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Smart Irrigation With the TI-Nspire™ CX Ecosystem: “Students See That Mathematics Is Actually Very Useful”
Posted 29/08/2022 by Carlos CoelhoThe motivation and enthusiasm of the students at Molelos Secondary School in Tondela, Portugal, were the driving forces behind the Smart Irrigation project using the TI-Nspire™ CX Ecosystem. But it was maths teacher Olga Pestana who put the wheels in motion.
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T³ Europe Tips for Your Summer Break
Posted 01/07/2022 by Sónia ReisThe summer holiday is here! You’ll probably be looking forward to recharging, and you might also be looking for some good ideas for inspiring books, websites, videos or podcast series. We asked five education specialists and T3 instructors to share their favourite content and how they will spend their free time in the summer. Hope you find something inspiring!
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Temperature: What It Means and How We Measure It
Posted 10/06/2022 by Ian GallowayAlmost nothing happens in the universe without there being a difference of temperature between two places. This suggests that most energy changes are associated with a temperature difference.
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The Heartbeat of STEM
Posted 06/04/2022 by Jessica KohoutAre you interested in introducing your students to coding but are not sure how? Read about this heart-pounding STEM project that will get your students excited about programming.
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Infrared Radiation and the James Webb Space Telescope
Posted 11/02/2022 by Ian GallowayThe James Webb Space Telescope has reached Lagrange point 2, one and a half million kilometers away, and is getting ready to explore the cosmos in the infrared part of the spectrum. Expansion of the universe means that after 15 billion years the light emitted by the earliest galaxies has stretched so that it is now in the infrared part of the spectrum. In this blog we focus on the discovery and use of infrared radiation.
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Challenges From Space: The James Webb Space Telescope and Lagrange Points
Posted 01/02/2022 by Ian GallowayOn January 23, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope reached its destination. This highly complex instrument is taking advantage of a cosmic location discovered by Euler and Lagrange more than 200 years ago. Read on to see how you can incorporate this into a classroom activity to calculate the Lagrange points.
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Sharing Inspiration 2021: Energy — the Elephant in the Room
Posted 06/12/2021 by Ian GallowayThe last session of Sharing Inspiration 2021 took place days after the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) had finished in Glasgow. Effectively, this was the T3 contribution to the debate on climate change and sustainable development.
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Students Should Free Themselves From Pen and Paper, and Start Learning By Doing
Posted 17/11/2021 by Sónia ReisWith 25 years of teaching experience, Alexandre Gomes is practical about the role of technology in education. The physics and chemistry teacher, and T³ Europe instructor, believes that technology education in schools must evolve from theory to practice. "You need students to free themselves from pen and paper and to actually start learning by doing. And learning by doing, using Texas Instruments technology, makes perfect sense.”
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Computational Thinking for all students Dutch Leo Kanner school
Posted 13/05/2021 by Koen StulensThe aim of the Computational Thinking strategy at the Leo Kanner secondary school in Leiden is to teach children to approach problems logically and to use digital tools to solve them. To this end, the school organised a pilot programme using TI-Nspire™ CX technology. “An important plus is that you learn the basics of computational thinking through this technology,” says teacher Zeno van der Zalm. “We started small, but we are now in the phase where we are involving more teachers and subjects in the trajectory.
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How I performed lab experiments during lockdown
Posted 18/03/2021 by Fernanda Neri, physics and chemistry teacher, Escola Secundária de Amares, PortugalHow can my students work on the lab experiments that are mandatory in the Portuguese curriculum during lockdown? As a physics and chemistry teacher I would like to share my experiences of switching to virtual lessons because of the global pandemic. Learning by doing is important to me; this is how students get a true understanding of physics and chemistry. When I get the chance, I sneak into a lab to use practical examples to explain scientific concepts, even during my regular classes. When I didn’t have these options during lockdown, I worked on solutions with the help of TI-Nspire CX technology.
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Applying Research in STEM Classrooms Concretely - Sharing Inspiration 2021
Posted 05/02/2021 by Ian GallowayIn 2021, our biennial conference Sharing Inspiration will go virtual. For the first time Sharing Inspiration also offers year-round activities for teachers, such as quarterly conferences and monthly webinars. On January 21, the first of these quarterly conferences was held. Read a report on this conference which focused on ‘Applying Research in STEM Classrooms Concretely.’
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Physics project: students sprint towards sustainable waste solutions
Posted 23/10/2020 by Sónia Reis
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Separating out metal, developing greener ways to collect waste, fishing plastic out of water, washing glass and compressing domestic rubbish — these are the sustainable waste solutions which the students worked on. Using scrum, they were able to work independently, and this gave them the freedom to solve problems. “It’s challenging for both teachers and students,” said physics teacher Cathy Baars, who devised the project, “because the resulting product is not fixed.”
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It Is Okay to Rely on Technology
Posted 14/09/2020 by Stephan GriebelEvery student has the right to receive proper education according to their individual abilities, talents and gifts. The individualization of education has been made even more challenging during the coronavirus lockdown, and collective distance learning made this aspiration close to impossible to realize. I witnessed teachers taking on the challenges imposed by forced home schooling, reinventing their teaching style in no time to make the best of the situation despite the constraints. Even though the situation was far from ideal, these teachers deserve our admiration and support for the months to come. As of September 2020, we already know the coming months will remain challenging.
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Talking to machines – my thoughts on sustainability, technology, and Python
Posted 07/07/2020 by Ian GallowayHow should we ‘talk’ to machines? What language do they speak? Can they speak our language? Whatever means of communication is chosen it is now clear that for the first time in history we have the capability of ‘talking to machines’. That is to say that machines are no longer something we simply use but something we control. Herein lies the danger. If humans forget how the machine functions the machine itself will no longer be able to sustain itself in the event of breakdown.
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My new school project: controlling a fighter jet with a handheld
Posted 06/07/2020 by Ludovic Duchenne, Maths and computer sciences teacher Lycée Touchard Washington, Le MansWouldn’t it be a cool school project to write code to control a plane? And would it not be even cooler to do this for a military fighter jet like the French Rafale? I thought of developing this activity – while reliving the movie Top Gun in my head – as early as 2018. The coronavirus lockdown was a good opportunity for me to finally start working on the project. I was keen to get back to school after lockdown to surprise my computer science and technology students with a very different end of the year activity!
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Education is key for a sustainable future; join in developing content!
Posted 02/07/2020 by Stephan GriebelSTEM education can play an important role in creating a sustainable future. Understanding issues relevant to sustainable development requires mathematics, including statistics and programming. To help facilitate this, an ambitious new project has been set up by T3 Europe involving content co-creation. We want to design classroom activities and content with STEM and sustainability in mind. That’s why we are calling on teachers to develop activities for this T3 Europe STEM sustainable development project.
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Programming the TI-Innovator Rover inspires Finnish and Portuguese exchange students
Posted 24/06/2020 by Carlos CoelhoCoding and TI technology were at the heart of a successful exchange trip by several Finnish students to the Ermesinde High School in Portugal. The Portuguese and Finnish students worked side by side programming their own TI-Nspire handhelds. They were able to instruct the robotic vehicle Rover to follow a course and avoid obstacles using its distance sensor.
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Join our successful T³ Europe Webinar Program!
Posted 26/05/2020 by Ian GallowaySince the start of the corona crisis, the T³ teachers' association has developed webinars so you as a teacher can continue to work remotely on your professional development. The free T³ Europe webinars are designed for T³ instructors and lead teachers enhancing their knowledge about effective use of TI technology. The webinar series has got off to a good start. Since April 2, 2020 registration ran at more than 180 for the three with about 50 people logging in to listen at each session.
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Top 5 Tips for Transitioning to Virtual Teaching
Posted 14/04/2020 by Erica SchillerRichard Snow is a T³ Instructor and an expert in distance learning. He was the first educator to use TI graphing calculator emulator software while teaching students in an online environment. For the past 15 years, he has been teaching remotely and is sharing his top tips. Snow got schooled in communication skills when he went to visit a community of his distance learning students in person. His students were truly remote — only accessible by plane. Once he flew in, he enjoyed doughnuts and conversation with them. One student’s comment struck a chord: “You don’t seem nearly as mean in person as you do online.”
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Tropical storm leads to STEM project on La Reunion
Posted 06/04/2020 by Marthe Pariset“Combining math with real-world challenges through a ‘learning by doing’ approach is very rewarding. Sometimes teachers don’t get involved with STEM projects because they are not experts in all the different fields. But it is quite normal not to understand all the theory before starting a project. You learn on the go. I know from experience that finding a solution to a problem together with your students is very motivating!”
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