New School Year, New School

It has been one heck of a ride during the last year. I had a short tour at a principal at a school in Cambodia and then returned to Korea to be at an ASP branch in Daegu. Both of those situations were difficult, but I found ways to survive them. Luckily both of those experiences lead me to where I currently am — American STEM Prep in Gwanggyo. I'm currently serving as the Vice Principal. My focus in on the secondary school and the Principal is focusing on the elementary school. We have a small, but thriving little school that has grades 6 to 10. I'm also teaching middle school science until the science teacher arrives in late October. Science is a stretch for me, but I'm excited to be back in a classroom with middle school students. Once the science teacher arrives, the Curriculum Director and I will split the middle school English classes between us. As it stands right now, we are both teaching full-time in addition to our admin roles. Not easy, but definitely worth it. The kids are great! We have a nice little leadership team for the secondary that includes a Head Teacher, Curriculum Director, and me (Vice Principal). We are utilizing Google Chats & Spaces to facilitate communication and it is working quite well so far. Day one is in the books! Looking forward to finishing the first week of school at ASP.

Grade 6 Science and iPads

Students filming the reactions of static electricity with an iPad.

Our Grade 6 (G6) Science team wanted to improve the quality and excitement around their current unit on Static Electricity. We came up with a great way to use the iPads to capture the static electricity in action and add video to the standard lab reports students create. It was simple and effective and produced some great reflection on learning. We have a cart of iPads in the secondary, so we used six to give each table team an iPad to film with. I walked the class through a quick download, install, and tutorial on Instashare (took ten minutes) and then turned them loose with the iPads to film the learning about static electricity in action. As students completed the different tasks, they were sharing their videos via Instashare between the iPads and their computers. After gathering all of their video clips, they used a science lab template that we created in Keynote to include the written lab work and the videos. Awesome!

Can static electricity move an aluminum can?

Can static electricity hold a balloon to the wall?