Sic ‘Em Saturday: Google’s Common Core Classroom

Recently, I ‘attended’ yet another webinar connected to Common Core and classrooms. It’s amazing to me just how many on-line meetings have taken place over the past few months with new ways to ‘sell’ the Standards, make them ‘easier’ or how you just can’t live without their greatness..Please, give me a break!

Here are the takeaways I got from the ‘Google Classroom‘, which by the way, is all CCSS aligned!

All the ‘Google Classroom’ programs are FREE!

Paperless & virtual so no one can see your (the student’s) mistakes!

Teacher and students are in the same domain so engaging, eagerness, pride, and confidence can be experienced with richer, deeper meaning and content!

‘Google Classroom‘ is so tech savvy and filled with all the skills needed to prepare for the SBAC assessments (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium)!

Collaboration with other students is suddenly easier and better than ever!

Kids/students can conduct their own research and become better motivated in their free time!

‘Google Classroom‘ will help the students/kids to NOT focus on a few things they can do really well, it will have them focus on lots of things for seamless assignments and workflow while enabling communication (ditches the traditional homework, classroom work)!

Dell Overview, Twitter, Netflix, and others are all involved as well since 2010!

Can take to college with you, too! As long as you have a Google Education account, your learning never ends!

Teachers can access student data and share it with many others!

Along the same lines:

As I’ve stated before in other posts, in personal conversations, on social media, all you have to do to access FREE aligned games, apps, and toys such as ‘Google Classroom‘ is offering, is to do a simple search on your smartphone. On my android, I can have over 250 apps within seconds. All aligned, designed for and targeting Common Core as ‘fun’, ‘engaging’,  and ‘cute’. However, what about some of the old companies who want in on the CCSS money machine? Like “Leap Frog”, “Think Fun” and many others?

They align as well! “Think Fun” went as far as to change their name, to become more attractive (my opinion) to the CCSS parent or/and student. New name: “Binary Arts”. “Games building 21st Century thinking skills via play.” “Change the world by translating mathematicians, engineers and inventors crazy dreams into simple toys which make STEM more organically possible.” So ‘forward thinking in curricula’ STEaM will be wonderful! (In my PCAST, STEM and CC post, I exposed how STEM is the ultimate agenda riding into our lives via CC ,all, at the current administration’s bidding; STEaM is a newer way to expand that agenda, but that’s a future post)

On “Binary Arts” blog, back in June of 2014, the owner made this statement, “Thinking Sigmund Freud meets Apple Pie.” He also expresses much support for Mr. Gates & the efforts to bring CCSS to us Americans. See blog entry:

(http://www.thinkfun.com/smartplayblog/?p=3751)

Teacher turned toy maker:

(http://www.thinkfun.com/smartplayblog/), former teacher, Tanya Thompson, expresses the importance of changing the world through play. However, listen for the portion of her talk centering around coding being a wheelhouse for education. Look into the SNAP Math Fairs (big supporter is connected to the Canadian Government’s Ministry of Education). While I’ve not researched this to see if this is CCSS north of our border, I do include the link so you can read how the website is using similar language to what we, here in America, are seeing so much of in relation to Common Core(https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/)& HATCH Conferences (http://hatchexperience.org/project/what-is-hatch/). Watch the video, if you like, click on  ‘about HATCH’ and look for the ‘creativity is the common thread’ visual. Then, listen to how many times you can hear ‘change the world’. Intel, Inc. is a big underwriter of HATCH. Intel, Inc. is an ardent defender of CCSS (see: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2013/09/business_execs_fight_for_common_core_before_its_too_late.html)

A couple of loose ends:

Before we part company for the day, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends about Binary Arts. If you watched the short video featuring the teacher/inventor, did you catch her reference to “Robot Turtles”? Did you hear “Adventure Quest”? Both these games partner with Code.org (a non profit group tied to Bill Gates, Zuckerburg with Facebook, and Kopp of Teach for America) The agenda (besides CCSS) is coding as a ‘social issue’. Holding the creative communications license to the games? Khan Academy (another group which has ‘sold out’ to CCSS). Khan is hoping to impact the proposed AP (advance placement) courses as well.

So, in “Sic ‘Em Saturday” fashion, LOOK into the games, the apps, the toys your students/kids are using. Want to stay Common Core, global agenda free during play time? Get offline! Go out and play, read together, have a family game night (use a classic game or one created before 2008, which is my time marker for before CCSS and after CCSS).