My school has made an amazing commitment to technology.

Weve
enrolled in google classroom and acquired chromebooks for every
student. The use of google apps in the classroom has truly revolutionized
my teaching! We have also made a big move towards implementing
makerspaces in every school in the district. These will be areas where
students can engage in any STEAM related activity. Being a younger
teacher, and a really big nerd, Ive been on the forefront in terms of
integrating this technology in my school. Ive spent the past three years
on the makerspace community and Im extremely excited to see that
hard work come to fruition this year.
Google apps in conjunction with student chromebooks has truly
impacted my teaching. All of googles apps integrate so well with the
tools we have in classroom and also the devices that the students use at
home. Google has also been extremely cooperative with the teachers
using their platform. They have continually upgraded their systems with
feedback from teachers! This has made it easy to commit entirely to this
technology. It is my opinion that when you build an ecosystem that
enables the students to ask questions and supply them with the tools to
needed to answer questions in a simple and intuitive interface, the
learning environment can benefit. This is especially true in science
where we want our students to think with an inquiry mindset. Our
schools commitment to this has enabled me to create and build this
ecosystem for the students in my class and the results have been
fantastic thus far. In 2015 CBC news interviewed a school in nova scotia
who has done the same thing and the feedback from teachers was great.

However, one of the important things I found in the article is "Simply us

sharing first and last name, their email address and encrypted password
is all that's required to do that, and all that we would share," [CBC 2015]. I
think this shows that Google is on the same page as educators in terms of
respecting student privacy and internet safety. This means that the
relationship between Google and education will continue to grow.
With students having such seamless connectivity to the web, I can
now integrate even more technology into my teaching. I do this through
numerous different java, and recently html5, applets. I think that these
are invaluable when it comes to the more abstract topics in physics. It
provides students with the ability investigate the relationships between
physical quantities and see those relationships visually, even when
youre dealing with an invisible quantity. Loo Wee sites a wonderful
graphic from the Singapore Ministry of Education showing the teacher
as the leader of inquiry and the student as the inquirer, both as hands
supporting a circle. Both of the hands are able to turn the circle where,
at the center, is science as an inquiry. These kinds of technology enable
us to create inquiry based activities for a variety of different subjects and
student levels. [Wee 2012]
However, many of these types of technologies, like the ones that
Wee cites are usable only when a teacher is there to facilitate the
experiment. Many schools are now also creating designated Maker
Spaces where students are able to come during their free time and have
access to a variety of 21st century tools. For instance, one of our students
decided he was going to build a full size dragon out of cardboard. He

designed the entire thing in Google Sketchup and then cut out over 500 2
dimensional pieces in order to construct the dragon! So many students
have great ideas like this, but may not be in the best socio-economical
position to do it. By creating a maker space, we can give other students
opportunities to work on projects like this as well as allow teachers to
introduce their students to things like 3D printers, costly computer
software. Even things as simple as wood says and screwdrivers can all be
found there. Nate Stone, coordinator of IdeaLab, a makerspace in Denver
Public Library has found that students flourish in this kind of learning
environment. He goes on to say We started out thinking that we were
going to have to provide all of the programming, but have found that
offering a space with tools tends to facilitate collaboration and the
sharing of advice. [Enis 2015] This is the environment that we have been
trying to build at our school and it is a huge part of what I try to do as an
educator.
In essence, my philosophy is all about inquiry. I want to take
students and teach them to think for themselves. Whether this be about
physics and having students question relationships between physical
quantities they encounter in their daily lives or about students creating
and building things for the simple reason of: Can I build this? The most
innovative thinkers of our time were always people who pushed and
questioned the status quo. It is of my opinion that many people are just
doing things because everyone else is or because they were told to. I feel
we should all question this and ask ourselves why? every once in
awhile. This is what our students need to make the next great leap.

References
Enis, Matt. "Meet Your Maker: Maker Spaces Are Branching Out In Unique New Ways As The
Movement Grows". Library Journal 140.12 (2015)
Wee, Loo. "Physics Educators As Designers Of Simulation Using EJS". N.p., 2012. Web. 8 Oct.
2016.
"Google Apps for Education finds place in Nova Scotia classrooms." The Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation 14 Sept. 2015. General OneFile. Web. 8 Oct. 2016.