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Inspiring students to do science like scientists

“Only by making sense of what they are seeing and doing can students truly appreciate what science is and what scientists need to do to better understand our world,” says Ed Crandall.

He brings this sense of adventure to his life and his teaching. When backpacking in Alaska and hiking in Zion National Park, the extreme beauty nearly crumpled him. Ed was equally moved when he first saw Maxwell’s equations in a physics lecture. He now laughs about “being brought to tears by math.”

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Doing without cookie cutter labs

Teacher Ambassador Kristina Koster

Kristina Koster first became interested in teaching as a tutor for the TRIO Upward Bound program while in junior college. The program helps low-income, first-generation college-bound students get into and succeed in college by providing free afterschool tutoring, Saturday educational workshops, and college visits. Kristina recalls, “I was able to see that I could combine my love for helping people with my love for science.”

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Computational thinking in biology: What is an InSPECT Dataflow diagram?

Integrating computational thinking into core science content and practices is a major goal of our InSPECT project, which is developing hands-on high school biology investigations using simple electronic sensors with Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity—a far cry from the simple germination experiments students usually encounter. An article in the Fall 2017 Concord Consortium newsletter (“Science Thinking […]

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