Space: The final frontier. A topic that is touched on in many science classrooms, but rarely finds a foothold in the major learning of our students. Learning about space provides opportunities to not only teach the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), but also allows students to think, dream, and wonder.  

As a classroom teacher of science or any other discipline, the topic of space can be a great crosscutting concept. As teachers dive into the NGSS, they can use these cross-curricular ideas to engage and deepen student learning.

Professional learning is not only a huge investment for a school district, it’s also a great opportunity for teachers to grow in their profession. Because it’s such a critical part of improving the educational experience for our students, we are looking at how to make it most effective for our teachers. In the first two parts of this series, we covered issues with professional learning and how to make learning more timely for teachers. In this third part of the series, we’ll focus on the implementation portion of any professional learning. We hope to answer the question of how teachers can practice and implement the new strategy in the most effective way.

Today’s educators know how vital STEM fields are for their students. STEM learning covers a multitude of necessary skills: hands-on, critical thinking, problem solving, student-driven, creativity, innovation, collaboration, inquiry, leadership, and teamwork. These skills will help today’s students excel in STEM careers, which are growing at a rate of 17%—compared to 9.8% in other professions.

Robotics and coding are becoming more and more popular for incorporating STEM in the classroom. Both activities are engaging for students while providing the ability to apply their knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology to solve problems.

Interesting in incorporating these activities into your classroom? Here are our top picks for robotics and coding resources:

Hundreds of educators joined us this fall for another rendition of our Transforming Learning in the Classroom webinar series. These robust sessions featured insights from experienced leaders in EdTech and provided educators with helpful tips for utilizing technology to promote critical thinking, implement project-based learning in the classroom, and support students as they prepare for college and STEM careers.

These three webinars are full of valuable ideas for using technology in the classroom to promote student engagement and success.

We often hear educational experts harp on teachers that times have changed, tools of changed, and students have changed. The conclusion drawn is that teachers and classrooms also need to change. While I agree with the sentiment in some ways, I find it ironic that many of those people who are preaching this from the mountain tops also never really model that behavior.

The sit-and-get full-day workshop is the traditional professional learning model that, in many ways, is much like the traditional classroom. We know that adults don't necessarily learn best in this format, but it’s what we see most of the time.

Hopefully you’ve had a great start to the year—can you believe we’re already heading into the holidays?! Now that you are well into a groove, it’s a great time to discover instructional methods that may be more interactive so your students continue to be engaged at this time of the year.

As I discussed in the first part of this series, there are many great reasons to get started with virtual reality in your classroom. The immersive experience is like nothing else—to me, it really feels like futuristic technology in our students' hands. Engagement skyrockets when we have the VR goggles out. 

There are numerous teaching tools and instructional strategies to go along with this experience that are easy for teachers to access. While on a VR tour, teachers can prompt students to look at different landmarks or details of the environment. There are both self-guided student experiences as well as others that the teacher leads the students through, depending on the objectives of the lesson.