AACPS OIT Byte

 By: Koralina McKenna, 7th grade Science Teacher  A long time ago, I dreamed of a day when my students' quarter long project based learning assignment would be presented and collected in a video presentation. It took 5 years to make this dream a reality and I'm going to tell you how it went and what I'll do differently next time.  5 years ago, I had the project figured out but I didn't have reliable access to technology for my classes to create video projects 4 years ago, I continued to perfect the project and had technology access but lost access to Windows Movie Maker, the video editing software I planned to use 3 years ago, I had everything I needed, I taught myself WeVideo and was ready to roll out this video option to my students but then the pandemic hit just before I planned to start  2 years ago, I decided to heavily modify the project to be more suitable to hybrid instruction and did not use the video option  Present day, IT FINALLY HAPPENED  This ...

  By Tracey Brown, Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist The Project At the start of this school year, like many central office teachers, I was asked to teach a class. I taught a one semester 6th grade science elective called Mission to the Stars. Throughout the course students learn about space exploration, what we have done, what we have planned for future missions, what we have learned and what we hope to learn. The overarching question is, “why are we exploring space?” And the answer (for the purposes of this course) is to find habitable planets, Earth-like planets that we could someday travel to and possibly colonize. The course culminates with a project in which the students are supposed to design and build a colony on a habitable planet that we have yet to discover. Their project must include 9 elements from throughout our course that colonist would need to survive on another planet: A research center A medical facility A recreation center Dormitories Bathrooms/showers...