SC Midland Summit Featured Speakers

Check out the exciting line up of Featured Speakers for the SC Midlands Summit. Registration is open now! This is an amazing line up for just $35.00. Participants will receive 14 hours renewal hours for attending both days of the conference. 

Jaime Casap

Jaime Casap is the Senior Education Evangelist at Google, Inc. With more than 15 years of technology experience, he is responsible for working with K12 educational institutions and organizations to bring current and future technological innovations into the education environment. Mr. Casap evangelizes the power of technology and the use of Google tools, such as Google Apps and Chromebooks, to help students build the skills needed to succeed, close the digital divide, and help level the playing field. He has worked with hundreds of school systems and states to build the capability to bring Google tools to millions of teachers and students. Mr. Casap is also a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, where he teaches classes in organizational behavior, leadership, and innovation. He serves on the Advisory Board of Directors for New Global Citizens and the Arizona STEM Education Program, and is a member of the Digital Education Council. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York at Brockport and a Master’s from Arizona State University.

Contact Information:
Twitter: @jcasap
Google +: Jaime Casap

Tim Childers

Tim Childers currently serves as an Assistant Principal for Technology Integration at the L&N STEM Academy, a STEM Magnet for Knox County Schools. He serves on the Blog Team for the Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council for Tennessee and was selected as a STAR DEN Guru for Discovery. In 2010 he was selected as one of TechSmith's "20 to Watch" rising educators for his use of video in professional development. He has led workshops for the TN Education Technology Conference, the FL Education Technology Conference, and the International Society for Technology in Education.  In 2012 he was selected as a keynote speaker for the Mid-South Technology Conference hosted by Memphis City Schools.
Twitter: @tchilders
Google+: +Tim Childers

Lodge McCammon  image from blog.discoveryeducation.com

Lodge McCammon

A Specialist in Curriculum and Contemporary Media at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (www.fi.ncsu.edu). His work in education began in 2003 at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he taught Civics and AP Economics.  He finished a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2008 where his work at The Friday Institute continues to bring innovative practices to students, teachers and schools.  He developed a teaching and professional development process called FIZZ which encourages and models best practices in implementing user-generated video and online publishing in the classroom to enhance standards-based lessons.  He is also a studio composer who writes standards-based songs, with supporting materials, about advanced curriculum for K-12 classrooms. (https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/project/fizz/about)

Daniel Russell, Ph.D.

Daniel Russell is the Űber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness at Google in Mountain View.  Dan developed the Power Searching MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that has been popular with teachers around the country.  He earned his PhD in computer science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence before he realized that magnifying and understanding human intelligence was his real passion.  He enjoys teaching, learning, running and music, preferably all in one day.  He worked at Xerox PARC before it was PARC.com, and was in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple where he wrote the first 100 web pages for www.Apple.com using SimpleText.  He also worked at IBM and briefly at a startup that developed tablet computers before the iPad. 

His keynote focuses on what it means to be literate in the age of Google - at a time when you can search billions of texts in milliseconds.  Although you might think that "literacy" is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding.  Knowing how to read is just the beginning of it - knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, interpret the texts that you find, organize (and use) the information you discover, and understand your metacognition - these are all critical parts of being literate as well.  In his talk Dan reviews what literacy means today and shows how some very surprising and unexpected skills will turn out to be critical in the years ahead.
Contact Information:
Google+: Dan Russell

Tammy Worcester Tang image from tammyworcester.com.

Tammy Worcester Tang

Tammy Worcester Tang began her career in the classroom, teaching nearly every grade from kindergarten through middle school.

Currently, Tammy works for ESSDACK, an educational service center in Kansas, as an Instructional Technology Specialist, providing staff development and training in the area of technology integration.

Tammy is extremely innovative and resourceful and specializes in finding unique and creative ways to use traditional computer tools in the classroom. She enjoys sharing her ideas with teachers throughout the nation, at conferences and in schools, and has a presentation style that can be described as inspiring.

Her website, “Tammy’s Technology Tips for Teachers” (www.tammyworcester.com) is a popular online resource for teachers around the world. Tammy is also the author of nearly a dozen best-selling technology resource books that are published and marketed nationally.

Greg Tang Image from www.gregtang.com

Greg Tang

A famed author and speaker, Greg’s goal is to to develop a more intuitive approach to teaching math, one that combines problem-solving and arithmetic and integrates math with language and art.

Greg has written a series of best-selling children’s books starting with “The Grapes of Math,” and has developed several award-winning math games and apps including Kakooma.

To see more about Greg, go to http://www.gregtang.com or http://gregtangmath.com.

School 1TWO1 Spotlight - Spring Valley High School

*Guest blogger, Rob Herron, Spring Valley High School Assistant Principal tells us a little about how Spring Valley is transitioning to 1TWO1.

Over the last 2 years, Spring Valley High has prepared for the full school 1TWO1 roll out, what are some practices your faculty, staff, and administration have started to help move towards school wide 1TWO1?

Spring Valley has really done a great deal in a relatively short period of time.  We have a new Principal, Dr. Baron Davis, who is really committed to using technology in a variety of ways.  Of course, the major effort underway is training our teachers to use technology in appropriate ways that increase student interest in what they are being taught, thus increasing their level of engagement with the material, and ultimately enhancing learning.  We have a lot of really excellent teachers who didn’t need much coaching or instruction.  And we have some folks who desired a bit training.  We’ve offered a lot of it.  During the second semester, for example, Debbie Easler (Media Specialist) and Jason Paddock (ITS) are offering sessions on different topics every Wednesday.  Teachers can select the sessions that most appeal or apply to them.  The classes are offered every period of the day to make it easy for a teacher to attend.  Debbie and Jason have really gone above and beyond in providing relevant training tailored to meet the needs of our teachers.  

We added a Quick Link on our website that we’re calling “1TWO1 in Practice” where we are showcasing student work that could not be easily produced without the 1TWO1 initiative.  The work we will showcase will be great things are students are doing in their classes, with technology, but not just for technology’s sake.  The work chosen will be at least at the Modification level on the SAMR model.  

Spring Valley is doing lot with technology in other ways as well.  The move to Google has opened a lot of opportunities in terms of the ease with which a school or its teachers can communicate information to students, their parents, or the community.  Google Sites is an example.  We’ve made a big move into Sites as they are relatively easy to set up and afford teachers unprecedented ease in communicating information about their courses.  This year we've required all of our teachers to have a basic Google Site for the courses they teach.  The site must contain their contact information, course syllabus, lesson plans, and a Google Calendar with assignments from their courses.  Parents can subscribe to the calendars and have information about upcoming quizzes, tests, and the like delivered to them.  We did a lot of training at the end of last school year, and over the summer, and in the first week of school, to help the teachers get their sites up and running. It’s been very collaborative.  The decision to require teachers to have a site really helped teachers learn Google Apps, and aside from the improvement in communication with parents, that was the real goal. You can view any of our teacher’s Google Sites from the staff directory on the SVHS website.  If anyone is interested in learning how to create a Google Site they are more than welcome to use some of the resources we created (here or here).

We've also moved to using Google Forms for our administrative walk through observations this year, and that's a big improvement.  Google Forms allows us to create a single database shared among the members of the administrative team.  Having all of the observation data in a single database is really powerful, and much more useful than an electronic file folder of a few hundred individual files (i.e. each walk through for each teacher).  Before we moved our walk through to Google Forms someone would have to have opened and read 500 documents to figure that out. A demo version of our form is available for you to see along with the backend spreadsheet.

Spring Valley has changed how we are communicating all of the wonderful things going on.  We used to send out a static, monthly PDF attachment called Viking Update.  Now we use Blogger.  Parents can follow the Viking Update via email or they can read it online.  It’s been pretty popular.   Here is a promo video we made about Viking Update.  We also Tweet everything that we put out on the blog, and much of it ends up on Facebook as well. The blog has had over 12,000 page views in the past 2 ½ months.  Last week we added a Spring Valley YouTube channel, and we put our daily in-house news program on the channel, and that’s linked to the blog, so we hope that encourages even more people to view the blog.

How has the District Quality Implementation Tool (QIT) helped with this transition?

The QIT has definitively guided some of the dialog that we have had with members of our school-level technology advisory board.  It’s caused us to reflect upon much of what we have done, and to think about what needs to still be done.  It’s helped ensure that we have an adequate number of representative stakeholders involved in the conversation.

How does Spring Valley High communicate what is going on with 1TWO1 with your stakeholders, primarily parents and the community?

Thus far our major method of communicating some of what’s been going on with 1TWO1 at SVHS is via the web.  As I mentioned above, Spring Valley has made a big leap forward this year in how we are using available technologies like Google Sites and Blogger to help inform our parents and public.  We have over a hundred teachers individually telling their stakeholders what is going on in their classes everyday via their websites.  In years past some sites were little more than a place a parent might find a teacher’s phone extension.  So while the web itself is hardly revolutionary at this point, the way we are utilizing it, and the number of people who are utilizing it, has changed monumentally.  

We’ve made a big move to web tools with products like Blogger and Twitter.  Parents can simply subscribe to our feeds and the information comes to them.  We’re trying to make it is easy as possible for them to stay abreast of things going on at Spring Valley High School.

We have had several discussions about the 1TWO1 initiative with our School Improvement Council over the past two school years.  I think those conversations have been really productive in that they allayed some concerns that some parents had.  Change is frequently met with a lot of questions.  The resulting dialogue between school officials, our teachers, and our parents was really good, and parents clearly understood that we were not just going to hand out Chromebooks and leave the students to their own devices.  

We have done a fair amount to help the parents with some of this technology.  We had a “Google Parent Night” as part of Open House where parents could go and sit down with an ITS and learn how, for example, to subscribe to a teacher’s Google Calendar. Once parents see how easy it is they love it. We even made a how-to video for the parents which many of our teachers put on their sites.  

How has professional development/learning played a roll in the 1TWO1 transition?

You could not accomplish the things we have without providing professional development opportunities for the faculty.  Jason Paddock and Debbie Easler, and others, have worked tirelessly for the past two school years providing dozens of sessions on various 1TWO1 topics.  The work they have done has taken a lot of the potential trepidation out of something like moving into a one-to-one computing environment in every classroom.  Though it would have been nice to have a Chromebook for every student from day one, the school truly benefited from the gradual roll out.  It gave us a lot of time to plan, train, reflect, amend our plans, re-train, etc.  It also gave us the opportunity to tap into the power of our faculty.  Those who got the devices in their classrooms first were a great resources in helping train the groups who got them subsequently.  We used a “train-the-trainers” approach in some respects, and that helped a lot.  

One thing we’re doing right now is providing optional, weekly staff development opportunities every period of the day every Wednesday during Semester Two.  We are asking our teachers to select a minimum of four sessions over the course of the semester.  Instead of mandating that teachers attend certain things, we are giving them the flexibility to select topics that appeal and apply to them.

---

If you are an administrator and would like us to spotlight your school's 1TWO1 implementation, please contact MaryAnn Sansonetti-Wood

Acrocity: Building the City of the Future with the Knowledge of the Past

*Welcome guest blogger, Danielle Elliott- Smith from Muller Road Middle School. 

Our 6^th grade team has worked on an interdisciplinary unit in which students had to integrate their knowledge of science, social studies, math, and language arts in order to create a futuristic city using the building techniques of the ancient world. Students had to design a building using elements of Greek and Roman architecture and integrating one of the six simple machines that they learned about in science class.  After students created their building using all recycled materials, they had to photograph their projects using their iPads and use an app of their choice to highlight the geometric elements present in their structure.  Students also had to submit a Keynote presentation demonstrating not only their knowledge of the six simple machines but also how those simple machines were used in the ancient world to accomplish great feats of engineering.  In language arts, students are working to create brochure guides to Acrocity, the city built from all of the buildings designed and built by our 6^th grade students at Muller Road Middle School. The sixth grade team --Danielle Elliott-Smith, Terry Atkins, Tina Lewis, and Kristy McIntyre

Student Project Pieces

 

BIG NEWS: Dan Russell Coming to the SC Midlands Summit

The SC Midlands Summit is getting closer and as it does the featured speaker line up is getting better and better. Our latest addition to the list is Dan Russell! If you are wondering who Dan Russell is, have you taken the Power Search with Google online? That's him!

Daniel Russell is the Űber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness at Google in Mountain View.  Dan developed the Power Searching MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) that has been popular with teachers around the country.  He earned his PhD in computer science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence before he realized that magnifying and understanding human intelligence was his real passion.  He enjoys teaching, learning, running and music, preferably all in one day.  He worked at Xerox PARC before it was PARC.com, and was in the Advanced Technology Group at Apple where he wrote the first 100 web pages for www.Apple.com using SimpleText.  He also worked at IBM and briefly at a startup that developed tablet computers before the iPad. 

His keynote focuses on what it means to be literate in the age of Google - at a time when you can search billions of texts in milliseconds.  Although you might think that "literacy" is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding.  Knowing how to read is just the beginning of it - knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, interpret the texts that you find, organize (and use) the information you discover, and understand your metacognition - these are all critical parts of being literate as well.  In his talk Dan reviews what literacy means today and shows how some very surprising and unexpected skills will turn out to be critical in the years ahead.

Check out the other featured speakers at the SC Midlands Summit! Register for the SC Midlands Summit today! This is an amazing deal at $35 for two days of learning! 

SAMR Contest for Teachers at Ridge View High!

There are a few teachers at Ridge View High  ROCKIN' new skins on their Chromebooks. Why, you ask? Teachers were asked to redesign a lesson plan based upon the SAMR learning model and submit the lessons for a chance to win a Chromebook cover. Winners went beyond simply substituting technology for another tool; they modified their lessons to allow for tasks that were inconceivable before technology. The lessons were examples of some of the great teaching and learning Ridge View is seeing this year.

What is SAMR?

SAMR, a model designed to help educators integrate technology into teaching and learning , was developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura.  The model aims to enable teachers to design, develop, and integrate digital learning experiences that utilize technology to transform learning experiences to lead to high levels of  achievement for students.  Summer Technology Institute Blog  

Congratulations 

to Mrs. Carol Kannisto, Mr. Steve Nuzum, and Dr. Gordon Maynes for 

transforming their lessons with technology.

Thank you to Tami Lenker, the Ridge View ITS, for sharing this wonderful idea!

Technology Spotlight - Sheena Ryant, North Springs Elementary

Ms. Sheena Ryant has been teaching 4th grade at North Springs since 2005. She had 5 years of experience in an ITEC classroom, prior to the 1:1 roll out this year. She became Nationally Board Certified in 2010 and has been a part of the STEMS program for 2 years. She believes that if technology is used effectively, it can be vital learning tool in any classroom.

From one of her students:

"Some types of technology we been working on with technology are Tagxedos, Windows Movie Maker, Flip cameras, and Chromebooks. Tagxedos is a website where you can type different words and turn it into a shape with any kind of color and font. We made a Tagxedo with our 2013 goals. With Windows Movie Maker you can make movies with sound and pictures. You can add different effects for the pictures and make the pictures have color. We made a Windows Movie about an explorer and the French and Indian War. Flip camera is a small camera where you can take pictures and videos. We used the Flip cameras to make a 13 Colonies Regional video and a French and Indian War video. A Chromebook is a laptop with Google Chrome. We use the Chromebooks almost every day. We use it for typing assignments. Our whole class works with all kinds of technology everyday and it’s fun!"

The School ITS, Nikki Allman also adds the years Ms. Ryant spent in an ITEC classroom has prepared her for the 1TWO1 roll out. She is not afraid to embrace the new technology options out there. Her students are challenged to create unique presentations for the content they learn in Language Arts/Social Studies. This allows students to have an opportunity to show what they know, instead of relying on just assessments. Within the first month of getting the Chromebooks this year, her students were creating documents, sharing, and organizing with the peers and teachers. She has jumped right into other Google Apps for Education. Ms. Ryant's first project using the Chromebooks this year was with Google Drawing. She never worked with the program, but envisioned her students using the Chromebook to publish their imaginary country and her students successfully created detailed countries. Chromebooks are not the only piece of technology utilized in the classroom. Her students have created various types of movies, from Paper Slide movies to documentaries using Windows Movie Maker Live. Her students continue to benefit from engaging, collaborative, and creative activities.  

SC Midlands Summit Registration and Call for Presenters is open!

The SC Midlands Summit is back for year 2 and we need you to make it happen!

Mark Your Calendars!

June 12-13, 2013

Westwood High School

180 Turkey Farm Road, Blythewood,  SC

Registration is now open for everyone. Go to the SC Midlands Summit page and click on registration for details. 

We are also looking for presenters. Do you have what it takes? Are you trying new technology rich activities with your students that you can share? Do you have ideas on how to make technology professional development meaningful for your faculty and staff? Have you unlocked the key to assessment with technology tools? Are your students flipping over your 'flipped classroom?' If you answered yes to any of these questions and want to share with your fellow educators, submit a proposal today! 

Proposals for session and workshop presentations will be considered for inclusion in the program if they are received by midnight EST on Thursday, February 28, 2013.  Notifications of acceptance or regret will be e-mailed on or before March 28, 2013. The main presenter will receive a complimentary registration (workshop fee excluded).  Apply to present today!  

Have you seen the list of keynote/featured speakers? I think there is a little of something for everyone.

Lodge McCammon
A Specialist in Curriculum and Contemporary Media at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (www.fi.ncsu.edu). His work in education began in 2003 at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he taught Civics and AP Economics.  He finished a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2008 where his work at The Friday Institute continues to bring innovative practices to students, teachers and schools.  He developed a teaching and professional development process called FIZZ which encourages and models best practices in implementing user-generated video and online publishing in the classroom to enhance standards-based lessons.  He is also a studio composer who writes standards-based songs, with supporting materials, about advanced curriculum for K-12 classrooms. (https://www.fi.ncsu.edu/project/fizz/about)

Tammy Worcester Tang
Tammy Worcester Tang began her career in the classroom, teaching nearly every grade from kindergarten through middle school. Currently, Tammy works for ESSDACK, an educational service center in Kansas, as an Instructional Technology Specialist, providing staff development and training in the area of technology integration.

Tammy is extremely innovative and resourceful and specializes in finding unique and creative ways to use traditional computer tools in the classroom. She enjoys sharing her ideas with teachers throughout the nation, at conferences and in schools, and has a presentation style that can be described as inspiring.

Her website, “Tammy’s Technology Tips for Teachers” (www.tammyworcester.com) is a popular online resource for teachers around the world. Tammy is also the author of nearly a dozen best-selling technology resource books that are published and marketed nationally.

Greg Tang
A famed author and speaker, Greg’s goal is to to develop a more intuitive approach to teaching math, one that combines problem-solving and arithmetic and integrates math with language and art.

Greg has written a series of best-selling children’s books starting with “The Grapes of Math,” and has developed several award-winning math games and apps including Kakooma.

To see more about Greg, go to http://www.gregtang.com or http://gregtangmath.com.

We will be adding more featured speakers as we get closer to the SC Midlands Summit!

Register today!

Technology Spotlight - Staci Weeks, Ridge View High School

Flipping Calculus 

Ridge View High School teacher, Staci Weeks did not want her students to skip a beat when she was out for maternity leave. Since cloning was out, she decided to go with the next best option--flipping. (Flipping is a form of teaching in which a teacher uses technology to teach content outside of class so that students have more time to practice what they have learned in the class. This allows a teacher time for small group and individual instruction.) Mrs. Weeks used a combination of Tech Smith’s Snagit software, a Smart Slate, and Edmodo to teach her lessons. She uploaded the videos to Screencast.com and to Edmodo so that students would have access to the videos both on and off campus. Students watched the videos for homework and then came to class the following day to practice what they had learned for homework. Students helped one another in class and asked questions on Edmodo. 

How did the students feel about the flip? Many would like this method to continue. One student said, “. . .The method of her teaching was rather enjoyable. While learning lessons at home, it was much easier to understand because I could rewind a lecture whenever I did not understand something and replay as many times as I wanted. Doing homework in the classroom allowed me to look to other students for guidance if I was ever stuck on a problem.”

Mrs. Weeks gives the following advice to teachers thinking of trying to flip: “If you're planning on flipping, know that it will be time intensive at first, but it will save you time in the long run.  There is a learning curve to making the videos, but once you get the hang of it, you can make a video in less than 15 minutes, and it saves you SO MUCH classroom time.  I didn't realize how much time I lost in a lecture due to small interruptions like administration calling for a student, small discipline issues that need to be addressed, waiting for a slower student to copy notes, or PA announcements until I actually started fitting 45-minute lectures into a 15-minute video.” Here is a sample of Mrs. Weeks Flipped Lesson.

Student Approved:
“This way of learning was better than I thought it would be. If Mrs. Weeks wasn't out, it would provide a way to learn the lesson at home, and then ask questions in class if we needed further assistance. Virtual lessons also allowed me to pause the video if i needed to and rewind if i she was moving too fast or if i didn't fully grasp the concept. I am able to learn the material at my own pace. In the end, I think I would much rather learn through the virtual lesson, compared to the in class lessons we have now. I am glad I had the opportunity to experience something like this, because it might be a method of learning I would need to use in college” C'Asia .

“During the time that she was out on maternity leave, we had a "reverse classroom" meaning she would teach the lessons online, which we would learn at home, then we were to complete the assignment in the classroom. Personally, I had mixed feelings towards this. Learning the lesson at my home was nice. I was able to stop the lesson and rewind it whenever I didn't completely understand anything which was helpful. However, I didn't like the lack of a teacher who knew the subject in the classroom. If I had a question about a problem, I would have to ask a fellow student or email Mrs. Weeks and wait for a response. I prefer a more hands on or personal experience. Although, if we were to continue this sort of teaching with the actual teacher present, I would probably prefer it over the traditional classroom standard of teaching” Haley.

“ I would first like to say learning from videos was a different experience and took some getting use to.

Learning from the videos was sort of the same as if learning in class.  An advantage was being able to pause the video to write down the slides and then listen to the teacher.  It was also helpful to watch the videos as homework and practice problems together in class with my fellow students.  The only difficult part was adjusting to the videos & any technical problems and being able to ask questions and have answers right away.  Overall I believe it was a nice experience and was a nice way to learn from the classroom atmosphere” Kiana.

“The virtual experience with Mrs. Weeks was remarkable. The pros of virtual AP Calculus are : Even though our teacher was not at school, we could stay in touch with her in terms of lesson plan.

We could replay the video. Thus if we miss something, we could replay and watch it. We did not have to worry about taking notes, instead we could focus on the material”  Shadman.

Staci Weeks has been a math teacher at Ridge View High School since 2007.  She loved math as a student and earned her diploma from the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics.  After a part-time tutoring job in college, she decided to pursue a career in public education.  She married while attending USC for a BS in Mathematics.  She has since earned a Masters in Teaching, also from USC, and currently lives with her husband and two children in Lugoff, SC.  The newest addition to her family, her son Jack, was born on November 1, 2012.  

App of the Week - The Plague

Description:
Plague Inc. is a unique mix of high strategy and terrifyingly realistic simulation from developer Ndemic Creations. Can you infect the world?  

Your pathogen has just infected 'Patient Zero'. Now you must bring about the end of human history by evolving a deadly, global Plague whilst adapting against everything humanity can do to defend itself. 

"Brilliantly executed with innovative gameplay and built from the ground up for mobile, Plague Inc. evolves the strategy genre and pushes mobile gaming (and you) to new levels. It’s You vs. the world -only the strongest can survive!" Google Play

iPad: 0.99
Android: Free  (unlock full version in app 0.99)
Chrome: not available

Classroom Use: 
The Plague Inc. will be used by Muller Road Middle students to create a multi-media project that demonstrates the connections between the history of infectious diseases, their impact on the human body, and the application of statistics to the spread/outbreak of infectious diseases.

Just as epidemics infected our world years ago, Plague, Inc. spreads diseases through animals and international travel. This allows the lesson on Epidemics to come to life for the students. They can choose and name a pathogen to infect the world. Students will research 10 different diseases before deciding which one they will use in both the project and the game. Students will use the app parallel to their unit on Epidemics.

Also in Plague, Inc., students have to select a country where the disease will originate. This is a strategic way to begin the game. Students will apply what they are learning in Social Studies about countries around the world. They will need to be familiar with the geography of the country, its demographics, and its climate to recognize how easily the epidemic will grow. 

In Science, students will study the human body. Looking at the major organs and tissues as well as how organs and tissue are infected by each disease. They will also learn about the DNA associated with each epidemic. Plague, Inc. allows the students to collect DNA points and spend them to avoid detection. It also allows the students to create the symptoms of their disease and the strength of it. Just as humans in real life, the people in Plague, Inc. do everything possible to fight the disease by either slowing it down or destroying it. Students will have to be strategic in using their DNA points as they decide how to react to the government’s counter-attack.

Plague, Inc. supplies all the necessary data the students need as they plan their attack on the world. The app shows various types of graphs to describe the number of people infected etc. It uses line graphs, circle graphs, and bar graphs. The students will be creating their own graphs in math class with the data they collect about their epidemic. Plague, Inc. has great examples of how scientists and mathematicians use displays of data to compare what is happening in the world. 

A design team at Muller Road Middle School will be implementing a new unit on Epidemics at the end of February. This team includes Lakeshia Mitchell, Marquis Ardoin, Michelle Mauney and Christy Stokes. 

The team looks forward to the implementation of this unit and how Plague, Inc. will aid the students as they discover the effect of epidemics on the world. Not only do they expect it to be a fun addition to the curriculum, but also expect it to grab the students’ interest and make an impact on their learning!

*Christy Stokes is our guest blogger! Thank you for the information on how students at Muller Road Middle will be using this app!