ITTIP’s Quarterly Byte May 2019
Local Girl Scouts Troop Earn Their Detective Badge with ITTIP During the month of February, Longwood University was invited to conduct a 90-minute lesson focusing on detective work to help a Girl Scout troop from Chester-
The mission of ITTIP is to transform teaching and learning in PK-12 classrooms through the use of technology by providing high-quality professional development for educators and engaging programs for students, in order to maximize their learning experiences and opportunities in a globally competitive workforce.
field County earn their Detective Badges. To earn the Detective Badge, the troops needed to understand that good detective work could include making good observations, fingerprinting, solving mysteries, and even communicating in code. ITTIP’s STEM Learning Specialist, Stephanie Playton, led the inte-
Above: Student examines their type of fingerprint (i.e. arch, loop, whorl).
grated lesson with ten participants through hands-on experiences. The troop first read a riddle to help them understand the power of observation, then did some more observing after examining the group’s fingerprints. Next, they learned about examples of binary code including Braille, Morse, Enigma and Code Wheels. The last focus of the lesson was on the binary number system used by computers. Students learned how computers translate combinations of 0 and 1 into characters, then enjoyed learning how they could use programming language with the Bluebot robot to help them solve a
Above: Students work in teams with a Bluebot to turn code into letters and words.
coding mystery.
Upcoming events May 11 GEM, Longwood University May 24, 27 Offices Closed May 29 TEaCH conference, Mecklenburg June 23 26 ISTE, Philadelphia July 4 Offices Closed July 22 Aug 2 Camp Invention, Longwood University In This Issue Page 1 Girl Scouts Page 2 GEM Page 3 STEAM Night Page 3 Active Directory Page 3 Camp Invention Page 4 Electricity & Computer Science Page 5 FIRST Robotics
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May 2019 Quarterly Byte - Longwood University ITTIP
Global Education Mindset: A Teacher Book Study ITTIP was able to offer an 8-week
ing about their own growth-mind-
book study experience on a Global
set and using global education as a
Education Mindset (GEM) this
platform to strengthen 21st work-
spring to educators in grades 4-8.
force skills to support the Profile of
Eighteen teachers from 6 SVRTC
a Virginia Graduate.
school districts and 10 schools While many participants are
were recruited for the project and met face-to-face on March 16, 2019, to begin the professional development experience. Over the course of several weeks, teachers have been actively participating in Schoology assignments through discussing, reflecting, and creating resources in their community of practice. In addition, they have been setting goals and making achievements towards a global education mindset.
Above: Teachers made Playdoh brains to learn about the parts of the brain and how it can grow.
The program learning has been done in conjunction with reading two book titles, Connecting Your Students with the World and
already using tools and resources they recieved through this learning initiative, they will be sharing their experiences and future plans for global education in one last face-to-face session on May 11, 2019.
The Growth Mindset Coach. While the teachers are learning about a growth-mindset for their classrooms, they are also actively learnRight: An educator from Texas, Kelly Dyer, video conferences with GEM partipants on a growth-mindset.
Virtual Reality with Google Tour Creator Google Tour Creator allows users to upload 360 degree photographs or locations from Google Street View and create virtual reality tours by adding your own text, images, and background sound. While this is not new, what is new is the capability to view the Tour’s that you create to be viewed through Google Expeditions as a guided tour. Here are some things to keep in mind when creating a Tour to be shared as a guided tour in Google Expeditions: 1) Make sure to create your Tour Creator tour with the Google account associated with your Google Expeditions; 2) Make sure to update your Expedition App on your devices; and 3) Find a good app to take your 360 images.
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May 2019 Quarterly Byte - Longwood University ITTIP
STEAM Symposium in Henrico County On Thursday, April 15, 2019, Henrico County held their first annual STEAM Symposium. The event comprised of highlighting activities that students from Short Pump and John Rolfe Middle Schools participated in while piloting Henrico’s STEAM program. The inaugural event provided middle school students and parents with STEAM learning opportunities while additionally inviting companies and businesses to partipate as vendors and showcase relevant resources. ITTIP director, Dr. Paula Leach, and STEM Learning Specialist, Stephanie Playton, attended the event to showcase Root Robotics and provide families with handson experiences for any coding level. Next year, Henrico County will be adding four more schools to their
ITTIP Hosts SVRTC Active Directory Training Twenty-one Informational Technology (IT) professionals from 13 SVRTC divisions participated in Active Directory training hosted by ITTIP and SVRTC. Learning Tree provided the instruction for the participants who came from the following divisions: Brunswick, Cumberland, Charlotte, Danville City, Greensville, Halifax, Henry, Hopewell, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Patrick, Prince Edward and Prince George. The week-long training took place during the week of March 25-29, 2019. This training was provided at no cost to the participants and included accomodations for participants that attended far from their homes.
hands-on instruction and practiced administering Active Directory technologies. They learned how to better manage and protect data access and information, simplify deployment and provide more secure access to their division’s data. At the April SVRTC meeting, members expressed the value that the training brought to their personal learning as well as how it supported their division needs.
During the Active Directory training, participants had
middle school STEAM program.
Camp Invention: Summer 2019 ITTIP will host two, one-week summer camps for children entering grades 3-4, and grades 5-6, free of charge to families. Registration information was distributed to SVRTC members in March. The first week will be held July 22 – 26, 2019 and the second week July 29 – August 2, 2019 at Longwood University. The Institute looks forward to providing students with hands-on learning and
Above: Stephanie Playton stands with ITTIP booth at the Henrico STEAM Symposium.
exploration!
May 2019 Quarterly Byte - Longwood University ITTIP
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Elementary Students Learn Electricity Unit Through Computer Science Experiences STEM and computer science integrations took place recently through an electricity unit with Dinwiddie Elementary’s 4th grade classrooms in collaboration with ITTIP staff. The electricity unit started off with learning how to use the MakeyMakey as a game controller to control pre-made, online games in Scratch. Students got to choose from a variety of games, then find conductive materials to connect to the controllers to connect their games. This served as an introduction to open and closed circuits, as well as conductive and non-conductive materials (i.e. insulators). Other lessons followed up on previous learning, but increased student knowledge and experience with electricity in relationship to parallel and series circuits. Students were challenged to create a
Above: Students use conductive materials to control a game on their computer.
hands-on activity for the electricity unit. A final activity included a live Q&A session with a Biology Engineer from Califorina working on making conductive plastics. These learning experiences are
Above: Student works with their littleBits to create different types of circuits and illustrate different types of transformed energy.
part of a research initiave in computer science. Data analysis and findings should conclude in the summer and be ready for dissemination in the Fall 2019, when computer science standards in Virginia will be expected to be implemented across K-12.
step-by-step guide of a Play-Doh object using Squishy Circuits. Students then had to describe and record their creation on Flipgrid with their partner. In order to cover SOL content to include transformed energy, littleBits was used as a culminating
Above: Tweet with screen shots from a “Skype a Scientist” live with students. Left: Student example of an emergency vehicle made with Squishy circuits.
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May 2019 Quarterly Byte - Longwood University ITTIP
SVRTC 2018-19 FIRST Robotics Teams: Wrapping Up A Successful Season The 2018 -2019 season of FIRST
Team 1598 - Danville
Robotics has wound down to the
Team 977- Halifax
final match at the World Finals.
Team 5954 - Lunenburg
There were over 33,000 students,
Team 1262- Martinsville
mentors, and teachers that led
Team 3258 - Martinsville
up to the FIRST Championship
Team 1413 - Mecklenburg
in Houston Texas. According to FIRST, some 700 or more teams competed and exhibited across all FIRST programs. SVRTC teams were among those who competed in the district regionals, and more recently World Championships. The SVRTC continues to support the teams involved in FIRST Robotics , with the mentorship of Bill Wilson, Senior Technology Engineer of ITTIP. He is constantly researching new products, ideas, and solutions and to assist teams when needed. Serving as a consultant for the teams, Wilson has had the chance to watch the teams grow from first meetings to 15+ year veterans. He has provided face
Above: Martinsville team at Deep Run High School for a March competition.
Team 5950 - Pittsylvania Team 6021 - Sussex
to face training to teams as well
Many of the teams will continue
as training from a distance using
to review their performance dur-
products like Webex and Google
ing the past season in an effort to
Hangouts. “Much of the training I
identify what went right and what
did in Labview programming was
went wrong, and what changes
done remotely. The web meeting
might be made to next year’s ro-
tools are well suited to provide
bot. There is still much to do and
video, voice, and data with interac-
learn during the off season and
tion locally and remote. Working
many teams will take advantage of
with students remotely gives me
this time to excel.
a chance to watch them work on developing their program while I
Even as the season is coming to
assist and encourage them at the
an end, SVRTC teams are already
same time”, comments Wilson.
making plans and preparing for the 2019 - 2020 season.
The Southern Virginia Robotics (SOVAR), a partnership between Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC) and SVRTC, supported ten SVRTC school divisions and eleven teams this year, including:
Above: Bill Wilson stands with the Mecklenburg FIRST team at the Chesapeake District Portsmouth event.
Team 6189 - Amelia Team 5279 - Campbell Team 6194 - Cumberland
Above: FIRST students compete at the District Championship.