Sponsoring Company: BIOZONE Corporation

Step-through BIOZONE's activities and learn how to utilize our unique pedagogical approach to engage students and streamline lessons. See how to integrate BIOZONE'S rich collection of digital assets into your lessons. Attendees receive a FREE print title & 90 day digital access to a title.

SPEAKERS:
Kim Stilwell

Sponsoring Company: Carolina Biological Supply Co.

Come experience the Carolina Certified Version of OpenSciEd for Middle School and High School. See how the new Carolina Certified Edition enhances these high-quality instructional materials and makes OpenSciEd even better! Leave with classroom resources.

SPEAKERS:
Cory Ort

NASA's Next Gen STEM SPARX (Sparking Participation and Real-world eXperiences in STEM) offers an exciting entry-level opportunity for K-2 educators to access standards-aligned activities and resources that follow evidence-based practices to equip their students with the skills to thrive in STEM.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn about the educator benefits of NASA SPARX and how this evidence-based model was selected, and will try their hands at some of the curated engineering design activities from the K-2 Educator Guide.

SPEAKERS:
Steven Smith, Miranda Fike

These immersive STEM lab challenges will engage students by allowing them to explore through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic stimuli. Each student grouping will navigate with their team members to collect evidence and clues to piece together the narrative of each scenario.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will be able to design immersive lessons that go beyond the design process based on multiple STEM skills utilized throughout the school year. These lessons will optimize student engagement and enhance their problem-solving skills.

SPEAKERS:
Brielle Jost

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

Embark on a journey into the world of forensic science using maggots, flies and flesh to solve a mystery! Imagine discovering a decomposing corpse in a field with four missing persons fitting the description. Who is it? This gripping session takes you on an adventure where using the clues found at the grim scene is the only way to discover the answers to your questions. Forensic anthropologist Diane France helped to develop this forensic science lesson that’s perfect for middle school and high school students.

SPEAKERS:
Erick Archer

Sponsoring Company: Society for Neuroscience

This workshop offers an opportunity for teachers to explore a new neuroscience curriculum designed for third through sixth grade students. The curriculum encompasses lessons aimed at improving academic performance and increasing mental health literacy among students.

SPEAKERS:
Carolann Berns

Are heatwaves happening more often? Or does it just feel that way? Using lessons from Heatwave Visualizations, available for free from the Museum of Science Boston and MathWorks, explore visualizations of heatwave data and discuss how an individual’s perspective may have unintentionally biased them.

TAKEAWAYS:
Navigate data visualizations generated from weather station data and learn how to help your students understand that a data visualization is produced by an algorithm written by a human, subjecting it to possible bias. Learn how to access the free materials needed to implement these lessons.

SPEAKERS:
Darshita Shah

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

Engage middle and high school students in a thrilling exploration of disease transmission using the zombie apocalypse scenario! Zombies offer a captivating lens to understand how diseases spread through a population. Join us for this session that makes the science of contagion both exciting and informative, turning the undead into a powerful education tool.

SPEAKERS:
Erick Archer

eCYBERMISSION is a free virtual STEM competition for grades 6-9 that offers standards-aligned resources, grants for teachers and thousands of dollars in awards for students. eCYBERMISSION fosters critical thinking and creativity while preparing students for the future.

TAKEAWAYS:
eCYBERMISSION is a free virtual STEM competition for grades 6-9 that offers standards-aligned resources, grants for teachers, and awards for students. eCYBERMISSION provides educators the resources to foster critical thinking and creativity while preparing students for the future.

SPEAKERS:
Carey Dieleman, Lora Gibbons, Laura Stary, Kelly McDonald, Brian Kutsch

This poster will specifically discuss the implementation of information literacy into an upper-division inorganic chemistry lab and the strategies employed to improve students’ information literacy in the laboratory courses.

TAKEAWAYS:
Strategies to develop information literacy practices in STEM classrooms need to be explicitly taught. These explicit activities need to familiarize students with concepts, as well as provide specific scaffolding to support its implementation.

SPEAKERS:
Matilynn Lam, Katy Miller

Participants engaged in experiential learning with an avatar-based virtual platform to facilitate guardian-teacher conferences. During this poster, curriculum examples from the professional learning experience will be shared, along with character development and participant reflections.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will take away recommendations for leveraging technology such as Mursion in teacher education.

SPEAKERS:
Chelsea McClure

Introduce students to research and the power of “big data!” Learn about an exciting, new, publicly available biomedical database and the All of Us Research Program that makes it possible. Find classroom resources that support using the database in class.

TAKEAWAYS:
The All of Us Research Program is building the largest, most diverse biomedical database of its kind. The program is making de-identified, aggregated data from the database available to the public through a Data Browser and providing resources to help students navigate it.

SPEAKERS:
Molly Malone

Inspired by the Transatlantic Outreach Program STEM Study Tour for teachers, the free online lessons use phenomena common to the United States and Germany. Framed as a virtual tour of Germany, the four STEM unit topics are sustainability, renewables, climate change, and ecosystems.

TAKEAWAYS:
In addition to accessing STEM lessons and information on future, free TOP STEM Study Tours, attendees will learn how science and engineering can be applied to local and global sustainability issues.

SPEAKERS:
Loris Chen

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

Feeling moody? Dive into the fascinating blend of science and coding as we guide you through how to create your own digital mood ring. No coding experience required! Grab a seat for this interactive session as we unravel the science of color and consider body temperature thresholds, all while deciding if fuchsia should feel flirty or if green feels groovy.

SPEAKERS:
Erick Archer

Sponsoring Company: Mosa Mack Science

You’ll learn how to choose and implement the best science phenomena. You’ll also receive free access to Mosa Mack Science phenomena lessons.

SPEAKERS:
Elisabeth Johnson

Sponsoring Company: Texas Instruments

While graphs are essential for organizing and making sense of data, students often struggle with scaling, axes and understanding variables. Come join this engaging session to see how we break down these concepts through movement and discover how students can have fun with motion sensors by capturing data and creating their own graph. Watch as understanding scales up when learning becomes a dynamic experience!

SPEAKERS:
Erick Archer

Explore classroom tested, free, online curriculum that helps students use block coding to create simulations and data visualizations for investigations of earthquake risks in California.

TAKEAWAYS:
This workshop will allow participants to become familiar with a free, online curriculum focused on estimating the hazards and risk of earthquakes in California. Participants will engage with the GeoCode curriculum as a student to see this innovative approach in teaching earthquake hazards and risk.

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie Seevers, Christopher Lore

This session is a cross-curricular project between forensic science and AP physics. These teachers have worked together to solve the age old question – when do we need that in real life? Hello, real world application! Here the session merges multi-level learners and teaches them to apply physics.

TAKEAWAYS:
1.) Cross-curricular projects help strengthen student engagement and increases learning, 2.) The activity will be shared with participants for immediate use and implementation in the classroom upon their return from NSTA 3.) Developing ideas with other content areas keeps the original content “fresh.”

SPEAKERS:
Tessah Zepeda, Misty Heredia

Explore the wetlands through a student-designed and engineered model created cooperatively between science and art. Structures were designed and created by students using recycled boxes, paper, and plastic, then detailed with paper mâché and paint. Upon completion, the school was allowed a tour/exploration.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to use the engineering design process to assist students in creating a life-sized model to share their knowledge on the importance of balance in a biome. Students can, even during a pandemic, become ambassadors for the environment.

SPEAKERS:
Elaine Sevin

These immersive STEM lab challenges will engage students by allowing them to explore through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic stimuli. Each student grouping will navigate with their team members to collect evidence and clues to piece together the narrative of each scenario.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will be able to design immersive lessons that go beyond the design process based on multiple STEM skills utilized throughout the school year. These lessons will optimize student engagement and enhance their problem-solving skills.

SPEAKERS:
Brielle Jost

Radioactive decay is taught in high school (NGSS-HS-PS1-1); however, materials and experimental equipment can be expensive. We compare and contrast the performance of centicubes and dice to accurately model radioactive decay and half-life for in-class investigations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about alpha, beta, and gamma decay, as well as the advantages and limitations of using everyday materials (pennies, dice, carbonated beverages, centicubes, etc.) as simulation analogies to teach radioactivity and half-life.

SPEAKERS:
Alexandria Black

A high school curriculum that supports and encourages bee knowledge so teachers “Bringing Effective and Engaging Science Teaching into the Generation Z (Beestingz) Classroom using Apiculture.” teachers from 4 states have worked with the DOA and Dordt University to create free curriculum.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be exposed to the beta version of a Beekeeping curriculum that is engaging Generation Z with hands-on interactive lessons written by teachers that support student investigation, interaction, problem-solving, and design engineering concepts around real-world pollinators.

SPEAKERS:
Rise Jongeling

Come learn about Data Puzzles, a free resource co-designed by climate scientists and instructional specialists from the University of Colorado Boulder that combine authentic data with Ambitious Science Teaching instructional practices to help students make sense of phenomena.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore authentic, contemporary data through Data Puzzles resources that frame data analysis for use in middle and high school classrooms with the Ambitious Science Teaching framework, and leave prepared to implement these 2-3 day sensemaking lesson sets in their own classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Jonathan Griffith

Spark wonder, curiosity, and conversation in your classroom with free virtual field trips to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Learn how we transform your students into cloud sleuths or hurricane tracking teams; exploring weather topics, Earth systems sciences, STEAM careers, and more.

TAKEAWAYS:
This poster showcases the suite of free, award-winning virtual field trips focused on weather, climate science, and STEM careers at the UCAR Center for Science Education. Learn about what virtual programs UCAR offers and how we deliver high-quality, interactive lessons directly to your classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Katie Wolfson

In this classroom lesson, students load X-Ray images into a Google AI site to create image recognition models. The models will then be trained to classify lung X-Ray results into various categories, producing patient diagnoses. Students also analyze the reliability of the AI model using statistics.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teach students to build, test, and assess authentic AI image recognition models to diagnose patient lung disease using X-Ray images. Students then assess the model using statistical tools.

SPEAKERS:
Ashley Burkart, Milton Johnson