I had a wonderful time at the 2013 TIES Technology Conference in Minneapolis. The pre-conference and conference workshops I attended have been useful. I have expanded my PLN with those sitting in the room and pushed my thinking with some new acquaintances.
I ended Sunday's session with an interesting conversation that has been digested, mulled over, and regurgitated for several days. The conversation was about STEM initiatives - the necessity of them and if STEM is something that really needs to exist. The conversation moved in and out of topics related to STEM and education and as we drove the winding path of our conversation there were parts of agreement and most often parts of disagreement, defense, and frustration.
Let me set the scene of the conversation...
I am in a session on Scratch. A really useful tool that I have used in my classroom. I have not used it to the extent I hope to but have had past students take the Scratch application to a level I had never imagined. The presenter of this session is an intelligent, creative, artistic, opinionated, and very self-confident man that shared some examples that helped expand my ideas for classroom integration.
He began the session by asking the 10 of us to introduce ourselves with location, job title and Scratch experience. About 90% of us in the room (that poor singleton that was called out to everyone) had Scratch experience and it threw the presenter for a loop. He prided himself on being the only Scratch presenter at TIES for the past few years and that no one had ever had any experience. Needless to say, his lesson plan he had laid out for us on his wiki needed to be adjusted. It all worked out well, we played with Scratch for about 2 hours while he was available for specific questions.
Within the three hour time frame, we worked on Scratch, learned about the presenter's career path and his unfortunate history of being cut from his art teaching positions due to budget cuts, and I had the opportunity to collaborate with a teacher from Princeton. Within my conversation with her, the presenter joined our conversation. He quickly stepped in with, "I think you could argue that STEM doesn't really exist." Silently I waited for his continued opinion as I reflected on my argument that STEM thinking and specific state standards could be integrated into a classroom without a separate STEM class. However this idea becomes difficult with the structure of our education system - separate subject areas, subject areas divided by rigid schedules, and standardized testing.
Our conversation continued with his thought that STEM is just a career development initiative to expose students to career paths in STEM related fields and STEM is a current buzz word and opportunity for educational products to make money. I sat listening, growing in frustration, and packed up my things to head out for some reflecting between sessions.
After several days of thinking and recording notes, I don't believe STEM is solely a career development initiative. I believe STEM has become a part of school districts due to the Minnesota engineering standards that are wrapped into the state science standards, as well as a push for current, curriculum centered technology infusion, and most importantly, to promote inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking skills that have seemingly taken a back seat with drill and kill approaches to standardized test prep.
I am surprised by any teacher that would argue a subject area, lesson, activity, or project is integral for student success in their future career. Students' careers are evolving from what they may seem to be today. Future jobs are unknown or simply nonexistent. How do we prep students for their career when we can't define it for them? Who are we to define what future bosses are going to demand of their employees? We can however assist, lead, model, and practice inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking skills with students as a foundation for them to navigate their future career paths.
My thoughts on STEM as a buzz word got me thinking about "buzz words" in general. To me buzz words are terms that are used loosely by people of varying degrees of understanding and interpretation. They are words that can be slapped on textbooks, apps, programs, and other teacher material to give the impression of a "be-all-end-all" type of product to solve all teacher's curricular or instructional problems. How can there ever be a "be-all-end-all" type of product when each classroom varies annually? There is no recipe! Buzz words are terms that people can throw out in interviews and conversations to try to seem "in-the-know" but really the application of such buzz words, specific classroom examples, stories, and teaching skills are the true identifiers of professional teachers that understand best practices.
To me, buzz words are simply labels for best practices that should be happening in the classroom whether the label is specifically called out or not. For example, you can't say, "I'm doing differentiation." What do you mean? "Doing differentiation" isn't an option, it is your job. Teachers are professionals paid to ensure all students success of meeting the standards. Yet just nine short years ago "differentiation" was a buzz word. I attended a conference in Vegas on differentiation. I got my masters degree in differentiated instruction. Differentiation isn't some thing new and isolated. It is something that all successful teachers naturally do on a daily basis - provide learning opportunities for students that best fits their learning needs (skill level, learning style, interests, etc.). Being able to collaborate, share data, collect data, analyze data, create and use common assessments, maximize small group instruction, etc. are all skills that aid in the ability to differentiate well and meet students' needs. Giving students opportunities for additional time, redos, alternative assessments, student choice, and the list goes on, are all things that successful schools and staff do. They aren't doing differentiation, they are doing their jobs.
STEM's goal is to create a learning environment of exploration and inquiry through hands-on, critical thinking and problem solving learning opportunities. These learning opportunities don't come segregated by subject areas but rather a natural blend of science, tech, engineering, and math. Whether it is STEM or any other subject area, shouldn't all classroom learning opportunities be inquiry based and require critical thinking? Shouldn't learning have an opportunity to be real-life rather than segregated? Maybe STEM was initiated to begin thinking differently about our learning environments?
I ended Sunday's session with an interesting conversation that has been digested, mulled over, and regurgitated for several days. The conversation was about STEM initiatives - the necessity of them and if STEM is something that really needs to exist. The conversation moved in and out of topics related to STEM and education and as we drove the winding path of our conversation there were parts of agreement and most often parts of disagreement, defense, and frustration.
Let me set the scene of the conversation...
I am in a session on Scratch. A really useful tool that I have used in my classroom. I have not used it to the extent I hope to but have had past students take the Scratch application to a level I had never imagined. The presenter of this session is an intelligent, creative, artistic, opinionated, and very self-confident man that shared some examples that helped expand my ideas for classroom integration.
He began the session by asking the 10 of us to introduce ourselves with location, job title and Scratch experience. About 90% of us in the room (that poor singleton that was called out to everyone) had Scratch experience and it threw the presenter for a loop. He prided himself on being the only Scratch presenter at TIES for the past few years and that no one had ever had any experience. Needless to say, his lesson plan he had laid out for us on his wiki needed to be adjusted. It all worked out well, we played with Scratch for about 2 hours while he was available for specific questions.
Within the three hour time frame, we worked on Scratch, learned about the presenter's career path and his unfortunate history of being cut from his art teaching positions due to budget cuts, and I had the opportunity to collaborate with a teacher from Princeton. Within my conversation with her, the presenter joined our conversation. He quickly stepped in with, "I think you could argue that STEM doesn't really exist." Silently I waited for his continued opinion as I reflected on my argument that STEM thinking and specific state standards could be integrated into a classroom without a separate STEM class. However this idea becomes difficult with the structure of our education system - separate subject areas, subject areas divided by rigid schedules, and standardized testing.
Our conversation continued with his thought that STEM is just a career development initiative to expose students to career paths in STEM related fields and STEM is a current buzz word and opportunity for educational products to make money. I sat listening, growing in frustration, and packed up my things to head out for some reflecting between sessions.
After several days of thinking and recording notes, I don't believe STEM is solely a career development initiative. I believe STEM has become a part of school districts due to the Minnesota engineering standards that are wrapped into the state science standards, as well as a push for current, curriculum centered technology infusion, and most importantly, to promote inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking skills that have seemingly taken a back seat with drill and kill approaches to standardized test prep.
I am surprised by any teacher that would argue a subject area, lesson, activity, or project is integral for student success in their future career. Students' careers are evolving from what they may seem to be today. Future jobs are unknown or simply nonexistent. How do we prep students for their career when we can't define it for them? Who are we to define what future bosses are going to demand of their employees? We can however assist, lead, model, and practice inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking skills with students as a foundation for them to navigate their future career paths.
My thoughts on STEM as a buzz word got me thinking about "buzz words" in general. To me buzz words are terms that are used loosely by people of varying degrees of understanding and interpretation. They are words that can be slapped on textbooks, apps, programs, and other teacher material to give the impression of a "be-all-end-all" type of product to solve all teacher's curricular or instructional problems. How can there ever be a "be-all-end-all" type of product when each classroom varies annually? There is no recipe! Buzz words are terms that people can throw out in interviews and conversations to try to seem "in-the-know" but really the application of such buzz words, specific classroom examples, stories, and teaching skills are the true identifiers of professional teachers that understand best practices.
To me, buzz words are simply labels for best practices that should be happening in the classroom whether the label is specifically called out or not. For example, you can't say, "I'm doing differentiation." What do you mean? "Doing differentiation" isn't an option, it is your job. Teachers are professionals paid to ensure all students success of meeting the standards. Yet just nine short years ago "differentiation" was a buzz word. I attended a conference in Vegas on differentiation. I got my masters degree in differentiated instruction. Differentiation isn't some thing new and isolated. It is something that all successful teachers naturally do on a daily basis - provide learning opportunities for students that best fits their learning needs (skill level, learning style, interests, etc.). Being able to collaborate, share data, collect data, analyze data, create and use common assessments, maximize small group instruction, etc. are all skills that aid in the ability to differentiate well and meet students' needs. Giving students opportunities for additional time, redos, alternative assessments, student choice, and the list goes on, are all things that successful schools and staff do. They aren't doing differentiation, they are doing their jobs.
STEM's goal is to create a learning environment of exploration and inquiry through hands-on, critical thinking and problem solving learning opportunities. These learning opportunities don't come segregated by subject areas but rather a natural blend of science, tech, engineering, and math. Whether it is STEM or any other subject area, shouldn't all classroom learning opportunities be inquiry based and require critical thinking? Shouldn't learning have an opportunity to be real-life rather than segregated? Maybe STEM was initiated to begin thinking differently about our learning environments?