Digital Design

We can all agree that times are not like they have ever been within any of our life spans (at least for those of us under 100). What has been debated passionately is how we, as educators & school systems, should best work with this ongoing pandemic. Some schools have responded by going online to synchronous classes while others have decided to use asynchronous learning and still others have decided that they don't know enough about access and an expectation for online learning is not equitable so they sadly have their students doing nothing. You can go on any social media and see countless hot takes complaining about what not to do and exaggerating these scenarios. Parents are either dismayed by the huge amount of worksheets sent home and apps to download or saddened by the amount of time their kids now have with nothing to do from school. On the educator side "Students shouldn't be looking at Zoom for 8 hours a day" is one of my favorite disconnected complain

The time has arrived where there is no argument about the place of technology in education . We need to rely on tech to help everyone with delivering education from a distance as we are sheltering in place and we need to do so in an intelligent and effective manner without just bumbling through a Zoom video conference for an entire class period. Be available for question, but don't expect students to sit there and listen to you lecture for even 20 minutes, much less an entire 70 minute period as is the length at my school. I've pasted the tips here and then again below with examples and additional explanation. Distance Learning Tips for 9-12 Classes Here are some quick tips to help you in designing the online experience for both you and your students. If you find it easier to read I have a google doc here with these tips laid out . Formatting gets weird in Blogger sometimes. Try to keep your online experience as similar to your class experience as possible so that the

I have the great fortune of teaching a Digital Design class at Convent & Stuart Hall in San Francisco. As part of designing the class I've gamified the progression of lessons into levels. Upon completion of each level students earn a badge. Here is the final Level for Team Makerbot, designing a Codeblocks vase using loops they create in Tinkercad's block coding feature, Codeblocks. This app is a great example of the exciting intersection of art, science, math & tech and serves as a great visual to help students visualize what exactly is happening as a computer runs through each line of a loop.

How to screen record, speed up my video& embed into my blog: Step 1: Start a Screen Recording by opening QuickTime Player, selecting File → New Screen Recording Step 2:  Click on the red dot to record. For our purposes we will record our voiceover in iMovie after speeding up your video. If you would like to record audio at the same time click the arrow next to record and then select the microphone. Step 3: Drag a box around the area you would like to record or simply click to record the full screen. When the small stop sign appears you know that you are recording. When it is on, but dim (as below) it is preparing to record, but has not yet started. Step 4: Design as you would normally. Confirm you are recording by noticing the stop sign is white. When you want to stop recording click on the icon. Step 5: Save your screen recording immediately by going to File → Save & choosing your Digital Design Folder .  Save your work according to the week and day of