Engineering is Elementary: 2016 Texas Regional Collaboratives Conference

Texas has a system for teacher support and professional development that I have not seen before. There are regional service centers that contract out for professional development to schools and districts for math and science. These regional service centers are supported by universities around the state. There is a chance that I am explaining this a bit incorrectly because even after asking numerous questions, I still had difficulty grasping the hierarchy and structure of the support system. What I did come away with is Texas has numerous professional development opportunities for their teachers both through the region service centers and the local universities. If possible, I would have stayed in Texas longer to take advantage of their coding sessions. Nevertheless, in the short time I was there I was able to gather many takeaways, both from speakers and the teacher-led sessions I attended.

Takeaways:

Computer Science Resources: Barefoot Computing, Computational Thinking Teacher Resources, Code.org, scratch.mit.edu, CSTA, Daisy the Dinosaur (K-2), Dash and Dot, Tickle, Pixel Press Flowers, Code Warriors (Ages 9+), Hopscotch, Lightbot, Scratch Jr., Bloxels, Tynker, Botlogic, Blockly, Enchanted, Wonder Workshop,
Robotics - Ozobots, Sphero, BeeBot, LEGO WeDo, LEGO Mindstorm, Dash and Dot
Create a Symbaloo for coding sites for students.
Debugging is important in coding and robotics programming to develop computational thinking.
Code. org has unplugged activities that don't require technology. Use these activities in centers with students along with programming and robotics.
Students designed arduino cars and printed their own wheel designs on 3D printers.

Teach a group of students to teach other students
Help them develop their knowledge of the materials and project to understand how to teach the other students.

TI Inspire Apps for iPads. TI Inspire has programmable brain.

Science Notebooks can be designed to meet teacher and students needs.

Designate use of sides - left =assignments and right=creative or left =student output and right =teacher input
Use packing tape to protect cover
Can use multiple composition notebooks by joining covers with duct tape
Have notebook quizzes for accountability

"Tell me what's on Page 2."

Cafe menu for student outputs or assignments
Store notebooks in rooms or take pictures of pages for students to recreate lost notebooks

Dotstorming,com
Remind101 for private team communications (FLL or Idaho TECH Challenge) or other group cmmunications
"Why do some students wonder?"
"Why do some students crave more knowledge?"
Transitions between schools are critical moments to shape students' success.
Capabilities (growth mindset) - if you don't believe you can excel you won't put in as much effort.

So how do we shape students' sense of capabilities?

Belonging (comfort/ownership) - Are the other students in the class like me?

Gives you a sense of comfort and ownership.

Purpose (why) - How might what they are learning be useful to others?

Personal

Help students develop long lists of things they are good at.
Identify goals

Students may have different goals

learn content (learning goals) - increases likelihood of mastery response
show they know the content (performance goals) - increases vulnerability to a helpless response
May be different because students have different opinions about the intelligence (fixed or growth mindset)