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If we want students to succeed in the STEM workforce and solve tomorrow's challenges we need to transform the way students engage with mathematics.
The arrival of COVID-19 has changed lives around the globe on an unprecedented scale. In the process, it has begun to transform learning for millions of students, introducing many to distance learning for the first time and placing virtual learning resources center stage worldwide. While the migrati
The nine dimensions are:
Dynamic Representations: Collaborative Reasoning: Immediate and Individualized Feedback: Science Argumentation Skills: Engineering Design Processes: Computational Thinking: Project-based Interdisciplinary Learning: Embedded Assessments: Evidence-based Models:
Curtin University has welcomed Western Australia’s first State-wide STEM skills strategy, which aims to ensure the next generation is equipped to participate in the future workforce. Minister for Science, Innovation and ICT, the Hon Dave Kelly MLA, today launched the new State Government strategy titled ‘Future Jobs, Future Skills: Driving STEM Skills in WA’. Curtin University was represented on the STEM Advisory Panel, which helped guide the direction of the STEM skills strategy, through Professor Jo Ward, the Academic Lead for Curtin’s Athena SWAN program.
As both a parent and a citizen of the world — a world that I want to survive past my children and grandchildren — I feel that it is crucial at this point in time that we support our children in their understanding and love of STEM, if only for our own selfish purposes: to save the world — literally.
Interested in trying Geniventure? Our new dragon genetics game, Geniventure, will be released in August 2019! At that time, access to the Geniventure materials will be free and open to the public. Geniventure uses a game-like environment to teach genetics, inheritance and the gene-to-protein relationship. Geniventure has lots of exciting features including: * an integrated intelligent tutoring system that helps guide student learning and alerts teachers when their students are struggling, * a real-time teacher dashboard that shows student progress, performance and conceptual understanding, * multiple gene-to-protein challenges, * the ability to run on iPads and other tablets, and * engaging art and storyline. Included in this release will be a set of extensive teacher support materials. Teachers will have access to the Geniventure online course that includes teaching tips as well as theory and background information. In addition, teachers will be able to use our student handouts, worksheets, and discussion guides, as well as pre- and post-assessments.
"I once saw a fascinating TED talk on 3D printing. As I watched the presenter discuss the custom fabrication, not of plastic gears or figurines, but of living, implantable kidneys, I thought I was finally living in the world of Star Trek, and I experienced a flush of that eager, expectant enthusiasm I felt as a child looking toward the future. I looked at my current career and felt a rejuvenation of my commitment to teach young people the power of science."
"There is merit in school students learning coding. We live in a digital world where computer programs underlie everything from business, marketing, aviation, science and medicine, to name several disciplines. During a recent presentation at a radio station, one of our hosts said that IT would have been better background for his career in radio than journalism."
Via EDTECH@UTRGV
Engage Kids in Hands-on Engineering
Use DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL hands-on activities and videos in classrooms and afterschool programs, in libraries and museums, at events and at home, along with our newest resource DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL CLUBS that connect 10- to 13-year-olds in out-of-school programs around the world.
Be creative and help people with engineering at DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL. Watch videos, play games, try activities, and share designs with the community.
Abstract This article is a commentary essay that uses the connected learning framework (Ito et al., 2013) as a lens to explore the relationship between making, coding, and critical literacy in the context of literacy teacher education. Critical literacy theorists have argued that it is important to understand the perspective and positionality of an author in order to make sense of a text in the context of history, society, and cultural norms (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999; Gee, 1999; Jewitt, 2008). Likewise, software, written by coders, is also a form of media that requires interrogation and critical analysis. Increasingly, digital technologies have played a part in individuals’ social, political, and economic lives, yet only a small percentage of individuals can read the code that has designed this software (Rushkoff, 2010). Therefore, to foster greater civic literacy and engagement, an important aspect of literacy instruction in the digital era should include a basic understanding of the fundamentals of coding languages. However, few teacher educators have the knowledge of computer programming to integrate coding into literacy education courses and, therefore, this aspect is missing from much of current teacher education.
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Rescooped by
Kim Flintoff
from STE(A)M
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The Toy Story Police Department (TSPD) is investigating a series of kidnappings. Baby stuffed animals are being kidnapped from their homes and sold on the international stuffed slave market. Sheriff Woody raided the office of the suspected ringleader. The Toy Story Incident Response (TSIR) team was able to perform data acquisition on found devices and computers. The suspect claims he is innocent and that any evidence found was planted on his computer. TSPD has also captured a laptop from one of the alleged stuffed animal buyers. Your job is to analyze the acquired data and answer the questions in the attached document so that Sheriff Woody can bust this evil stuffed slave market.
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We’ve set our challenge as: “How do we emerge from COVID-19 impacts with an education system that is responsive, adaptable, contributory, community-linked and future-focussed?” This program was borne out of the imagination of Western Australian educators wanting to generate authentic learning experiences for WA school students to apply STEM-inspired, curriculum-linked, design-thinking processes to solving real-world problems relating to the immediate and future impacts of COVID-19 and other community related needs in Western Australia. Inspired by the WA State Government and Public Sector iThink initiative we have translated their call for the combined skills and capabilities of the Western Australian community to bring WA school students to address the challenges identified.
The answer to empowering our learners by giving them purpose and inspiring their passion may be right under our noses. In play, one group of children may use dozens of LEGO pieces to recreate the excavator they found fascinating on their neighborhood walk, while another group of students uses Minecraft to create a fireworks display in honor of the Chinese New Year. Taken together, students learn the science and engineering behind simple machines or the importance of cultural practices in social studies, while learning how to collaborate with others and create something better together. In each instance, students use elements of design thinking to cocreate and problem solve, engaging in thoughtful dialogue and continuous iteration. This play can be made into so much more if educators guide students by demonstrating the utility of the content they're learning and inviting students into the process of meaning making.
MAY 2019: PEDAGOGICAL TRENDS IN STEM EDUCATION Student-centred pedagogies are a key element in STEM education as they develop a variety of skills transferable to other disciplines and topics, such as problem solving or collaborative skills. Scientix highlights the pedagogical trends in STEM, such as problem-based learning, project-based learning, challenge-based learning, design thinking, blended learning or the flipped classroom, and presents the latest overview of inquiry-based learning in science education (IBSE) practice in Europe.
If there's one thing a robotics class needs, it's floor space. Otherwise, students can't really test their creations. Gaining room for that and giving the kids workspaces where they could leave their projects to come back to later were two of the goals for converting a traditional middle school computer lab into an innovation lab at Chatham Middle School in New Jersey. The lab is also used for coding and computer aided drawing and design lessons, as part of a "STEM micro campus" within the building.
Stem is not Maker Craft. It is not paddle pops sticks, marshmallows, pasta and cardboard. It may involve these at some point, but it is not what we find when we search the internet and pick the first pretty picture. STEM is not a 1 hour activity to fill a Friday afternoon. It may be part of an ongoing project in which an allocated timeframe is used to dig deeply and engage in learning. STEM is not a specialised time to withdraw kids and make stuff. It’ just not this. Ever STEM is not coding for an hour a week. Coding is an integral part of it, but you just can’t call it STEM if that’s all you’re doing. STEM is not a task that fulfils one outcome from our over populated syllabi. It takes more than one outcome to come plate a STEM project. STEM is not ticking a box on a ‘future focussed’ learning strategy on a school plan. It’s a purposeful change in practice that needs to be adopted over time, and with strategic intent.
Teaching science through narrative underscores the fact that knowledge is not fixed, but rather always emerging through active questioning of the unknown. Stephen Klassen, a former physics education researcher at the University of Winnipeg, explains that stories can be used to open doors for learners, prompting curiosity by providing the “reasons for needing to know”— the motivations behind a scientist’s actions. By exploring how scientists question and cultivate curiosity, students can begin to imagine themselves as interrogators of our universe.
To prepare for a 21st-century workforce, students across the country are developing skills in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But STEM learning doesn’t only happen in the classroom; it also happens at home, at the library, in museums, and in afterschool and summer programs. Informal settings like these are essential to STEM learning, yet members of the public don’t fully appreciate the value of STEM learning outside of school or understand the need to bridge—or connect—STEM learning that happens in different environments. How can advocates make a stronger case for bridging STEM education across settings? A new report by the FrameWorks Institute offers insights. Supported by the Oath Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Bezos Family Foundation, the report is part of the Families Learning Across Boundaries (FamLAB) project, which is led by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in partnership with FrameWorks, New York University, and Stanford University.
Education Week offers you a big-picture look at how states, districts, and schools can overcome the obstacles that prevent more students from succeeding in STEM as they progress through school.
On the first day of school, science classrooms around the country welcomed back their scientists, who also happen to be their students. As we're establishing classroom cultures and norms, it's an optimal time to celebrate citizenship — not only in the classroom, but in the community. After all, these students will someday change the world… and that day may be today. The notion of being a scientist used to require one to go to a lab. Now, we're able to collect and manipulate relevant data from anywhere. From the heart rate monitors in their smartwatches and accelerometers in their phones to simply taking note of the natural world around them, our students have the opportunity to connect with the outside world, which provides them with a starting point for interacting with the larger world and someday changing it for the better.
Updates on all NASA Missions
Hello World issue 6 brings together a collection of experts, who address the challenges of ethics, and how that affects and underpins the teaching of computer science. They share ideas, thoughts and experiences, and look at how to inspire students, whilst grounding them in an ethical ethos. Also in this issue: Bringing Minecraft – and a bicycle! – to the classroom The Hitchhiker’s Guide to KS3 computing Using Escape Rooms to improve problem-solving skills What’s turning girls off computer science?
The major group representing science educators is making this point crystal clear: The scientific consensus for climate change due to human activity is overwhelming, and the topic must be taught in K-12 classrooms. The National Science Teachers Association says in its position statement, released this morning, that the science of climate change is as well established as other fields, like plate tectonics and planetary astronomy, and that the subject should be taught in K-12 education.
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