Sunday morning is a tough time for a presenter. Early departures, church services, brunch dates, or too much Saturday evening make it difficult for some to attend sessions at this time. I’m sure that Michael Barnett from Boston College was pleased to see a nice crowd at his session on “Using GIS to Model Urban Street Value.” He demonstrated a program that starts with a satellite image of an area. The students add the location of trees, buildings, parking lots, and grassy areas. He provided us with laptops to see the actual maps created by the students and then we ran an analysis program that calculated a summary of the economic benefit of the trees. But the really cool part was that the model could be modified to answer questions such as What happens if we plant more trees? Are some species of trees more beneficial than others? What happens if we pave over a grassy area to make a parking lot? Check out the Urban Ecology website for more information, including a nice tree identification resource.

Some presenters had basic lectures with PowerPoints, some provided “think-pair-share” opportunities for participants, some had laptops for participants and guided us through simulations or software tools (an advantage to sitting up front), and others had the participants actually do the hands-on activities. Most had handouts, although I was glad to see that many had just a basic one-pager outline and then gave us the URL of their website to download a variety of resources—less to carry and a lot greener!

This session prepared us to lead a one-week unit in which  students take a “journey” to the Moon. Facilitators Tara Clopper and Heather Slatoff led us in hands-on activities, including designing our own mission patches. One perk with this session—a free CD containing the whole unit, including video clips.
In the photo above, teachers examine Tara Clopper’s t-shirt decorated with lunar mission patches designed by students. Clopper and Slatoff said they stayed up late ironing patches on t-shirts, and as someone who hates this task, I was relieved that they advised us to recruit help for this part of the unit!
During a mission communication activity, teacher teams played the roles of “senders” and “receivers.” Senders shaded squares on a grid and tried to convey the design to the receivers without showing them the grid. It reminded me of the game “Battleship,” which was popular when I was in seventh grade.

With so much to see and do at the conference, I shouldn’t be surprised by the number of people I see no matter how early I arrive. If there’s a workshop going on, there are people in there.
When I arrived at the conference center this morning, there was an odor in one hall that took me back to my 7th grade science class. At a hands-on workshop, a number of attendees were refining their dissection skills. I’m not ashamed to say that wasn’t a workshop I was in a rush to join—I wasn’t very good at dissection back in 7th grade and I really didn’t want to relive those days. Sorry, Ms. Hess, where ever you are!
I did attend one on developing assessment tests. It seemed like the participants could hardly wait to ask questions. With so much government emphasis on meeting standards, they wanted to know why it wasn’t necessarily a good thing if most students got a standards-aligned question correct and how to use the assessment results to help their students.
I also attended Lamont Flowers’ seminar on the Black Experience in Science Education. He challenged the audience to do their own research on how to improve the science education of African Americans and all Americans. He was right when he said, “With education comes options.” Don’t all children deserve to have a number of options available to them?

ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) sponsored a series of seven sessions presented by two of the most dynamic educators I’ve ever met: Ben Smith and Jared Mader of the Red Lion School District in PA. I attended the sessions on Creativity and Innovation and Digitizing the Science Classroom: Preparing Students for the Global Society. Rather than “forbidding” students from having cell phones, digital cameras, and iPods in class, these high school teachers (Ben teaches physics and Jared is now the district’s Technology director but is still a chemistry teacher at heart), encourage students to use these tools, along with laptops and probes, in authentic and productive ways. From incorporating digital video into projects to submitting assignments online to communicating via podcasts (and the students create them), their classrooms are infused with creativity that helps students learn science and communicate their learning. it’s obvious that they do a lot of modeling and guiding in their classes, and they were very patient as audience members created their first MP3 files. The website of these EdTechInnovators is a wealth of resources, links to downloads, templates, tutorials, presentations, and examples of student projects that they are generously willing to share with us. Click on the “Resources” link at the top and on the NSTA link in the list of conferences at the bottom.

The exhibit hall is like a science teacher’s paradise! There are so many new things, as well as some tried and true ones. All of the major textbook and trade book publishers are here as well as many of the lab equipment and supply companies. The reps are eager to share their catalogs and demo their products. Some even have elaborate seating areas for the presentations and drawings for prizes. I was dazzled by all of the cool stuff! Being a bird watcher, one of my favorites is a motion-sensitive, all-weather camera that can be aimed at your birdfeeders to snap pictures remotely! Lots of microscopes, robotics, probes, models, software, and calculators, too. From maps and posters to pens, magnets, bookmarks, and rulers, there are also many “freebies” to take home. When I would get home, my students would always ask, “What did you bring us, Ms B?” What they didn’t know was that the most important things I brought home (in addition to the goodies for them) were new knowledge, lots of information, suggestions for improving my instruction, and memories of new friends.

Virginie Chokouanga, the SciLinks database administrator, did a session on using SciLink’s online assignment tool. This tool allows the teacher to create assignments based on the websites in SciLinks. The students can show what they’ve learned. Check out this feature at the SciLinks site.

Is it madness to give away $150,000 worth of science equipment and supplies? No way! Cheryl A. Miller, a high school science department chair from Murrieta, California, was one of four winners in NSTA’s Ultimate Science Giveaway. Miller said winning a slew of prizes donated by exhibitors—including a trip for two to Costa Rica—made the money she spent to come to Boston all worthwhile.
I’ve seen and met a lot of happy teachers during the conference, but I nominate Cheryl as the happiest. I think she will be smiling in her sleep tonight!

Page Keeley, NSTA’s President-Elect, guided us through the use of probes (the written kind, not the electronic ones!) to uncover student’s knowledge and misconceptions about science concepts. She shared several examples of the probes: Ice Cubes in a Bag, The Mirror on the Wall, Is It Food for Plants. She also shared a list of non-threatening formative assessments to get students involved and to find out what they are learning. By the time the final exam or the state test is given, some misconceptions get set in stone unless we get inside the students heads.

OK, I’ve been to a number of sessions on topics that I’m familiar with. It’s time to stretch my mind and venture into unfamiliar territory to learn something new. Dr. Gibor Basri from Berkeley gave a presentation on The Search for Earth-Sized Planets Around Other Stars. He described NASA’s Kepler mission, designed to search for earth-like planets by using a telescope to monitor stars and look for “the telltale dip in their light cause when a planet crosses in front of them.” Astronomy is something I never had any formal coursework in, and judging from the sophisticated level of questions from those in the audience, I was definitely the new (and semi-clueless) kid on the block!
But Dr. Basri is a wonderful example of how someone who is passionate about his topic and who has excellent presentation skills can motivate someone who is a novice learner in a topic (in this case, me) to get excited enough to want to learn more! I’ve bookmarked the Kepler Mission website and put Kepler’s tentative launch date (next February) on my calendar.