(One student complaint: It's confusing switching back and forth between Google Classroom and a newer course platform, Chalkup).Ĭurrently, the teaching team is working to find balance among learning that captures students' passions making a broader impact on society and covering the academic basics, as well. She continues to experiment, update and overhaul the curriculum each year, changing up everything from course offerings to the software used on every student's laptop. Īnd Armaan Ismail, a ninth-grader who's partnered with a girl from another school to create Guardian Locket, a small pendant that works like a panic button, sending a series of discreet emergency texts in case of danger.īhatt, a teacher for more than a decade, got excited about experimenting with new ways of learning, technology and entrepreneurship when she took a side job consulting with a startup on the development of an educational iPad app. I also chat with more entrepreneurial students - like Heidi Mendez, an eighth-grader who used her budding coding and graphic-design skills to design a logo and build a website for her mother's pet grooming company. So if I mess up I can go back and know what I did wrong."Ī couple of ninth-graders run the school's Instagram account: They've photographed, uploaded and tagged me by the time I leave. "Like in our 3-D printing class, I film the whole thing. One student in the Minecraft group takes out his phone and videotapes me interviewing them. Students are divided into "tribes" and research various artifacts that would have existed at the time. Paleolithic cultures are brought to life in Sujata Bhatt's sixth-grade class, where students re-create an ancient Pakistani city inside the virtual world of Minecraft. So he's able to contribute some firsthand knowledge. Ahad, as it turns out, once visited the archaeological sites of the tribe his group is working on, on a family trip back to Pakistan. Some members of his group do research others troubleshoot the technology. And I feel like this teaches us to collaborate." "If I went to any other school I wouldn't play Minecraft for a grade. "I really like this history project," says Ahad Lakhani, a well-spoken sixth-grader with glasses. On the day of my visit, these students are working in groups, using the game Minecraft to build a historically accurate environment for a particular Neolithic or Paleolithic people. Much of the classroom learning is done independently or as a group, with the teacher stepping in as needed.įounder Sujata Bhatt also teaches the sixth-grade humanities course. Incubator founder and sixth-grade teacher Sujata Bhatt assists student Elise Mayfield with a Minecraft assignment. Yasemine came up with her idea for keeping earbuds stored and neat in a class at the Incubator School, a new public school in Los Angeles that focuses on STEM, entrepreneurship, gaming and a collaborative approach to learning. This is kind of disgusting, but it can cause acne." "If you're washing your hands, water can get on your buds and damage them," the ninth-grader explains. In a cacophonous hallway crowded with her classmates, she launches into her pitch: Her invention is called the Slapwrap, a braceletlike device for storing earbuds. Our Ideas series is exploring how innovation happens in education.įourteen-year-old Yasemine Dursun is an aspiring entrepreneur. Since students enter the school with varying language abilities, they are able to start the program at a level tailored to them. All of the students use the language learning app Duolingo on their laptops. Adam Livneh speaks to a classmate in his sixth-grade Spanish class.
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