Jim -

Thank you for your comments. Most of the credit goes to the students who have had the imagination and persistence to complete their projects.  We would be honored to give a presentation to the CLEAN Network.

I agree, Gillian, this is such an interesting project! So neat to have the students develop these innovative solutions. The CLEAN Network would be excited to hear about it. I emailed you the email address of our call coordinator - please reach out and we can get something scheduled. 

Thank you Katie. We will do that.

And, you will have active support from other CLEAN Network members, as you do!  

Katie, Gina and Anne are incredible. I would not want to imagine what the climate and energy education and STEM-based action communities would be like without their indispensable contributions.  They are very tuned into, and are very much are responsive to the requests and suggestions of CLEAN network member organizations and individuals.

Recommendations on what will make for an especially great presentation always help.  Then there is making sure that loads of people want to log in for a given presentation.  Most of all, to take part in the Q &A, and the how-can-we-practically-help-you-to-the-fullest part of the discussions.  True collaboration among colleagues.

Innovate to Mitigate and TERC are highly valuable, and highly valued, members of the CLEAN Network. ClimateChangeEducation.org and our Mobile Climate Science Labs program will be very enthusiastic in support of your providing an update of your work at a national teleconference of the CLEAN Network.

Let's be working on when the best timing is, and go for scheduling then.

Sound OK?

We're recruiting teachers for next year's competition. If you're interested check out our website and sign up.

Santi,

What are some of the ways fellow Showcase presenters and their programscan  help to recruit teachers for next year's I2M competition?

We have the capacity to help in the following.  As we did last year, for this year's competition. There may be ways we haven't thought of.  We want to, and encourage others to, focus on those methods that resonate best with the ways of I2M:

== Word of mouth with the teachers, schools, school districts, and science-technology centers that our programs work closely with.  In our case, we are especially well known and respected in Washington DC, Maryland and (as for the last two decades) in California.

== At large scale hands-on STEM festivals and community events.  (Returning big time now that COVID is, at least for the moment, not at a peak.)  Interaction with hundreds of teachers, school officials, and informal educators all day long. 

== Similarly with STEM field trip hubs.  Multi-day events where scores of school groups are bused in to do hands-on STEM. Where a rich array of labs are all set-up and ready to go to engage thousands from all over a region.  Especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Presented by highly experienced specialists in providing high quality fully engaging labs on climate and energy innovation -- featuring innovations pioneered by teams of middle and high school students.  Note: most of the lab presenters are educators who are people of color. (Especially African American and Latina/o/x.) 

Sounds like a good match for ITM?

== Social media, such as Twitter.  https://twitter.com/climatescilabs -- Where fellow Showcase presenters are in regular contact with local and federal government climate programs, school principles, school districts and the like.  Tweeting and likes all year round -- can include I2M when the time is right.

== Announcements over the CLEAN Network Listserv.

Regarding timing:  Are the two best times to get the word out?:  Right now, before the end of the school year?  The best time.  Only second is August, before the beginning of the school year.  Pre-registration is open now, yes?

Next year will get rolling early -- in September. With the submitting of abstracts in early October. 

I’m delighted to see that you have continued to explore the crowdsourcing  approach and are thinking about ways of adapting it to local situations. You have clearly established proof of concept, but I see examining adaptation of the model to various contexts as the next challenge. I also like your idea to explore linkages to the environmental and social sciences. That could be very fruitful in terms both of expanding the model and linking the disciplines around issues. 

Yes, we have inklings currently about how the model works in various contexts, but a more systematic study would yield useful insights.  Under future funding, we might consider developing adaptations of the model to local contexts to study how crowdsourcing can be set up and be productive in a network of, say, local or regional teachers. What are the challenges? How do teachers and students perceive the benefits? Under what circumstances can such problem-based learning -and crowdsourcing-flourish?  We're asking these kinds of questions in the current context, but it will be interesting to investigate whether the model can be sustainable in "local pods."

In the current year's challenge, several students conducted what may be termed social science studies. For example, one team devised an education campaign at their school on the climate impact of food waste, and employed a pre/post survey to determine learning and intent to act.  In addition, one of the teachers in the video is urging us to extend our recruitment beyond STEM teachers, which gives us the impetus to try next year.  We suspect that such efforts will be most successful if the non-STEM teacher is recruited by a peer.

The teaming idea seems potentially very fruitful, both in terms of helping teachers and students see linkages across disciplines, and in terms of demonstrating the power of perspective through broader collaboration. Hope you test the idea. 

Thank you Tara. We had originally planned to use Facebook because it has many of the functionalities we sought, but widespread district blocks on that app meant we needed to find another platform. We opted for EdModo because it is familiar to many teachers, and could be adapted to our needs.

Students seemed initially reluctant to share substantive comments, but we provided a rubric to support good feedback - and we also made sure that they knew that the quantity and quality of their comments would be included in the final judging. 

As for the quality of the collaborative work, you should check out two conference presentations we have made: one is in the AERA 2022 repository and the other will be part of the ICLS 2022 conference proceedings. Let me know if you're interested in seeing either of these.  We found that students not only received ideas that improved their projects, but also found that thinking about meaningful comments to make on others' presentations caused them to think more deeply about their own designs, rationales and investigation plans.

Thank you, Jamie!  We are really excited by the connections students are making with members of the community as they develop their innovations. A few teams reached out to the local colleges and to scientists in their lives to help strengthen their ideas. Your thought to reach out to EwB is not something that we had considered, but I will certainly make sure to include local chapters as we prepare for next year's competition.

Thank you Jessica! We engaged teachers in 2 PD sessions to introduce them to the goals and overall structure of the challenge, and to share rubrics and guidelines for productive discussion that addressed science practices, e.g., framing a productive investigation question, using evidence to support claims, etc. We also checked in with teachers and students regularly to offer our support.

A preliminary success was that the discussions we're having here in the videohall was a model of sorts for how we hoped students would interact. The students absolutely took excellent advantage of the in-depth discussions they conducted and critiques they provided. We have evidence that the discussions resulted in improvements to almost all of the projects.

Our biggest hurdle in the project so far, as for many, has been the impact that COVID has had on our recruitment efforts. However, the number of participants has been increasing and we hope for more success in the coming two years!

Thank you Karen!  Yes, students did express a sense of empowerment.  With respect to the crowdsourced conversations especially - some described feeling daunted at first, especially the 8th graders when commenting on the work of 12th graders, but came to appreciate the benefit both of commenting on and questioning others' work and receiving comments and questions themselves.  Some also said that having to think critically about others' designs helped them to think more critically about their own as well.

Hi Shari, thanks for your comments!   I have been responding to posts from the bottom up - so I've described supports in response to Margo just below. 

Collectively across the challenges, schools have been located in Florida, New York, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland.  In one challenge we also had submissions from teams at American Schools in China, and in Lebanon!

Gillian,

Could you share with us (fellow Showcase presenters and visitors) how STEM programs can contribute STEM instrumentation to ITM teams?

How can the communication take place to match up what ITM teams need to what other Showcase participating programs have to share?

I would think a question is also: What is considered "fair and appropriate?" So to speak.  Clearly, we don't want students and teachers to cheat-- obtaining support and equipment in ways the ITM rules discourage or don't allow. Am I correct in thinking, that ITM also has no intention of hamstringing the ability of the teams either?  Adult professionals (e.g. major university research laboratories) engaged in STEM innovation almost always seek, are offered and successfully obtain equipment from outside entities. [ e.g. Via partnerships, grants, sponsorships, joint ventures, gifts, loans, etc.] Undoubtedly, students are encouraged to be creative when learning how to ask for help.  They should not have to solely rely on what they happen to have around the house. 

Could you tell us a bit about what the different teams did to obtain support?  In this past year, did everything take place in ways that were OK with ITM and the NSF models? Hopefully, nothing ever got close to crossing the line -- where teams received too much support from adult and multi-generational organizations and institutions.  Including in the support from fellow middle and high school students such as Abigail Stark, Antonia Romm and Luca Rinzel -- three of the leaders at our labs.

We at Mobile Climate Science Labs lent two of the ITM teams scientific instrumentation this year, to help them in their research and development work. Including one of your top winners. (We ourselves are multi-generational: where middle and high school students actively and practically team up with engineers, scientists, artists, teachers, and other professionals all year round, both to advance STEM education on a mass scale and to deliberately make breakthroughs in STEM-based climate action and energy innovation.)

Over our twenty year history, it has been essential to us to have robust sources for science instrumentation, engineering equipment and technology.  After all, we literally bring real STEM labs to hundreds of thousands of students, families, and schools each year (pre and post COVID). With special emphasis on communities of color, and the removal of the barriers that discourage young women from making STEM one of their greatest strengths.

We receive donations to purchase equipment, but we also directly receive gifts of high quality, powerful instrumentation.  In turn, some of that equipment, we have lent to ITM teams -- to use for as long as they stick with their projects.  (Encouraging sustained involvement with ITM and STEM innovation.)  For example, we have tens of thousands of dollars worth of wonderful equipment donated to us by each of the major probe-ware and education-based STEM instrumentation companies -- e.g. Pasco, Pocket-Lab and Vernier. [There is a natural quid pro-quo:  Since we openly and publicly employ their instruments in our hands-on labs in very high profile settings, their customer base sees how valuable the equipment is in the real world. When wealthy school district representatives experience the scenes where thousands of school kids from the poorer schools and communities of color are enthusiastically using a given company's instruments, as at a mass scale science festival, it is fantastic advertising of their products.]

Are there ways to help ITM teams next year gain experience how to bring in support in the form of STEM instrumentation?  Adult professionals at research labs would have little more than rubber bands and paper clips if they were not effective in gaining support.

We love to help ITM teams. As long as our assistance is not breaking the rules of how the ITM competitions are intended to unfold.

Thanks Jim -

We appreciated your introducing two teams from your network of educators to the competition and welcome your efforts at promoting the project again next year.

For details about what teams did to gain support, refer to my response to Tara a couple of days ago. We expect teams to collaborate, engage in the scientific process, and with help from their teacher and their community, to find the resources they need.

During the PD sessions with teachers, we discuss ways to help teams get the instrumentation they need and the grant provides some financial support if requested.

Pre-registration is open now, and getting the word out at any time is welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We appreciated your introducing two teams from your network of educators to the competition and welcome your efforts at promoting the project again next year.

For details about what teams did to gain support, refer to my response to Tara a couple of days ago. We expect teams to collaborate, engage in the scientific process, and with help from their teacher and their community, to find the resources they need.

During the PD sessions with teachers, we discuss ways to help teams get the instrumentation they need and the grant provides some financial support if requested.

Pre-registration is open now, and getting the word out at any time is welcome!

 

 

 

 

Thank you Margo!  Support came from several sources, some provided by the project and many by the teachers.  The teachers helped students with many of the challenges you'd expect in a problem-based learning setting - how to engage in the scientific/engineering process, how to guide students towards a feasible project given their capabilities, how to troubleshoot, providing materials and resources, e.g., helping students figure out how to find a needed expert in their community (a parent, a scientist).  The teachers will tell you that the students took a lot of initiative on their own as well.  The project provided resources on the website (terc.edu/innovatetomitigate) and also convened 3 professional learning sessions with the teachers.   Finally, project staff were available to answer questions, and provided guidance when needed.  We stayed in regular contact with teachers and their teams throughout. 

The number of submissions has grown each year, and we are relying on word of mouth to publicize this opportunity.  Please help spread the word!

Thank you Marie. The first challenge took place right when COVID was on its first upswing, which had a marked impact on participation levels. Submissions grew in the second year, enough so we could do a preliminary study of the online discourse.  We presented those data at AERA this year and there is a related paper in the repository.  We also had a paper accepted for ICLS 2022 next month, and that will appear in the conference proceedings.  Both papers are accessible on Researchgate. We plan to build on these as we continue our design-based research in the next couple of challenges.

Thank you, Gillian. I will locate those papers on Researchgate.

With gratitude,

Marie

Let me know if you cannot find or download them and I'll email them.

Thank you Carol! All the credit goes to the students and their teachers!