Get the tools to plan and execute a successful STEM Family Night geared toward all ages.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to plan a STEM family night What types of activities do you choose How to get parents involved

SPEAKERS:
Jacqueline Mumford (St. Paul School: Salem, OH), Misty Dietrich (St. Paul School: Salem, OH), David Pancurak (St. Paul School: Salem, OH)

Learn how to use purposefully designed, engaging questions to elicit and address students’ commonly held ideas about core concepts and practices related to engineering and technology.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Learn how formative assessment probes reveal students' ideas about engineering and technology, including common misconceptions and stereotypes about engineers. 2) Learn how to embed the engineering and technology probes into instruction. 3) Learn how the engineering and technology probes support disciplinary core ideas and practices.

SPEAKERS:
Page Keeley (NSTA Past President: No City, No State), Cary Sneider (Portland State University: Portland, OR), Mihir Ravel (Visiting Scholar: Portland, OR)

What if students habitually explored the key questions posed by scientists, engineers, and designers in anything they do? Innovators’ Compass is a 5-question tool, in all-free online and offline formats, to make that possible—developed by an MIT and IDEO alumna who’s now an Olin College educator. A quick introduction will include short videos of the Compass used in STEM.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about a visual tool, in all-free on-and-offline formats, with 5 questions distilled from many practices in science, engineering, design, and beyond. See students and educators applying these for STEM, interdisciplinary, and SEL problems and projects. Use these 5 questions with peers on a pressing problem: how to advance hands-on STEM in (semi) virtual times.

SPEAKERS:
Valeria Rodriguez (STEM Educator & Instructional Technologist: Miami, FL), Ela Ben-Ur (Innovators' Compass: Cambridge, MA)

Hear how the Samueli Foundation along with its partners designed and scaled the STEM Learning Ecosystem to now 89 communities around the world.

TAKEAWAYS:
What it takes to build a STEM Ecosystem How to build a STEM Ecosystem The evidence to support the value of a STEM Ecosystem

SPEAKERS:
Veronica Gonzales (Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM (TIES): Cleveland, OH)

Discover STEAM-y starters in books we know, love, and have on our shelves. Titles, activities, and resources will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn why picture books are great starters for STEAM exploration. Discover favorite books and challenges. Explore how to add STEAM into already utilized texts in your curriculum and classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Kate Burton (Trinity School: Atlanta, GA)

Hear about a PBL project called Filling the Gap that connects educators with local STEM businesses to develop classroom units around real business issues/problems.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with: 1. Understanding of a local STEM Ecosystem in western North Carolina 2. Understanding of the Filling the Gap Program 3. Examples of PBL units partnering classroom teachers with local STEM businesses

SPEAKERS:
Carol Moore (STEM West: CLAREMONT, NC), Regina Barrier (North Carolina School of Science and Math - Morganton: Morganton, NC)

Scoop up new learning with an ice cream insulation project that serves as a unit anchoring phenomenon, providing students with three-dimensional learning experiences interwoven with the strands of STEM.

TAKEAWAYS:
A guide for how to utilize an engineering project as the phenomenon for an NGSS unit . Tips on how to effectively manage students working on engineering group projects. A format for 3-D assessment of an engineering design project

SPEAKERS:
Rachel Davis (American School of Dubai: Dubai, 0)

Hear how a model car design challenge used project-based learning to interweave the strands of STEM into a student-driven learning experience.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. A scaffolded process for designing, organizing, and assessing their own STEM-based PBL unit. 2. Tools to use to manage student learning and group work. 3. A collection of resources to help with designing a STEM-PBL unit.

SPEAKERS:
Rachel Davis (American School of Dubai: Dubai, 0)

STEM educators are quickly responding to the challenge of teaching students virtually through online classrooms and asynchronous assignments, but in hands-on technology classrooms, like Fab Labs and makerspaces, learning is especially difficult without access to 3D printers, laser cutters, and other digital fabrication tools. Over the past few months, the SCOPES-DF educators and makers network has been innovating and prototyping solutions to this challenge. In this workshop, participants will hear about some ideas and practices from innovative educators in the network using digital fabrication technologies with their students and will be challenged to get creative in their own virtual classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Shifting the focus to design is important for virtual projects. Computer simulations are an added step for digital fabrication that can be helpful in virtual assignments as well as in-person prototyping. Educators all over the world are facing this challenge with digital fabrication technologies, learn from others by joining the network.

SPEAKERS:
Liz Whitewolf (The Fab Foundation: Boston, MA)

Learn how to use purposefully designed, engaging questions to elicit and address students’ commonly held ideas about core concepts and practices related to engineering and technology.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Learn how formative assessment probes reveal students' ideas about engineering and technology, including common misconceptions and stereotypes about engineers. 2) Learn how to embed the engineering and technology probes into instruction. 3) Learn how the engineering and technology probes support disciplinary core ideas and practices.

SPEAKERS:
Page Keeley (NSTA Past President: No City, No State), Cary Sneider (Portland State University: Portland, OR), Mihir Ravel (Visiting Scholar: Portland, OR)

Discussion centers on pre-college educational preparation, acquisition of career information, and career options. Strategies for first-year college success will be described.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. High school course work preparation 2. Needed student strengths for success 3. Sources and uses of career information

SPEAKERS:
C. Dale Elifrits (Northern Kentucky University: Highland Heights, KY)

Have a great activity to share? Join in for an overview of how to write for The Science Teacher. Learn tips and tricks for being a published author.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Participants will learn about the inner workings of the journal. 2. Participants will gain skills in how to write for the journal. 3. Participants will be introduced to what kinds of articles are sought for the journal.

SPEAKERS:
Ann MacKenzie (Miami University: Oxford, OH)

Hear about various NSTA competitions and how they can bring STEM and the NGSS into the classroom, as well as give students and teachers a chance to earn recognition and prizes.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about NSTA competitions Learn about how you can use competitions as a resource to implement NGSS and STEM into your curriculum Learn how you and your students can win prizes and recognition

SPEAKERS:
Alexis Mundis (Army Educational Outreach Program: Arlington, VA), Acacia McKenna (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Matthew Hartman (BrainPOP: Pittsburgh, PA)

Experience the Question Formulation Technique: a simple, powerful strategy that can spark curiosity and deepen remote learning by teaching students to ask their own questions.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Participants will learn the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) by experiencing it for themselves. They will walk away with a practical strategy they can immediately use in a remote setting to teach students how to ask better scientific questions and drive science inquiries. 2. Participants will explore student work from science classrooms across the country to see how the strategy can be used for a range of instructional purposes. 3. Participants will reflect on their learning, think on how they can implement it in their own setting, and get access to free tools and resources to do so.

SPEAKERS:
Nicole Bolduc (Ellington Middle School: Ellington, CT), Katy Connolly (Right Question Institute: Cambridge, MA)

Learn how to use purposefully designed, engaging questions to elicit and address students’ commonly held ideas about core concepts and practices related to engineering and technology.

TAKEAWAYS:
1) Learn how formative assessment probes reveal students' ideas about engineering and technology, including common misconceptions and stereotypes about engineers. 2) Learn how to embed the engineering and technology probes into instruction. 3) Learn how the engineering and technology probes support disciplinary core ideas and practices.

SPEAKERS:
Page Keeley (NSTA Past President: No City, No State), Cary Sneider (Portland State University: Portland, OR), Mihir Ravel (Visiting Scholar: Portland, OR)

Faculty and current students will discuss Pitt-Johnstown’s unique approach to their STEM Endorsement Certification, including students’ personal experiences and future teaching goals, and the program’s benefits and implications for  research.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will engage in discussion to learn about: • Current focuses on teacher preparation in STEM education • Pennsylvania’s approach to endorsing students via their STEM Endorsement Certificate model and its program design and evaluation competencies • Pitt-Johnstown’s unique approach to the model, through a Q&A with faculty and current students.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Chesney (University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown: Johnstown, PA)

It takes a village to build a STEM culture. We will share how two international schools built a culture of making through makerspaces and maker fairs.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Learn how to develop partnerships with outside organizations, corporations, and makers. 2. Understand that STEM ecosystems vary from one school to another, there is no one recipe, but there are guiding principles. 3. Gain understanding in how a maker space and a school maker faire can build a STEM culture.

SPEAKERS:
Craig Gingerich (American School of Doha: Doha, 0), Brian Wright (American School of Doha: Doha, Qatar)