For educators looking for excellent, flexible online STEM Professional Development (PD), we are offering six-hour, Mini Modules to meet your professional development needs, delivered by experts in online learning. Each six-hour module comprises the following:
Three 1-hour live, online webinar sessions
Plus three hours of collaboration, discussion, and implementation
How it works: Request any module below. We will contact you to coordinate and send you registration and payment information for you and/or your participants.
Cost: Each module is $250 per participant.
STEM PD Mini Modules
Click on the module titles for more information.
Instructor: Dr. Mubina Schroeder
Explore publicly available data for teaching climate science to students of all ages. Learn to integrate the interdisciplinary topic climate change into STEM classrooms and teach students to analyze and think critically about data sets.
Session 1: Data is Everywhere; Finding Truth
Session 2: Climate Science in the Curriculum
Session 3: What can we do? Inspiring Activism
Outcome: Access climate data and learn to approach climate science from an action orientation.
Instructor: Karen Woodruff
Classroom Culture is essential for a productive learning environment. Students need to feel welcome and their ideas valued. Creating a virtual classroom culture can be challenging for classroom teachers. Learn how to invite all students into the learning community – even in a virtual setting.
Session 1: Classrooms for All Learners
Session 2: Discourse Models
Session 3: Collaborative Sensemaking
Outcome: Teachers will gain strategies for creating a virtual classroom culture, a key component of a successful classroom.
Instructor: Karen Woodruff
NASA Office of STEM Engagement is a leader in providing engaging mission related STEM and STEAM activities for all ages. Explore the content of the NASA STEM @ Home resource pages with expert teacher educators to focus on how you can meet your instructional goals with NASA!
Session 1: NASA is Going to Mars!
Session 2: NGSS based Resources for Blended Learning
Session 3: Inspiring the Next Generation
Outcome: Learn the vast resources that NASA provides for teaching and inspiring students to be STEM explorers.
Instructor: Stephanie Stern
Just getting started with GAFE (Google Apps for Education)? Get a confident start with Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Forms and more, to organize and manage your online and blended classes and enhance your teaching practice.
Session 1: Welcome to Google Apps for Education (GAFE)
Session 2: Google Classroom
Session 3: Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms
Outcome: Teachers will gain confidence and work on their own projects that apply to their classroom and district needs using the skills they learned with Google Suite.
Instructor: Karen Woodruff
Develop your skills for engaging all students in productive discourse and idea sharing in the face to face and virtual classroom. Learn how to initiate small group and consensus models as part of the STEM classroom.
Session 1: Student Ideas and Discourse in the STEM Classroom
Session 2: Modeling Instruction in All Settings
Session 3: Engaging All Learners in STEM
Outcome: Learn to put student ideas at the center of instruction.
Instructor: Karen Woodruff
Learn to shift your favorite STEM lessons to virtual and blended classroom settings using a wide variety of available online teaching tools that engage students. Specific focus may be tailored to district or teacher needs and licenses.
Session 1: Eliciting Student Ideas; Tools for Engagement
Session 2: Tools for Modeling and Discussion
Session 3: Seamless Implementation of Online Tools
Outcome: Teachers will be able to plan for and implement online and blended instruction while maintain student engagement.
Instructor: Karen Woodruff
Engineering design is an important pedagogy for STEM integration. Explore EDCs that make use of easy to acquire materials or focus on brainstorming and design. You don’t have to give up on engineering design when students are learning at home!
Session 1: Engineering Design for Cross Curricular Learning
Session 2: Resources and Virtual Implementation
Session 3: Communities of Problem Solvers
Outcome: Teachers will collaborate to identify how to shift classroom-based engineering design challenges to blended and at home learning.
Instructor: Stephanie Stern
(Parents and caregivers welcome)
Micropods are community-based support groups for small groups of students learning outside of the school building. Gain knowledge of accessible STEM activities that make use of everyday items and keep kids engaged and learning during your micropod sessions.
Session 1: Setting up your home school, Screen Time
Session 2: Math and Engineering Aren’t Scary
Session 3: Technology Games for Education
Outcome: Any group engaged in micropods will gain excellent resources for setting up and implementing small group instruction.
Instructor: Charles Canestaro
Inquiry and experimental labs are an important part of STEM instruction. A variety of platforms exist for engaging students in virtual labs. Learn the basics of each or tailor the module to focus in depth on a specific content area.
Session 1: Maintaining the Science and Engineering Practices During Blended and Virtual Learning
Session 2: Virtual Lab Favorites in All Content Areas
Session 3: Implementation and Reflection
Outcome: Teachers learn virtual labs to use for blended and virtual instruction.
