Sponsoring Company: NOAA

Learn to leverage freely available global data visualizations using NOAA’s SOS Explorer mobile application (available on Apple and Android devices and Chromebooks), and an observational technique used in art museums to increase critical thinking and time spent on visual and group thought analysis.

SPEAKERS:
Beth Russell (NOAA Office of Education: Silver Spring, MD), Hilary Peddicord (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory: Lyons, CO)

Sponsoring Company: Milestone C & STEMI

This essential Foundations of Tech will provide an introduction to areas of new-age tech that are embedded in Industry 4.0, including design, robotics, and AI. Let's work together to make students developers, instead of consumers, of tech and STEM for their future and ultimately, career choices.

SPEAKERS:
Dave Conelias (Milestone C LLC: Shelton, CT)

Portals are “a gateway between one world and the next,” Arundhati Roy offers. As young people use video games, they are accessing and developing portals, revealing how they imagine new social possibilities, futures, and worlds. In this keynote, Cortez will share insights and vignettes from The Learning To Transform (LiTT) Video Gaming Lab, a space he founded that supports undergraduates, community members, and Black and Latinx high school students in jointly re-imagining the role of everyday gaming as a robust site for learning. Through these examples, Cortez will offer new pedagogical portals for how social justice, the socio-political imagination, play, and STEM converge in everyday learning contexts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Through examples, Cortez will offer new pedagogical portals for how social justice, the socio-political imagination, play, and STEM converge in everyday learning contexts.

SPEAKERS:
Arturo Cortez (Assistant Professor: Boulder, CO)

Discussion boards and class discussions can tend to become routine, unproductive, and often frustrating to both teachers and students. After participating in a NGSS Twitter Chat, I began to wonder how I could replicate this experience in my course. Using the structure of Twitter and the function of the Twitter Chat, I reimagined facilitation of a class discussion that promoted increased engagement and learning for all my students. Using the stream format in Padlet and intentional questions for reflection, I replaced a typical reading response and class discussion. To my surprise, it was one of my students’ favorite strategies and continues to be each semester. Participants will engage in a Twitter chat simulation to support their understanding of the simulation and how students participate. Directions for creating the Padlet will be demonstrated and participants will have time to design their own Twitter chat simulation padlet and chat questions to use with upcoming content.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will use the structure and function of social media experiences, understand how they can be safely simulated in our classrooms using tools like Padlet, and leave with a Twitter Chat simulation they design around their upcoming content. (No Twitter account needed.) Upper Elem-PostSec.

SPEAKERS:
Beth Pesnell (Kansas State University: Manhattan, KS)

Sponsoring Company: ExploreLearning

This interactive session will explore a digital interface that develops models to capture students' thinking when designing and testing solutions to real-world problems. We will immerse ourselves in solving a puzzling STEM Case to develop a model and use it to optimize a solution.

SPEAKERS:
Patricia Low (ExploreLearning: Charlottesville, VA)

The session will give teachers an opportunity to see examples of the rich and meaningful three-dimensional assessment that are called for by the NGSS. This session, as a result, will include 20 minutes of audience participation in student hat and 20 minutes for examining student responses in order to make sense of student thinking. Participants will leave the session with access to a library of high-quality instructional 3-D assessment that they can use in their own classrooms. The agenda for this session is: • A discussion of what makes assessments useful for teaching and learning (5 min) • A discussion of the difference between 3-D, 2-D, and 1-D assessments (5 min). • An opportunity for participants to experience an example of high-quality 3-D assessment (20 min) • An overview of a tech tool that teachers use to access and use a library of these assessments (5 min) • Questions (5 min)

TAKEAWAYS:
Characteristics of high-quality three-dimensional assessments include: (1) can be used to examine how students use a DCI, CC, and SEP to figure something out, (2) easy to administer and take, and (3) include tools that lead to useful insights about student thinking.

SPEAKERS:
Todd Hutner (The University of Alabama: Del Valle, TX)

Sponsoring Company: 3D Molecular Designs

Physical models reveal the invisible molecular world, but can have limitations. Digital media can address these limitations, but is experienced separate from the models. With 3DMD AR, digital overlays appear directly onto the physical models, seamlessly combining the strengths of physical models and digital media.

SPEAKERS:
Mark Hoelzer (Director of Materials Development: Milwaukee, WI)

The NGSS emphasizes practices including: 1) analyzing/interpreting data, 2) constructing explanations, and 3) obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. Passive learning will not help middle school students practice these skills. But by giving students agency, ChatGPT, and proper scaffolding, teachers can incorporate such practices. This workshop will support teachers as they navigate through a scaffolded learning experience with ChatGPT. Attendees will discover that ChatGPT can be used to offload lower-level thinking skills and advance students into higher order thinking. For example, MS-PS1-3 reads: Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society. Students could use ChatGPT to gather the information and then analyze, evaluate, and construct explanations to make sense of the information. After one hour, attendees will have developed an NGSS-aligned activity using ChatGPT that they can confidently use!

TAKEAWAYS:
To be successful with ChatGPT in the science classroom, we need to give students agency. In this workshop, attendees will control their learning. They will develop a valuable idea for using ChatGPT in their class AND witness a fully different way of managing their class…by giving students agency.

SPEAKERS:
Walter Ryan (Retired Educator), Chris Turner (Chief of Staff: Rockaway, NJ), Denise Bressler (Chief Ideologist: Liberty Corner, NJ)

Sponsoring Company: CloudLabs Virtual STEM

Discover how gamified classrooms enhance STEM, creativity, and autonomous learning. Get engage with gamified environments, exploring benefits, challenges, and best practices for integrating technology in education.

SPEAKERS:
Jiovany Orozco (CloudLabs LLC)

In the presentation, I will be sharing STEM activities for grades 6-8. The activities shared will include STEM icebreakers, STEM projects for content units, and other fun and engaging STEM activities. Get ready to have a STEM-sational time as you will be creating projects to take back to your school. I will also provide links to activities/projects that participants can use that will not be demonstrated/experienced that will align the concept of cells to TEKS for grades 6-8.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will experience hands-on learning for grades 6-8. This experience will give attendees fun and engaging activities for students to learn about STEM.

SPEAKERS:
Amy Rush (Lufkin Middle School: Lufkin, TX), Rebecca Walker (Tays Junior High School: Katy, TX)

Digital notebooking is a tool that can support both teaching and learning and can be utilized for a variety of purposes. The time during this 60 minute session will be split between the presenters sharing information including examples of various ways to implement digital notebooks that align with research-based best practices and participants having time to plan and prepare usage for their own setting. Teachers will leave with ready-to-use takeaways to assist them in empowering students to not only learn content more independently but also reflect on their learning path and level of understanding to gear up for future success. Teachers will also be able to explore how the notebooks provide quick access to each student's progress in learning and the ability to give feedback when and where it is needed.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will leave this session with a digital notebook template and the knowledge and resources to create and implement one successfully, as well as a framework that coicides with the use of a digital notebook and fits any curriculum to allow for students to have influence on their learning.

SPEAKERS:
Vera Hayslip (7th grade Science: Cincinnati, OH), Kelly Hartings (Indian Hill Middle School: CINCINNATI, OH)

In this exciting and topical workshop, participants will act as their students to roleplay as a team of EV drivers, city planners, and community members to plan EV infrastructure. Participants will need to balance the needs and desires of different stakeholders to place EV chargers in their community. They will test their plan by simulating a day trip by calculating distance, battery capacity, and charging time. The challenge will be to make it a whole day without running out of battery power. This activity is inspired by electrification lessons from The Energy Coalition’s Energy is Everything curriculum program. Participants will leave this workshop with the tools to facilitate a roleplaying activity that explores city planning, identifying and addressing tradeoffs, and electrification within their communities. All materials will be provided by The Energy Coalition’s program, Energy is Everything.

TAKEAWAYS:
This hands-on, standards-aligned workshop will show the influence of engineering, technology, and science on society. Participants will learn to facilitate a roleplaying activity that explores city planning, stakeholder tradeoffs, and electrification within their own communities.

SPEAKERS:
Hanna Buechi (Sr. Project Coordinator: Irvine, CA), Jasmine Pineda (Project Manager: Irvine, CA)

Virtual reality is an emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way we learn and teach. As a tool in education, VR can create immersive and interactive experiences that engage students in ways that traditional methods cannot. VR can be used to create virtual field trips, simulations, visualizations, and collaborative environments that allow students to explore, experiment, and learn in ways that were previously impossible. VR as an educational tool has the potential to improve student engagement, understanding, and retention. The immersive and interactive nature of VR can help students to better understand complex concepts and retain information more effectively. As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that VR will become an increasingly important tool in education, providing new opportunities for learning and teaching. ClassVR (the platform we will use)can be used as an educational tool that not only engages the students but helps the educator teach!

TAKEAWAYS:
Virtual Reality as a teaching tool is a great way to engage and immerse your students and can help fill any gaps they may have from their personal experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Ashish Vadalia (Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation: No City, No State)

Sponsoring Company: Pivot Interactives

Learn how to use Pivot Interactives as a source of phenomena to quickly bring data analysis into all parts of the learning cycle. Unlock the science practices with your ready to go data and easily implement into your instruction.

SPEAKERS:
Eric Friberg (Pivot Interactives: Minneapolis, MN)

Teachers will experience what it is like to be a student in a unique and engaging modern classroom that uses innovative methods that place students in the center of their learning. Their assignments will be to view examples from science classrooms currently using the model, and create components of a modern classroom using content from their own courses or provided samples. By completing this workshop, teachers will have a better understanding of how to use technology with blended instruction, mastery learning, and self-paced structures that incorporate collaboration, projects, and hands-on learning into a modern classroom to effectively reach the needs of every student, and receive valuable next steps to begin transforming their teaching and create a Classroom of the Future. This workshop is geared toward 1:1 classrooms of all grade levels.

TAKEAWAYS:
​​Participants will experience this model as students as they explore blended instruction, self-pacing, and mastery-based grading. They will then begin to apply these concepts to their own lessons and units using the toolbox of samples, templates, and resources.

SPEAKERS:
Sumala Paidi (Teacher: , TX), Julie Gastler (Hickman High School: Columbia, MO)

Sponsoring Company: Pivot Interactives

What do hands-on labs do well? What not well? Are you open to considering a paradigm shift? Come see how Pivot Interactives expands the options to implement phenomena, the science practices, feedback, and scaffolding easily across the learning cycle.

SPEAKERS:
Eric Friberg (Pivot Interactives: Minneapolis, MN)

Sponsoring Company: Stile Education

N/A

SPEAKERS:
Shawna Jensen (Stile Education: Portland, OR)

This is a Share-a-Thon presentation highlighting the learning of computational thinking with the guidance from artificial intelligence. Through a live demonstration of describing a game's logic in English, the AI will guide the user to think computationally and bring the game to fruition.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn to: clearly articulate programming concepts, think like a programmer, relate various aspects of each sentence to computational concepts and constructs, and apply lessons to various subjects.

SPEAKERS:
Michael Hsiao (Virginia Tech: Blacksburg, VA)

Join us as we take you through a hands-on journey, walking you step-by-step through the process of crafting impactful movies. Whether you’re a seasoned tech enthusiast or new to the world of video editing, this session caters to all levels of expertise. Learn how to: 1. Choose the Right Software: Explore the functionalities of iMovie, Clips, and other popular editing tools, and determine which one suits your presentation style best. 2. Plan Your Story: Dive into the art of storytelling and how to structure your presentation to convey information effectively. 3. Capture and Edit Footage: Discover techniques for capturing engaging video content and editing with precision, including adding transitions, effects, and captions. 4. Incorporate Visuals: Learn how to integrate images, graphics, and animations to enhance your message and keep your audience engaged. 5. Perfect the Audio: Understand the importance of clear audio and explore how to incorporate music, narration, and sound effects.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to seamlessly integrate critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, and initiative into their STEM curriculum through video-based projects.

SPEAKERS:
Tambra Clark (Birmingham City Board of Education: Birmingham, AL), Portrice Warren (William James Christian K-8 School: Birmingham, AL)

Participants will have an opportunity to practice using a 3-D printing pen. They will be able to create small models and designs from a pattern (or just by doodling). This activity also aims to spark ideas for 3-D pens as a relatively easy and inexpensive way to introduce the engineering design process with practical applications for students. Information about eCYBERMISSION and the other programs sponsored by the Army Educational Outreach Program will be available as well. Submitted for the STEM Haven activity session on Saturday AM session, request access to electrical outlets and table space Please do not schedule to conflict with the following sessions: The Scoop on K-12 STEM Programs and Teacher Awards Administered by NSTA; eCYBERMISSION STEM Competition - The Power of Phenomenon-Based Learning; eCYBERMISSION STEM Competition - Authentic, Engaging, Accessible; or Translating Experience to Classroom Practice through Research Experiences for STEM Educators & Teachers (RESET)

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will have an opportunity to use a 3-D pen to make (and take) a small model or design for the classroom using a provided pattern or an original design. Information about eCYBERMISSION and programs administered by NSTA and sponsored by AEOP will be available.

SPEAKERS:
Brian Kutsch (National Science Teaching Association, eCYBERMISSION), Carey Dieleman (National Science Teaching Association: No City, No State)

Participants will have an opportunity to participate in a virtual reality simulation of a laboratory setting by wearing a VR headset. They will be able to “test” potential solutions for a refillable canteen by following verbal and visual instructions within the VR application. The VR experience also offers additional options to learn about various technological developments researched and developed by scientists and engineers working in Army laboratories, including night vision goggles and walkie talkies. Information about eCYBERMISSION and the other programs administered by NSTA and sponsored by the Army Educational Outreach Program will be available as well.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will have an opportunity to use virtual reality goggles and applications to explore a technological alternative to hands-on scientific inquiry and engineering design processes. Information about eCYBERMISSION and programs administered by NSTA and sponsored by AEOP will be available.

SPEAKERS:
Brian Kutsch (National Science Teaching Association, eCYBERMISSION), Carey Dieleman (National Science Teaching Association: No City, No State)

Part 1: We'll demonstrate how to use the ChatGPT to create dynamic curriculum & lesson plans that encourage student curiosity and foster a love for scientific inquiry. We'll demonstrate how to use the AI to generate thought-provoking questions, design hands-on activities, and provide real-time feedback to enhance student learning. Part 2: Learn how ChatGPT can assist you in designing assessments that effectively measure student understanding and track progress toward learning objectives. We'll cover strategies for generating AI-powered quizzes, tests, and projects, as well as using ChatGPT to analyze student performance and provide personalized feedback. Part 3: Navigate the potential challenges and ethical considerations of using ChatGPT in the classroom. We'll discuss best practices for responsibly and transparently integrating ChatGPT into your teaching, while maintaining student privacy and addressing potential biases in the AI's output.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to effectively integrate ChatGPT into science education, enhancing lesson plans, curriculum, and assessments while addressing ethical considerations for responsible AI implementation.

SPEAKERS:
Ren Mendoza (University of Nebraska at Omaha: , NE), Noah Glaser (Assistant Professor: COLUMBIA, MO)

A hot topic in energy management circles is microgrids. This activity introduces this concept and is designed to help students build simple DC circuits to “connect” and “light” their microgrid buildings. We’ll further discuss critical thinking activities and idea for classroom discussion to help students develop an understanding of their role in keeping our electric power system running smoothly, as well as how smart technologies in the home apply to a smart grid system.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn activities for students to be able to explain what a microgrid is and how to gather and analyze data to understand electricity use.

SPEAKERS:
Don Pruett, Jr. (Washington Science Teachers Association: Everett, WA)

In the presentation, I will be sharing activities for a 6-8 aligned unit on force and motion. The activities the participants will experience will include: a hands-on activity with technology to collect and analyze data that will aid in calculating speed and a hands-on activity using technology to graph motion in real time. I will also provide links to activities/projects that participants can use that will not be demonstrated/experienced that will align the concept of force and motion to TEKS for grades 6-8.

TAKEAWAYS:
Vertically aligned lessons for teaching force and motion that involves hands-on experiences which will engage your students. We will use hot wheels to collect data to calculate speed and create motion graphs using hands-on technology.

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Walker (Tays Junior High School: Katy, TX), Amy Rush (Lufkin Middle School: Lufkin, TX)

Over the last 10 years, STEM West, Inc. has engaged over 40 local STEM industries with schools through a variety of programs: Bridging the Gap (teachers partnered with businesses to create PBL units for the classrooms related to real business challenges), EXTREME STEM Tours (every 8th grader visited 2 local STEM businesses and they toured their community college to understand connections between pathways and businesses), and Robotics clubs that presented prototype solutions using their robotic platforms to advance the industries' production. The goal is to ignite participants' ideas of how they can modify these examples to fit their school, district, or region.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will take away several different ways to engage local businesses through partnerships.

SPEAKERS:
Carol Moore (STEM West: CLAREMONT, NC)

In this session, teachers will have the opportunity to rotate through small group sessions with expert educators who will discuss a variety of topics such as blended instruction, self-pacing, mastery learning, classroom management, and collaboration. Each expert will share their insights and strategies and then answer questions. This session is designed for teachers who are eager to embrace technology and student-centered learning to create a dynamic and engaging classroom. (This Q&A session is a follow-up to our other two workshops: “Building Your Classroom of the Future: Embracing Technology and Student Centered Learning” and “Building Your Classroom of the Future: Student Centered Learning in a Low Tech Classroom” and is suitable for all grade levels.)

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will get tangible and practical ideas to begin the journey of transforming their classroom into the Classroom of the Future. Teachers will leave equipped with samples, templates, resources, guidelines, tips and tricks.

SPEAKERS:
Sumala Paidi (Teacher: , TX), Julie Gastler (Hickman High School: Columbia, MO)