The Cardboard Challenge Comes to APS!

Friday was quite a day at Aberdeen Primary School. We featured our very first Cardboard Challenge, and it was so exciting!!!! High hopes were in the air, and it was every bit of what we anticipated and more!

    The Cardboard Challenge is a global movement that started a few years ago all because of a little boy named Caine. During the summer, Caine had to come to work with his dad at the auto shop everyday. To save Caine from boredom, he started to take boxes from the back, and began building games,  eventually turning them into an arcade. Caine finally had his first customer after months of waiting. This customer could not believe he was the only one to play Caine’s arcade, and this customer decided to make a video about Caine and his arcade, advertising it all over social media. Caine came back to the shop one day to find hundreds of customers, and they continue to come on a daily basis to play Caine’s arcade. Caine now has his very own scholarship fund, and it all started because one ten year old boy decided to get creative with a box!

    Now all across the world, schools, children, and communities come together to be part the the Global Cardboard Challenge. This year it took place on October 7th. Since that is a Saturday, APS decided to try this new adventure on Friday, October 6th in the afternoon. For the younger grades, an hour and a half is about all they could handle, but I can see higher grades being able to do this all day! Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade students blew it out of the water! We saw ships, houses, cars, hug machines, rockets, basketball hoops, forts, cakes, and so much more! The amount of parent involvement was astonishing! There is nothing better than seeing a student-filled event bring communities together!

    So how do you set up a Cardboard Challenge? It is not that hard! Since this was our first time, we learned what worked well, and what we can do next time to make it even better! I am the STEM teacher at APS so I get to meet with every class each week. This worked well for us since I was able to use a class period to tell the students about the challenge. I read them the book, The Most Magnificent Thing, and we discussed struggles when trying to build, and how to persevere when things do not go the way we want it to. Then I showed them the video about Caine’s Arcade. They were completely hooked after this!!! Next I modeled a few pictures and examples of things they could build, and then they set to work on their blueprint! If a STEM teacher is not at your school, teachers can take 30-45 minutes to explain the challenge to students and let make their blueprint.

    The next step was to get all staff, parents, and the rest of the community involved. Letters went home to parents, explaining about the events, supplies we needed (cardboard, tape, and markers), and asking for volunteers! If a school does not have a lot of volunteers, it would be best to ask a High School ( We reached out to Pinehurst). Next year, we plan to ask one or two companies to just drop off loads of cardboard a week or two in advance instead of tons of cardboard coming in everyday. We discovered that painter’s tape and masking tape were the easiest to tear and worked best for the little ones. Posters were placed everywhere to continue to get the students excited!                        

    A couple days before the event started, I made a list of where all the teachers would be to give to the office so they could direct volunteers. I passed out the children's blueprints, markers, tape, and box-cutters to every teacher. We purchased these ahead of time and only gave to adults! I emailed all special teachers and any extra teachers that could help to ask for help in passing out cardboard to each grade or classroom before the event started.

    On the day of the event, we started to pass out cardboard to each grade about an hour before the event started.. Teachers chose where they wanted to hold the challenge. Students filled classrooms, hallways, and outside. Each grade was called down to their area. Then students began to grab cardboard and get to work! Ideas and little minds were fast at work, letting their creativity run loose! Volunteers were very helpful in making these wonderful creations a success!

    When the challenge was over, we had the hardest job: Clean-Up! We decided to tear down our inventions and recycle the cardboard. Students took the cardboard down and then placed it in a designated area. It would be a good idea to call the town or public works ahead of time to see if they can pick up the cardboard the day of or after!

    There was a little bit of work involved with the Cardboard Challenge, but it was well worth it! Students loved it, and are still talking about it! I hear comments like, “Cardboard Challenge was the best day ever!!!” “When are we doing the Cardboard Challenge again?” The Cardboard Challenge contains so many wonderful benefits to children. It builds creativity. It goes over the engineering process of ask, imagine, design, build, and create. This process can also be applied to many other academic processes, such as the writing process. Students also learn that things may not always work the first time they try, and they will have to go back and try again. Students learn to persevere even when they are becoming frustrating or something is hard. Most importantly students learn how work together in a fun and enjoyable way and become part of a team.

     A box can be many things if we just let students’ imaginations run wild! The Cardboard Challenge is a must at any school!

            

     

STEM Fever Spreads into the Specials Rotation

During the school year last year, Moore County Schools’ DIF team helped implement the Engineering Thread that used the engineering and design process throughout many of our curricular areas and aligned to standards in grades K-5. This was well received at the elementary level that we launched the Engineering Thread in middle grades as well.  

Another spin off from the success of our engineering lessons, has been the addition of a new class at Aberdeen Primary and Robbins Elementary.  Dr. Molly Capps and Mrs. Kim Bullard have added a STEM Class to their specials rotation. Students and parents are THRILLED that students get exposure to this type of learning on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.  In class, students are learning to work collaboratively in teams to problem solve by asking questions, planning, creating, and redesigning.  So far this year student have participated in projects like figuring out how to construct a better basket for “Little Red Riding Hood”, designing a robotic predator and competing with other predators for resources, or building a boat that will float and save their animals in a flood.  Students are conceptualizing, building, and testing their solutions to these problems.  

The idea is that students exposed to STEM and the engineering process on a regular basis will learn to be problem solvers and think through this process in other aspects of learning. Think about when you explain steps in a process or write a paper, this thinking is very similar to the engineering process these students are learning to work through.

Public schools are tasked with building up 21st Century learners and preparing them for jobs that do not exist yet.  At Aberdeen Primary and Robbins Elementary, the STEM coaches, Ashley Luersman (@Miss_Luersman) and Kim Collazo (@kcollazo) are getting kids accustomed to solving real world problems and teaching them to think like engineers.  Through this process students are learning to think like an engineer and are applying their background knowledge in science, technology, and math to do so.  

What a wonderful opportunity for these Moore County students!

Every school needs a Lori Paulus

There are lots of people who make a school a special place. From board members to bus drivers, many people influence the lives of our Moore County Schools students. But there are few who have the positive impact that Lori Paulus has at Cameron Elementary School. At first glance, she may appear to be a typical media center specialist with books in hand and a list of Reading Counts stats closeby but there is so much more to Mrs. Paulus than what meets the eye. You will be hard pressed to find a more caring, supportive, dedicated, hard-working and passionate employee in our district who only has the absolute best in mind for our students. She pushes our students to achieve more than they could ever imagine. I love coming to work at Cameron and meeting with Lori because she always has these amazing ideas that she gets so excited about and you can tell that she can’t wait to roll them out to the students. Another thing that I love about Lori is her eagerness to incorporate technology into her lessons. Her relentless drive to find ways to use iPads, Chromebooks, and even robots with her classes motivates me to be a better DIF. Don’t get me wrong, Lori knows the importance of having her students complete assignments by getting out a dictionary or using a non-fiction book to research a topic. But she is constantly looking for ways to enhance instruction through the use of digital learning.

One project that I am really anxious to help her with is a lesson where we are going to incorporate our new Spheros! Since we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month we are going to take a look at three folk tales. Two are Mexican and the other is Cuban. We will use the Spheros to work on our sequencing skills while we retell the stories. The students will recreate the different scenes from the story then they will code the Spheros to retell the important details as it goes through the sequence of events. Follow us on Twitter for pictures from our lesson!

I always enjoy picking the brain of teachers who I look up to, so that I can hopefully take something back from them and add it to my toolbox. Take a look at what Mrs. Paulus shared with me when I sat down to interview her and hopefully you’ll be able to take something from this phenomenal librarian:

Question: How long have you worked at Cameron/Moore County?

Answer: This my 15th year. Before that I was not in school system. I ran a used book store, worked with the Peace Corps in Thailand, but I spent most of my time teaching environmental education classes in New York. Almost 50 different types of classes.

Q: How would you describe your teaching style?

A: I think because there are so many awesome books I very rarely teach the same lesson every year. I’m always trying something different. I try to use fresh material for the kids, and for me as well. I don’t like to repeat things.

Q: What motivates you to use technology in your lessons?

A: We really had a mandate in our curriculum to integrate technology. It really has eved and flowed with different teachers. I think for kids technology is so motivating. The engagement and differentiation is crucial for our students. But technology could also engage them in a topic that they may not be interested in before. I think if you show a variety of things to kids it expands their repertoire and hopefully it will set them up for classes in the future. I like it for organization too. Things like Google Drive are so great for students to organize and keep their materials from year to year. Finding different ways for students to express themselves. It’s also good for independence.

Q: What is one of your most memorable lessons that included some kind of digital learning?

A: The thing that I really enjoy is our One Book One School program. We’ve done a blog in years past for students to have an ongoing discussion on the books. I loved that the parents were involved in it also. Parents who had trouble reading had access to the videos we made. And kids who didn’t have a parent reading with them could watch the videos at home. We would have the traditional reading experience for students but technology allowed us to expand on reaching more of our population by giving them an alternative way to interact with the book. It could also be extended by responding to the blog. It was a great encouragement for those kids.

Q: You’re an inspiration to many people, including myself, what inspires you?

A: I listen to National Public Radio a lot. They have new ideas in art and music. They will highlight authors as well as technology. They have a lot of ideas that we could use in our classroom.  I also check social media daily, like Twitter. Authors tweet a lot. Facebook and Pinterest also give me lots of ideas.

Q: What is your favorite part about being a teacher?

A: The special part for me and my job is that everybody is my patron. It’s not just students, it’s staff. I get to work with every student. I love to work with staff as they come in. I love to work with big groups or small groups. I like working with people. I like connecting people with resources that connect with them.

Mrs. Paulus is, without a doubt, the heart and soul of Cameron Elementary School. She is an absolute pleasure to work with and the students at Cameron are very lucky to have her as their media center specialist.

-Clint

Growing Engineers in MCS - Starting Year Two!

New school year = new engineering challenges in Moore County!

After a short summer break, we welcomed our students back into our buildings this month to start the new school year.  As kids have come back, it's been exciting to see that their knowledge and motivation around engineering and problem solving have not been sapped in any way over the break- in fact, we're starting to see some momentum from last year carry into this year!

Ms. Robledo (DIF extraordinaire at HFE, CES, and RES) reported that while doing the 1st engineering project of the year with a group of 1st graders at Highfalls Elementary, she asked "What is an engineer?" to which students replied enthusiastically with "someone who solves problems!"  When asking what they needed to do before they created their first prototype, cries of "make a blueprint" and "make your plan!" ringed out.....  Just think of where these little engineers can go from here!

On the older spectrum, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting a 6th grade class already this year, as the DIF team is now taking our engineering thread into the middle grades this school year.  The first class I was able to visit was Ms. Willis's class at Southern Middle School.  She worked with DIF Beth Alderson on the "Whatever floats your boat" engineering project that focuses on the core concepts of density (always a tricky one for 6th graders).

Students were given free roam to plan around and choose various materials to create a boat that would hold as much mass as possible.  Each material (such as styrofoam, cork, cardboard, aluminum foil, etc.) was given a pricetag and students had $1,000 to spend.  After planning and building their first prototypes, they placed them into a container filled with water.  They measured displacement of water as well as the amount of mass their boat held before sinking.  Next, they tried their boat in a container of saltwater to record this same data.

From there, they were able to go back and re-engineer/improve their boat designs in order to hold more mass.

Students did a GREAT job in thinking through this task.  A really cool part of the lesson, though, was when Ms. Alderson asked the students how many of them did engineering last year as 5th graders- almost every hand went up!  It was clear that the students were comfortable with the engineering process and taking some risks of failure along the way.  Very cool!

As a DIF team, we are excited to be a part of this revolution of critical thinking and problem across Moore County Schools.  We look forward to sharing more stories through this blog and also don't forget to follow us on Twitter at @MCSDigital.

-Steve J

Take your students anywhere with Virtual Field Trips

Lets face it. There just isn't the money to do fun field trips anymore, and even more than that there is only so many times that you can take your students to the local zoo or aquarium before it gets monotonous. 

Well let me introduce you to Virtual Field Trips!!!! 

Virtual Field Trips are a free resource put on by museums, archives, and companies around the world with the expressed purpose of linking your objectives with their missions. There are virtual field trips for all ages, grades, and subjects. Some even provide lesson plans for you to collaborate with your students and the museum employees. 

This year I was able to facilitate quite a few vitual field trips in my schools. I took 4th graders to Washington State to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West to leaarn about animal adaptations from both our region and regions around the country. 

I got to take Mr. Baker's 8th grade class to New Orleans to visit the National World War II museum and got to focus on Dr. Seuss cartoons and primary sources since that is what his student's were struggling with.

                                     

Virtual field trips offer an oppurtunity for students to hear the information from someone other than you. Let's face it, after a while we can get a little repetetive. Why not let your students travel the worl and learn from someone new!!!

If you are wondering what is out there here is the link to Microsoft's Skype in the Classroom program, where you can search already designed field trips by grade, age or student, or even subject. 

https://education.microsoft.com/skype-in-the-classroom/virtual-field-trips

Wondering how to get started?  Ask your friendly neighborhood DIF!!! 

Virtual Field Trips are a fun way to take your students to new places to discover new information. Let me know if you need some help finding the perfect field trip for your students!!!

Beth Alderson

DIF

Southern Middle School/ Aberdeen Elementary School

@texteachBeth

STEM Camp 2017- Best STEM Camp Ever (until next year)!

Today, the Moore County Digital team is wrapping up our 5th annual summer STEM Camp and it's safe to say this has been the biggest and best one yet!

For those that don't know, our summer STEM Camp is offered as a 4-day camp for two consecutive weeks (it runs as two stand-alone weeks with a different group of kids each week).  During STEM Camp, our students are exposed to cutting edge technology, amazing guest speakers, loads of great STEM career options, and are able to think and act like real engineers.  It is open to rising 3rd-8th graders and this year we also opened an Advanced Robotics camp that included students in grades 9 and 10.  Tuition is $160 for the week, which includes all lunches, snacks, and a free t-shirt.

Simply put- this is the best camp in North Carolina, PERIOD!  Our DIF team works tirelessly to provide the best possible experience for the 200+ students that attend.

Check out all the pictures and videos from STEM Camp this year!

Each year, our camp has a theme.  This year, our theme was aviation.  We worked in partnership with the Moore County Airport to provide a top-notch experience and exposure to real people who have been successful in the aviation career pathway.  Each of 4 rooms in the camp worked on different aviation related tasks and challenges.  Here are the things our students got to experience this year:

Room One:  Rockets and Thrust Structures

Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Priest, and Ms. Boesch worked with students through the engineering process, where they were given the task to produce a thrust structure from cardboard, Popsicle sticks, and hot glue.  The structure had to be strong enough to not break apart through 3 consecutive launches into "lower orbit" (ie, launch the water bottle to the top of the metal rod without flying off).  Students had to do a ton of critical thinking in this room- deciding on their design, managing their materials budget to make their structures strong but cheap, figuring out how much water the rocket should hold, how much sand the launch mechanism should hold, and how high their launch mechanism should be held to produce the correct amount of lift.

At the end of the week, students created presentations to try and convince NASA to purchase their thrust structures.  A lot of fun mess was had by all!

Room Two:  3D Printed Wing Designs
Ms. Alderson and Mr. Martin worked with students to design wings to test for lift.  Students learned how to use Tinkercad, an accessible 3D design program we use often with students.  After completing their designs, we had three 3D printers churning their designs out all week.  Once their designs were printed, it was time for testing!

Ms. Alderson's father-in-law built a custom wind tunnel for all of our student testing.  Students placed their design into the wind tunnel and turned the wind on high.  Students had to intently observe how their design fared and whether or not it achieved lift.  After discussions about design, shape, and thinking about why some achieved lift and others didn't, it was back to Tinkercad to work on improving their designs in hopes of achieving lift (or better / more stable lift) with the new and improved versions.  Students did an excellent job with this engineering process and learned a lot!

Room Three:  Mars Rovers and App Creation
Ms. Reynolds and Ms. Snotherly created an awesome experience for students in the Mars Rover room!  The elementary students were tasked with creating a livable habitat on Mars out of a boatload of craft materials (cardboard, tape, ribbon, paint, confetti, etc.).  The other task they needed to complete was the creation of a Mars Rover out of our Lego WeDo kits.  This rover was built to navigate the landscape successfully.

Our middle school campers worked with Ms. Reynolds to create apps using the MIT AppInventor program. Students were totally engaged in creating their Mars-related apps and testing them out on Android tablets that were provided.  We definitely sparked some future programmers this week in this room!

Room Four:  Drone Obstacle Course
Ms. Collazo and Ms. Robledo led our Parrot Drone room and it was a huge hit!  After being introduced to the many careers that are popping up around the world that involve drones, students were tasked in teams to collaborate and design an obstacle course object for their drones to fly through.  But here was the catch- they only had $100 to spend at the "Drone Depot", where they could purchase items such as PVC pipe in 2-ft and 4-ft lengths, PVC pipe connectors, and various lengths of rope.

After creating their obstacle, students headed off to the gym to learn how to program drones to fly in a set, autonomous way as well as how to manually fly their drones.  Finally, on the last day each team got to attempt to manually fly their drones through multiple obstacle courses they had built and carried to the gym.  Students loved the experience and learned a ton!

Advanced Robotics Room
A brand new addition to STEM Camp this year, the Advanced Robotics room worked with 9 rising 8th-10th graders to get their hands on designing, building, and programming advanced robotics to complete challenging tasks.  Led by Mr. Herring and Ms. Holmes, students were given an intense crash course on how to be successful builders and programmers.  The growth our students made in this week was incredible and we look to expand this offering next year!






Guest Speakers
We were also proud to offer our campers some exposure to some amazing guest speakers throughout the course of camp.  Lt. Col Ana-Maria Ehrler spoke about her experience as a combat pilot.  Lt. Tim Davis and Detective Shane Fogle from the Moore County Sheriff's department brought and demonstrated a drone they use in their police work and described how it helps keep them and the public safer.  Paul Von Hardenberg, a former mechanical engineer with Sikorsky Aircraft, spoke to students about the engineering process as well as how helicopters achieve lift.  All of our guest speakers made our camp a richer, more authentic experience for kids.





Finally, we had some great surprises in store for our students this year that could not have happened without our partnership with the Moore County Airport.  On the Monday of each camp, we invited Greg Hudson, the CEO, to land his helicopter on the front lawn of New Century Middle School.  Needless to say, the kids were totally caught by surprise when helicopter came in and really enjoyed learning about it from Mr. Hudson after he landed.

And, last but CERTAINLY not least, the airport allowed all of the kids to come and take a tour and talk to real pilots, flight controllers, and aviation mechanics.  Our students got to get up close and personal with many types of aircraft and learn from the experts what it takes to be successful in their field.  And the cherry on top came at the end of camp- our students were given the opportunity to go up for a free flight with the Airport's Young Eagles program.  Unfortunately, our first week of campers were rained out but received a rain check for the fall.  But, in the 2nd week the skies stayed clear and calm as over 80 students went up in the air, many of which for the very first time!  Truly a thrilling end to a great STEM Camp!

Finally, we would like to thank the entire DIF team for their extremely hard work in providing the best summer camp in North Carolina.  We'd also like to thank the Airport Authority for partnering with us to provide opportunities for students they will never forget.  We'd like to thank all of our guest speakers for sharing their knowledge of their fields.  And, finally, thanks to all the Moore County Schools' support from top to bottom, thanks to New Century for hosting, and thanks to the parents for trusting us with your kids this year.  We truly enjoyed it!

Middle School Competition and Regional Competitions 2017

   Last year Moore County held its first middle school robotics competition, which was a fantastic success. Not only did we continue to provide the competition for middle school students in our county, but we extended the invitation out to other counties as well. We held our first middle school regional competition this year, which definitely upped the ante for robotics. Middle school competitions were held back to back on Friday, May 19 and Saturday, May 20th. All of the participants did such an outstanding job and it is apparent that robotics has really taken off in the region!

   

   

   Scotland County joined our "American Cities" themed competition with open arms, and participated in the elementary showcase too. Scotland County had at least one team from each middle school attend our regionals. The competition for middle school consisted of a series of challenges that were much different than the elementary showcase. For example, we had two First tech Challenge (FTC) fields set up, one depicting an urban environment and one depicting an rural environment. In addition, the students had to build an arm to throw a football and design their robot to pull "snow" on a sled. Lastly, there was also the crowd pleasing Battle Bots! These robotics events drew many people from Scotland and Moore County, with many other counties inquiring about these events throughout the year. Next year, it is our goal to have many more counties participate.
   The apparatuses that students created for these events at regionals was absolutely amazing! The competition in general, aside from being fun, really challenged the kids in engineering, problem solving, and teamwork. It is out goal to continue to challenge students in this way, so they are prepared for advanced robotics concepts and 21st century skills.

   
















   Below are pictures from the Middle School Regional Competition and we hope you can help spread the word about robotics in your county! Thank you to all of our schools, staff, and coaches that participated in these extraordinary events!

MCS Regional Middle School Competition

~Deanna Boesch