In this episode we chat with instructional technologists at the 2023 VSTE conference and visit Ware Elementary in Staunton City, Virginia to meet a prospective teacher who started his career as a school custodian before being encouraged to become a teacher by his principal.

This instructional plan combined Counseling SOLs EA 2,4,10 and WIDA English Language Development Standards. The lesson includes several activity options. Note: Some images may not appear in the "Overview". To view all images in this instructional plan, click "download" at the bottom of the overview.

In this activity, students will explore the idea of “data” and how it provides a lens through which to view different aspects of human experience. Students will interrogate the affordances and constraints of data as a form of representation and speculate about the effects data can have on human perception and behavior by fitting data into different schemata, developing their own data schemata, and comparing the data schemata of different institutions in their lives with the schemata they develop to represent themselves.

In this project, students will create artistic data representations, expressive artifacts based on data sets. Before engaging in their own projects, students will briefly research and discuss data-based art making in history and in contemporary times. Then, students will use the remaining 3 instructional days to create their art. The resources below provide support for two kinds of representational projects—data-based music, and data-based visual art on a grid (similar to the weaving art discussed in ECS 1.11-14).

Students will explore how computers are embedded in the activities of their ‘every day’ through keeping a technology journal and sharing their timeline with a group of students or the class. Through this activity, students learn to find examples of their own definition of computing before engaging in the class discussion about how we might choose to classify computers by their characteristics. Students end the activity by designing a technology that solves a common/current problem in their own routine (“I wish there was a computer that could help me…..”). Through this examination, students will learn that computers can do many things to help humans solve problems on micro and macro levels.A supplementary lesson plan for ECS Unit 1, days 1-2 by Perry Shank

In this activity, students will explore computational sequencing (the process of putting specific instructions to be executed by a computer in order) by engaging with recipes. Students will think through how a computer might interpret instructions, create instruction sets based on these insights, and share favorite recipes as they try to arrange instructions in a format that a computer might understand.

In this activity, students will create a model of a computer designed to accomplish important tasks that align with their personal interests or the needs of a friend/family member they interviewed in a previous lesson. Then, students will discuss tradeoffs in design: the value judgements computer designers make when they build computers for consumers to purchase.

In this lesson, students will learn about using binary encoding to represent numbers and text. They’ll use several different encoding techniques, and then develop and test their own protocol for encoding other kinds of information into binary.

In this extension, students will evaluate the role of data collection in their lives. They’ll identify some common data collection practices, evaluate the ethics of those practices, and develop a framework for thinking about when data collection is appropriate and when it is exploitative.

In this activity, students will compete in a shell game tournament while they learn about different search strategies that computers perform on sorted collections of data.

Students will use minimum spanning trees to analyze a problem and provide insights into addressing the problem. The lesson provides detailed support around analyzing transportation infrastructure in their community and assessing its impact on the lives of different people who use it. Students create minimum spanning trees based on data, solve the trees to generate insights about the data, and communicate those insights along with policy recommendations based on their analysis.

In this activity, students will develop an idea for a new website they will create to practice their new web accessibility knowledge & development skills. Students will assess what sorts of websites they might create to serve as a platform for information sharing, serving the needs of a particular user group in their school or community, or curating resources around a particular topic.

In this lesson, students will explore the relationship between website file size, request volume, and internet speed. They will then unpack how website design impacts accessibility for web users with slow or unreliable internet, outdated computers, or other constraints that lead to information access issues.

In this activity, students will write code that includes semantic HTML elements, and explore how semantic HTML helps make HTML easier to read, and increases the accessibility of websites for people who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.

In this activity, students will create and share websites designed in the previous Web Design Ideation lesson. They will reflect on their efforts, share assessments of their successes and challenges, and evaluate the affordances and constraints of web design as a problem-solving tool.

This is a VDOE Webinar, EL Instruction: Co-Teaching: A Schoolwide Approach, recorded on August, 24, 2020.

This is VDOE Webinar, EL Resourcs for #GoOpenVa, recorded on May 20, 2020.

The first form is your teacher notes with all the answers. It will help you guide students.  The second one is the student form they would fill it in as you lead them in. Normally, after I give this lesson. I ask students to write sentences about them using all the functions of “ESTAR”. Then i ask them to tell me  the same things about their classmates.  I model on myself first. Then I ask them to come to the front of the class and read their examples.  

ESTAR & SER are some of the most difficult verbs for students to remember, and learn to use properly as they become more comfortable with their new language. However, this mnemonic has become one of my most useful and purposeful lessons. Students remember and use them all the time after they have learned it this way.