One August 1st we hosted a workshop at Boston Public Schools to give teachers – of all content areas and grade levels – an opportunity to dive in and create. Because we strongly believe in learning by doing, it’s only appropriate for us to have teachers learn how to incorporate our learning tool into their curriculum by using it!

While there were many fabulous movies created by all, I wanted to share this particular one made by Lisa Schad at the Mario Umana Academy in East Boston.  This particular video exemplifies our claims to the value of putting story to topics that often lack such context so kids can make sense of new content to what they feel comfortable.  For example, Lisa explained that her students have always struggled with ratios, as the focus was on numbers, yet it was wrote memorization rather than a true understanding of what ratios meant.  One day in class she offered and example to students asking if they wanted to make a certain flavor of skittles in their mouth how many more blue ones would they need than red ones. They immediately had the answer, and taking this experience to the next level visually, she created a movie illustrating ratios as tasty as skittles themselves!