Create, Use, and Distribute Free SmartGraphs Activities

Day
Fri

Learn how to create free, online interactive lessons of your own design to help students understand graphs and the STEM concepts represented in graphs. Bring a laptop.

Date/Time
-
Session Type
PI-organized Discussion

Learn how to create free, online interactive lessons of your own design to help students understand graphs and the STEM concepts represented in graphs. SmartGraphs permits non-programmers to create new multi-page, interactive activities. Teachers and students may also freely use and share existing activities, which are released under a Creative Commons license (see http://www.concord.org/projects/smartgraphs#curriculum). SmartGraphs activities run in a Web browser; there is no software to download or install.

CADRE Instrumentation Study

Day
Fri

This session provides an opportunity for participants to discuss findings from a systematic review of instrumentation that DR K–12 projects proposed for assessing teacher’s content knowledge, classroom practices, and pedagogical content knowledge.

Date/Time
-
Session Type
Other
Session Materials

This session provides an opportunity for participants to discuss findings from a systematic review of instrumentation that the DR K–12 community proposed to use in their projects. The conversation will include a presentation of the most commonly named instruments being used to assess teachers’ content knowledge, classroom practices, and pedagogical content knowledge. Presenters discuss with participants the state of measurement tools for teachers and the implications for accumulating knowledge across projects.

What Do We Do with the Kids Who “Aren’t Ready” for Algebra?

Day
Thu

Presenters from two projects developing and researching ninth-grade “double-period” algebra approaches and materials present their distinct but compatible perspectives. Group discussion is encouraged.

Date/Time
-
Session Type
PI-organized Discussion
Session Materials

Having students enter high school “unready” for algebra is not a new or rare problem. The challenges, frankly, are vast. Students identified as “unready” are extremely varied, as are the reasons they are included in specialized classes. Some, for example, are mathematically competent, but included “for English language support.” More, of course, have some difficulty specific to mathematics. Of those, many are weak in arithmetic.

Urban Advantage: Formal-Informal Partnerships to Improve STEM Teaching and Learning in Middle School Science Classrooms

Day
Thu

This session examines the potential and challenges of developing effective formal-informal partnerships to support STEM teaching and learning and embedding research agendas into this work.

Date/Time
-
Session Type
PI-organized Discussion
Session Materials

This session presents the work from three projects that are addressing the challenges of using secondary data sets in the classroom to teach ecology. Presenters from each project provide a brief overview of their development and research work followed by a question and answer period. A panel discussion with participants focuses on the following three questions: What are the challenges and benefits of bringing “real” data to the classroom? How do you make complex data accessible to middle and high school students?

Toward Greater Mutual Understanding in STEM: A Focused, Facilitated Conversation Exploring How Engineering Lessons Can Support Math and Science “Common Core” Standards

Day
Thu

In an environment structured for productive thinking, educators from different content areas collaboratively begin to develop a set of recommendations or considerations for cross-content generative engineering lessons.

Date/Time
-
Session Type
PI-organized Discussion
Session Materials

This session focuses on a particular role that engineering lessons and curricula can play, placing them as tools for engagement in and expansion of mathematics and science learning in which engineering is used primarily as a means to help promote learning in these content areas. This role may not be what all engineering education specialists strive for; many of us may well value engineering education for its own sake and its role supporting technological literacy.

The Challenges of Scaling Up

Day
Thu

Dynabook and SmartGraphs answer the questions: What are the major challenges in scaling up, and how do you plan to meet them?

Date/Time
-
Session Type
PI-organized Discussion
Session Materials

The goal of the session is to help attendees understand challenges of scaling up and to inform their design of scaling-up strategies for their own projects. The session has four parts: an introduction in which key challenges are identified, two parts in which Dynabook and SmartGraphs describe strategies for meeting challenges, and a part for audience to interactaction. To successfully scale up, organizations need to concisely identify the “value proposition” that appeals to users, which requires an understanding of need, approach, benefits, and competition.