There's an awesome project happening in two of the 5th grade classrooms at The School at Columbia University right now. To supplement their study of Ancient Greece, Dena Rothstein and Heather Lortie, are having their students collaborate with students from The Marymount School across Central Park on the Upper East Side. (The School is located on the Upper West Side...) Both groups are designing 3D Greek temples using Tinkercad and sharing their online files with a group at the other school to tweak, customize, and ultimately build ("print") in our 3D printers. The humor of us being able to say that we are literally outsourcing to the East is not lost on us.

Teachers supporting this collaboration at The School are Heather, Dena, Greg Benedis-Grab (@gbenedisgrab), and Don Buckley (@donbuckley) with a lot of support from Cristina Martinez (@finlaycm) and a little support from me. On the UES of the park, Jaymes Dec (@jaymesdec) and Lesa Wang oversee Marymount's particpation in the project. Jaymes designed the new Fab Lab at Marymount, and he just spoke at TEDxNYED last month.

Today, the groups communicated "long distance" and "real time" using Google Video Chat. (Cristina Martinez turned on the Chat feature for students just for this project and just for a few days. Usually, this feature is disabled.) I moved about checking on all of the groups. At one point, I observed four kids (two in front of me and two on the screen) discuss their designs and even use a secondary laptop facing the camera to visibly demonstrate how to use Tinkercad to make a triangular hole to decorate the roof of a temple. I thought that was awesome. :)

The annual 7th grade Great Mathematicians project is underway. Dr. Sabrina Goldberg's students are currently fleshing out faux profiles for their assigned mathematician on The Social Network, our in-house social network powered by Elgg. This year, Don Buckley and I are asking kids to distill their mathematician into a graphic to be used on their digital profiles and on their physical poster.

Examples:
DeCartes - Cartesian Plane
Newton - gravity, apple
Tesla - electric current, lightbulb, or lightning bolt
Erno Rubik - Rubik's cube

 

After the incredible success of the Tools at Schools design collaboration with aruliden and Bernhardt Design, Don Buckley (@donbuckley) was inspired to have faculty at The School apply the design thinking model for our Year of Innovation.

These pop-up houses, on display throughout the school for a few weeks, are the result of many months spent researching discussing, researching, ideating, and prototyping. Inside are snapshots and notes from each group and an iPad3 (on an iPevo Perch with headphones) running a video where students, faculty, and parents talk about each concept (Homework, Discipline, Recess, Lunch, Grading). Kudos to Hil Szanto (@hilszanto) and Cristina Martinez (@finlaycm) for the videography and editing!