November 24, 2010

Yesterday the building was pretty empty at Grant Wood. I worked on collecting STEM career video clips. I am going to do my best to make it easy for the Grant Sites to show a couple of career clips a week in order to expose the students to as many STEM careers as possible. I want to put a screen shot of a couple of websites on the CSI Grant Recipients' resource website, but I don't know if I can legally do that, so I wrote to Stacy Beimer and I'm waiting for a response on that question.   I also worked on a way to explain the 'Catching the Wind' EIE kit, since I have the Braille school getting ready to use it and also the ELP in Mt. Vernon.  I made some Power Point slides that feature the elements of the kit and the elements of all EIE kits. We'll have to do some EIE kit training, so I was killing two birds with one stone as I became more familiar with the whole kit (we had done part of it for the U.S.A. Science Expo, and may be able to use some of what I did for that.  Erica seemed willing to help with this, so I'm hoping we can plan that soon.

Today I worked on the Grant Recipients' website, and then met with one of the teachers in Mount Vernon who wanted help with the Invention Fair.  I told her that I'd be willing to help with support for the students who don't have help at home in planning inventions, with a little after school club. She wanted to have her kids plan the Invention Fair and have them advertise too, so I helped her with the details she'd need to know to plan and execute it.  This is a non-competitive event that I've run for many years. I suggested that she might want to apply for a STEM grant next year, too, with her interest in after school science. I showed her the EIE kit list, and we talked about how that might fit in.  I had worked Monday on a list of links for STEM related topics, and one of my lists was links on inventions, and I will be sharing that with her also, because she asked for videos that might help spark interest and curiosity.  I look forward to working with her on this even more, and I told her I could come help if she had an after school group of kids (that didn't have support at home to do an invention project).

November 22, 2010

Today I've been working in the office. The schools are busy with conferences or vacations, and there aren't many people in the building at all here at the AEA either.

I spent the morning working in Teacher's Domain.  Erica and Jeanne had both mentioned that I should get to know the site, so I put that on my list of tuhings to do, and finally got to it today.  I went through all of the science resources and watched many videos, both to learn about things myself as well as to know what I could use them for and recommend them for.  I was struck by how many resources there were on building bridges, and also delighted to see how many were on inventing. I gathered the links on a document so I can refer to them quickly.

My afternoon was spent working on the plans for the Braille school, as well as learning the EIE kit 'Catching the Wind' better (at the same time),  Our theme will be 'Renewable Energy', and one day will be spent on wind energy.  It occurred to me that these kids will have never 'seen' a windmill, so I called the windmill museum that I had visited in Indiana to see how much their windmill models cost, but they are closed. They should be open tomorrow, so I'll try again. Then I found a wind turbine model and e-mailed that info to Sara Larkin so she could order it if she so desired. Where we can show most kids pictures of these things, these kids won't have a clue what we're talking about, and it is rather silly to design something that you've got no experience with.  I'm also working to convert the assessments to braille questions that they can respond to in their journals. Though we've done the windmill activity at the science expo, we didn't go through the EIE unit in the usual way, which I am learning about today.

November 19, 2010

Today I attended a meeting on a grant proposal down in the board room, and I went to Lemme in Iowa City to meet with Lisa Hall.

I learned a lot at the grant meeting about what goes into a grant. I also learned about how much Grant Wood is losing by Jeanne retiring. What an amazing person.  

I was going to be meeting with Jeanne, but the grant meeting went too long and I had to drive to Iowa City, so our meeting got canceled. I went to Iowa City and found Lemme, thanks to my GPS.  What an amazing room Lisa has!  I am SO taking my camera next time I go! She had old ugly lockers in her room so she painted them with blackboard paint and the kids got to draw in white chalk on them.  She had two or three steamer trunks painted black opened up with books to read displayed cleverly; one setting had a Halloween scene. She had an old reading table, so her obviously talented daughter drew a mural on it.  She had old ugly metal chairs so she painted each one a different bright color (which looked great with the blackboard lockers).

She told me about all of her after school programs. My word! This woman is a saint! I asked her which ones she could most use my help with, and she said the 'family nights', so I put those on my calendar as a priority.  Some of the parents don't speak English, and she needs more help because the parents end up liking to learn from the activities too, so she has fewer helping hands.  I am excited about helping such an amazing teacher!   
      
 I'm hoping to get to several schools every week. That's what my job is for, and I want to keep my focus on the schools. 

November 18, 2010

Today I worked on studying what materials to recommend for Vernon Middle School for their after school program. When I asked about the times they were meeting I found out that her weekly meeting only consisted of an after school recycling project. I told her that we needed to focus the learning a bit more, and I asked if I could come and offer her some help.

I finalized the date for May 19, pending confirmation of the availability of the U of I Memorial Union. I called Rebecca and she said she'd get back to me on it.

Jim called to see how I was doing, and it was really nice to hear from him. It is a tough day, because one of our Mt.Vernon students died today, and he was one of our Mt. Vernon teacher's kids. I did not have Jacob, who died, but I had his brother and worked with his father on my Iowa Core Committee.

I drove to Marion and met with Deb. She commented that she thought she was the only grant recipient meeting with the kids every week, so I showed her the schedule of when the other schools were meeting, which was an eye-opener for her because several of the other schools were meeting twice a week, and they were all meeting more than the 20 minutes that Vernon was meeting. I gave her three EIE manuals to look through, and recommended the Landscape Engineering since it was an advanced kit and seemed to compliment her current Prairie activities. She was receptive, and I told her I'd come back after she had some time to look through it. I also told her that Erica and I would do a little training with her before she started.

I got escorted out by one of her students. That was fun! Kids are so neat!

November 16, 2010

PBS had a Town Hall Meeting on STEM Education and Attitudes in the US. This event used Twitter, Facebook and interactive technology using Vokle to have a conversation on this. Kids spoke about their experiences, and Al Gore asked them about what kinds of issues were, in their opinions, standing in the way of our world standing on math and science education. Unfortunately, I tuned in at 12:00 and it was winding down, and I realized it must have been a different time zone. Special guests were Arne Duncan, Dean Kamen, Sally Ride, and the Mythbusters Jamie and Adam. I imagine that I will be able to find more info on what happened. I did send out the info to several schools on the meeting. I'll be curious to find out if any classes tuned in from around here.

Wow! I just got an e-mail from Mount Vernon HS thanking me for sending the link, and that they watched it!

November 16, 2010

    Today I worked on getting the word out about a STEM event tomorrow on PBS. It says, "Discovery Education Participates in a Global Online Town Hall on STEM Education ET Join Dean Kamen, host of DEAN OF INVENTION and Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, the MYTHBUSTERS, along with young people from around the world for an interactive discussion exploring youth attitudes toward math and science education. www.DiscoveryEducation.com/STEM-Global-Town-Hall
    Teachers, principals and other educators -- we invite you to bring this conversation into the classroom by hosting your own town hall viewing. Download this guide to connect your students "to their peers around the world in this dynamic discussion. "
    I went to the site and I see that you have to do a little maneuvering to get to the video feed.  I'm interested in seeing what they have to say tomorrow.



     I went through all of the final report notebooks from since STEM started  to try to collect some data. I'm starting with the simple data of how many students have participated in the STEM Grant activities.  This data is not easy to extract from the reports. I would like to change the reporting so that 1. number of students served, and  2.How many contact hours were spent with the students.  The reason that I want this data is because of the STEM Goals being:

• nIncrease student participation in STEM activities
• nIncrease public awareness of the need to support student explorations and teacher resources involving STEM related learning opportunities.
• nImpact student awareness and knowledge levels of STEM career avenues and opportunities. 

    I am going to be working on collecting links to STEM career information. Especially short videos that could be presented at the beginning or end of an activity.  I made it clear at the luncheon that one of the important things to do with their groups was to promote STEM careers.  I also did this when we ran our booth in D.C. I told the participants, "You know, you're doing what an engineer does! Have you ever heard of an engineer?"  

Another thing I did was to write to my daughter's company "In-Three" that makes films into 3-D. They've done films the kids here have seen (G-Force and Alice in Wonderland), so I think it would be exciting, and it connects those who are artistic to the STEM careers.  I asked if they would make a career video that we could use to promote careers in graphic technology. My daughter said they sounded excited about doing it, so we'll hope they go through with it.  I have some other people in mind that I'd love a video from!!

Another thing I've been working on today is getting the date and place worked out for our final showing in May.  Rebecca Whittaker is ready to reserve the 19th of May for the Memorial Union once I get the OK for that date from everyone ( I asked all the grant recipients to respond with a yeah or nay for that date). I'm waiting for e-mail responses for that.

   I'm meeting with Janine today. She wants to become more familiar with my job, so she wants to meet once a month. 

November 9, 2010

Today we had a Vast Science Team meeting. We started it off by doing our book study, which is on two books called Taking Science To School and Ready, Set, Science. These rare helpful to me because it is a rare opportunity to learn about science along with the consultants.

I got a lot done this afternoon. It's nice to have the luncheon behind me so I can focus on what I need to do to get organized for the next steps. I compiled the information including the Grant Sites, contact info, the dates I know of that they have chosen to meet and such. I also got the agenda pasted into my form for the OSO-CSI meeting tomorrow so that I can take notes properly, and made a list of the member's names so I could just check off who was there from my seat instead of relying on their attendance, which I didn't get a copy of last time.  I also went through all my e-mails and found all of the correspondence concerning EIE kits so I could make a projection on which kits people were checking out for sure, which kits they might want and when, and which grants included mention of kits. I wanted to make sure we had enough kits of the ones that I could predict might be ordered.  I think it's exciting to see the increase in the use of these kits.  I do think Grant Wood AEA is driving an exciting change by being innovative and creative in their science leadership, and the EIE kits are an example of that.

November 4, 2010

I had a full week preparing for the STEM Grant Recipients' Luncheon. There were handouts to locate, to understand, and then to amend (in terms of contact names and dates). The slide show needed to be updated and changed according to some suggestions that Yukiko had made to me. One was that she didn't think the assessment piece was working for us, and so I had a lot of thinking and contacting others to do in order to find out what would be appropriate as far as assessment. I wanted to give the Power Point a bit more 'history' of where our common goals came from and put a bit more focus on our common goals. I wanted to emphasize creating more scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians through these projects. I began with researching the STEM initiative. I started making Power Point slides, trying to set the stage and tell the story. But this quickly became too wordy and boring. I had a talk with myself about putting all of Nannette into this, tired or not, and so I gave it all I had. Right up until 11:30 p.m. on November 3rd. It isn't perfect, but it gave the touch of creativity and meaning that I wanted it to have. I will go back at some point, I hope, and work with the audio levels, but here is the movie I created that I inserted into the Power Point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yhygCqG3Yc

(P.S. These photos came from my classroom and I pointed out before showing it that there were many parent volunteers, Cornell Professors and Rockwell Engineers in the photos. Some of the photos are also from our trip to Washington D.C. for the U.S.A. Science Expo).

I had a good turnout for the luncheon, and the recipients were grateful and delightful. I am so very lucky to have Jim Thornton behind this project. He is amazing. He is organized, helpful, patient, and experienced. It does my heart good to see someone so good at his job. He was an administrator, and I can tell the schools he worked for must have been in very good hands.

My favorite part of the luncheon were the gals from Hiawatha. They were so excited about having gone to Space Camp. I was pleased that one of them was African American, because we want to increase minority interest in science, and I can tell that this dynamic duo will do a great job of that with their program. I can't wait to see their flight activities!