We rely on their expertise and have their books lined up on our resource shelves for handy reference, but the opportunity to hear so many NSTA Press authors speak in person is too good to pass up. The array of authors who are scheduled to present at the NSTA National Conference in Los Angeles, March 30–April 2, 2017, is impressive.

The wide range of topic areas ensures that there is something for everyone. Listen to Page Keeley discuss formative assessment probes; Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry share how to use children’s picture books to teach STEM, inquiry, and more; or Steve Rich present many ways to bring outdoor science in to your students. Some of NSTA Press’ new authors will be there too, discussing big data, STEM, NGSS, and many other topics.

The Advance deadline for registration is fast approaching (February 24), so don’t delay. Register today and secure your opportunity to advance your own professional development by spending time with the experts. NSTA authors have developed classroom-tested solutions to the challenges you face every day.

Here is the complete list of NSTA Press authors and topics:

Uncovering Elementary Students’ Ideas About Science Through Literacy Capacities
Thursday, March 30
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Presenters: Page Keeley and Joyce Tugel

• Experience examples of formative assessment probes and techniques that uncover what students are really thinking about NGSS
• Explore students’ core ideas in science through use of the literacy capacities of speaking, listening, and language.

Uncovering K–12 Students’ (and Teachers’) Ideas About Matter and Energy in the NGSS
Thursday, March 30
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenters: Page Keeley, Joyce Tugel, and Joel Truesdell

• Examine examples of diagnostic probes from the Uncovering Student Ideas series, including several new ones.
• Learn what students really think about matter and energy and the connection to “3-D formative assessment.”

Teaching for Conceptual Understanding in Science: Building a Bridge Between Student Ideas and Scientific Knowledge
Friday, March 31
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenters: Richard Konicek-Moran and Page Keeley

• Explore what conceptual understanding is.
• Learn how you can teach science for conceptual understanding in your classroom.

Formative Assessment Classroom Techniques for Uncovering ALL Students’ (and Teachers’) Ideas
Friday, March 31
9:30-10:30 a.m.
Presenters: Page Keeley, Joyce Tugel, and Ray Barber

• Experience a strategy harvest of written, verbal, and digital techniques that elicit all students’ ideas.
• Create a safe classroom environment where everyone’s ideas are valued.

Picture-Perfect STEM Lessons: Using Children’s Books to Teach Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Friday, March 31
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Presenters: Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry

• Acquire lessons from Picture-Perfect Science Lesson authors.
• Learn to integrate STEM and literacy in grades K–5.

Next Time You See…
Friday, March 31
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Presenter: Emily Morgan

• Come away with ways to inspire a sense of wonder about the natural world.
• Learn about books and activities to share with your students.

Picture-Perfect Science Lessons: Using Picture Books to Guide Inquiry, K–5
Saturday, April 1
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Presenters: Emily Morgan and Karen Ansberry

• Acquire lessons that use picture books to connect NGSS and CCSS.
• Watch as authors model the lessons.

Flowers to Fruit: Putting Botany Back into Your Curriculum
Friday, March 31
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenters: Richard Konicek-Moran and Kathleen Konicek-Moran

• Learn how to restore botany to your curriculum?
• Use Flowers to Fruit for examples to use in your classroom

Outdoor Science with Birds, Books, and Butterflies
Friday, March 31
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Presenter: Steve Rich

• Discover engaging lesson ideas with natural materials, children’s books, and citizen science.
• Join in for outdoor classroom basics, funding ideas, crosscutting concepts, and free seeds.

Outdoor Science: A Practical Guide
Saturday, April 1
11:00 a.m. –12:00 p.m.
Presenter: Steve Rich

• Come away with engaging lesson ideas with natural materials, children’s books, and citizen science.
• Unearth outdoor classroom basics, funding ideas, crosscutting concepts, and free seeds.

Inside or Out: The Perfect Place for Connecting Outdoor Science and Children’s Trade Books
Saturday, April 1
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenter: Christine Ann Royce and Steve Rich

• Engage in lessons that connect investigations in outdoor science topics with paired children’s literature.
• Enhance the topic of outdoor science by integrating it into other discipline areas.

Argumentation in the Earth and Space Science Classroom
Thursday, March 30
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenter: Sharon Schleigh

• Learn how to engage in scientific argumentation to support teaching in your classrooms.
• Come away with sample activities from the leading NSTA Press books.

It’s Debatable: Using Socioscientific Issues to Develop Scientific Literacy, K–12
Thursday, March 30
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenter: Sami Kahn

• Observe how to engage your students in controversial societal issues related to science.
• Develop your students’ scientific literacy during this interactive workshop.

Diving into the NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas: How and Why They Are Important for Teaching and Learning
Thursday, March 30
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Presenters: Ann Rivet, Ravit Golan Duncan, and Joseph Krajcik

• Examine the disciplinary core ideas across physical, life, Earth and space sciences, and engineering.
• Learn more through rich descriptions of phenomena, learning progressions, and teaching resources.

Teaching Energy Across the Sciences
Thursday, March 30
5:00–5:30 p.m.
Presenter: Jeff Nordine

• Learn about the “Five Big Ideas” related to energy.
• Explore how to make energy a crosscutting concept across the sciences and everyday life.

Learn Strategies to Help You Implement the NGSS Practices!
Friday, March 31
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenters: Susan Koba and Anne Tweed

• Use instructional tools that help provide students with multiple opportunities to learn, promote linguistic and nonlinguistic approaches to teaching, and support NGSS
• Come away with practical handouts.

Doing Good Science in Middle School
Friday, March 31
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenters: Vicki Massey and Olaf Jorgenson

• Explore the best practices in science education with the authors of Doing Good Science in Middle School
• Learn the resources available to help you teach the NGSS in your classroom. The 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate) model of instruction will be highlighted.

Integrating Engineering Practices into Whole-Class Inquiry Challenges
Friday, March 31
11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Presenters: Michael Nocella, Dennis Smithenry, and Joan Gallagher

• Learn how a chemistry teacher designs and modifies whole-class inquiry challenges to incorporate engineering practices into content curricula.
• Understand how integrating engineering practices into content curricula enhance science-process skills.

How Scientific Learning Communities Promote Equity and Access Through Whole-Class Inquiry
Friday, March 31
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Presenters: Michael Nocella, Joan Gallagher, Jason Foster, and Poonam Patel

• Learn how community building via Whole-Class Inquiry supports students in a safe space.
• Address access to curriculum and microaggressions to promote classroom equity.

The Power of Investigating: Guiding Authentic Assessments
Friday, March 31
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenters: Julie McGough and Lisa Nyberg

• Bring science to life as by transforming two-dimensional lessons into three-dimensional learning experiences!
• Learn hands-on strategies to launch investigations and fuel student thinking and learning.

Learning to Read the Earth and Sky, Explorations Supporting the NGSS
Friday, March 31
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Presenters: Russell Colson and Mary Colson

• Observe Earth scientists reading stories written in the Earth.
• Join the authors in some investigative classroom lessons through which you and your students can apply the practices of science to reading the Earth.

Big Data, Small Devices
Friday, March 31
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Presenters: Donna Governor, G. Michael Bowen, and Eric Brunsell

• Find out how to use smartphone apps and real-time data to have students engage in scientific investigations.
• Explore concepts in Earth and environmental science.

Planning Three-Dimensional Formative Assessments with the Feedback Loop
Saturday, April 1
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenter: Erin Furtak

• Collaborate with other science teachers as you learn to use the Feedback Loop Planning Process.
• Plan and reflect on 3-D formative assessments.

Solar Science = NGSS-Focused Solar Astronomy Experiences + Preparation for the All American Total Solar Eclipse
Saturday, April 1
9:30–10:30 a.m.
Presenters: Dennis Schatz and Andrew Fraknoi

• Come explore some of the effective learning experiences to prepare yourself for the 2017 solar eclipse.
• Familiarize yourself with NSTA’s recently published Solar Science, a solar astronomy curriculum resource that is NGSS-focused.

Be a Winner! A Science Teacher’s Guide to Writing Successful Grant Proposals
Saturday, April 1
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Presenters: Patty McGinnis and Kitchka Petrova

• Come away with useful insights from the NSTA Press book Be a Winner! A Science Teacher’s Guide to Writing Successful Grant Proposals.
• Learn tips for writing your own grant proposal, how to identify and refine proposal ideas, the ins and outs of submitting a proposal, and more.

Bringing the S-T-E-M Together in Early Childhood Using Science and Engineering Practices
Saturday, April 1
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Presenter: Peggy Ashbrook

• Increase your understanding of science and engineering practices while seeing how young children use them in STEM explorations.
• Discuss examples and NSTA’s early childhood position statement.

Everyday Engineering
Saturday, April 1
3:30–4:30 p.m.
Presenter: Richard Moyer

• Engage in STEM activities related to everyday engineering (such as ballpoint pens, life jackets, and sweet spots).
• Learn how to create your own lessons accordingly.

Problem-Based Learning in the Classroom, K–12
Sunday, April 2
8:00–9:00 a.m.
Presenter: Tom McConnell

• Experience the power of Problem-Based Learning with the authors of this new book series.
• Explore the book’s resources.

Helping Your Students (and You!) Achieve Basic Data Literacy
Sunday, April 2
9:30–10:30 a.m.
Presenters: G. Michael Bowen and Tony Bartley

• Discover data collecting/analysis techniques to help students young and old.
• Learn the relationships between types of data and analysis of it.

Register for the National Conference before February 24 and save!

More About the 2017 National Conference on Science Education

Browse the program preview, or check out more sessions and other events with the LA Session Browser/Personal Scheduler. Follow all our conference tweets using #NSTA17, and if you tweet, please feel free to tag us @NSTA so we see it! Need to request funding or time off? Download this letter of support.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

2017 National Conference

• Los Angeles, March 30–April 2

2017 STEM Forum & Expo

• Kissimmee/Orlando, July 12–14

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As smartphone cameras take on an ever-more sophisticated role in the science classroom, the technical limits of phone photography become more apparent. Luckily, a dose of strong light can overcome many problems as well as provide access to a world unseen by the human eye. But not just any light will work. The amount, color, and frequency modulation of the light all play important roles in scientific photography.

The proper amount of light is a double-edge light saber. Many LED light sources change the brightness by blinking the LED very fast. Unfortunately that blinking can be detected by the camera and shows up in video as flickering lights or dark bars moving across the screen. And the effect is even more pronounced when the slow motion option is engaged. An excellent solution for just such lighting problems is now available with the Surefire FirePak.

Photons from a Phirehose

Surefire is well known as the maker of some of the world’s best flashlights, but recently they have let some of their lighting magic seep into the world of smartphones. With Surefire’s new “FirePak Smartphone Video Illuminator + Charger” lighting system, two troublesome areas of cell phone photography and video capture are solved with one powerful device. By blasting up to 1500 lumens of light onto a subject, the very fast or the very dark are now fair game for the camera. 1500 lumens is about the same as a focused 100 watt light bulb!

Leveraging the sophisticated camera and image processing power of a student’s smartphone can open even more windows into the the high speed, very small, and of course, nighttime and dark worlds you might want to capture. In fact, until you use such a light that is both powerful in output and features, it’s hard to appreciate all the limitations of even the most modern smartphone cameras.

The FirePak is designed for the phone camera and is billed as a mobile lighting solution and device charger. The lightly rectangular block named the FirePak contains a large rechargeable battery, two USB ports (one for charging itself, one for charging other devices), a sliding multi-position switch, a battery indicator light, and two unique LED lights.

What’s unusual about the pair of LED lights is they have asymmetrical 10mm reflectors with one offset in one direction and the other offset 180 degrees. This combination of lights produces full-frame illumination specifically designed for a smartphone’s 16:9 HD aspect ratio. In other words, the FirePak lights up a rough rectangle that is proportioned to what the cell phone camera sees. No wasted light, no dark spots or vignetting.

Schooled

Proper exposure is a combination of three things: shutter speed, lens aperture, and light sensitivity. In the case of slo-mo, the shutter time is very short and the light sensitivity of the camera chip is fixed and depends on the quality of the smartphone. So too is the aperture of the camera’s lens. The solution is to pour more light on the subject to give the camera more to work with in terms of focus and exposure, and make it easier to clearly freeze each frame.

The Surefire FirePak has a six position switch, off—on (but no-light)—low—med low—med high—high.  When “on but no-light” is selected, the light output can be controlled by a companion App from up to 10 meters away (which has its own set of advantages). In the video below, the FirePak is cycled from “off” through “high” and back to “off.” It was not mounted on a smartphone, which is why the light was moving relative to the camera’s view.

The runtime for the FirePak on high output is about five hours with a slowly diminishing brightness. You might get about one and a half complete iPhone recharges if the FirePak’s battery is used only for that purpose. And running on the lowest light output of 100 lumens, the FirePak should give about 10 hours of useful light off a full starting charge. Obviously there are many combinations of the above, but you can always head off to school with a full charge if you plug the FirePak into a wall outlet or computer overnight. And you can even charge the Firepak with a traditional external recharging cell phone battery. However, FirePak has a healthy appetite, which is why it has its own large battery, so don’t expect to pull a full charge out of a similar sized backup battery.

Don’t Blink

Another important feature of the Surefire FirePak, and arguably the most impressive, is that the LEDs are modulated at a frequency faster what the smartphone camera uses, even with slow motion. Lesser lights blink on and off rapidly to simulate a dimmer output. But that blinking can be seen by the smartphone camera and appears as flashing or dark lines on the captured video. During higher speed video capture (that produces so-called slo-mo results) the effects are even more pronounced. In the past, our lower-powered incandescent lights produced a constant photon output even when dimmed. In fact it was the electric current of 60 cycles of AC current (in America) that produced blinks and flashes rather than the dimming.

Although taking pictures and video at night or in a dark environment might seem the obvious use for the FirePak, the lighting of subjects that will be recorded in slow motion is truly a win for the FirePak. For a camera to capture video that plays back in slo-mo, it must capture two, three, four, or more frames in the time it normally takes to capture one. So, half-speed slo-mo is about 60 frames per second or twice the normal 30 FPS. Quarter speed playback, meaning one second of real time is shown over four seconds, would take 120 FPS. And the iPhone’s slo-mo is 240 frames per second, or eight times normal. And some other Apps claim up to 1,000 frames per second. With all that speed comes the need for lots of light.

The Surefire FirePak produces a bright stream of light that can easily reach out 20 meters or more when needed, or shine a spotlight on a local scene making closer subject stand out from the background. The low setting of the variable output FirePak is still fairly bright so for closeup photography and video so it may be necessary to hold the FirePak further away from the scene, even if just centimeters. Light output is affected by the inverse square law meaning that the light’s intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. So even a little increase in subject-light distance has a noticeable effect.

The Case in Point

The FirePak is designed to be mounted to the smartphone using a slide-on docking attachment system that begins with a custom Surefire phone case. The dual-rail yoke on the back of the FirePak slides into a pair of slots on the back of the svelte phone case Surefire makes. It’s mostly held in pace by friction, but there is a stopping block that locks the sliding.  No buttons or release levers are required to attach or detach the camera from the case.

The FirePak is reversible on the phone case, and I’ve found that when imaging close objects such as those within 20 cm from the lens, the output reflectors on the FirePak might need to be close to the lens to reduce shadows. For everything else, the FirePak can be used with reflectors up or down. For off-phone use, I think a tripod socket on the FirePak would be helpful, or an after-market tripod attachment that uses the same rails as the smartphone case. 

At about 38 seconds into the Surefire promotional video below, you can see the blinking from a modulated light source on the curtain in the right of the frame, just before the FirePak overwhelmed the scene with flicker-free lighting.

In the video above, I had to study how Surefire was using the FirePak on a stand during the filming, as the FirePak was the actual lighting source for the video. Surefire was using a clamp to hold the FirePak. I had hoped to repurpose one of my iPod/iPhone tripod clamps, but alas, the FirePak is too narrow to seat in a traditional-sized iPhone clamp. However, being a photographer in a former life, I did have plenty of Bogen/Manfrotto clamps and arms for studio work, as well as tripods. Using a similar solution to Surefire’s video, I was able to position and adjust the FirePak for all smartphone photography and video-shooting situations I could create. Of course, duct tape would also work. And it is with this off-camera lighting that the Bluetooth App control of the FirePak really shines!

There’s an App for that.

The Surefire FirePak will sell for about $200, and the companion app called the Surefire FirePak Illuminator can be downloaded for free onto your Apple or Android phone. The App can talk to the FirePak via Bluetooth allowing some on-screen light control and customization. Additional features of the App include grid overlays for photo composition, tools for white balance, a self-timer, output levels, and exposure brightness (ISO). 

It is clear that the trend of student smartphones is not really a trend anymore. It is the new normal. And with all paradigm shifts in capabilities, we teachers should make sure there is plenty of room in our expectations to address and even assess what might have been impossible last semester.