Learning in the Lou

Where the two surfaces meet. While it was raining today we took a field trip to the parking lot at Dressel. In the image above you can see two different surfaces, one appearing wet and the other looks normal. RIGHT On the right side of the image, it is just regular concrete. You can see the water starting to pond a bit and is running off into some unseen drain. LEFT The water just disappears! The great thing is this area of the parking lot allows the water to drain slowly back into the ground. Check out this image that illustrates what is going on below the surface. If you showed this image to the kids, what would they think is happening? Would they know why MSD requires these parking lots? STEM is everywhere, even in the places we never notice. Where else do you see STEM in your classrooms? How might you help kids prepare for the world by showing them things like this parking lot?

Do you slowly collect tabs throughout the day? I know on any given day I might open twenty to thirty tabs. That many open tabs starts to slow the machine down and my battery appears to drain much faster. Here is a simple solution that allows you to open a million tabs and help your laptop run efficiently.  The Great Suspender The Great Suspender is a Chrome extension that puts your tabs to sleep after a set amount of time. To wake the tab, all you do is click.  Start by visiting The Great Suspender and clicking the big blue button in the right corner. Click Add extension . Click settings . 1. Adjust the time. We recommending choosing 30 minutes or 1 hour. 2. Scroll down. Whitelist - sites that are exempt, they won't be suspended. 1. I copy/pasted the addresses of the three tabs I use most often. If you use Pandora or Spotify in a tab, add that address here. 2. Click Save settings . This is what you see when ...

30 Day Doodle Challenge with Peter Reynolds and The KidLit Show from TheLivBits on Vimeo . A few weeks ago we had the awesome opportunity to meet Liv as she visited a few of our schools. She inspired so many of our kids with her keynote and classroom visits. Liv shared this video and has a new challenge for us, a 30 day doodle challenge ! Check out the padlet and start wondering, what doodles can you share with the world? This isn't just for kids, teachers why not add yours too! Note: Scroll down and check out Liv's post on the Padlet page. She lists a few guidelines to help everyone get started. 

Ikea Inspiration is everywhere. The other day we were at Ikea learning about their culture and something really caught my eye. What if we used our hallway spaces for something like this? What if we used the walls as places to show learning and inspire others? Ikea Hallway Ikea is just about seventy years old, seventy! Along one of the employee hallways, there is a very long timeline. Each section is dedicated to one year in the life of the company. School Hallway What if you created something like this? The topic could be a book. Each chapter or section the kids could create something that represented what they just heard or read. Each day or week the timeline grows.  What if you did this with social studies? A science concept? Ways to solve equations? What if you didn't do any of the work at all? What if the kids created every bit of the display? Missouri History Museum Last week we saw almost the same idea in a training room at the Missouri ...