Educational Technology

Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.

Classroom Learning Partner (CLP) tools allow students and teachers to create, annotate, and manipulate visual representations to solve math problems. The tools may be used for a number of mathematical purposes, but were mainly conceived to assist in creating visual representations for multiplication and division. The underlying model of multiplication and division assumed by the current set of tools involves a repetition of groups of the same size.

• Genetics

Many teachers use online professional development websites, but little is known about what teachers actually learn from them. This study explored teacher use of an online video-based learning website with over 37,000 members. It used web analytics to study user selection of video resources and coding of website commentary to analyze teacher responses to videos. The results indicated that teachers commonly view video clips designed for immediate use rather than reflection and respond to videos by evaluating the pedagogy positively.

Does the promise of competency-based PD outweigh the challenges to implementing it? Do we really want competency-based PD or just more effective, sustained, job-embedded PD like instructional coaching, lesson study, and the like. Read this blog by Meg S. Bates as she ponders these questions and more.

Variations of this slide deck were used in 3 different presentations this summer about the Teachers with Guts project:

• Agent-based modeling in StarLogo Nova. MIT Nord-Anglia Teacher Program. (2016)
• Introducing Project GUTS. MIT Science and Engineering Program for Teachers. (2016)
• Infusing Computational Thinking into Science Classrooms. ISTE Conference.  (2016)

This presentation on "Supporting the Intersections between Computer Science and the NGSS" was presented at the NSTA STEM Forum & Expo in Minneapolis, MN. (2015)  

The Santa Fe Institute has been developing programs and curricula that infuse computational thinking into Science education for the past 12 years. In this webinar, presenters describe how the study of Complex Adaptive Systems through computer modeling and simulation fits into existing science frameworks and classes, share information about their program and curricula, and describe the professional development needed to prepare Science teachers to address the computational thinking practices presented in the NRC framework and NGSS.