Knowles Engineering teachers co-developed and piloted a scaffolded framework for integrating social justice into engineering design that we are excited to share with the NSTA community. Come ready to explore how to empower your science students through intentional engineering curriculum design!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will interact with examples of empowered engineering curriculum, as well as apply the framework to their own classroom. Teachers will leave with concrete ideas for how to incorporate more social justice work into their own engineering curriculum in manageable and expanding ways.

SPEAKERS:
Katey Shirey (edukatey: Washington, DC), Emily Berman (Global STEM Challenges Program)

Designing for justice means centering inquiry on phenomena that cross the artificial boundary between human and natural systems. The result is instruction that not only teaches students to understand the natural world, but broadens their perspectives on how humans fit into natural systems, what constitutes science, and what they can accomplish using science. In high school, some of the design problems that students are noticing in the world may feel overwhelming, but breaking them down using the ideas and practices of science can help students find hope and resilience. For example in OpenSciEd HS, students ask: Where should we focus efforts on treatment and prevention of cancer? What can we do to make driving safer for everyone? How can we slow the flow of energy on Earth to protect vulnerable communities? To answer these, students must use science ideas and practices to understand/think creatively about design problems that emerge from complex systems at the nature-human divide.

TAKEAWAYS:
NGSS-designed instruction that is oriented toward justice can not only teach students to understand the natural world, but broadens their perspectives on how humans fit into natural systems, what constitutes science, and what they can accomplish using science.

SPEAKERS:
Zoe Buck Bracey (Senior Science Educator and Director of Design for Justice: Colorado Springs, CO), Samantha Pinter (Norwalk Public Schools: Norwalk, CT), Jamie Noll (BSCS Science Learning: Colorado Springs, CO)

This session will introduce participants to a NSTA lesson designed to introduce high school students to cutting edge research on Artificial Intelligence. The lesson is designed around the critical aspects of sensemaking: students experience a phenomenon, engage in science and engineering practices and share ideas and to build and/or apply disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts needed to explain how or why the phenomenon occurs. Sensemaking is in the vision of A Framework for K-12 Science Education - “the doing of science and engineering is highlighted as a strategy that can capture students’ interest in science and motivate their continued study.” (A Framework for K-12 Science Education, pp 42-43). NSTA lessons and units provide opportunities for all students to engage in science learning that is meaningful to them

TAKEAWAYS:
The JHU Wavelength lesson introduced in the session provides opportunities for high school students to learn about cutting edge science research, figure out science ideas related to artificial intellligence, and consider how it could benefit their community.

SPEAKERS:
Rama Chellappa (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor: Baltimore, MD), Patrice Scinta (NSTA: Arlington, VA), Rama Chellappa (Johns Hopkins University: Baltimore, MD)

Learn how to engage your students with the rich phenomena around the mismatch between our human body physiology and our modern environment, using a free, EQuIP-reviewed unit designed for HS NGSS.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will develop a vision for how to use engineering practices to teach genetics and epigenetics while creating a more engaging and inclusive classroom environment for all learners

SPEAKERS:
Joy Otibu (Mott Hall Bronx High School: Bronx, NY), Andrea Sau (Mott Hall Bronx High School: Bronx, NY)

Students and presenters will share how they are making a positive impact in their community through interdisciplinary research and design thinking. During this interactive session you will learn how to teach students interdisciplinary research, interview skills and host a community showcase.

TAKEAWAYS:
It is hard for students to learn about complex problem such as climate change, water security through STEM fields only. By combining STEM research with other disciplines, students learning is deepened and it gives teachers a chance to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines as well.

SPEAKERS:
Jim Birdsong (Monta Vista High School: Cupertino, CA), Kavita Gupta (Monta Vista High School: Cupertino, CA)

How can you use science inquiry for engineering design? What makes a lesson "engineering design"? Learn three go-to teacher strategies for integrating engineering into science lessons for all grades. Leave with free resources, templates, and terrific ideas for confidently integrating the "E."

TAKEAWAYS:
You'll learn how to integrate the E without wasting precious science time by making three strategic moves: set up enticing phenomenon-driven challenges, grow student engineering identity through creative problem definition, and scaffold engineering tasks that require science investigations.

SPEAKERS:
Katey Shirey (edukatey: Washington, DC)

Are you looking to integrate discovery engineering design principles and historical case studies into your biology class? Attend this session to explore serendipitous, real-world stories that have influenced engineering discoveries and learn how to incorporate these ideas in your classroom!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants attending this session will explore historical case studies describing discovery engineering stories and learn how to integrate case studies as interactive, data driven activities for students to learn biology and create innovative designs to address specific challenges in biology.

SPEAKERS:
M. Gail Jones (North Carolina State University: Raleigh, NC), Rebecca Hite (Texas Tech University: Lubbock, TX), Gina Childers (Texas Tech University: Lubbock, TX)

Learn how to create and present a cross curricular, cross grade level immersion experience for all ages. Briefly discussing the research that highlights the learning benefits of themeatic units, we will follow a school as they spent a "Semester in Space" that culminated in a 10 minute ISS contact.

TAKEAWAYS:
School-wide units create a culture of learning that spans all disciplines and grade levels as students are able to experience content from variousviewpoints. Learn how to implement a an overarcing theme in any school.

SPEAKERS:
Christiana Deeter (Canterbury School: Fort Myers, FL)

Learn how the NASA TechRise Student Challenge helps students build and fly their own experiment ideas in suborbital vehicles (balloons and rockets), as well as how it helps inspire students across the nation to engage in STEM, research, and technology projects.

TAKEAWAYS:
TechRise's unique approach to STEM enables students and educators of all experience levels to learn tangible engineering skills including coding and working with electronics. The challenge aims to engage student teams across the U.S. in the technology experiment design and flight test process.

SPEAKERS:
Deanne Bell (Future Engineers: Burbank, CA), Lucas Moxey (NASA Outreach: Edwards, CA)

We will discuss engineering design within the context of the NGSS. Focusing on the decline of pollinators, participants will develop prototypes of native bees and dry pollination techniques to demonstrate how to develop engineering lessons using problem-based phenomena and engineering design.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will have the opportunity to experience an engineering design lesson aligned to NGSS, develop and test prototypes of native bees, and engage in meaningful discussions of engineering design within the context of 3-dimensional science and engineering teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Rita Hagevik (The University of North Carolina at Pembroke: LAURINBURG, NC), Kathy Trundle (Utah STate University: No City, No State), Laura Wheeler (Assistant Professor: , UT)

Come learn from the National Free Flight Society (NFFS) and Science Olympiad about how easy it is for to use free flight model aircraft in your classroom to help students master the three dimensions of the NGSS related to Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn the art of the possible when it comes to using flight as topic to engage students in their study of forces, free body diagrams, and Newton's Laws.

SPEAKERS:
John Loehr (Science Olympiad: Oakbrook Terrace, IL)

Department of Energy national labs provide opportunities for researchers to be involved in developing authentic STEM learning experiences for students. Join this hands-on session to see how Berkeley Lab energy technologies research is reflected in projects on sustainability and alternative energy.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about NGSS-aligned curriculum resources that reflect authentic STEM research at Berkeley Lab, and directly experience hands-on sustainability/alternative energy projects.

SPEAKERS:
Faith Dukes (Director, K-12 STEM Education Programs: Berkeley, CA), Alisa Bettale (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Berkeley, CA)

Feeling timid about embracing the challenge of engaging students in fun and creative engineering design challenges? The presenter will share a method for structuring, scaffolding, and assessing student growth and learning during NGSS aligned engineering design challenges.

TAKEAWAYS:
Engaging students in the engineering design process fosters life long skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Assessment of engineering design should focus on these skills rather than the overall success or failure of a student designed project.

SPEAKERS:
Rachel Stasi (Retired Secondary Science Educator: , IL)

Hands-on lab producing graphs critical to understanding properties for engineering bridges and more. With focus on making, interpreting, and teaching the graphs in a classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
Cheap and effective beams & bridges labs with graph analysis, iterative design, and real-world applications.

SPEAKERS:
Scott Spohler (Global Impact STEM Academy: Springfield, OH)

Go behind-the-scenes of a vehicle crash-test facility to learn about the latest research regarding equity issues and crash testing.

TAKEAWAYS:
Is crash testing biased against women? Exploring the reality of this question offers students and teachers an opportunity for real-world studies of nature of science topics such as correlation vs. causation as well as statistical data analysis techniques and other engineering practices concepts.

SPEAKERS:
Griff Jones (University of Florida: No City, No State), Pini Kalnite (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Highway Loss Data Institute: Arlington, VA), Linda Jones (University of Florida: Gainesville, FL)

Explore STEAM with concrete, metal, polymers, and clay. Apply math & design concepts to many real-world examples. Supplies are cheap and students love destructive testing!

TAKEAWAYS:
Affordable labs exploring these properties of material categories and ways to adapt these labs for specific classroom needs while referencing real-world applications and iterative design.

SPEAKERS:
Briana Richardson (Washington High School: Washington Court House, OH)

Replace demoralizing competition with creativity, laughter, and inspiration by giving students open-ended projects. This talk will feature 3 creative circuits projects—LED greeting cards, Arduino-based holiday lights shows, and LCD quotes displays.

TAKEAWAYS:
Open-ended projects are engaging, technically rigorous, and boost student confidence. Teachers will walk away with 3 concrete project ideas ready for implementation, as well as the inspiration to design more.

SPEAKERS:
Marieke Thomas (The Bronx High School of Science: Bronx, NY)

Through this workshop, participants will learn from classroom teachers and university professors on ways to incorporate your local habitat and utilize community partners to provide students with exposure to diverse job opportunities.

TAKEAWAYS:
We will share activities that demonstrate different jobs related to environmental science while addressing the need for STEM learning. Hands-on activities will be explored and connected to specific careers that can be discussed and applied with students in classrooms regardless of stream access.

SPEAKERS:
Tim Hawig (Carrollton City Schools: Carrollton, GA), Stacey Britton (University of West Georgia: Carrollton, GA), Brent Gilles (University of West Georgia: Carrollton, GA)

Students embark on an odyssey to discover how Art can be the motivation and hub to learn sciences and a journey discover themselves. An acrylic interactive light sculpture combines coding, proximity sensors, laser cutting, refraction of light and soldering to create a large sale art installation. Since our school mascot is the lion, students built columns of laser cut acrylic and LEDS that form the constellation LEO. They soldered customized circuit boards that controlled how the LEDs turned on and off when triggered by human presence. Different emotions were plotted on a 2D graph based on light intensity and blink frequency to help them express aspects of being human in an LED pattern. One student eloquently describes how her light pattern matches what she feels when experiencing an anxiety attack. Their creation forced students to explore different disciplines beyond their comfort zone and spur discussions in the student population about how they felt during pandemic learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students wear labels and often avoid other disciplines of learning, yet the 4th Industrial Revolution will present challenges and opportunities that require a diversity of experiences and skills. LEO demonstrates how all the interconnected letters of STEAM work together. foggs.ca/wp/?page_id=2303

SPEAKERS:
Ian Fogarty (Riverview High School: Riverview, NB)

As we discuss drones as an instructional tool for K-12 STEM education, this session will introduce an example of drones presented as part of an engineering design-based project to teach climate change to secondary Earth Science students.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will discover ways to engage STEM learners with hands-on, drone-based teaching for their own educational applications.

SPEAKERS:
Hannah Ziegler (Vanderbilt University: Nashville, TN)

A team of middle/high school STEM teachers with university teacher educators lead a discussion about what we’ve learned from planning, implementing, and evaluating social-justice-oriented STEM lessons in school districts with varying support for integrating social justice into the curriculum.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants receive lesson samples that (i) define a target concept aligned with curriculum, learning targets, and social justice issue; (ii) identifies the STEM-knowledge informing the issue, (iii) articulates discourse boundaries, and (iv) anticipates varying student perspectives on the issue.

SPEAKERS:
Amanda Barrett (Marietta High School: Marietta, GA), Marshai Waiters (Marietta Middle School: Marietta, GA), Mike Dias (Kennesaw State University: Kennesaw, GA)

Agile is becoming increasingly dominant as a project-management methodology. We will share our experience with applying Agile principles in a high school setting, using a physics and engineering electricity/circuits project as an example.

TAKEAWAYS:
Exposing students to Agile can not only prepare them for internships and careers, but also help them develop better time management, self-assessment, and work evaluation skills. Learn how we adapted Agile for a high school science class, as well as general advice for applying Agile in the classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Patrick McClanahan (Teacher: Suwanee, GA)

Preview of how the OpenSciEd High School Chemistry course will guide students to use force thinking as a lens alongside energy and matter to help them develop and explain chemical phenomena including atomic structure, bonding, and exothermic and endothermic reactions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Forces are not only an important idea in physical science generally, but are necessary, in conjunction with matter and energy, to help students develop the mechanisms underlying diverse phenomena like lightning, creating water on another planet, and energy released in the combustion of fossil fuels

SPEAKERS:
Michael Novak (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Dan Voss (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Nicole Vick (Northwestern University)

Matter, forces, and energy are three powerful lenses to make sense of phenomena. We will use examples from the forthcoming free and open-source OpenSciEd High School physics course, which also incorporates earth and space science, to show how we can scaffold the development of student thinking using these lenses across the year. Participants will receive an overview of the course and the matter-energy-forces (M-E-F) conceptual framework. Participants will also explore examples of phenomena that students will explain through these different lenses. Examples will include (1) deep mantle convection, (2) vehicle collisions, (3) meteors, (4) microwaves, and ionizing radiation.

TAKEAWAYS:
A framework for reasoning about changes in the matter, energy and forces in a system helps students develop the mechanisms underlying explanations of diverse phenomena including deep mantle convection, vehicle collisions, meteors, microwaves and ionizing radiation.

SPEAKERS:
Zoe Buck Bracey (Senior Science Educator and Director of Design for Justice: Colorado Springs, CO), Michael Novak (Northwestern University: Evanston, IL), Kate Henson (University of Colorado Boulder: Boulder, CO)

Ever had a project fail? Too difficult or easy? Students make great products but without actually learning or using the content? We will share our journey of learning to plan better projects through a way of thinking anchored in real-world engineering ideology: thinking in Solution/Problem Space.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn to consider how the criteria and constraints you set for a project will affect the Solution Space your students must navigate. This will help you avoid trivial or unaligned solutions, as well as more easily create projects with rich potential for students to create imaginative solutions.

SPEAKERS:
Patrick McClanahan (Teacher: Suwanee, GA)

Learn how all students benefit from inventing using U.S. Patent and Trademark Office free resources. Walk away with a classroom invention challenge focused on real-world problem-solving addressing science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts. Resources will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how invention education engages students in real-world problem solving and is a transdisciplinary approach to learning. They will gain an understanding that STEM does not exist in isolation and that collaboration and critical thinking become essential along with content.

SPEAKERS:
Reginald Duncan (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Alexandria, VA), Jorge Valdes (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Alexandria, VA), Kathy Hoppe (STEMisED, Inc: No City, No State)