Shoot & Tweet
On Day 1, we created our own Twitter accounts and discovered the power behind #hashtagging. Hash-tagging is a way of categorizing topics that people are posting about. We each had to take a picture that represented us and tweet it with the hashtag #MSUrbanSTEM so that we could find all the pictures that we took. My picture represents my dilemma about continuously getting parking tickets in the city. At the end of each day, we collect all the tweets with the hashtag #MSUrbanSTEM and used Storify to put them into a timeline for the day.
Quickfire: Video Story Problem
On Day 2, we created a Quickfire Challenge. Our challenge was to go out and find a problem that has to do with everyday life and make our own Quickfire challenge out of it. My group, the Dream STEAM team, went outside and saw people parking and paying at the parking meter and immediately thought about my dilemma with parking tickets. Quickfire challenges are a great way to challenge students that have a little competitive side.
Cosmos Quick & Dirty Guide
During this program, we read the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It is interesting to think about how the earth was created, how we came to be, and how everything in the universe is related. We had several group discussions about this book and created slides to explain the deeper meaning in each chapter. Check out the link above to see the rest of the chapters!
Where does it STEM from?
During one of our sessions, we discussed the definition of STEM. What is STEM? What does it mean to you? We were then given one item and had to express the meaning of STEM in our own way. I was given post-it notes. I created the "Eye of Wonder," which symbolizes a new way of looking at the world around you when you are using STEM. In the words of Miss Frizzle, "Ask questions, make mistakes, and get messy!"
IDEAS Photo Assignment
One of our challenges was to find letters of the alphabet in everyday life. The only rule was that we could not manipulate any of the letters ourselves, we had to find them naturally. Then they took the letters we sent in and formed these inspirational words, "Great Ideas." This challenge helped open my eyes to seeing things in a different light. When we stop taking everything for face value and look past it's known purpose, that is when we start to get these "Great Ideas."
Creativity Guidepost Meme
In a creative way to connect our readings to technology today, we created a meme. We had a discussion about how research shows that top rated teachers bring their hobbies of their own lives into their teaching. We thought that this is a very important trait for all teachers to have, to bring some part of their personal lives into their teaching.
Breaking the Laws of
Misconception
One of our quickfire challenges was to create a fame-by-frame Stop Motion clip using the Stop Motion App. The clip had to be about a common misconception in the field of STEM. One misconception is that electrons orbit around the nucleus like the planets orbit around the Sun (video 1), but in reality they move all over (video 2). If the electrons actually orbited around the nucleus, they would end up collided with the nucleus over time.
Illuminate your Discipline
During one of our sessions, we needed to illuminate our discipline. My ImagineIt project is to look at numbers through nature. Like this seahorse, which has a golden spiral for a tail. I created a circuit to allow it to illuminate.
World of Wonder
Have you ever wondered why a rainbow is round? Or why sometimes you can see a double rainbow? What about why you may see a swarm of dragonflies? Everyday we go about our lives and see things that might make us wonder. During our in-class sessions we took these wonders and presented them with answers. I had an issue last summer where I discovered that there were gnats all over Montrose Beach! They had infested the beach for weeks. Then the next thing I know, the gnats were gone, but now there were dragonflies. I wondered what had happened to the gnats and why were these dragonflies here? So I researched this and found out that dragonflies swarm to large infestations of gnats because they eat them. The dragonflies had feasted on all of the gnats. Who would have thought that dragonflies could be so helpful?! Click on the link above to see the slides and explanation of a double rainbow!