Welcome to our video! Every year the Showcase gathers such an interesting array of visitors that we're excited to see what we will learn from you.

Learning Ecosystems Northeast is, essentially, an experiment in expanding youth STEM learning pathways by focusing on the educators (teachers, librarians, informal educators) who work with those youth. At its root is the belief that connecting educators will manifest as more connected learning for youth. 

We are eager to have discussions about how others are using the "learning ecosystems" framework to inform the design and execution of your work, as well as (or maybe particularly) the places where existing models and research are failing you. We're also eager to talk about the gnarly problems of practice that emerge when we try to work across, and create learning pathways across, learning contexts. 

Our presenter team includes project members working in formal classrooms, in out-of-school environments like 4-H, and in libraries as well as members of our external evaluation team. So while we're interested in talking about connecting learning across contexts, we're also ready to talk about the unique challenges of particular learning environments. Finally, we would love to share examples where we think supporting learning across the school/out-of-school boundary can lower the challenges for all in creating vibrant STEM experiences for youth.

Good morning! I'm the library voice (along with my colleagues at the Maine State Library and the local library staff who are part of the connected learning ecosystems across Maine) What excites me the most about this showcase is the opportunity to see what other educators and researchers are doing to engage youth in dynamic and authentic learning opportunities. This is my first 'trip" to the showcase and I can already tell I should be blocking time off on my calendar to take the time to visit as many videos as I can this week :)

For those of you curious about what libraries are doing to broaden participation and reach kids who might not otherwise have m/any opportunities to explore STEM concepts in ways that resonate and excite them to want to keep exploring- pull up a chair and let's talk!

One of the things that excites me the most about being part of the Learning Systems Northeast project is the focus on cross pollinating educator types so we can catch kids wherever they are. What are your experiences working/collaborating with educators from different sectors? Do you have an example of how this kind of collaboration has led to impactful youth programming?

Hi everyone! Hope you enjoy our video. I am the state program leader for the 4-H program in Maine.  4-H is the youth development program of the University of Maine and is housed within University of Maine Cooperative Extension. We are excited to be a part of this project and appreciate that we can bring our work with informal learning to the table of this project. In 4-H we also rely heavily on volunteers and that is another area of experience we bring to this project. It has been extremely valuable to get to know the other partners with this project and learn from each other. Through the project and the learning ecosystems new partnerships have developed which will create more opportunities for youth to engage in hands on learning focused on STEM both in and out of school. In 4-H our motto is to make the best better! I really believe that speaks to the work of this project. We are all working together to make a difference!

Good morning everyone!

This is such an ambitious and inspiring project. The goal, as you beautifully put it, is to bring about that moment (or many moments) when students “all of the sudden wake up” and become engaged. I really love the indirect approach – instead of going straight to the student you weave a net that can catch those children (again beautifully put!) who are at risk of “falling out of STEM.” And I love that this net is intentionally designed to knit together in and out-of-school adult educators. In your opening post, Leigh you suggest that you have some examples ready to share. I would absolutely love to hear how a particular project succeeded in weaving a net and also how this net actually functioned in practice – if you saw the fruits of what you call slow and patient work. Did you see students suddenly waking up? Again, I’d relish hearing an example or two. And finally, do you have plans to measure the impact of this work over time?

I also would love to hear from you, Marijke. Libraries have so much potential to reach kids, especially since kids often feel more agency in a library (they don’t have to be there, they can wander the stacks, they can ask questions and find what they need, etc.). Might you offer a way that you have worked with in-school educators and informal educators to fashion this net? And have you had the opportunity to witness students becoming engaged? In what ways is the library a unique and essential part of this collaboration?

 I’m very much looking forward to this discussion! And I'm just now seeing your post Lisa, so I'll respond to that later! 

Thanks for joining the conversation and engaging in this learning and experiment with us. My role in this project is to lead and support the GMRI team members who are focused on generating resources and designing learning experiences that help the educators and educator networks bring climate and data learning back to their youth. I would love to learn from others about the kinds of resources they are designing and developing to support deep learning about climate change and data in and between formal and informal learning spaces. What kinds of learning experiences have been successful? Where have you had challenges? What resources have been most helpful to the educators and facilitators of learning and what kinds of professional learning supports contributed to that success? Let's chat!

Hi all,

What a great video/project. I love the metaphor of a net regarding STEM learning ecosystems. Over the last six months our project has begun to facilitate discussions around STEM ecosystems in a rural mountain community in Colorado. I was struck by the comment in the video that you have to "go slow to go fast." This is so true when it comes to trust building especially when some providers may perceive competition with each other.

Regarding Sarah's question, we have worked to involve many voices from the community and co-designed/facilitated these meetings with community partners. We have also asked the question about express their interests in working together and how each partner can benefit. We began our community STEM ecosystem meet-ups by jointly developing community STEM asset maps of STEM opportunities throughout the county. From there we hope to identify multiple STEM pathways for youth that can contribute to career awareness and readiness for youth interested in STEM careers or careers that use STEM. Since our effort is relatively new, I'm curious about how STEM ecosystems have evolved over time? How do you encourage welcome new voices to the table? 

Thanks again for sharing your project and this engaging conversation.

Hi friends - it's so nice to catch up on what you're doing in Maine.  I really appreciate your "net" working - both the work itself and the resulting net.  As Amy is, I'm eager to hear some specific examples of ways that your collaboration has resulted in a student discovering her love of science or persisting in a STEM-related field.  In one of the teacher's comments, she mentions "doing science outside" as having the potential to "change a kid completely."  How important do you think these hands-on aspects of doing science are in catching kids who might be falling through the cracks.

I'm also curious how you keep track of individual kids across these wonderful, varied contexts.  What are the communication 'tendrils" of the net you're building?

Finally, like one of the other commentators, I resonate with your noting that it's important to "go slow to go fast."  Building trusting relationships among educators is clearly a key part of your work.  Other than "going slow," do you have any specific advice on that process?

Thanks for the inspiration and for your good, deep work.

You always ask great questions, Andee! To the question from both you and Amy, we have examples of kinds of collaborations among educators that are creating new kinds of experiences for kids. We don't yet have data regarding the "holy grail" of, as you say, "a student discovering her love of science or persisting in a STEM-related field." One example of a kind of thing that's happening that didn't previously: One local land trust had never previously had a relationship with the schools in its cachement area. Because of relationships built through the ecosystem meet-ups, their education director met experts running a vernal pool citizen science program and partnered with them to recruit and then support teachers who engaged in the investigation on land trust lands with trust experts there to respond to student questions. The trust also arranged for others to offer relevant professional learning experiences for teachers before/after the field trips. The trust has now built into its annual calendar an assumption of partnering with teachers 3x/year to do outdoor investigations aligned with the curriculum and are fundraising to make that possible. This is not hugely innovative -- it's simply that it wouldn't have happened without creating a consistent, inviting space and time for educators to form a supportive peer community for trying new things.

Andee: To your question about "go slow" and trust I would quote my friend Elena Sparrow who runs a companion NASA project in Alaska: "The relationship IS the deliverable, it IS the work." And we've been blessed with program officers at NASA who totally get that and provide patient financial support that recognizes we'll get farther in the end and create more positive, impactful positive outputs by starting with trust building. 

Finally Andee, to your question about tracking students -- we aren't and it's hard! We do have the potential to create a statewide digital "field notebook" and are currently in a discovery process around that, imagining that if many/most learning experiences were documented in some way in the field notebook, then it becomes an amazing research tool for seeing kids' pathways. The Digital Youth Network in Chicago (Nichole Pinkard & others) and their L3 platform also has this potential I think. But maybe I'm not getting at what you're asking?

Thank you, Leigh, for your thoughtful responses.  You're lucky to have financial support that understands the importance of relationship-building.  When I did some work in Alaska in the 1980's, that was, indeed, the basis of our impact (although we also had some very cool computer tools to offer!)  As for the "tracking" question - I'm curious how we could figure out what opportunities to offer to students once they've gotten initially "hooked" by a science experience.  Especially in a rural state like Maine, I imagine that some students don't know where to look for their next engaging experience, so I was thinking of a system that might make such recommendations.  I have a vague memory that the REACH Center that MMSA was working on a while ago was trying to create such a resource that would help students continue to find opportunities to engage in science.

Thanks, Leigh, for that response and the helpful references, too!  I look forward to hearing how this work progresses.

Great conversation here, Andee and Leigh! I looked up the Chicago Digital Youth Project (since I live and teach in Chicago) http://digitalyouthnetwork.org/. I didn't see what you were referring to, Leigh, as their digital field notebook capacity (would love a link for that or to other folks who have such a platform), but I did notice this: http://digitalyouthnetwork.org/home/tools/xdisc/ - which actually looks like it addresses what you were calling for Andee (a way for kids to access further experiences that might capitalize on that moment of getting hooked) - but this does it in a city as opposed to a rural setting. 

Amy, yes, pretty sure what I knew as L3 is now: http://digitalyouthnetwork.org/home/tools/iremix/

Good morning all- Some of hte posts about understanding what the impact of this project is on youth learning and their excitement about STEM/climate science touches on a longstanding issue that libraries grapple with- how do we assess the learning that happens in a library (and other informal learning spaces)? One of the things that we claim about leering through libraries is that it's low stakes and inviting to youth who might otherwise be turned off from STEM for the very fact that we don't assess learning. In general the focus in the library is to expose youth to different experiences and provide scaffolding for them to pursue their interests. We hope the exposure leads to sustained interest but it's a challenge to "prove" that is does which, is often what a funder wants to know...

The "Impact Libraries" project through the University of Maryland looks at assessing computational thinking skill development through library programs and one of hte assessment tools that measure positive experiences of youth and also their perceptions of future career/learning possibilities. While focused on CT, the tools could be adapted to other learning topics. https://impact.ischool.umd.edu/ 

It's great to see work like yours that tries to build equitable partnerships between researchers and educators. I particularly like the idea of these groups joining together to create a net that tries to catch at-risk youth to help them gain STEM interests and identities.

Leigh, I saw you quote a colleague who said, "The relationship IS the deliverable, it IS the work." I've had the pleasure to learn from the work Breanne Litts is conducting with the Northwestern Band of the Shone Nation (see here). That team convinced me how important these relationships are to developing meaningful research in communities. I understand why you need to "go slow" to build quality relationships that respect the goals of all parties. I want to ask how you make your relationships work, but I know it isn't easy to articulate. Have you thought about trying to "formalize" your relationship-building process or at least document it in some way to share with others?

It's also great that you recognize learning as something that happens in and outside of schools. Are there ways that youth can start an investigation in one place, say a school, and take it into another, maybe a library? I guess I'm asking how different players in the net work together to coordinate the NASA (and other) investigations.

Hi Leigh and all,

What a great project and set of educator support efforts across informal and formal education sectors! I'm curious: When you bring educators from schools, libraries, and organizations like 4H together, what does the professional learning/networking look like? For example, are educators working on developing learning activities together, examining student work together, planning implementation together? In research-practice partnerships where people from different disciplines and contexts come together, much work is often needed to create a shared language and set of goals to keep the work moving forward together. How have you approached these challenges, especially over multiple years (since 2016 - that's impressive!), in face of inevitable turnover within your network?

Leigh (and Andee and Brian) - Fabulous work, and wonderful exchange and discussion here.  As someone also invested in engaging students in rural communities, I very much appreciate the conversation here.