Tag: BDSS

Instructions for Supply Teacher

Instructions for the supply teacher can be found at http://goo.gl/zY4RpC. Note that this document is only accessible to DSBN staff.

Instructions for the students are found in their Google Classroom accounts.

The Students Know I Hate IE!
Student artwork
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Program or Website for Creating a 3D Gamified Literacy Test Prep Environment?

I’ve received a request from an English teacher who has an excellent idea for a program for her students. Here is her request:

I have an idea and am looking for a program to make it happen. I want to create a 3D virtual world that I can use to gamify lit test prep. I want to be able to embed challenges – or links to bring them out of the world to complete tasks. I would ideally like them to have an avatar that can wander around and find the challenges that are hidden throughout the world, and want to add layers of badges / points, etc. as well as mastery learning. I have the idea in my head, but might you know of a good program I can use to create it. Ideally there will be minimum programming as I know limited HTML but would prefer something that does the coding for me. I am happy to pay for the program, but if there is a free one that would be great too.
I can figure out how to make it happen with 2D but would ideally like 3D.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. 🙂

Continue reading “Program or Website for Creating a 3D Gamified Literacy Test Prep Environment?”

BDSS Maker Club

Mission Statement

The BDSS Maker Club is a student-led club focused on providing students with time, space, knowledge, and equipment to design and make things.

The purpose of weekly meetings is to:

  • Equip students with skills to make, create, and design;
  • Provide time, space and resources to student to create, make, and design;
  • Provide guidance, supervision, and instruction to do the above; and
  • Allow students to pursue individual interests for all of the above activities.

Meetings: The club will meet Tuesdays or Wednesdays in room 3-209 (Mr. Beens’ class) unless otherwise announced (see calendar below). Students will need to arrange for transportation home at 4:30. Continue reading “BDSS Maker Club”

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Technovation – The global technology entrepreneurship program

BDSS will be participating in this exciting program for the first time this year. The team is only allowed to have five members. We have three so far, with one student in mind as the fourth. The fifth will be decided by doing a “gap analysis” of our needs after the girls research and understand the program requirements.

From https://www.changemakers.com/girltech/entries/technovation-challenge:

Currently, most computer scientists and entrepreneurs are men. Software fields are exploding and yet jobs go unfilled due to a shortage of programmers. In his keynote speech at the National Technovation Challenge event, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz shared a statistical fact; when you educate a girl in the developing world, on average, five people get educated because she will educate at least four other people through the course of her life. The same finding is not true for boys. By educating girls, Technovation transforms the culture of computer science and business to one of cooperation and equal opportunity.
Technovation Challenge provides a safe environment for girls and mentors to step out of their comfort zone and take computational, entrepreneurial, and leadership risks. Over the past three years over 800 high-school girls have programmed 125 mobile phone apps and learned how to launch their startups. 94% of these girls now believe that a career in technology is a viable option for them. Technovation uses project-based learning to encourage a whole suite of transferable skills in our students that go far beyond a traditional computer science curriculum. The curriculum has the direct, hands-on application of creating a personally relevant mobile app instead of taking a programming test in a classroom. The interdisciplinary focus on computer science and business teaches girls how to work as part of a team to create something original and relevant. Our model includes high doses of mentoring by women in the high-tech or computer science worlds.