Presentation Description: To create high quality STEM learning opportunities several factors must be considered. Is it hands-on? Do students have the opportunity to collaborate? Is significant content and conceptual understanding uncovered through the activity? Join us as we talk about these factors and others, their importance, and explore STEM activities that exhibit them at work.
Presenter: Cheryl Steighner Location: Tacoma, WA, USA @cherylsteighner
Presentation Title: Finding Your People
Presentation Description: This session will focus on the positive changes that can occur in our schools when one “finds their people,” or a group of other like-minded educators. I will discuss a variety of ways teachers can connect with one another on- and off-line to spark their individual passions, as well as provide tips for collaboration and passing on the spark. Examples include: EdCamps, Twitter (citing specific hashtags or chats), Google+ communities, Pinterest, worldwide educational events (Dot Day, Global Read Aloud, Hour of Code), and local and national conferences.
Presenter: Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. Location: Santa Fe, NM, USA @jackiegerstein
Presentation Description: Being a maker educator often requires developing a new mindset; a new set of skills and roles. Discover, through this presentation, first, why we are in a perfect storm for maker education in both formal and informal learning environments, and second, through a self-assessment, the characteristics and qualities of the mindsets of an educator who is embracing making education.
Presenter: Mark W. Carbone & Donna Miller Fry Location: Cambridge ON and Thunderbay ON (respectively) @markwcarbone and @fryed
Presentation Title: Connected Learners Need Connect Leaders
Presentation Description:
This video presentation captures the importance of ‘getting connected,’ the journey and the impact of being connected through a series of interviews with several Ontario based education leaders. The context of this presentation relates to the TEDx talk by Donna Miller Fry and Mark W. Carbone as part of the TEDxKitchenerED event theme of Fostering Connectivity which is published at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEc666kN_i0
Presenter: Melanie Thompson Location: Jefferson City, MO USA @mahsati22
Presentation Description: This presentation will illustrate how I transformed my library, creating a learning space for exploration and invention. The video will highlight the steps I took to make this change, from rearranging the physical space to the creation of an after school STEAM club/MakerSpace. I will explain the rationale behind my plan, objectives that guide the program, and explain what STEAM means to my students and me. I will share the planned calendar of topics, resources for activities, and show how easy it is to create a space and time for students to explore and engineer. I will also include tips for gathering materials. The video will include links to files, photos, and audio reflections from teachers and students.
Presenter: JoAnn Delaney Location: Hershey, PA USA @jdelaneyJoAnn
Presentation Title: Genius Hour Passion Projects
Presentation Description: Genius Hour Passion Projects started with a pep talk from Kid President and 95 Hershey MS 6th grade students. The plan… What if students could learn whatever they wanted? What questions would students want to find out? What impact would students have on the world? Students were called to action to share their genius!
Presenter: Melissa Techman Location: Charlottesville, VA, USA @mtechman
Presentation Title: Coding/Making/Writing with Connected Learners
Presentation Description: An overview of how to use Mozilla’s Thimble with students for creative approaches to writing. Thimble allows for easy website building and fun remixing of existing website templates. Following the success of Webmaker events with teens at the public library, Melissa Techman shares her forms, templates and methods so you can experiment with Thimble in the classroom. This creative approach to writing builds interest in coding and allows students of all abilities to have fun and experience collaborative and connected learning. While intended for grades 6 and up, the approach and the templates can be simplified for younger students.
Presenter: Karen Wilkinson – Director, Tinkering Studio Location: San Francisco, CA / United States @TinkeringStudio
Presentation Description: The Tinkering Studio is a public space within the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where we design opportunities for people to “think with their hands” in order to construct meaning and understanding through STEM-rich learning experiences. In this talk, I’ll touch on some of the underlying ideas behind this work and hopefully show why a constructionist theory of learning is ideally suited to maker-centered education.
Presentation Description: Mister C shares and discusses the importance of Grabbing the MIC and using music in the classroom and discusses tips and tricks of music integration.
Presenter: Paul Allison Location: New York City, NY @paulallison
Presentation Title: A Key to Interest-Based Learning
Presentation Description: When we introduce Youth Voices to students we tell them: “We mean it! We really do want you to find your own area of inquiry, your own niche of expertise, exploration, and excitement. What are you already good at? What do you dream about, wonder over, and want to inquire into? What are you passionate about? That’s what good research is really about. Starting with 10 self and 10 world questions is a great way to begin!” http://youthvoices.net/questions
Next, we tell students: “Over time, along with your teacher and your peers you will be able to identify the “generative themes” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 3, pp. 96 & 97) that begin to bubble up in your writing. This type of really free, habitual freewriting is an important first step — and ongoing, underground spring — that allows your projects and essays to become “a practice in catalyzing passion and creativity,” not just another school assignment. Once you begin to write into an area of inquiry, your can take your next step “by finding niche learning communities that each kid might want to be a part of and build on that.” (John Seely Brown. Lecture, 1.18.05) Helping you to create and find these niches is what “creating discussions” in a school-based social network such as Youth Voices is all about.: http://youthvoices.net/freewriting
In this video, Paul Allison puts the “10 self/10 world questions” assignment into the context of the larger goals of Youth Voices, where we encourage students to allow their passions to brush up against disciplinary inquiry.
Learn more about this key to interest-based learning.
