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!