Full STEAM ahead!

     Awesome news! My school will be offering a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) class next year and I get to teach it! It will be called Full STEAM Ahead! The Science department brought up the idea at the beginning of this school year to the administration and they thought about it for a while until it was finally approved.

     Within the past few school years, I have been in charge or sponsored various science competitions for my students to be a part of. It was always done after school or before school, weekends, personal time, etc. It has become a bit overwhelming so having this class will really help with all those competitions. Of course this means I have to come up with a curriculum plan for the 2016-2017 school year for the course and I have no idea where to start! :( I have some ideas on what I want to incorporate in the class:

1. E-portfolios - have the students post their work on a blog, site, or some sort of online portfolio to document their engineering process. The best scenario would be to use Edmodo since I use it for everything.

2. Relate activities & competitions to STEAM careers - number 1 question I get in science class with some of the concepts we learn, "when am I ever going to use this in real life?" or "what type of job does this relate to?" this should have students research what STEAM careers relate to specific challenges or topics.

3. Monthly themes - I wanted to make each month a different theme with real world challenges that students need to come up with solutions for, like one month focused on water and all the issues we can think of with water and how to fix it! I need to the class to be structured enough where students don't find themselves bored or asking what they should be doing.

4. Think critically - seems cliche, but a lot of students can't solve an issue even if its a simple one like how to load staples into the stapler. I want them to be ready for the future and to become those members in society that will fix the world's problems.

5. Robots! - ok this is because I like robots among other nerdy science things and I ordered 3 SPHERO Bots that students can code to perform certain functions. Coding is not only fun but part of the future and they catch on pretty quickly. I've had the students code in class using code.org where they created their own games and posted it on Edmodo for other students to play. I had to test out the SPHERO so my husband bought me BB-8 from star wars and it's been all fun and games at home! check out the video of BB-8 at home:

Check back next year when the class is in full effect!

Record it!

I finally did it! I recorded my first lecture for my flipped classroom trial. My goal this school year is to try out the flipped classroom for some of my class periods in the hopes that I can implement it all next year.

I'll admit, it was overwhelming figuring out what to do first. I decided to pick our next topic in class and record over the PowerPoint lecture. That was a bit strange too trying to speak into the slides with no real audience in front of you was intimidating. Once I did that (short and sweet about 10 mins) I uploaded the file to Edmodo where the students had access to the notes. I also posted 2 questions for the students to answer on Edmodo based on the lecture to hold them accountable for taking the notes at home. I ran into some issues of course: 

1. Some students didn't do it at home. Period. But it was a smaller number than I thought. 

2. Some students ran into issues watching the notes because the file was too large. 

So those students that had a hard time taking the notes or did not do it, used in class tha lets to take the notes while the other students completed an interesting lab. Of course the students were working hard on the notes to finish and not be left out of the lab. The next time I did notes online I had more students complete the task. I also used something new called office mix. I really enjoyed this add on to the Microsoft office 2016. The add on lets you record directly onto the slides with a screen capture and you can put quiz questions into the slides!! One of my favorites. However, I always run into issues. Students had to be logged into their county accounts and Edmodo in order to answer the questions in the PowerPoint to receive credit. It might work well if no questions are included in the PowerPoint and just make it a public office mix for them to watch. 

Example photos coming soon! Stay tuned!

**Update!**

Here is a link to the recorded lessons I created and had my students take notes on. If anyone has any pointers, please let me know! :)

Chapter 14.1 - structure of an atom

Office Mix Powerpoint Lecture - Chapter 15.1