STEM & the Outside World - Making the Environmental Connection (Happy Earth Day!)

Guest Blog: Connecting environmental education and STEM

Submitted by Christina on Fri, 2013-04-19 14:57

What are the learning goals of environmental education? How are they best accomplished? How do they support the broader goals of improving students’ STEM skills?

Students have an innate curiosity – even wonder – about the natural world around them. Environmental education (EE) taps into their enthusiasm and provides them the knowledge and skills to solve 21^st-century challenges. Early connection with the environment also equips students to make everyday decisions that improve the quality of their lives and the health of our planet.
The goals of EE can be accomplished well through project-based learning and hands-on exploration of the outdoors. Local, place-based environmental projects provide relevant learning experiences for students and an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in their communities.

Through EE, students learn not only STEM content, but also develop the critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills that are critical for success in STEM careers where substantial growth is expected. Further, studies indicate that young people who experience the natural world and have more opportunities to play and learn within it are more likely to choose science or related fields as careers.

What are the opportunities and obstacles to introducing students to environmental education?

While field trips and opportunities to explore nature centers and other nonformal education settings are valuable to sparking interest and deeper knowledge about the environment, lack of time and resources can make it challenging for teachers to provide those opportunities. Increasingly, schools are investing in enriching the more accessible laboratories for learning that exist right outside the classroom door, in a nearby park, the schoolyard, school garden -- even the school building itself. Recognizing the national priority on successfully engaging more students in STEM, significantly more environmental science content is being integrated across multiple disciplines. There are expanded opportunities within the new Next Generation Science Standards to emphasize science learning through an environmental context, through content on human impacts on the natural world.

What do policymakers and decision makers need to know when thinking about STEM learning and environmental education?

Research and survey findings indicate young people have a strong interest in the environment. Total employment in STEM jobs is expected to increase by twice as much as all other jobs by 2018 and environmental science jobs are expected to grow by 25% by 2016 – the fastest among the sciences. Sources and additional statistics can be found in the new Tech & Our Planet infographic.
In 2011 the U.S. Department of Education developed the Green Ribbon Schools recognition award, which honors schools that are exemplary in reducing environmental impact and costs; improving the health and wellness of students and staff; and providing effective environmental and sustainability education, which incorporates STEM, civic skills and green career pathways. This year, as part ofNational Environmental Education Week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did a PSA that speaks to the important connection between EE and STEM.

Submitted by Jennifer Tabola, senior director of education, National Environmental Education Foundation

The Maker Movement: White House Google + Hangout

School Leadership Summit - Tomorrow LIVE! (Steve Hargadon - Talks will be archived)

. Thursday, March 28th, is our inaugural, online, and free School Leadership Summit. http://www.SchoolLeadershipSummit.com. We invite you to join us for a very full day of sessions from Yong Zhao, Michael Fullan, Bill Brennan, and 67 other presenters as part of a virtual and collaborative global conversation on school leadership. The hour-by-hour conference schedule, with instructions for attending, is available to view in 35 different time zones at http://admin20.org/page/schedule. The Summit welcome is at 6:30am US Pacific Daylight Time, and the conference finishes with an informal online "after party" at 7:00pm, twelve and a half hours later. Conference strands are aligned to the internationally-recognized ISTE National Education Technology Standards for Administrators and include the leadership topics of: Vision in a Changing World, Teaching and Learning in a Changing World, Professional Learning in a Changing World, Data-driven Reform in a Changing World, and Ethical and Responsible Use in a Changing World.  TICAL (the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership) is the founding partner of the conference. We invite you to join us! All are welcome. See you online! Steve Steve Hargadon Co-Chair, 2013 School Leadership Summit http://www.stevehargadon.com Visit Classroom 2.0 at: http://www.classroom20.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network Recordings: Session recordings will be posted almost immediately after a session is completed. Look to the conference menu for a link to the recordings page. To continue correspondence with a session presenter and attendees, look for the presentation discussion post here.

Student Driven Design - Personalized Learning (Submitted by Jim Ross)

If students designed their own school… it would look like this

Posted by Valerie Strauss on February 20, 2013 at 4:00 am

Student Peter Boyce
(By Charles Tsai)

“It’s crazy that in a system that is meant to teach and help the youth there is no voice from the youth at all.” That’s the opening line in a video called “If students designed their own schools,” about The Independent Project, a high school semester designed and implemented entirely by students.

What did it look like? No quizzes. No tests. No grades. Students created their own learning materials and taught themselves and each other.

The Independent Project started in 2011 at Monument Mountain Regional High School, a public school in Massachusetts, after a student named Sam Levin advanced an idea about students creating their own learning environment in order to find the engagement and mastery he felt were lacking in many teacher-designed classes. Principal Marianne Young agreed to a pilot.

In this model, teachers serve as mentors and coaches, not as direct instructors, while students pose questions and find ways to answer them.

The pilot semester — in which eight students participated (one 10th grader, five 11th graders and two seniors) — was broken down into four parts: orientation, the sciences, the arts, and the collective endeavor, which all of the students would agree on a serious world issue and work together to find a solution or a piece of a solution. Students would come up with their own questions in each subject, research it and then teach it to the other students.

After the first semester, an evaluation was undertaken and changes were made to the model. Now several schools in the country have their own Independent Project.

The video was done by Charles Tsai, director of Learning Networks for Ashoka Canada, a global association of social entrepreneurs. He also  works in the area of self-directed education through his organization, Social Creatives.

Here’s Tsai’s video:

Student-Centered Design Example - In Practice

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Towards the Second Build: Consultation and conversations

http://openlearningspaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/towards-second-build-consultation-and.html?showComment=1357224420764#c5305788718051364437

Our consultation process and living our norm of ‘Value the Voices’ has continued with our year 2, 3 and 4 students. A team of teachers in Learning Hub Two worked alongside children in a number of different ways. Some students focused on existing spaces and how they felt about them, others on potential new spaces and what they would like to see. Data was gathered using drawings, photographs, models and conversations.

How do you sincerely listen to a large group of students and for it not to become token consultation? Working with a group of close to seventy students produces a staggering mass of data- some great learning for us around student voice and how to get the most from it, and personally as well, just about to launch into a research project.

The important thing seemed to us to extract key themes that were raised by a number of children, whilst still hanging onto the individuality and creativity that individuals brought along. So a number of students were interviewed afterwards either individually or in small groups. In general these interviews were carried out with children who contributed elements that in essence added something new, without being unrealistic (more about this soon!).

Existing spaces

Initial learning was done with Hub Two students gathering data about like and dislikes in the existing spaces. Armed with cameras, small groups of children took a series of photos of places they liked and disliked around our hub, glued these to a plan, added ‘Like’ or “Dislike’ symbols, and were then invited to comment and justify their decisions. In general students focused on the positive aspects of their spaces and were quite pragmatic about furniture, layout and facilities such as sinks, bathrooms and Comments often referred to elements within the space such as computers or furniture rather than the space itself.

One group commented that:

I like it because the table is mobile (picture of the back of the X4 teaching station).

I like this space because I can concentrate when I’m learning (picture of beanbags in the breakout room).

I like this space because it’s quiet most of the time (picture of the shield table at the end of the hub).

I like this space because it can shut its doors and it will be quiet (picture of breakout room).

I like this space because I can get supplies from here, that are organized in tote-trays (picture of tote-trays).

I don’t like this place because it is not tidy (book shelves)

Another group commented that:

I like this because it tells you what you are doing (picture of Literacy Tumble on the wall).

I like this because it tells you what stage you are in (picture of Reading progressions on the wall).

I like this because it tells the teacher who’s here (picture of guardian group roll).

I like seeing our pictures (picture of wall mounted TV).

I like this because it shows our clay and you can look at it (picture of clay artwork display on table).

Other common features that children commented on and liked were:

·      Coloured ‘welcome couch’

·      Large space where the entire hub could meet

·      That there was lots of space- easy to find somewhere to learn

·      Spaces behind furniture where children could sit

·      Wall mounted TV

·      Corners where they could sit and learn

·      Coloured glass

Possible Spaces

Students were invited to put together designs for possible hubs. These were completed either individually or collaboratively. Some chose to draw and others built possible spaces using construction materials. Both of these were used as a basis for conversation, much of which was captured on video. A number of students participated in collecting video data, where they explained in greater detail what was involved in their design. They were also able to respond to questions about why they had included certain elements and what their thinking was.

Interestingly the learning spaces that children drew were mainly rectangular and often with small rooms coming off the main area. Children have really adopted the concept of working alongside teachers in a more central space and then moving out to learn more independently. Children often drew multiple small rooms as components of the larger space, often with designated purposes. One students design for example includes a larger space and then a number of smaller spaces to be used for: science, private learning and music. Another’s included a designated maths room, a reading space and a teacher’s room. Did teachers need their own room we asked “they might need their own space but would have to keep it tidy!” came the response.

There was a strong sense of purposeful spaces resonating with this group of children, for example science or specific facilities for cooking. When asked if this space would be exclusively for the use by their learning hub children commented that it would be ok for another hub to use the space too, and for them to have an alternatively purposed shared area.

The pragmatism continues into bathrooms. A number of children drew what they described as ‘private toilets’ accessible only by students in that particular hub. When questioned further about these they described wanting the toilets close so that ‘if I got really into my learning and was busting to go to the toilet, I could get there quickly’. In general the point was that proximity not exclusivity was the key. The toilets would be ok outside, as long as they were close (It is possible that children considered that the new hubs would have to utilise existing toilets).

Children commented on the small breakout rooms being quiet places where they could concentrate. They were able to close the doors and work undisturbed. This raises the question of how many breakout spaces a hub might need and how many need to be closeable.

Sinks and wet space areas were a common theme in the drawings, frequently appearing in the corners or ends of the hub. It was felt that the wet space certainly needed to be larger than existing lino areas and positioned away from the main thoroughfare.

A number of children commented on the desirability for more that one level within the space, with either a drop down or a rise up. One commented on the ‘Staircase to nowhere’ idea of a set of stairs with a small landing on them, one on a mezzanine level, another on a sunken area.

Bag storage was initially an issue at school and was solved with the aid of a project involving a team of students and a design expert. Some children commented that it would be better to have the bags indoors, out of the wind and rain.

Emerging Themes: The main themes to emerge from Hub Two students were:

·      A space large enough for the entire hub to meet.

·      Toilets in close proximity

·      Internal bag storage

·      Sinks and wet spaces away from the centre of the room

·      Inclusion of ‘quiet spaces’

·      Purposeful spaces that could be shared with other hubs

·      More than one level

·      Corners and spaces behind furniture- idea of ‘secret spaces’

The consultation continues…