Learning in the Lou

My first #booksnap.  I have seen this shared on Twitter for a while now and decided it was time to try it. While my snaps are not super great, it has helped me narrow down what is really snapable and what isn't. I'm sure you can understand, sometimes we just highlight too much on any given page. What is a #booksnap ? I think it is simply taking a picture of the book you are reading, highlighting an outstanding quote and sharing it publicly. The idea came from Tara Martin,  @taramartinedu , when she began reading the Launch book. Like any book, it can be difficult to keep the conversation going between face-to-face meetings. I know I will highlight and add a ton of Post-Its to my book which might be great for me but not the greater conversation that could happen around what I'm reading. #booksnaps solves this issue by giving me a quick pathway to snap, annotate and share my thinking. I believe this will change my reading by helping me narrow down my highlights an...

I bought the cake but totally forgot about candles! How can you have a birthday cake and not have candles? Just before we cut the cake I recalled that I had one special candle left from a pack I bought maybe a year ago. I am still amazed at the level of engineering it took to make this thing work. Thoughts I had: How do they get the big flame to work without totally melting all the smaller candles? Why does the wire stretch across the big flame? Could you make a different candle to play a customized song? How many version did they need to make before they found one that worked flawlessly? How did they come up with this idea? How much math was involved in making this? Could you use different chemicals to produce a different colored flame? UPDATE: We took it apart to find the electronics inside. We found two batteries, a simple speaker and a tiny circuit board. The best part was the small strip of metal that was tightly wound which provided the power t...

Soda machine at 5 Guys. STEM is everywhere. My wife was out of town and I had not listened to what we were supposed to do for dinner so my solution was to take the kids out for dinner. We hadn't been to 5 Guys in a long time we we decided to stop by. We ordered and turned the corner to fill up our drinks and stopped cold, the FreeStyle machine was open. One of the employees explained to me how the whole thing works and I was in awe. The first thing that hit me was how much they must be saving on shipping costs. Look near the bottom of the image above, you can see where all the flavor packs are stored. Each of these holds about two hundred drinks and weights less than a paperback book. The carbonated water and sweeteners are added the instant you fill your drink selection. No need to ship those five pound boxes of syrup anymore! How is this STEM? The mixing of the drink is very precise, I wonder what the mathematical formula is for this. This technology originated f...

There are times when I just can't read another book, audio or physical old school paper. There are times when I read online and that leads me down some random pathway. I look up and notice an hour has passed and I have only read a paragraph. You know what I mean, Pinterest or Facebook grabs you and time disappears. While looking through the audio books from the St. Louis County Library I decided to check out the app called RBdigital . This app gives you instant access to many of the most popular magazines available today. I love how accessible they are on my mobile, great to read during lunch. My son is totally into cars while I barely know where the gas goes. I found four different car magazines that he could download and read. I know these would keep him engaged for weeks on end. I found The Economist was also listed. No idea if I can understand this any better than the car magazine but it would be way more interesting! I know we are constantly encouraging al...

There are times when I just can't read with my eyes. Driving in the car or hitting the gym are two times when reading with my eyes just gets in the way. I got hooked on reading with my ears years ago by subscribing to Audible . My subscription plan only covers 12 books a year, I can read that many in no time! When I run out there is a place I can turn to for more audio books and these are completely free. The only catch is you need a valid St. Louis County library card. I logged into the St. Louis Country Library eMedia site and was presented with all the options above.  I clicked Hoopla just to see if they had any Ken Robinson books. Super pumped that they had four of his titles ready for me to download. While listening on my laptop would be fine it would not really work well in the gym or car. I also performed the same search on Overdrive yielding only one audio book that is also available on hoopla. Some of the above also provide you with music and movies....

An image is worth a bunch of words, these beautiful pictures can help you find at least a million of them. What I love most is how opened ended each of these are. The images even give you talking points to help the kids think about what they are seeing. I would recommend using some sticky notes to get started or just writing on the whiteboard with a marker. Check out What's Going On in This Picture? created by The New York Times to see the images.