Category: stem
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Fantastic Questions for Student Learning Reflections
I am loving the opportunity to participate in #EdCampVoxer over the holidays this year. On December 23rd I shared the post, “Advice for Teachers Starting with Classroom Blogging,” which came out of the “Let’s explore blogging- writing and reading for professional growth!” group. Today I’d like to share some helpful ideas and questions which came out of…
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Inspired by Ashley Vance’s Biography of Elon Musk
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) is not only an inspiring and fascinating person, he’s also one of the most important entrepreneurs of our times who is combining technology with hard work and engineering smarts to solve some extremely challenging problems we face as a human race. Today I finished listening to the biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance (@valleyhack)…
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Changing Mindsets: STEM Is NOT Content Areas in Isolation
As this fall semester has started, I’ve heard several stories about STEM classes and STEM teachers in other schools that have troubled me deeply. Some paraphrased quotations from new, full-time STEM teachers, have included: I’m going to teach some math lessons, and then we are going to do some hands-on science experiments. Later in the semester we…
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Amazing Animated Space Films: Wanderers and New Horizons
Videos about space have been some of my favorite things to share with 4th and 5th grade STEM students the past two years. Yesterday I added several new space video links to my STEM curriculum “Curiosity Links” page, which my friend Bill Casebeer shared with me this weekend. The first is a short film (just under 4 minutes…
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Podcast427: Battlecode Coding Competition at MIT with Jonah Casebeer
This podcast features an interview with Jonah Casebeer, a 17 year old family friend and rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Alexandria, Virginia. Jonah and three of his classmates entered the annual “Battlecode” Artificial Intelligence Programming Competition at MIT along with about 400 other teams in the fall of 2014. Their…
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Ordering Supplies for STEMseeds Camp: Jitterbug Robots
In two weeks, Amy Loeffelholz and I will be leading a 3 day workshop for elementary STEM teachers in Yukon, Oklahoma, which we’ve named “STEMseeds PD Camp.” (It’s June 2-4, 2015.) One of the planned STEM projects we’re going to do is “Jitterbug Robots,” a lesson my wife (Shelly Fryer) learned to do and enjoyed last…
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30 Reasons I Love Teaching Elementary STEM
This is my 20th year in education but my second year back in the classroom, teaching STEM full-time to 610 4th and 5th graders at Independence Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma. Our STEM program is very unique, since it’s in the “specials “rotation for all students that also includes PE, Music and Art. This is the…