Category: Blog
Prompted by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Absolute certainty is not scientific,” we wrote on this blog, “With the ongoing polarization of science in today’s political environment, it’s more important than ever to remember that science is filled with uncertainty.” That was 2011, and it is still just as true today. At […]
This year we published a dozen articles in researcher and teacher practitioner journals that showcase the state of the field in STEM educational technology in 2020. Learn what students with low and high spatial skills notice in computer visualizations of plate tectonics (#2), how students can experience authentic messy data exploration of meaningful questions (#10), […]
Whether teaching physics, chemistry, or biology, every high school science teacher is challenged to take students on a journey down to the nanoscale level where intangible, invisible forces hold sway and mysteriously result in phenomena at the macroscopic level. Think Ms. Frizzle and her Magic School Bus as her schoolchildren take the ride of their […]
We experience weather every day. And it’s often the easiest icebreaker to start a conversation—“What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods?”—since weather is, well, everywhere! We know a lot about weather, too, thanks to datasets collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA database includes data from thousands of […]
Remote and hybrid teaching have made keeping track of student work even more challenging. To address this problem, we redesigned our Class Dashboard and have added it to selected activities and modules in our STEM Resource Finder. Just like past iterations, the newly revised Class Dashboard shows a grid of students’ work that updates in […]
Evolution is a particularly daunting subject to teach and to understand. The evidence for it is indirect and the model rests largely on phenomena that cannot be directly observed, including some that are poorly understood to this day. A research-based set of curriculum materials aimed at upper elementary and middle school students can help. We […]
Rebecca Ellis is a research associate at Michigan State University. The Connected Biology project (ConnectedBio), a collaboration between the Concord Consortium and Michigan State University, recently released Deer Mouse Fur Color: From the Field to the Beach. This free, Next Generation Science Standards-aligned set of 15 lessons guides students through a nuanced understanding of the […]
Earth science classes typically present plate tectonics and the rock cycle as separate and unrelated concepts. Yet land and rock formation are directly related to the tectonic environments in which they form. Indeed, plate tectonic interactions are fundamental to understanding geological processes. A new project funded by the National Science Foundation is focused on teaching […]
Using AI and literacy-based approaches, StoryQ is creating inclusive learning experiences and preparing diverse youth for the future.
Educators know that learning happens not just in the classroom, but all the time and across all settings—from school and to home other formal and informal spaces. In learning sciences research, this is described by a learning ecology framework. Like an environmental ecosystem that sustains biodiversity, learning ecology is a set of complex relationships and […]