This collaborative session brings together four mature projects that use different approaches to develop and validate technology-enhanced STEM assessments. Presenters share their designs, research findings, and implications for measuring STEM standards. All offer evidence addressing four questions: (1) What was the technical quality (reliability and validity) and effectiveness of the assessments for their intended purposes? (2) How feasible were the assessments to implement in classrooms? (3) How can the projects can be scaled up and sustained?

Given technology that enables teachers and learners to express mathematics and science in quite new ways—relative to textbooks and conventional classroom talk—what sorts of representations, activities, and practices provide the necessary structure to guide and develop what students can “say” and “do” so that they develop ways to express themselves more powerfully and meaningfully?

Presenters from six DR K–12 projects, each involved in mathematics or science teaching and learning, describe their approaches:

In this session, presenters from three projects seek to elaborate teaching practices in mathematics and science that support the development of central mathematical or scientific ideas and result in significant learning opportunities for students. More specifically, they seek to ground a larger conversation about equity in mathematics and science education in the sharing of specific analyses of their work. All three presentations focus on supporting teachers’ development of ambitious (rigorous and equitable) instructional practices.

The Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness (PARCC) is a consortium of 24 states that received a Race to the Top Assessment Grant from the U.S. Department of Education in the fall of 2010 to build a next-generation student assessment system. The assessments will be based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics and target students in grades 3–11.

Synopsis
How can we sustain and improve our innovations to promote lifelong science learning? What have we learned about designing computer-based materials that transform science education? What are open questions and promising directions? How can we collaborate to stimulate change? What strategies and revenue streams will lead to sustainability of promising innovations?

For a description of the Crossroads session structure, please see the initial Crossroads session.

Participants are invited to play online games embedded in a data-analysis environment, analyzing their game data to improve their strategy. The structure follows an abbreviated version of classroom activities that presenters are now field testing. Product release is scheduled to begin in fall 2012. (Participants should bring a laptop computer that can connect with conference wifi.) With each game-based activity, subsequent discussion focuses on different issues about which presenters would like feedback.

The purpose of this session is to engage participants in discussing and sharing strategies for designing classroom uses of data sets and visualization technologies, including large archives and portals of geospatial data sets, data from field sites, Web-based graphing and data analysis tools, and technologies that simulate a field environment. Each of these technologies and data sets is tied to curriculum and instructional resources.