Day 01 - Organize Your Team

Our first order of business is getting to know one another, starting with names. I'm going to do my best to guess your names and you will correct me. Names are important and with your help I should be able to get all of them right sooner rather than later.

The second thing we will do is get everyone added into Google Classroom. STEAM 2 will be run primarily through Google Classroom - many assignments and assessments will rely on Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Forms, and I will post a question of the day every day for you to answer immediately upon entering the room. I will also use Google Classroom to post a link to today's lesson, so if you have trouble remembering whether we are on day 7 or day 8 of a unit, just check Google Classroom and that will set you straight.

Next we need to set up Google Drive so that we have a clean system into which our work can be stored for editing, sharing, and evaluating. To do that, go to your Google Drive and create a new folder. Title it "STEAM 2 - Your Name". As an example, I'd title mine "STEAM 2 - Michael Sullivan". Then share that folder with me and make sure I have full editing rights to the folder and its contents.

Having an individual folder is only half of the storage structure we need. Much of the work in STEM 2 is team-based, so you are going to need to form teams and then make a team folder. You have 2 minutes to form teams of 3 or 4 people. I will feel free to assign groups if I find teams of 2 or individuals who have not joined a team by the end of the 2 minutes. Move quickly and decisively.

Once you have your team formed, you will need a team name. You have 5 minutes to come up with a team name. It must follow this formula: two words, with the first word being the color of your row of computers and the second word being a pluralized noun that is not commonly associated with that color, so something like "blue penguins" or "yellow panthers" would work fine. Once you have your team name, have one person on the team create a folder in Google Drive and name it the same as your team name. Then share it with everyone on the team and with me, and put your individual STEM 2 folder inside the team folder.

Tomorrow we will start our first scenario as part of our review of the Engineering Design Process (EDP). For today, we're going to spend a litle time talking about STEAM expectations..