I'm sure we've all been asked, "How did you spend your summer vacation?" We usually describe the obligatory family trip, visits to the community pool with the kids or--if you're really creative and not averse to making things up--wolverine hunts in Alaska with your uncle (Napoleon Dynamite fans will understand).
Recently the Professional Services Division at the SSEC sat down for the second of our new Journal Club meetings. Building off of our last discussion of the SSEC's "LASER" (Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform) model, we read Christopher L.
Absolute excitement. That is how I would describe the atmosphere of the Smithsonian's Teachers' Night on Friday, November 15. For those who are not familiar, Teachers' Night is a special night for educators to find new resources to use in the classroom and attend demonstrations showcasing Smithsonian programs and materials.
Last week SSEC's Professional Services Division held our first Journal Club meeting. The Journal Club serves as an internal Professional Learning Community (PLC) to keep the Professional Services staff up to date with current research in the areas of professional development, educational policy, standards, and scientific literacy, just to name a few! As this was our first meeting, we decided to start at the beginning with the SSEC's seminal text Science for All Children.
A little over two years ago, more than 90 participants from the seven LASER i3 North Carolina districts gathered in Greensboro, NC for an intensive 5 1/2-day Strategic Planning Institute (SPI). During their time together, seven district leadership teams created comprehensive strategic plans aimed at transforming science education in their districts.
In September 2013, the 10th annual meeting of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences (IANAS) was held in Santiago, Chile.
In recent years, Pinterest has grown to be one of the most influential social platforms on the Internet. According to Mediabistro, Pinterest hit 10 million unique visitors faster than any site in history and has grown by over 2,000% since May 2011. Pinterest boasts some pretty amazing statistics proving that it is the ultimate tool used for gathering and organizing content found on the web.
Hi. My name is Inez Leibman, and I am the New Mexico Regional Coordinator for the NSRC LASER i3 program. I was born and raised in northern New Mexico and have spent most of my adult life here. My background is in elementary education and educational leadership. I spent seventeen years teaching -- three in an urban private school setting and fourteen in a rural public school. I spent the majority of my teaching career working with Limited English Proficient and "high risk "students. I saw the challenges faced by students growing up in poverty and difficult living situations.
As states adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), everyone is wondering about what the assessments will look like. This is not because everyone is suddenly fascinated with the finer points of educational measurement, but because assessment is often known as the "tail that wags the dog" of education; it has a disproportionately large impact on curriculum, instruction, and outcomes.
Effective science education is, in itself, an innovation engine and more urgently needed now than ever before to address such major issues as climate change, national security, conservation of resources, disease epidemics and other health threats, trade, and more. In President Obama's words, "... we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow. And I don't intend to have us out-educated" (Obama, 2009).
After News 14 Carolina did a great story on the LASER i3 Summer Professional Development, they wanted to come back for more! Linnie Supall visited Princeton Elementary School and did a great piece on how the students are now interacting with the curriculum. "I've seen a lot of little girls now say, 'I might want to be a scientist when I grow up. I might want to be a biologist and study the fish in the ocean'" Bridgers said.
Check out the rest of the story here.
Hi! I'm Kim Ottosen, the Houston Regional Coordinator for the NSRC LASER i3 program. That's a long title for what I really do -- information hub, professional badger, and barrier reducer. In a grant this size with so many complexly integrated parts, I find myself doing things I never imagined I would do and I'll bet you do too.
Instead of teaching young people about science, we want them to do science. That’s one of the central notions in teaching science as inquiry and it’s a core part of the Next Generation Science Standards. Said that way it sounds simple, but when we step back and try to articulate exactly what doing science means it becomes a bit tricky. Is it collecting data? Is it developing research questions? Is it defending and advancing arguments based on evidence? The short answer to each of these questions is “Yes, and…”.
New learning standards are designed to keep up with the changing needs of new generations of schoolchildren. By that measure, New York University Professor Okhee Lee sees the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a success.
The following blog was written by first-grade North Carolina teacher Tiffany Kramer. Tiffany provides some time-saving strategies and insight that may help other LASER i3 teachers. Thank you, Tiffany, for sharing with us!
After attending our first week of LASER i3 training in 2011, my 1st grade team was very excited about the engaging lessons the kit provided, but we also wondered how much time it would take. It seems like every teacher's schedule gets tighter every year. We wondered how we would find time to set up, teach the lesson, clean up, and make use of student notebooks.
As the temperature cools and crowds slowly begin to leave our nation's capital, one thing is certain (OK, maybe two things are certain): summer is nearly over, and the SSEC's 2013 International K-12 Science Education Institute for Leadership Development and Strategic Planning has come to a close.
In my freshman-year biology class in college, my professor asked the 120 students in the room to think about how a tree acquires mass as it grows. I was puzzled, having never been asked this question in previous biology classes, and other students felt the same way and didn't know the answer. After allowing us to deliberate for a little while, the professor proceeded to show us a video of Harvard and MIT graduates coming up with the wrong answer to this fundamental question about photosynthesis.
During our annual National Science Education Leadership Development Forum in Alexandria, VA, Professor Lisa Kenyon talked about creating a culture of argumentation in a science classroom. We talked about why you might want a culture of argumentation in your classroom in our previous post. This week, we will discuss what teachers can do to create this culture in their classrooms.
"In order to understand Earth, you have to understand rocks and minerals." Dr. Michael Wise took science teachers from around the nation behind the scenes to learn about some unusual rocks and minerals. His specialty is with pegmatite a mineral found in a variety of critical electronics (such as video game consoles).
A culture of argumentation... at first it doesn't sound like the sort of thing you would want to encourage in the classroom. But especially in science class, it is exactly what our students need. "Argumentation" is the backbone of how scientists talk to one another. Similar to building a court case, scientific arguments are a way to explain what you think, and why you think that way. Unfortunately, despite argumentation's critical role in science, it is seldom used in teaching the subject.
Why should we support education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)? The answer is simple yet profound. We must all recognize that we live in an era of constant scientific discovery and technological change, which directly affects our lives and requires our input as citizens. And we must recognize that as our economy increasingly depends on these revolutionary new advances, many new jobs will be created in STEM fields.
With our second Science Academy for Teachers of the summer gone and behind us, we have moved ahead with the third and final Earth History Academy that took place in Washington DC this past week.
Here are some highlights from this summer's Energy Academy:
Evolutionary relationships and phylogeny can be a confusing topic even for some college students, so how do K-12 science teachers navigate this sometimes frustrating topic and find the resources to help them share this important knowledge with their students?
I was talking with some of the teachers during the Biodiversity Academy week here in Washington D.C. about software programs or online resources that would be appropriate for middle school or elementary audiences. Here are a few online resources I found that may be helpful in those settings:
Welcome to Houston! It's the middle of July, we're in our second-to-last week of training (there are six total), and our staff and trainers are not nearly as exhausted as we thought we would be at this point in the summer.
A group of volunteers gather for quick photo.
Citizen science projects engage members of the public in scientific research. With the Next Generation Science Standards' emphasis on science and engineering practices, these projects provide an ideal way to involve students in the process of scientific investigation. An abundance of mobile apps makes participation in citizen science projects easier than ever and allows data entry in the field. Here is a selection of apps that we found particularly useful for engaging students.
We had a busy week this week with the first Smithsonian Educational Academy for Teachers of the summer underway. This week's theme was Biodiversity, and twenty-four K-12 science teachers from all over the nation came to Washington DC to participate.
Hi, Energy Academicians!
Welcome to our 2013 Energy SSEAT Blog. This site was created for you to network, share ideas, to keep touch after the Academy, and generally to provide a casual digital forum for us to talk energy!
Hi, Biodiversity Academicians!
Welcome to our 2013 Biodiversity SSEAT Blog. This site was created for you to network, share ideas, to keep touch after the Academy, and generally to provide a casual digital forum for us to talk biodiversity!
First off please introduce yourselves:
As many of you are done or winding down with the school year, we wanted to ask...how was it? We think ours was pretty good based on some of the feedback we got from students:QUOTE-I-learned-so-much-about
Happy summer, everyone! This is our favorite time of year because we get to meet and work with so many teachers!
We just finished our first week of LASER i3 Professional Development (PD) in Santa Fe, New Mexico! 86 science teachers, representing 17 schools and 12 districts joined us June 3-7 at Gonzales Community School for five intense days of PD.
Teachers spent the first half of the week diving deep into science content as adult learners. From first grade teachers exploring biological systems to sixth grade teachers revisiting physics formulas, participants were challenged as they became the student in inquiry-based discussions and activities.