Blog

Explore extreme weather in your area

Graph of tMax in Palmdale, CA, in CODAP showing mean of 102.98 degrees F.

Leticia Perez is a Senior Professional Learning Specialist at WestEd. Frieda Reichsman is a Senior Research Scientist at the Concord Consortium. Headlines make the news all the time warning of warmer winters, changing seasonal patterns, life-threatening heat, or alternately dangerous freezing conditions. Whether you’re in Massachusetts or California, or somewhere in between, nearly everyone has […]

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Mastering NSF projects: An insider’s guide to success

At the Concord Consortium, 12 of our research scientists are Principal Investigators or Co-Principal Investigators* on our dozens of National Science Foundation-funded projects. We polled our Principal investigators and their project managers to find out what it’s like to run a successful research and development project. Below are their top ten tips. 1. Like most […]

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New AI in Math program funded by the U.S. Department of Education

The Concord Consortium, in collaboration with Texas Tech University, the University of Florida, and WestEd, was awarded a $4 million Education Innovation and Research grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The five-year project will develop a year-long Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Math supplemental certificate program for secondary Algebra I or Integrated Math 1 classes. […]

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11 innovative STEM publications that mobilize knowledge

To work towards our mission to innovate and inspire equitable, large-scale improvements in STEM teaching and learning through technology, we make our STEM resources free and our research findings accessible and usable. Achieving such an ambitious mission takes countless partners and perspectives, and we are thrilled to collaborate with teachers, students, scientists, and researchers. In […]

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7 ways to get a head start on New Year’s resolutions for your classroom

A visible target-match in Geniventure

Social media has been exploding with New Year’s resolutions since early fall. If you’d like to get a head start on your own educational resolutions for the next calendar year, we’ve got you covered. Want to help students see Earth science as a lab science? Add more data science activities to your high school classes? […]

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Research on system modeling for classroom use

Epidemics model in SageModeler

From local environmental justice issues to global phenomena such as climate change, complex problems often require systems thinking to address them. Since 2018, the National Science Foundation-funded Multilevel Computational Modeling project, a collaboration between the Concord Consortium and the CREATE for STEM Institute at Michigan State University, has researched how the use of our SageModeler […]

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Under the sea: How a dive to the seafloor can help students unlock Earth’s past

Seafloor spreading modeled in TecRocks Explorer

Stephanie Seevers is an Earth science teacher in Colorado and a consultant on the TecRocks project. I was talking to my 9th grade Earth and Space Science students recently about why they think so many people lack a solid understanding of our planet and its history. We brainstormed ideas, and while several theories sounded valid, […]

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Learning science practices with moths and collaborative software

Teachers and MothEd project staff in lab at Michigan State University

Moths live around the world. Despite their ubiquity, they haven’t been studied nearly as much as their daytime counterparts, not even by entomologists. Butterflies have gotten most of the attention. The MothEd: Authentic Science for Elementary and Middle School Students project is exploring ways to deepen independent science inquiry learning in young learners using technology […]

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