Now Offering Clock Hours

In exciting news for the teachers with whom we work, Technically Learning has been approved as a Washington State Clock Hours provider! For those of you unfamiliar with Education Department terminology (trust me, I was too!), clock hours are continuing education credits teachers can earn by taking training sessions and seminars designed to facilitate their professional growth. Often, these are done in addition to daily classroom teaching and preparation, so teachers have to find attend these sessions during their free time.

We realized that if our job was to aid teachers, our robotics training sessions should be useful in more ways than one. The Washington State Education Department recognized that our sessions, which familiarize teachers in the robotics curriculum and equip them with best practices for training students in robotics, should count as a professional educational experience for our dedicated teachers. This means that Technically Learning has become an even smarter choice for teachers looking to save time and improve their students classroom experience; we're a one-stop shop for professional development and improved classroom experiences!

VISTA in Wonderland

Yesterday was a wonderful day, because it was the first time I'd worked with Alice. Alice is a 3D computer animation program developed by Carnegie Mellon, and free for public download and usage. Think "Shrek" or "Toy Story": with a wide variety of characters, settings, objects and commands, amateur filmmakers can tackle real-life topics like life in the medieval times, or fictional worlds involving fairies, ogres, spaceships or robots. (You can even visit Wonderland with the White Rabbit and Alice, after whom the program was named.)

Technically Learning helps site schools harness the incredible creative potential of Alice, and develop activities and curriculum for teachers to use when incorporating Alice into their classrooms. Currently, we are working on programming for our partner organization, Technology Access Foundation, as they will be using Alice in their Tech Start program this winter.

I had time to work on my own film for practice. It won't be hitting the indie film circuit anytime soon, and I definitely need to find a better title than "Watch Out, Horsey," but I saw the amazing potential for this tool in classrooms of all subjects. Creative writing teachers can work with students more accustomed to visual culture than pen and paper stories. History teachers can help their students think through alternate versions of history and the repercussions of events that have taken place. There is the obvious technological component -- students are learning computer programming in an accessible way -- but they are also learning the logical, thoughtful ways both stories and computer programs must be written. And, if they are anything like me, they will have a blast doing it!