrounding stream erosion. He told us a story about New York City. The city had a growing issue of the declining quality of the drinking water. One solution was to spend many billions of dollars building a treatment plant, a solution that would require significant and expensive maintenance every year.      The solution they deployed was to go way up river and fix a few issues. This greatly improved the water quality making it much easier to fix in the city. This solution was much cheaper and has a lasting impact ...

We were driving down the road and experienced some odd electrical issue, the GPS stopped charging. The unit only had enough battery to last until we hit Chicago. I would have been concerned but I had a backup plan. Below the GPS I had my tablet running Waze . I have been told there are two types of people, those who have lost data and those who will. Do you have a plan if your laptop suddenly dies? Are there folders that need to be backed up but aren't? Google just released a totally new Google Drive back up and sync tool. I currently have just over 110 gigs in my Drive which was too big for the older desktop Google Drive tool. What they added was the ability for me to just back up one folder from my desktop without having to download everything on my Drive. It is brilliant. UPDATE - MARCH 2018 Only read the updated section if you are currently using Google Drive for PC. If you are not and want to use Back Up and Sync skip to the getting started section. You need to ...