Science & Engineering Festival Photos Taken from my Phone

USA Science & Engineering Festival

If you want to see who Nannette, Jim and I spent our weekend with go to this video link: USA Science & Engineering Festival.

If you want to want to participate in the Nationwide Wordle:  The question posed is : What will be the greatest discoveries and advancements science and engineering will bring us in the 21st century?

(send in your answer now).

 

When I submitted my answer the Wordle looked like this:

As I said yesterday in my Tweet - Jeff Weld estimated that we had over 5000 visitors stop at our booth (he made this estimation by the number of Smarty Bands (aka Silly Bands) we distributed).

The Air Trolley, Catching the Wind: Designing a Windmill, How Windy are You?, and Wind Turbine activities were popular and we have rare moments of calm. I enjoyed watching the adult volunteers from PTLW, I-Teach, CSI/OSO, and Teacher Externships interact with the budding young scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians who visited our booth to learn more about wind energy. To a person they commented on how a child's face would light up when they had an Ah-Ha moment that led to the successful design of a windmill or flight of an air trolley or a personal best in the How Windy am I? anemometer activity or the comprehension of how many volts a two, three or four blade wind turbine could generate.

The memory that is etched in my mind is the face of the sub-five year old who after successfully designing a propeller system that would lift the load in the Designing a Windmill station - came over to the Air Trolley and said to me

"what do I get to learn here?"

I am exhausted and yet exhilarated.

How Many Windmill and Air Trolley Parts Can Two Teachers Stuff in a Suitcase

Whew!  I just finished stuffing < I mean carefully placing > all of the pieces and parts Nannette and I assembled for the Catching the Wind windmill activity and the Air Trolley Variables activity into my suitcase.  It all fit (well that is if you count the fact that I had to stow the hubs and propellers in my carry on bag) and I still had room for clothes.  But two pair of Khaki pants and two white shirts don't take too much room.  I hope the hotel has a laundry service or I shall have to go shopping.  That wouldn't be all bad!

So in case you are wondering what Nannette, Jim and I will be doing I have embedded links to the two video's Nannette made to feature the Catching the Wind:  Designing a Working Windmill and the Plane Sense Investigation from the FOSS Variables kit here for your viewing pleasure.  Sorry, I can't seem to locate the URL for the first one Nannette created; so I will post picture instead.

We fly to Washington DC tomorrow, so make sure to check out the Science & Engineering Festival link and follow my Tweets @EricaDLarson!



Reflecting on How Fast a Week Can Fly By When One is Traveling

As I reconnect with my blog, I am chagrined to realize it has been a week since I last posted.  In my defense it was a very hectic, travel-laden week as I left Wednesday (10.13.2010) to fly to San Francisco, CA to attend a 2.5 day training session on the revisions to the FOSS Earth History unit.  I traveled and learned with three teachers from College CSD; Gina, Chuck and Brenda.  They were selected to be a test site for the FOSS National Trials of the revised Earth History unit.  With that honor comes a great deal of additional effort in that they are to provide evidence about each investigation as they implement the unit.  I will be their support and have already begun by having the materials shipped to the VAST Center for preparation.   The next 3 months will be intense as I am expected to make classroom visits and provide observational evidence of how well students are learning the material through the designed investigations.  It will be fun and frantic!

As for my support for the STEM TiR; yesterday I spent all afternoon reading the OSO - CSI grant applications.  It was well organized; thanks to Nannette and Jim and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I always feel when the readers are given clear, explicit instructions and defined expectations the inter-rater reliability is always high.  This was the case yesterday afternoon and I am proud to say we selected three very promising grant proposals.  I know Nannette and Jim will need to meet with the grantees to do some on-site coaching to ensure that they are able to enact their plans successfully (or in some cases refine their plans to ensure success); and I look forward to being of support in any way Nannette and Jim feel I can be of assistance.

Today; we tackled the final preparations for the Science and Engineering Fair in Washington, D.C., by refining the Wind Energy activities from the FOSS Variables kit and the EiE Catching the Wind kit.  We still have some work to do tomorrow ~ but I am pleased with the very engaging chart Nannette created to capture participants innovative ideas for wind mill blades they would like to build.  We also focused on the Engineering Design Cycle and defined the components of each phase of the plan for the other adults who will be facilitating our activities in the booth when our 'shift' is over.  Tomorrow we do the final prep and pack the materials into the extra suitcase I plan to bring.  I trust Nannette will help me remember the final, final details as I must also prepare instructions for the VAST Technician, Candice, to prep the FOSS Earth History for the CCSD teachers while I am gone next week to NSTA in Kansas City.

Travel....gotta love it!

Gotta Love SKYPE

I love being a 21st Century worker!  Today Jason Martin-Hiner (AEA 1) and I had a 45 minute SKYPE conference call to discuss the best way to store and retrieve the ELI artifacts.  Currently they all reside on the WebBoard and I was able to Share My Screen with Jason so he could see where I had placed things.  I am always so embarrassed to show off my e-files!!!  As a 20-year veteran of the classroom; I have never quite felt comfortable doing business over the phone (shhh! don't tell my GWAEA Supervisor).... Thus the SKYPE video call is a perfect way for me to conduct business as I was easily able to discern Jason's frustration, relief, confusion, and joy through his entire gamut of expressions.  I must figure out a way to include at least one SKYPE video call to each of my PBS TeacherLine online participants in my fall/winter course.  The PBS TeacherLine directors encourage us to personalize the course and what a better way than to actually 'see' and 'hear' each other (facilitator to participant AND maybe even participant to participant)!  Hmmm!  Wonder if Lia will allow me to swap one written assignment for a SKYPE video conference session.... I don't want anyone to think I am a dinosaur... at least when it comes to the use of technology to enhance learning....(the picture below is from the museum at Ft. Peck in MT taken during my Summer Trek to Glacier NP and back).

Nannette; I followed Stacey Behmer's Tweets all day at ITEC ~ she felt the Keynote was hilarious.... do you agree?  May I ask who spoke and what the topic was?  Also, please hyperlink any relevant web links related to the ITEC conference in your blog post about these two days so I can be a virtual learner! 

Nannette ~ shall we set a time to meet via SKYPE while I am away in California?  I think the time difference might through us off a little... but why don't we discuss it tomorrow and see if we can figure out a good time to connect while I am away.

Office Work to Support LEA Work

Whew!  To think some individuals (like my sister who works for the USDA) got to celebrate Columbus Day as a Holiday while I barely had time to eat my lunch!

Whenever I put 'office day' on my calendar I know the day will fly by faster than I can blink my eyes....there is always so much to catch up on during these precious few moments spent at my cubicle at 6th St (fondly called the Northern Facility of GWAEA).  If I were to list what I did today it would include:

• emails to:
• Cindy at Marion ISD about an upcoming professional learning + FOSS units at K and 6 - 8th grade;
• Greg Leytem at CCSD about the upcoming FOSS training in Berkeley;
• Gina, Brenda and Chuck about the arrival of the FOSS Earth History kits for the National Field Test + logistics for our travel, ground transportation and lodging while in CA,;
• Amy at Vernon MS about additional FOSS kits;
• Amy K. at Linn Mar about K-6 STC assessments;
• Tammy C., and Sheri S., at GWAEA PD office about the USTMSS course;
• Sue S., and Amber W., about 5th and 6th grade collaboration on the topic of Science and Literacy connections;
• Kristen at Creek about the upcoming 6th grade collaboration
• PLUS phone calls to:
• Deb about ISTS expenses for Nannette
• Amber about 5th collaboration at CCSD on Wednesday
• Cindy about scheduling a meeting for AfL planning
• Jim about reading the OSO grants and the plans for the USA Science and Engineering Festival
• PLUS work on the USTMSS Google site and Meeting Wizard to plan our Dec - April course sessions.

What I did not get accomplished today will have to get done tomorrow as the clock ran over 4:30 by the time I caught up on correspondences and meetings!  What was it Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With the Wind;   "After all... tomorrow is another day."

Iowa Academy of Science ~ Iowa Science Teacher's Section Fall Conference Reflections

Thursday and Friday found me attending my 22nd IAS/ ISTS Fall Conference!  Dean Hartman helped me remember when I joined as that was the year Dean was Fall Conference Chair and the conference was held in Cedar Rapids.  

On Thursday, Nannette and I first attended the Iowa Department of Education Quarterly Conversations hosted at McFarland Nature Center where we had a rich afternoon full of sharing and reconnecting with many Science Consultants from around the state.  Then off to the ISTS Evening Banquet honoring the Presidential Excellence in Math and Science award winner and showcasing the IPTV production on the History of One Room Schoolhouses throughout Iowa.  The food was good, the conversation was invigorating and the video was informative.

During the Friday all - day conference; I attended many of the Exhibitor's booths and learned about:

• the progress of the Iowa Bedrock Map,
• Whiterock Conservancy
• the Blank Park Zoo
• Drake online courses
• Pasco Probes
• resources free from the USGS

Sessions I attended taught me about

1. STEM resources offered by IPTV (one I particularly loved was the NOVA titled The Secret Life of Scientists.  I highly recommend that you watch Mollie because I loved the MIT cheer she modeled! 
2. GPS and GIS at UNI (Chad did a nice job highlighting the benefits and challenges of using technology to help students model important ESS concepts).  I strongly suggest that you visit his website to learn more about his efforts to capture video of GSI Field Trips (like the one I attended yesterday) to share as virtual field trips with educators and students across Iowa.
3. Galileo was the post-lunch keynote speaker and he was a consummate educator.  I most appreciated his human model of his Natural Numbers in his inclined plane experiments.  I will view that Force and Motion investigation differently the next time I get the chance to facilitate that unit with Julie.
4. Jason's former physics teaching college Matt presented on his UNI Masters Thesis and introduced us all to a new resource titled:  Ranking Tasks in Physics; a resource I want to locate.  He also mentioned a standardized test to measure student reasoning in Physics - Jason is going to get that information and share it with me soon!
5. I ended the day assisting Richard Heathcote in our presentation on the Whiterock Conservancy 2011 ISTS Field Trip.  You can learn more about that by going to my YouTube video.

For a look at the content offered feel free to review the ISTS Fall Conference Advance Program (this was a PDF that I downloaded and then reuploaded to my Google Documents for reference.)  Nannette and I debriefed our day on the drive home; but I still look forward to reading what she posts on her blog as a post-conference reflection.

NSTA Science Scope October 2010 Issue: Science Process Skills

I would like to encourage a few comments to this question: In light of the research on how students learn science + the statements about 'Science Process Skills' vs. Science as Inquiry Abilitites and Understandings in the National Science Education Standards (published in 1996) + the draft of the revised Science Education Standards would NSTA Science Scope devote and entire issue to Science Process Skills? To read more; follow this link.... October 2010: Science Process Skills!

Closing the First Semester MS Kit Trainings

Monday and Tuesday of this week found me at the VAST Center co-learning with the teachers and facilitators all about Chemical Interactions and Planetary Science.  I am always amazed at how well these units have been designed and constantly wish for 'one more day' with each of the units to allow us to explore more deeply and continue thinking about how middle school students learn science.  One consolation is that in each of the sessions we emphasized the upcoming course; Uncovering Student Thinking in MS Science:  Supporting the Iowa Core.  To learn more about the content of this course I invite you to following this link to our Mindomo Tool. 

Today (Wednesday) I started my day with Christopher at the USGS getting an in depth training session on their Groundwater Model.  In the interest of learning, I used my new Android cell phone video camera function to record Jim's explanations, questions and descriptions about how to make the model serve the learner's needs.  I will do a more detailed Blog on the power of modeling in Earth/Space Science after I edit my video.  That way I can learn how to embed video into this Blog Site.

Tomorrow, Nannette and I travel to Ames to attend the Iowa Department of Education Quarterly Conversations.  There I plan to provide an update on the work of our ELI Teacher Leaders as they used summer time to put the final touches on their Public Engagement Products.  Friday we attend the Iowa Academy of Science; Iowa Science Teacher's Fall Conference, which always provides opportunities to network with science educators from around the state (and a fabulous luncheon complete with a tantalizing dessert).

What a beautiful fall day!

My Own Virtual Reality

This Friday I explored the concept of virtual coaching with the high school science teachers at CCSD and virtual reality modeling actual reality with Nannette related to her visit to Mt. Vernon.  Both stretched me into more innovative and creative ways to interact and represent our understanding of both effective pedagogy (e.g. using Google Document comments to provide feedback and coaching on the CCSD Assessment for Learning mini-lessons) and meaningful content (e.g. a Nannette's report that one student had an idea to create a virtual model of the inside of a cell).

These experiences led me to wonder; "Where would I record this kind of support on the new data collection tool we were given at our team meeting on Thursday?"

I wonder if it would be a good idea to identify the HAT (e.g. CONSULTING, COACHING, FACILITATING, or PRESENTING) I am wearing when I record the data for the services I am providing to my districts?  That way I could put the term virtual in parenthesis behind each HAT when I use technology and distance tools to support effective science instruction, curriculum, and assessment classroom practices.  I will post this thought on our VAST Team Google Site to see how others react to this proposal.

FYI:  The crinkling noise you are hearing is my brain making new neural pathways :-D.   I need to post a picture of flowers from Crested Butte to allow my brain to relax.