One day left to submit projects for the STEM Summit!

Looking for innovative K-12 projects to present at the 2013 STEM Summit

What: Resource Expo at the 2013 Massachusetts STEM Summit
When: November 13, 2013
Location: Gillette Stadium
To submit: Please send the title of the exhibit and a short description of K-12 innovative project - including grade level and school, names and titles of presenters (students are encouraged to attend and to be presenters if appropriate), and e-mail and phone contact information of the point person - to Alysia Ordway at alysia.ordway@bostonpic.org.
Deadline: September 10, 2013

The 2013 STEM Summit at Gillette Stadium will include a new feature this year: a Resource Expo where students, teachers, and others can display innovative STEM curricula, projects, and activities. This is open to all who contribute to, participate in, or support PreK-16 STEM education. Please consider showcasing and sharing your innovative STEM work with STEM Summit attendees!

The submissions should:

• Feature student- or teacher-created STEM products, activities or curricula (PreK-16)
• Illustrate STEM innovation
• Reflect goals of the State STEM Plan
• Increasing student interest in STEM
• Increasing student achievement of STEM, including college readiness
• Increasing success in post-secondary STEM fields
• Increasing effectiveness of STEM educators
• Aligning STEM education to workforce needs

The submissions should not:

• Be for the purpose of promote or advertising commercial products

Massachusetts Project Lead The Way Conference

Save the Date

What: Massachusetts Project Lead The Way Conference
When: October 24, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Location: Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Salisbury Laboratories, Worcester, MA
Eligibility: The conference is open to all K-12 schools and other interested parties.
Details: Partial funding to support implementing PLTW programs at the middle and high school levels may be available to MA school districts serving diverse, low income populations. The conference details will be available by late September on the WPI website at www.wpi.edu/+pltw. For more information about the Project Lead The Way programs, please visit the PLTW website at www.pltw.org.

This conference is a professional development conference for school counselors, curriculum specialists, principals, teachers, district administrators, and interested business and industry professionals to learn about the Project Lead The Way K-12 Curriculum Programs that integrate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), providing an opportunity for districts to develop a STEM pathway from kindergarten to grade 12 in order to prepare students for the global economy. These programs are aligned with the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.

PLTW programs are endorsed by the Massachusetts Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, the American Aerospace Industry Association, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, among others.

Massachusetts Envirothon looking for coaches

Opportunity for Massachusetts high school educators

Who: Massachusetts Envirothon
When: Webinar for new coaches on September 24, from 5:00-6:00 P.M. The first of three team workshops will be on October 25 at UMass Amherst.
Information: For more information visit www.maenvirothon.org or read our 2014 recruitment letter or contact massenvirothon@gmail.com.

The program offers:

• A September webinar to answer your questions
• Three workshops through the year, across the state
• A current issue with relevance to every urban, suburban, and rural community: Sustainable Local Agriculture
• A stellar competition site (Sholan Farms, Leominster)
• A proven new competition format allowing up to 10 team members to compete at the May event, with a chance for community service as well

Opportunity for students to:

• Get outdoors and experience the interaction of wildlife, water, soils, and forestry within Massachusetts ecosystems
• Investigate this year’s current issue: Sustainable Local Agriculture
• Develop skills to participate in community decisions and action
• Work alongside natural resource professionals to learn about local wildlife, water, soil and forests
• Grow in their commitment to stewardship of the environment and natural resources
• Test their environmental knowledge, skills, and teamwork in a challenging competition
• Develop their curiosity and a love of learning in science
• Increase their awareness of career opportunities in the environmental field

Long-time coaches like the Envirothon because it gives them a chance to keep learning themselves, to get to know a group of students well, and to spend time with them outdoors.

NASA Exploration Design Challenge

Become part of space history

What: NASA learning challenge for K-12 students
Information: For details, see the Exploration Design Challenge website
Deadline: The deadline to register students for the virtual crew is March 14, 2014.

In March, NASA launched an exciting new partnership with Lockheed Martin to engage students in America's next phase of human space exploration. The Exploration Design Challenge (EDC) invites students from kindergarten through 12th grade to learn more about one of the biggest challenges NASA faces before sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit: space radiation. Through a series of age-appropriate activities, participants will learn about radiation and its effects on humans and hardware destined for asteroids, Mars or other deep space locations. Orion is the vehicle for these space destinations and will make its maiden test flight in 2014.

The youngest explorers (K-4) will complete NASA education activities related to radiation. Upon completion, a teacher or other adult may submit the students' names to be flown on the 2014 Orion flight as honorary virtual crewmembers.

Those same opportunities are open to students in grades 5-8, but they also will design and develop a radiation shield prototype. Instructions, guidebooks and related content are provided on the EDC website.

High school participants have an even greater challenge – and opportunity! In addition to the activities listed above, teams of students will design a radiation shield prototype that meets established criteria and constraints. Teams will submit their designs, and the top five designs selected will be tested in a virtual radiation simulator. The winning team will travel to Florida for Orion's launch and have its design flown aboard the spacecraft!

This is an exciting, hands-on way to get students inspired and interested in what NASA does now and the grand plans ahead! All the details for the EDC and information on how to participate are on NASA's website.

Summer professional development for teachers in grades 3-8

Massachusetts Professional Development Institute

Title: Student Conceptions in Physical Science
Date: July 16-19 (Tues.-Fri.) and July 22-24(M-W)
Time: 8:30 am-3:00pm; one afternoon 4-7pm in fall
Location: Worcester State University, Fuller Room, Student Center
Credits: 3 graduate credits from Worcester State College @$100/credit /67.5 PDP’s
Information: Register here, and contact Sandra Mayrand for more information.

This course (intended for grade 3-8 teachers) will focus on identifying and developing students' conceptual thinking about physical science, whether concrete, emerging, or mis-constructed. Participating teachers will see how to support the connection and development of concepts across and within grade spans by actively engaging with colleagues in investigations. They will learn about tools, strategies and approaches to assess students' initial ideas, including possible misconceptions. Course participants will learn how to plan for and support student learning to advance student conceptual thinking in productive ways as they learn science. Multiple resources will be used for effective planning and instruction, including the Massachusetts Science Curriculum Standards, formative assessments, differentiation strategies, models of student work, learning progressions and strand maps. Through this course participating teachers will also deepen their fundamental knowledge in physical science concepts and learn how students’ conceptual thinking develops in: Force and Motion, Properties of Matter, and Energy Transformation.

New STEM course for middle school educators

Integrating STEM for the Middle School: A Hands-On, Real-World, Practical and Research-informed Approach for Teachers of Grades 6-8

Course: This course is offered by The Hall at Patriot Place Presented by Raytheon in collaboration with Engaging Youth through Engineering (EYETM) and Blue Heron STEM Education. Participants will explore STEM topics and curriculum and instruction issues through rich, engaging middle grades curriculum materials developed through a National Science Foundation award.
Registration/questions: Contact Peg Myers, Education Director, The Hall at Patriot Place

Course Dates:
Session 1: Thursday June 13, 2013 3:45 – 7:15 PM
Sessions 2-6: Monday-Friday August 5-9, 2013 8:45 – 3:00 PM (45-minute lunch break)
Session 7: Tuesday November 12 3:45 -6:30 PM
Session 8: Weekday afternoon/evening, tbd* 3:45-7:15 PM
*Session 8 will be designed to examine student work and other documentation from the classroom implementation of an EYETM middle school module. The date of this last session will be decided in collaboration with course participants during the August session.

Workshop Fee: $500 per DISTRICT. Each district may send 2-6 participants. Ideally, participants will be math-science teacher pairs who teach the same cohort of students. Districts wishing to send additional participants should contact Peg Myers.

Description: Expand your own content knowledge and your professional expertise in a supportive, creative team environment. Explore engineering and technology content and how it fits with real-world challenges as well as current, standards-based mathematics and science content as outlined in the Common Core State Standards, the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for Mathematics, and the most currently available science standards versions. In addition to hands-on, in-depth integrated STEM experiences that are drawn from nationally recognized exemplar materials, the course will include readings and discussions, visits from STEM field experts, and opportunities to look at student work for insights into STEM pedagogical issues. An implementation project in your classroom will also be included so that you can gain supported practice in integrated STEM experiences. Pending approval, this course will offer an option to earn 3 graduate credits from an accredited post-secondary institution.

Please Note: Additional costs include a materials fee for a comprehensive teacher guide and implementation kit and tuition fee for optional graduate level credit, to be paid to credit-granting institution. (Final course approval is pending.) For information, please contact Peg Myers.

Summer learning opportunities: computing & robots

Put computing in your summer

The Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) has collected and posted summer learning opportunities for students and teachers to engage more with computing and robots! Note that summer teacher professional development programs may not be full, even if the deadlines have passed, so please contact the organizers if interested.

Summer Camps for Students

• across Massachusetts and beyond
• for middle and high-school students
• web design, robotics, gaming, and more!

Professional Development for Educators

• workshops in June, July & August for teachers
• for middle, high-school, and community college educators
• programming, app development, and more!

The BLOSSOMS Initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

BLOSSOMS INITIATIVE OF MIT - ATTEND A WORKSHOP, MAKE A SCIENCE LEARNING VIDEO

MIT BLOSSOMS and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education are looking for Massachusetts high school science teachers to participate in the development of new interactive video‐based lessons aligned to new science and technology/engineering standards. These lessons, created here in Massachusetts by individual science teachers or small teams of science teachers, will become valuable educational resources within the Commonwealth and important tools in supporting the transition to new state science standards. Each teacher or teacher team will earn $1,000 as a token of appreciation for the successful completion of one of the ten selected lessons.

Informational Workshops:

• May 20th, 4:00 – 5:30 PM Sturbridge Hotel and Conference Center, Sturbridge
• May 28th, 4:00 – 5:30 PM MIT, Tang Center, Kendall Square, Cambridge
• •May 29th, 4:00 ‐ 5:30 PM West Springfield Clarion Hotel, Springfield

To sign up, receive travel directions for a workshop, or for more general information, contact MIT BLOSSOMS Project Manager Elizabeth Murray at emurray@MIT.EDU.

Read after the jump to learn more!