Amazon Education Has an OER Platform

A few months ago Amazon Education launched a private beta open education resource platform.  I've been lucky enough to be a private beta participant and I'm enjoying the site.  It's easy to find resources and get ideas from other innovative and effective educators.

Currently the site allows invited educators to post and search for K - 12 resources.  Educators can search the site by grade level, subject area, standard, and creator. 

The open resource movement is a fantastic way for educators to collaborate throughout the world and provides a free way to find high quality teaching resources outside what has been purchased in a box from a school district.

Back in October 2015 the U.S. Department of Education announced the launch of #GoOpen to encourage such collaboration.  Amazon was named as a collaborator in that announcement.  Fourteen states (unfortunately not California) have launched statewide initiatives.

 If you'd like to join the wait list for the platform go to http://bit.ly/AmazonEduWaitList

Upstander Comments Using MC Squares

The last activity of the year that we did with the MC Squares was to write positive comments about each classmate.  Each student wrote their name in the middle of their MC Square.  We passed the squares around and each student wrote a bucket-filling comment about each of their peers.  When students got their own square back they took a picture of themselves holding the square and had a chance to read all the positive feedback.  It was a great feel-good end of year activity. (no photos for privacy reasons)

Disney Imagineer Lesson with MC Squares

In June 2015 I wrote about a Disney Imagineer lesson my students worked on.  I updated it this year to include the use of the MC Squares.  Students used the squares to map their ride.  When they shared their ride with the class they were able to point to different aspects of the ride on the map as they described it or showed pictures either on paper or a digital presentation tool.  Most groups used 2 squares for their map so they had space for a map key and the details of the ride.