14 year old STEM Innovator!

I know we have many kids who can think this way in Stamford, CT as well!  :-)  This is impressive.

Why STEM? Which Career?

 

http://ionfuture.org/

Two Connecticut Science Teachers Selected For Fellowship Program in Prestigious NSTA New Science Teacher Academy

 

HARTFORD, Conn. — December 12, 2012 — The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all, in collaboration with The Dow Chemical Company, the Amgen Foundation; Astellas Pharma US, Inc.; the American Honda Foundation; the Bayer USA Foundation; and Lockheed Martin, today announced that two out of the 244 science teachers chosen as Fellows in the 2012-2013 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy are from Connecticut. Selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide, the Fellows (listed below) will participate in a year-long professional development program designed to help promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher confidence and classroom excellence and improve teacher content knowledge.

 

Amgen-NSTA Fellow

·   Emily Korn, Cloonan Middle School, Stamford, Conn.

 

                        (WAY TO GO EMILY!!!)

 

Bayer-NSTA Fellow

·       Rebecca Seibert, Ansonia High School, Ansonia, Conn.

 

“We are thrilled to provide these teachers with the resources and support needed to help them feel confident and passionate about the critical work they do in inspiring today’s youth to become tomorrow’s leading STEM professionals,” said Gerry Wheeler, interim executive director, NSTA.

 

“As a longtime supporter of STEM education, Bayer recognizes the lasting impact that quality teacher professional development can have,” said Sarah Toulouse, acting executive director of the Bayer USA Foundation. “Preparing and retaining the best and brightest science teachers is essential for today’s students to achieve and succeed in the STEM fields.”

 

The 2012 Fellows were selected on the basis of several criteria, including showing evidence of a solid science background and displaying a strong interest in growing as a professional science educator. Each Fellow will receive a comprehensive NSTA membership package, online mentoring with trained mentors who teach in the same discipline, and the opportunity to participate in a variety of web-based professional development activities, including web seminars. In addition, each Fellow will receive financial support to attend and participate in NSTA’s 2013 National Conference on Science Education in San Antonio.

 

For this academic year, The Dow Chemical Company, the primary sponsor of the program, will fund the participation of 195 science teachers as Dow-NSTA Fellows. The American Honda Foundation will support three science teachers as Honda-NSTA Fellows and the Amgen Foundation will support 11 science teachers as Amgen-NSTA Fellows. Astellas Pharma US, Inc. will support 14 science teachers primarily from the Chicago area as Astellas-NSTA Fellows and the Bayer USA Foundation will sponsor six science teachers as Bayer-NSTA Fellows. The remaining 15 science teachers will be supported by Lockheed Martin and named Lockheed Martin-NSTA Fellows.

 

Launched during the spring of 2007, the NSTA New Science Teacher Academy, co-founded with a grant from the Amgen Foundation, was established to help reduce the high attrition rate in the science teaching profession by providing professional development and mentoring support to early-career science teachers. Since its inception, the Academy has provided high-quality professional development to more than 800 science teachers nationwide.

 

For a list of the 2012-2013 Fellows or to learn more about the NSTA New Science Teacher Academy, please visit www.nsta.org/academy.

Germ Killing Robot comes to Stamford Hospital! Cool.

http://stamford.dailyvoice.com/news/germ-killing-robot-comes-stamford-hospital

TOR MS Lego Mindstorms Robotics!

     Dave Edleson of TOR MS in Stamford, CT, with the support of many of his peers in Middle Schools across Stamford, is applying what he learned from the GEF/NSTA/NASA sponsored Summer STEM workshop to his lessons.  The students were challenged to work in teams to program the mindstorms robots to travel a certain distance and determine the relationship between time and distance.  This is in preparation of a more complicated mission that they will face later this week!

Here they are at work!

Checking out the ports!

Testing out the program!

This greeted the students!

Here they are at work with the NXTs.

 

 

NSTA Honors the GE Foundation with Distinguished Partnership Award for Organization’s Commitment to Science Education

 

From the NSTA web site!

ARLINGTON, Va.—December 7, 2012—The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the largest professional organization in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all, today announced that it presented its prestigious Distinguished Partnership Award to the GE Foundation , the philanthropic organization of the General Electric Company, at NSTA’s Phoenix Area Conference on Science Education yesterday. The award pays tribute to the Foundation’s steadfast commitment to the improvement and enhancement of science education in partnership with NSTA.

Thanks GEF for all of the work you have done to support Stamford Public School science, math and technology educators!


Read more at.... http://www.nsta.org/about/pressroom.aspx?id=59732

Cloobots at the CT State Championships!

 

Cloobots display boards about their SNAP-O clothing solution for those with mobility issues.

 

 

LEGO WeDO Club at Davenport Elementary School

 

When I asked how many students would sign up for the Lego club again this is what happened! 

These programmers were hard at work solving a problem related to a spinning lego top!

  

This team created a lego airplane with a controllable propeller!

This hard working team is working on a pair of robotic lego legs.

Cloobots on It's Relevant! (...on to states!!)

Cloonan Robotics Team-- Cloobots

     Here is the Cloonan MS Lego Robotics team preparing for their regional competition at Greenwich Academy tomorrow from 9 am to 6 pm tomorrow!  Best of luck team!

Taking some trial runs before the big day.

 

 

 

 

 

Being interviewed by Samantha of It's Relevant!

Special Thanks to Mrs. Chichester, Ms. Korn, Asst. Principal Laureen Mody and Principal Dave Tate for inviting me to spend time with the team.

Tech and Science meet in Jim Sapia's class!

From Jim's "tweet'!

Jimmy Sapia‏@mrsapia_teach

Ss back-channeling using Todaysmeet about their observations of elodea and duckwood! #elemsci #elemchat #ipaded #edtech pic.twitter.com/ApGK8Aq6

 

                                                This is really innovate stuff!  Way to go Jim.

"Get the Math" video from PBS!!

Watch Get the Math: The Setup on PBS. See more from THIRTEEN Kids.

CT Invention Convention Meeting!

     Here are some hard working middle school teachers learning more about the CT Invention Convention!  This exciting after school program which is funded through a generous grant from Pitney Bowes will allow many Stamford students to invent a solution to a problem they care about.  The process culminates with an appearance at the CT State Invention Convention for selected inventors at UCONN!  This program is expected to run from late December to April.

Cloonan Students- A and E STEM challenge!

     Here are a group of students from Cloonan MS in Stamford taking on a STEM challenge with their teacher Shana Esposito!  Way to go!  This is a fun way to learn more about math and architecture!

 

 

Any suggestions for the teams?

 

 

 

 

Math is the vocabulary for your own intuition!

Watch this!

Technology and Science - Teaching Challenge

Get Texts form the Intn'l Space Station!

 

ISS will now text you when it is close to overhead. COOL!

  http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

 

 

HS Science teachers learning about the CCSS!

 

100% of High School Science teachers learned about the ELA extensions for Science in the CCSS.  Discussions included text dependent questioning and how text complexity is determined. 

Citizen Scientist Opportunities!

      The web offers many exciting opportunities  for classes to get involved in REAL science!  My first experience with this concept was Monarch Watch in which you reported the location of migrating monarch butterflies to a web site added to a huge database of sightings.  It was fun and motivating for myself and my students.  (At the time I was doing this it was $3 and hour to log onto AOl…early 90’s!) Here are some great starting points that will get you thinking about how you might incorporate these opportunities into your curricula! 

1)      Sci Starter— http://www.scistarter.com/

An easy to use menu for searching for science projects to get involved in utilizing categories like : at home, at night, at the beach etc.   You can also select item by science topic.  Starting in October 2012 project from this web site are being featured on the NSTA web site.  A nice collaboration!

Here is their cool blog-  http://scistarter.com/blog/

2)      Zooniverse-- https://www.zooniverse.org/

 

This site is self described as, “home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects.”  The most popular project on this web site is Galaxy Zoo.  All of these projects appear to be Space based and will have you analyzing Hubble Telescope images, finding stars from IR image data, exploring the surface of the moon or Sun, or my favorite, searching for evidence of planets around Stars!

 

3)      Scientific American Citizen Science project list-- http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/

 

An exhaustive list of great projects to consider getting involved in.  Dig into this one!  I am definitely going to get involved in the seafloor explorer and the baby laughter project!  J

 

4)      Nasa: Citizen Science page - http://science.nasa.gov/citizen-scientists/

 

It doesn’t get much better than NASA if you want to contribute to a science project!  Check out the ones they encourage you to participate in.  Would you like to be a martian scientist?  Or perhaps study lunar impacts?  Here you go!

 

5)      The Cornell Lab or Ornithology Citizen Science Central – http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit

Once again, here is another great resources for connecting with an array of citizen science opportunities!  Give one a try!  You can even find ourt about an annual conference for people interested in this topic! 

A couple of specific projects I’d  like to highlight are…

- Students’ Cloud Observations Online (S’COOL): “The project aims to collect data on cloud type, height, cover, and related conditions from all over the world. Observations are sent to NASA for comparison to similar information obtained from satellite.
  How cool is that?  Brian Butera and his 6^th grade student in Stamford were recently recognized by NASA for being meaningful contributors!

-Globe at Night -  http://www.globeatnight.org/  Help contribute to a database collecting information about light pollution.  This is an easy one to do!

STEM video sites

Here are a few links to STEM video resources:

1) Here are links to videos on the Science of the Summer Olympics
http://nstacommunities.org/blog/category/nsf-videos-and-lessons/

2) STEM videos for teachers from the National STEM Centre in England http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/collection/1202/teachers-tv

3) K- 12 STEM videos produced by MIT!
http://k12videos.mit.edu/

If you know of more please comment on this post!

Jim

Megan Likes our Blog!

Click below to see a list of STEM blogs that Megan Pollack (Engineering Equity in Education) likes!  We made the list!

http://meaganpollock.com/blogs-i-like-you-might-too/

Keep up the great work Stamford!  (.....or should I say STEMford!)

Jim :-)

STEM Contests and Competitions

Here is a link to several STEM related contasts and competitions!

http://blog.genyes.org/index.php/2012/10/23/stem-related-contests-and-competitions/

Go fot it!

JIm

Scenes from our SPS CCSS Forum!

What do science and play have in common?

 

A and E + STEM!

     Here are some scenes from the A and E professional development that was artfully delivered by Shanna Esposito and Theresa Circelli!  It was a collaborative effort at perfecting some new STEM related A and E lessons!

Updating the lesson on the fly to improve the lesson based on teacher feedback!

 

 

A lot of thought went into these lessons.

Reviewing lesson materials.

The leaning tower of pasta!

A winning tower design.

An innovative and elegant solution

A valiant effort but to no avail!  :-)

Screen shot 2012-09-30 at 8.13.17 PM

Screen shot 2012-09-30 at 8.13.17 PM, a photo by jim forde on Flickr.

Screen shot 2012-09-30 at 8.33.46 PM

Screen shot 2012-09-30 at 8.33.46 PM, a photo by jim forde on Flickr.

Mr. Edelson's Rocketry and Math lesson

Here is an example of an original rocket (in progress)
and a packet which helped to guide the students.

      It was a pleasure to day to visit Mr. Edelson's 8th grade math class at TOR today!  The students were highly engaged in a lesson about designing rockets.  You may ask, "Why are they designing rockets in math class?"  Well, they were using measurement, fractions and were ultimately collecting original data from the designs in order to create a scatter plot. As I understand it, they will be plotting the length of the rocket body tubes vs. the diameter of the fins!  Dave was pretty tricky in sneaking all of that math into such a fun lesson!  :-)  I hope I'll be invited back to see the launches, which I am told require a whole new set of math skills to be utilized!   Keep up the great work !

Here are a couple of more images of the kids at work!

 

Here is an encouraging sign (one of many located all over TOR) that was outside of Dave's classroom.

 

 

 

The Stamford Times covers our NASA trip!

Click here to read a Stamford Times article about the Stamford teachers and administrators who attended the STEM integration workshop at NASA!

Science and the Summer Olympics

Click the following words to learn more about Science and the Summer Olympics!

Mars Curiosity Rover!

Isn't this exciting!

Go here for Curiosity central!


NASA lands a car sized rover on Mars!
Click Here to learn more from NASA JPL

Jim

PolarTREC anyone?

Thanks to Louise McMinn for sending out the info on this great opportunity!

Jim
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Accepting Applications

PolarTREC Teachers 2013-2014

PolarTREC: Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S.

Application Deadline: Monday, 3 September 2012, 5 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time

For further information, please contact PolarTREC at:

Email: info@polartrec.com

Phone: 907-474-1600

PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is currently accepting applications from teachers for the seventh year of teacher research experiences. Teachers are invited to submit an application to participate in field research learning experiences during the 2013 (usually Arctic) or 2013-2014 (usually Antarctic) field seasons.

More information and application forms are available at: http://www.polartrec.com/teachers/application/2013

Stamford STEM Conference Participants

Stamford Educators and Administrators at the 

GEF NASA/NSTA STEM Integration Conference 2012

Brian Butera's S'cool project on CBS web site.

The story of Brian Butera's class was just picked up by the AP and published on the CBS web site!  Pretty cool!

See the link... http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/06/23/connecticut-middle-school-students-provide-nasa-with-valuable-data/

Jim :-)

ps- Thanks to Louise McMinn for finding this link, and of course, to Brian and his students for all of their amazing work!

Brian Butera's 6th graders help NASA!!

Here is a great article about the work that Brian and his students are doing with NASA satellite data at TOR!

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/default/article/Sixth-graders-help-NASA-in-science-class-3637952.php

101 ways to get our kids unplugged this Summer!

Please pass these links along to your students to see if they might try any of these activities this summer.

Here are 101 Science things to do during the Summer!

Also, here is another link to explore ... Summer Science Fun

Have a great break!  You all deserve it for what you do for kids everyday.

All the best.

Jim :-)

Congrats to Westhill's FFA program!

     It was a thrill last night to attend the Westhill Agriscience program FFA Awards Dinner.  Many award and recognitions were distributed to the well deserving students, teachers and adult leaders.  To find out more about this amazing program based at Westhill please head to their web page @ http://www.westhillweb.com/agriscience-program.aspx   There you will find out how to join this program or how to connect to the doggy dare care/grooming and many argriscience related events that they sponsor annually!  (like the plant sale pictured above)

Stamford STEM team at CSTA event!

   Several member of the Stamford STEM community attended a CSTA sponsored - Beardsley Zoo Behind the Scenes tour yesterday.  It was a fun event that allowed us to get unique insights from the zoo team and unique access to spaces that are not open tot he public!  The event ended with a group discussion that touched on the topics of CCSS an NGSS.  Many interesting perspectives were shared.  I would encourage anyone to attend this when it is offered again!  Special tanks to Louise McMinn for promoting the event.  It was fun to be there with Mike, Dana, Carrie and Beth as well!

The picture above is of Kristen Record who manages the CSTA FB page and is a highly awarded and regarded science teacher in CT! 

Stamford Teachers present at the STEM FORUM in Atlantic City!

Scofield MMS teachers Eileen Wargo, Karen Kulish and Fran D'Agostino did a great job presenting their STEM project connecting math and science and the concepts of force and motion!

Here are some images from their well attended and well received session at the event last Friday morning!  People could not get enough of their ideas and materials!  Well done.

TOR is Taking Rover Cloud Obs to the Next Level!

Direct quote below from the NASA Observe Your World web site about Brian Butera's classes and their work with NASA!!     Way to go!

Read the whole article here....  https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/oyw/?p=1824

------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Butera is a sixth grade teacher at Turn of the River Middle School in Stamford Connecticut.  In early March 2012, he registered 4 of his classes for the S’COOL Project.  Since then, he has encouraged his students to also observe as ROVERs .   Through Skype meetings between his classroom and S’COOL Team members, along with the formal educational guidance of the S’COOL website and the flexibility of ROVER observations, Mr. Butera has customized the S’COOL Project for what works best in his classroom.  For example, for the assessment component in his classes, Mr. Butera uses one of three options:  Students can give him their ROVER nickname and he can search for their reports in the ROVER database; they can print the online report form and turn it in with their data; or, they can print and turn in the match emails S’COOL sends when their ground observation matches satellite cloud data.

Butera explains that the S’COOL/ROVER project, “gave [his] students the ability to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it directly in the field with actual real life research.  [He] also enjoyed how the program tied directly into [his] weather and atmosphere unit, utilized outdoor observations, and applied and tied in the results of the outdoor observations to technology.” Butera describes, “ As ROVERs, [his students] observe together during the week and make individual observations on the weekend”.

What are Mr. Butera’s students saying about the projects? Ryan Carroll comments, “I learned just how important clouds are to climate.”  Daniel Bagalloo agrees, ” I didn’t know just how important clouds can maybe help us see changes to our planet.” Arden Lesoravage responded,  ” I learned how important day to day data can help in determining weather changes.”

Mr. Butera and his students took Rover cloud observation to the next level, with 1,252 Rover reports over the past 3 months!!  Congrats Turn of the River Middle School!

Check out the public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards....just released today!  You should comment on them to make them even better!

http://nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards

STEM Showcase Pictures!