ITTIP Summer 2014 Newsletter

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Problem-based Interdisciplinary STEM

(PI STEM) at Longwood University Up-Coming Events

Page 1 PI STEM

Page 2 ISTE in ATL

Page 3 MODSIM

Page 3 ITSI in Virginia

Page 4 Summer 2014 PD

What to find in this month’s Megabite:

Summer 2014 ITTIP Monthly Newsletter

Monthly Megabite

The Institute was awarded a State Council of Higher Education of Virginia

(SCHEV) grant in late June for the grant titled, Problem-based Interdisciplinary

STEM (PI STEM). In return, PI STEM provided a week long face to face profes-

sional development workshop for 28 teachers from 11 school divisions in July.

The recruitment included teams of at least two teachers from the same division

from either a middle school or a high

school. The team needed to include a

language arts teachers, as well as a math-

ematics, science, CTE or resource teach-

er.

The face to face learning week (July 14th

-18th) began with a visit from BirdBrain

Technologies. Dr. Tom Lauwers, the

founder of BirdBrain Technologies, made

a personal appearance to teach the par-

ticipants how to use the Hummingbird

Robotics kit with the software, Visual

Programmer. By the end of the day, the

teams of participants created and pro-

grammed a robot with the theme, Sum-

mer Fun.

August

4th - 5th

Middle School: Advanced

Concepts for Science

Education Leadership,

Longwood University

August

4th- 5th

Elementary School: Ad-

vanced Concepts for Sci-

ence Education Leadership,

Longwood University

Above: PI STEM participants showcas-ing their Hummingbird Robotics.

Left: Pittsylvania group shares their innovative way of making a spool for their motor out of a Chapstick top and two quarters.

Continued on page 4

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ITTIP takes Technology

Around the World

National Spelling Bee

ITTIP Monthly Newsletter Summer 2014

ITTIP Presents at the 2014 International

Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

ITTIP director, Dr. Manorama Talavier, and STEM Specialist, Stephanie Playton, traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to present and learn at the annual ISTE conference. This year’s conference was held at the Georgia World Congress Center from June 28th - July 1st with over 16,000 attendees representing 67 nations. The conference tends to attract teachers, tech-nology coordinators, administrators, library media specialists, teacher educators and policy makers to enjoy world-class keynotes and hundreds of sessions in a variety of formats.

This year ITTIP staff proposed and was accepted to present a session titled, STEM IDEA: Inquire, design, engineer, articu-late. Their session focused on successful ways to get middle school students excited about STEM through integration of Scratch and LilyPad Arduino while facilitating the development of inquiry and design process skills. Instead of using PowerPoint, Talavier and Play-ton used Classflow to receive feedback and creative responses from the audience during the presentation. The session was 50 minutes long and attracted 150 participants, the maximum room capacity.

Next year’s ISTE conference is scheduled to be held June 28th - July 1st, 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Next year’s call for participation be-gins September 3, 2014 and registration opens October 1, 2014. If you missed this year’s ISTE, you may want to take a look at the opportunity to attend and/or contribute to ISTE 2015.

Does your school have an annual spelling bee? If so, have you ever considered making it national? The National Spelling Bee is held annually to help students improve their spelling, increase vocabulary, learn concepts, and develop correct English us-age that will help them throughout their lives.

The program is open to students that have not passed beyond the eighth grade and are under the age of 16. Early enroll-ment for Bee ‘15 will begin August 14th through October 15, 2014. The regular enrollment period is October 16 through De-cember 12, 2014. Teachers/Schools that enroll will receive resources. For the Bee ‘14, schools were additionally given a free subscription to Britannica Online of Kids (a $69.95 value) to be used as a prize in their spelling bee program. After the local rounds, winners of your Bee can move on to through the competition nationally, with a chance as the National Champion. Prizes may include up to $30,000 cash for the national winner. Additional prizes are given for other finalists and semifinal-ists.

Above: ITTIP has a full session at the 2014 ISTE Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Summer 2014 ITTIP Monthly Newsletter

Modeling & Simulation Workshop

(MODSIM) NASA Langley Research Center and ITTIP sponsored four days of professional development for fourteen (14) mathematics and science teachers in grades 6-12, and two (2) pre-service teachers, in the fundamentals of modeling and simulation. This opportunity took place at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

As part of the participation, teachers were provided lodging, a stipend, and recertification points. Three of the days involved tours of some of NASA’s facilities and simulators, such as the wind tunnel, flight simula-tor, and 3D printers. Presentations also included Excel as a tool, MathDisk, ITSI, probeware, simulations and

much more!

The last day participants were given time to create an inquiry based unit plan using the 5E method, while integrating modeling and simulation. ITTIP looks forward to posting these unit plans to make available on the Ed Resources site so that other educators and students can benefit from these plans.

Above: Participant takes cover as her co-pilot crashes their plane in NASA’s plane simulator.

Above: Participant uses a temperature probe during an online activity.

Innovation Technology in Science Inquiry (ITSI) is a nationwide project with Concord Consortium, including four States (Virginia, Kan-sas, Alaska, and Iowa), and funded through a National Science Foundation grant. ITSI finished its fourth school year of training teach-ers and having them implement activities through an online portal that includes inquiry based learning through integration of probe-ware and/or simulations, while making connections to STEM careers. As representatives for Virginia, ITTIP has trained 85 teachers to date through face to face and online facilitation. In addition, many workshops have been presented to additional teachers to encour-age classroom integration of this tool.

As a culmination of this year’s research and findings, ITSI Master Teachers from all four States joined at Longwood University during the week of July 21st- 25th. Master Teachers worked hard on developing more activities, resource guides and teacher guides for the online portal. ITTIP of Longwood was delighted to host this event for the educators and partners of the ITSI project.

Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry:

Longwood Hosts Master Teachers

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Summer 2014 ITTIP Monthly Newsletter

Summer 2014

Participation ITTIP is proud to announce the participation for the Spring & Summer 2014 professional development opportunities. These numbers reflect recruitment for MODSIM, PI STEM, and Advanced Concepts for Science Education Lead-ership (ACSEL), and webinars:

PI STEM (continued)

The week continued with partici-pants learning more about prob-lem-based learning and interdisci-plinary STEM to integrate into a unit plan with the Hummingbird Robotics kit in their classrooms by January 30, 2015. During the school year, participants will par-ticipate in four webinars about literacy and mathematics integra-tion with STEM.

Through this professional learning community, teachers will come together in May 2015 to share all that they have learned from their experiences with PI STEM through sharing their unit plans and col-lections of digital artifacts that will be posted on ITTIP’s Mahara site.

ITTIP staff looks forward to vis-iting classrooms to observe their learning and hard work in action.

County or School Number of Participants

County or School Number of Participants

Amelia 5 Henry 6

Bedford 3 Hopewell 3

Brunswick 9 Longwood University (pre-service teachers)

2

Buckingham 2 Lunenburg 3

Charlotte 9 Martinsville 1

Chesterfield 1 Mecklenburg 3

Colonial Heights 8 Nottoway 7

Cumberland 4 Pittsylvania 11

Danville 5 Prince Edward 4

Dinwiddie 3 Prince George 4

Greensville 7 Sussex 3

Halifax 8 Williamsburg 1

*Hargrave Military Academy

1 GRAND Total 113

*Hargrove Military Academy is a private school located in Chatham, Virginia.

Above: Brunswick teachers work togeth-er on one of their design challenges.