Linking in-school and out-of-school STEM learning
If you’ve visited the NSTA website recently, you may have noticed a few changes. When we unveiled our new name last year (moving from the National Science Teachers Association to the National Science Teaching Association) and our logo refresh in January, we knew we would need to update our home on the web. But the new NSTA site is more than just a pretty face—in these unp … [Read more...]
Early in my teaching career, developing a lesson plan or museum program could be a lonely experience. For most of my five years in the classroom I was on my own — and it wasn’t pretty. Planning usually involved binders of lessons and lots of trial and error. Thankfully, social media and web-based, shared documents have made this a much more collaborative experience. The cha … [Read more...]
Spring can be a fascinating time to study our natural world as it emerges from its winter state. Observing and documenting signs of spring, such as the first frog call, the return of migratory songbirds, and the budding of plants, are cornerstones of many phenology-related citizen science projects. Citizen science, or science for all, invites public participation in science. … [Read more...]
After a string of successes in our teacher professional development programs at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), I recently began to notice a disconcerting trend: Teachers stopped coming. Despite efforts to draw program participants, it became harder to convince individual teachers to sign up for course offerings. In talking to colleagues at other museums and … [Read more...]
According to a 2012 United Nations report, many countries prioritize children’s learning about the genesis, prevention, and mitigation of natural disasters (Selby and Kagawa 2012); the United States, however, falls behind with respect to disaster education (FEMA 2010). The Next Generation Science Standards disciplinary core idea Natural Hazards (ESS3B) states, “Students who dem … [Read more...]
