We are proud Recipients of a few KDP Awards!

 We (two counselors and two students) have just returned from a trip to Norfolk, VA where we participated in the Kappa Delta Pi 53d Annual Convocation.
It was a very engaging, informative, and productive trip and very rewarding! There were very inspiring keynote speakers, more than 100 Professional Development workshops and sessions.
Our Mount Saint Mary College KDP chapter, Sigma Tau 451, has become the 2019 Achieving Chapter Excellence (ACE) Award, recipient for the fifth time! What makes it even more significant is the fact, that out of 600 chapters only 16 were recognized as ACE award chapters.
We also received Silver Award for Celebration of Teaching initiative, 2018-2019 Distinguished Officer Award (Kristie Cox, chapter president) and unexpectedly I received my 15 years of Experience as a KDP Counselor award.

Here is our ACE Poster 

We didn't have a chance to present it, we had to leave earlier because of the scary weather forecast. 

But we met with our NE regional consultant Joe Clemmer and had a wonderful conversation about the future of the chapter! 

Back to teaching. 

Want to Become a ThingLink Certified Educator? Roll up your Sleeves!

I have been using ThingLink for quite a while. I enjoy the idea behind the program: it engages diverse digital literacies and encourages creative thinking. With the 3D element, it becomes even more attractive to students as they are provided with Augmented Reality experience.
Much depends on how a teacher uses the program: in a traditional way selecting an image and adding the information to the icons, tags. OR a teacher creates a learning adventure, leading students' learning from task to task, encouraging creating thought, and calls for action.

Below are a few impressive ThingLink projects created by ThingLink certified educators from all over the country on diverse topics and for different subject areas. 
My project is one of them. Now it is on slide 4, a week or so ago it was on Slide one. The Community grows!
ThingLink Spotlight Speakers Published - Google Slides:
'via Blog this'
I became a Certified ThingLink educator. Here is my badge:

Free Technology for Teachers: If You Teach Science, You Need Science Netlinks

For my science methods class, this is a great article from Richard Byrne. 

Free Technology for Teachers: If You Teach Science, You Need Science Netlinks:



'via Blog this'

STEM vs STEAM

Everybody knows about STEM science programs. Recently the new acronym appeared and became popular among science teachers, S.T.E.A.M - Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics! The art component is wisely integrated into this event because of the budget cuts and as a result of that students' creativity is neglected!

                                             
Mount Saint Mary College will be hosting a STEAM program on March 17th thanks to the efforts and resources of the CARD Center under the leadership of Dr. Fran Spielhagen, who shares sponsorship of the event with the KDP chapter.  My science methods classes will join the program. The organizing committee proposed a STEAM station template and invited teacher candidates to submit proposals with 30-minute lessons. Ten (10) stations were approved for the event! Some of them will involve the use iPads, drones, 3D printer, and a few stations will do natural science projects and math! All of the stations will require creating final projects with the art component. I contacted Goshen LEGO LAND office and they promised to donate an architectural LEGO set as a prize! My colleague Dr. Sonya Abbye-Taylor contacted Mad Science Lab and they will do a presentation at the end of the STEAM Day.
No science without technology! Richard Byrne shared his ideas and findings for the STEAM events in his Free Technology for Teachers blog.

So glad I follow this Blog!

Richard Byrne posted a great blog about the science Journal App for a science classroom! He is describing five ways of how this app can make a classroom engaging and inspire students to learn science authentically! Thank you, Richard, for a thought-provoking post!!
Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Observations Students Can Record With Google's Science Journal App: 'via Blog this'

Explore and adopt! About HyperDocs | HyperDocs.co

I have read about HyperDocs in Richard Byrne's wonderful and very current blog Free Technology for Teachers.  He informed teachers about the work of three experienced Google educators who are behind this idea - Lisa Highfill, Sarah Landis, and Kelly Hilton. Here is their website: About HyperDocs | HyperDocs.co

I have already tried out and adopted one of the templates for our afterschool science program.
The students were so engaged and excited about completing the HyperDocs project on Climate Change, they didn't want to leave the classroom when the time was up!

More on Google tools and Google tutorials visit Richard's blog and youtube channel.

Exciting Virtual science Fair Project

It will be probably sixth or seventh semester of me teaching the science and technology methods course.  It has been quite an adventure on its own. I love science and more now being involved in the environmental/sustainability science. I will be teaching Sustainability Literacy for Social Change course in the Fall of 2018.

This semester parallelly to teaching the course I also challenged myself to explore the technology program I used a lot in different ways and in different classes - VoiceThread.   I decided to get a Voicethread certification. I completed a 2-week course and now have to finish a project with the teacher candidates. I chose my science methods classes as I came up with an idea of running a Virtual Science Fair. Teacher candidates from my classes usually have their fieldwork at Bishop Dunn Memorial School. They usually run their Science Fair in the Spring and my classes usually contribute to the Science Fair through designing their own projects and then through judging students' projects.  So --- I decided, that in the Fall, I will provide teacher candidates an opportunity to select their Science Fair project ideas, conduct their scientific methods, create digital posters and share them via Voicethread.
This month is devoted to working on the Science Fair projects. I created Guides, rubrics, video-tutorials, invited science consultant, Mr. Love, to speak about the scientific method.

Last Tuesday, one of my research students, Kelsey, taught the class peers: how to sign up, create Voicethread slides, add links and images and the ways of recording comments. We are set to go with the Virtual Science Fair project on the Voicethread.


  
This project is over. So is my Voicethread certification challenge. I completed a Voicethread training course, engaged my classes in the Virtual Science Fair project via Voicethread, practice students' skills in designing their Voicethread stories from simple (About me) to more complex, their Science Fair posters, presentations and their communication with each other on their SF projects. It turned out to be challenging and enjoyable at the same time!
I am now a Certified Voicethread Educator. Here is my badge:

 Here is the link to the Wall fame of the Voicethread Certified Educators. Scroll way down to the bottom to find me.