This studio explores the notion of in-between by engaging several relationships; the relationship between intervention and perception, between representation and notation and between the fixed and the temporal. In the Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges tells the perverse tale of the one to one scale map, where the desire for precision and power leads to the escalating production of larger and more accurate maps of the territory. For Jean Baudrillard, “The territory no longer precedes the map nor survives it. …it is the map that precedes the territory… and thus, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.” The map or the territory, left to ruin-shredding across the ‘other’, beautifully captures the tension between reality and representation. Mediating between collective desire and territorial surface, maps filter, create, frame, scale, orient, and project. A map has agency. It is not merely representational but operational, the experience and discursive potential of this process lies in the reciprocity between the representation and the real. It is in-between these specific sets of relationships that this studio positions itself.

This article discusses how to use murals as an interdisciplinary, cooperative activity to blend science, art, and math concepts.

This is a project I assign my students in an introductory, non-science major astronomy class. Each student is assigned one of the 25 brightest stars in the sky and they are asked to research and apply concepts they have been learning in the class to their particular star. I leave it up to them to decide the format of their final project - most do PowerPoint but some have done videos or podcasts. One student actually landed a part time job at a radio station after they heard her recording her star project! Many students tell me this is a highlight of the course!

    During this lesson, students will learn more about their favorite authors by researching them on the Internet and presenting to the class, school, and community. Students will learn biographical information about their authors, the inspiration behind their stories and identify their authors’ different styles of writing.   

    During this lesson, students will learn more about their favorite authors by researching them on the Internet and presenting to the class, school, and community. Students will learn biographical information about their authors, the inspiration behind their stories and identify their authors’ different styles of writing.   

The lesson plan focuses on the students playing the role of adult effective decision-makers who can help the planet and imagine its future. Students will build upon their knowledge of climate change causes, effects, and solutions. Students use the four-language skills in content based and language instructions class. They work cooperatively and collaboratively utilizing different higher thinking skills. Students are assigned to write their reflection about the lesson using Google forms and turn their ideas for the planet future into a  projects.Photo was made by Salwa Aly using Canva App

    During this lesson, students will learn more about a historical person by researching on the Internet and presenting to the class. Students will learn biographical information about their person.  Students will compile their research together in a class book. 

Students research a biology topic, present their discoveries to each other for peer review, create a short video explaining the topic, and decide how to share their video publicly.

With this assignment, students will have an opportunity to dive into one of the many aspects and concepts of biology in greater depth. They will have an opportunity to choose a topic they are interested in (list of possible topics provided, adaptable for others), and research the how/why/when of the topic. They will then present their findings first in a written format (a preliminary informative essay), to serve as a guide for their video production. After discussion and peer review, they will create short videos that explain the topic to the general public. Teaching this topic in a creative way will solidify their own knowledge. They will also become familiar with many aspects of video editing, and grapple with putting their creations into the world.

A presentation covering the development of an evaluation framework for transforming teaching materials into OERs.

Delivered at the OER 10 Conference

To conclude this unit, students design a recommendation engine based on data that they collect and analyze from their classmates. After looking at an example of a recommendation app, students follow a project guide to complete this multi-day activity. In the first several steps, students choose what choice they want to help the user to make, what data they need to give the recommendation, create a survey, and collect information about their classmates' choices. They then interpret the data and use what they have learned to create the recommendation algorithm. Last, they use their algorithms to make recommendations to a few classmates. Students perform a peer review and make any necessary updates to their projects before preparing a presentation to the class.

In this lesson students design a structure to represent their perfect day using the binary representation systems they've learned in this chapter. Students will first write a short description of their perfect day and then review with a partner to identify the key pieces of information they think a computer could capture. As a class students will decide how a punch card of bytes of information will be interpreted to represent those pieces of information. Students will then use the ASCII, binary number, and image formats they have learned to represent their perfect days. Students then trade punch cards and try to decode what the other student's perfect day is like. The lesson ends with a reflection.

In this cumulative project for Chapter 1, students plan for and develop an interactive greeting card using all of the programming techniques they've learned to this point.

Students will plan and build their own game using the project guide from the previous two lessons to guide their project. Working individually or in pairs, students will first decide on the type of game they'd like to build, taking as inspiration a set of sample games. They will then complete a blank project guide where they will describe the game's behavior and scope out the variables, sprites, and functions they'll need to build. In Code Studio, a series of levels prompts them on a general sequence they can use to implement this plan. Partway through the process, students will share their projects for peer review and will incorporate feedback as they finish their game. At the end of the lesson, students will share their completed games with their classmates. This project will span multiple classes and can easily take anywhere from 3-5 class periods.

In this final project for the course, students team to develop and test a prototype for an innovative computing device based on the Circuit Playground. Using the inputs and outputs available on the board, groups will create programs that allow for interesting and unique user interactions.

Students take what they've learned through chapter one, and develop an app of their own design that uses the board to output information.

To conclude their study of the problem solving process and the input/output/store/process model of a computer, students will propose an app designed to solve a real world problem. This project will be completed across multiple days and will result in students creating a poster highlighting the features of their app that they will present to their classmates. A project guide provides step by step instructions for students and helps them organize their thoughts. The project is designed to be completed in pairs though it can be completed individually.

At this point teams have researched a topic of personal and social importance, developed and tested both a paper prototype and a digital prototype, and iterated on the initial app to incorporate new features and bug fixes. Now is the time for them to review what they have done and pull together a coherent presentation to demonstrate their process of creation. Using the provided presentation template, teams prepare to present about their process of app development, including the problem they set out to solve, the ways in which they've incorporated feedback from testing, and their plans for the future.

Based on the peer interview from the previous lesson, each student comes up with an idea for an app that will address their user's problem. Students then get to create their own paper prototype of their app ideas by drawing "screens" on individual notecards. A project guide directs students through the process including building the app and testing it with their user to see if their assumptions about the user interfaces they created are accurate.

Students have spent a lot of time throughout the unit working on their Personal Website. In the final couple of days students finalize their websites. They work with peers to get feedback, put the finishing touches on the websites, review the rubric and reflect on their process. To cap off the unit, they will share their projects and also a overview of the process they took to get to that final design.

After learning about how to link web pages to one another, students are finally able to publish the website they have been working on. In this lesson, they link together all the previous pages they have created into one project, create a new page, and add navigation between the pages before publishing the entire site to the Web.