Former student speaks to 7th & 8th graders

On Tuesday & Wednesday (Dec 21-22), Mr. Kyle Loux visited with my 7th & 8th grades classes about careers and specifically engineering. Mr. Loux graduated from Alburnett two years ago and is currently attending Purdue University studying Computer Engineering. Mr. Loux spent about 45 minutes with each class discussing many topics and answering student questions. Zach Prucha, an 8th grader, commented, "There are a lot more options for engineers and types of engineers than I thought." Another 8th grader, Tony McFarlin commented, "Engineering is in pretty much everything." Anna Possehl stated, "You have to take Physics to be a successful engineer." A question that a student asked was, "Did you take hare classes your senior year or easy classes?" Mr. Loux responded by challenging the students to be conintually challengin themselves with hard classes and learning everything possible in high school as that will help in the transition to college. An interesting statistic Mr. Loux discussed is that, it is estimated 50% of the current engineers in the U.S. will be retirement age in approximately 10 years. This will created a lot of opportunities for current high school students to focus on finding a good career in engineering. Thank you Mr. Loux, the students were engaged and had great questions!

Virtual Team Challenge Results are in!

Alburnett team 3 placed first in Iowa and 61st nationally in the Deloitte Virtual Team Challenge competition out of over 2,500 teams from all 50 states. Read more below.

Alburnett Accounting students participated in the Deloitte Virtual Team Challenge. The students were put in teams of 3-4. The teams of students were a consulting company that had to research and hire employees to help the virtual city of New City clean-up an oil spill. Each student was assigned a role as part of the consulting company including: hiring emergency services & logistics, hiring the public relations firm, hiring the legal & compliance issues, and hiring the recovery & disposal vendors. The students received information from the mayor and had to visit different stores and vendors to research employees to hire. Each team member had to hire an employee for each of the three tasks. The three tasks were; task 1-Business, task 2-Ethics, and task 3-Decision-making. Part of the hiring process was negotiating, Mr Kuhlers' students quickly found out that negotiating could cause the cost to go up or down. The goal of the simulation was for students to learn more about business and accounting. This was a national competition where the students' decisions raised money for the virtual United Way. Deloitte had over 2,500 high school teams competing online from all 50 states. Alburnett had 6 teams, with team 3 raising the most money of any Iowa team at $169,430 and ranked 61st overall nationally. The winning team raised $241,170 and was from Boone High School in Orlando, FL. The Alburnett teams are listed below:

Team 1; Alex German, Kylee Pyle & Jill Sadler raised $151,293
Team 2; Clint Francois, Kayla Hanson & Jordan Neighbor raised $164,800
Team 3; Mikayla Hand, Mitch Harger, Tonya Saddoris & Alex Stepanek raised $169,430
Team 4; Grant Henderson, Zach Lawrence, Alex Rickels & Kelsey Saddoris raised $117,700
Team 5; Zach Hoyle, Dalton Kramme, Garrett Running-Hawk & Colton Shadden raised $108,550
Team 6; Hiedi Dickerson, Taylor Matus & Briann Wieland raise $98,427

Overall this was a good, interactive simulation that gave our students a chance to experience a new aspect of Accounting (consulting). We are planning on participating again next semester.

Entrepreneurial Traits

My Introduction to Business class is starting a unit on entrepreneurs, check out the wordle that was created, the larger the word the more it is used. By the end of the semester we should have some business plans created.....will keep updating!

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2802966/Entrepreneurial_Traits

Purple-n-Gold Night a success

Alburnett FBLA organized one of the best every Purple-n-gold Nights! There was a lot of activities along with a great crowd Click the below link to see the pictures of the team introductions, teacher POMS squad, and Chaz Sorensen beating out Kylee Pyle in the 3-point contest.

https://sites.google.com/site/alburnettfbla200809/Home/purple-n-gold-night

Below is the video Clint Francois & Alex German created with Mr. Kuhlers' assistance.

Caracus to Alburnett via Skype

On Tuesday, November 9th, Mr. Alex Garcia, a businessman from Caracus, Venezuela visited the Alburnett Introduction to Business classroom via Skype. Mr. Kuhlers had the students write out questions the week before and gave those to Mr. Garcia to research his response. Mr. Garcia is an IT manager for an American company in Caracus, but he is a native Venezuelean. Most of his English communication is written so this was an opportunity for him to improve to work on his English speaking skills.

This opportunity gave the Alburnett students a chance to experience the global environment first hand. Besides hearing about Venezuela from Mr. Garcia, at the end he asked some questions in Spanish to the students. MacKenzie Mann and Jordan Neighbor stepped up to the challenge and had a short conversation with him in Spanish. This was an outstanding experience for my students and I hope to do more guest speakers via Skype as the opportunities arise.

Senior Kylee Pyle commented, this was something different and gave us a different view of how communication works. Aly Warner noted, it was neat to hear his comparisons of the U.S. and Venzuela. Danica Windfield realized that communicating isn't always as easy we want it to be. In the students reflection notes, many would like to do again, possibly using students from other countries.

Are we teaching the Love of Learning?

Education Article Summary/Reflection
Periodical: District Administration
Date: October 2010
Title: For the Love of Learning
Author: Will Richardson

Teaching education is more than passing the test or getting students into college, this article focuses on education teaching students to be self-directed, self-organized, and passionate learners. Students have more information at their fingertips through the web than we could have ever imagined from the late 80's and early 90's.

This article allowed me to reflect on my classroom at Alburnett. Are we focussing on individual student interest? Or real-problem solving? Or just the love of learning which some may refer to as exploration? Are we using the tools we have to do our best? I feel that we have to practice being passionate learners for our academia interest, which will carry over into our students. Are we trying new things and constantly updating, some new things don't go as well as others, so the next year are we adjusting or modifying or do we just scrap that idea?

This article focuses on the 21st century skills, which Mr. Richardson defines as the ability of our students to publish information to global audiences, by collaborating and creating with others who may be half way around the world at any hour of the day. Also, the ability of our students to tell stories through the use of multimedia, up to date and practical multimedia.

Sometimes it is easier to focus on the barriers, but if we step back with the attitude we want our students to develop then we need to find ways to incorporate the tools that our students are using in their personal life into education. Being creative in finding ways to use those tools in our classroom. If our students don't want to do something they will find an excuse; if they want to do something, they will find a way. The article focuses on a New Jersey school that is bringing this philosophy to their 3,200 students by making the majority of their classes inquiry based and grounding those classes in social online tools, such as blogs.

I enjoyed this article because I agree with a lot of what the author is saying and to me it makes sense. Learning is more than learning the answers for the next test, it is a passion. We need to display that passion through our teaching.

Please post ideas or thoughts or possible tools/contacts to develop this concept further at Alburnett.

Kindergarten Video Game

Two Alburnett seniors recently created a video game for the Kindergarten classes to use during their computer time. Click on the link to see the students demonstrating the video game to the Kindergarteners. The game is a fish counting game where the students have to count how many fish are on the screen. They are given three numbers and should click on the correct one that matches the number of fish on the screen. The students worked with Mrs. Paulsen and Mr. Kuhlers using GameMaker v8.0 from yoyogames.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kkuhlers/KindergartenGames#slideshow/5531627092723068290

Business students blogging

Every other week my students are required to read a magazine article or newspaper article with something to do with business and then summarize in a blog the student created online. This is great for cross-curricular for reading and writing, also students are reading and learning about business articles. Check out the link below to see what students are blogging about.

http://sites.google.com/site/kkuhlers/introduction-to-business

Venezuelan businessman coming to Alburnett

Skype is a powerful tool. My students will be having a guest speaker through Skype next week. He is an international or global businessman from Venezuela who works for an American company. This week my students are putting some questions together that I'll e-mail to him and next week we will agree on a day. He will skype into my classroom and have a discussion with my high school students.

Also, he will be speaking some Spanish to have some cross-curricular flavor to his appearance. My students are looking forward to this opportunity to learn more about global business & see if they can recognize some Spanish!?!

Alburnett Iowa and Oslo Norway

My Introduction to Business students have been grouped with students from Ann Michaelsen's Oslo, Norway students to work on a PowerPoint together. Each group has 4-7 students some from each country and they got to pick a topic: education, family, media influence or economy to create a Powerpoint teaching the other countries students about their country. Also, the students are creating a video of the "typical day" for their subject area. So far it has been outstanding.

Collaboration tools are up to the students; can use e-mail, office web apps, google accounts, skype, or whatever they agree on.

Virtual Team Challenge

I started this activity last week with my Accounting I and II students. This is a virtual simulation online of an oil spill in a virtual City "New City". The simulation is a national competition sponsored by Deloitte Accounting. Students are in teams of 4 with each student having a specific role in the team. They have to gather information to make informed decisions about hiring and cleaning up the oil spill to stop it from being a bigger environmental disaster than it already is. My students have created their avatars and started the tutorial this week, October 18th. We plan on doing for two weeks. Check it out by clicking on the below line.

http://virtualteamchallenge.com/home.php

Computer Building with Junior High Students

https://sites.google.com/site/computer7c/Home/computer-building-pics

Check out the above link. My seventh graders tearing computers apart and putting back together. Great hands on activity where they get to feel computer memory, touch a computer fan and take out a motherboard! Awesome-special thanks to Mr Mike Givens for helping lead and coordinate. Also thanks to Randy Morrison for providing the computers to deassemble and reassemble!

Summer Enrichment - Student Video Games

This summer had the great opportunity to teach our 5, 6 & 7th graders for approximately an hour and half for a two week period. We explored google sketchup and gamemaker v8.0.

In google sketchup we downloaded the physics addon and students created a car, house, and a project of their choice. We only spent a couple of days on this project. Sketchup is open source, if you get a chance check it out. The other open source software we spent some time on is Gamemaker v8.0. This is a simple visual software where students could create video games. The summer enrichment was done in partnership with our math and science departments and funded by the Greater Cedar Rapids Foundation. We are looking forward to doing again next year!

Here are a few games:

http://www.alburnett.k12.ia.us//High%20School/submittals/kkuhlers/kuhlers/SchonD-MathHamburgerChase.exe

http://www.alburnett.k12.ia.us//High%20School/submittals/kkuhlers/kuhlers/Spersflage-NumberOrder.exe

Introduction

A little information about myself. I'm Mr. Kuhlers and I teach 7-12 graders computer and business education in Iowa. I am always looking for opportunities that I can use with my students to give them a more practical and real education experience. I want my students to be able to apply their knowledge to real, unpredictable circumstances. Please add to this blog ideas that you have or have tried. If you have tried some new ideas please add your thoughts of reflection on how well the students responded to the new idea.

I enjoy learning new technologies, please add any new technologies that you may have learned or are using in your classroom. Some of the technologies I use are listed below:

In Accounting we play Monopoly on a Wii with students recording the transactions & posting
I use the Knowledge Matters-Virtual Business software in my Introduction to Business class
I use the personal finance, managment, and sports
For a quick check for understanding, I use www.polleverywhere.com
Also, my students use the Gamemaker v8.0 software in creating some quick simple video games

I am starting my seventh year and excited to find new technologies, such as incorporating www.ihaveaplaniowa.gov into my curriculum and finding an international classroom for my Introduction to Business students to interact with and learn about other cultures. This year is going to be exciting and l look forward to seeing posts about what other teachers are doing.