Blogs

Taking a step back from the Summer Institutes for K-12 Teachers, the three individual institutes seem to work in a spectrum of traditional to non-conventional form of educating. This order, ironically enough, is set up in the same way the institutes proceeds throughout the summer. For the first of the three, the Computer Science Institute, is the most information-fed workshop. It resembles the more habitual way of teaching in the way that its participants are suppose to work through the computer programs and programming only through example. The following institute, the Brain and Behavior, had a fair amount of

First off, I want to personally thank and commend Grobstein for taking a young college student (rising sophomore) as an intern/student/teacher for this years Summer Institute for K-12 Teachers as oppose to the typical upperclassmen. I feel as though my participation and involvement here has helped provide more diversity to the summer experience. From this internship, I have gained a lot and learned much about myself and what I want for my future. This summer has assured

This workshop, which would be more accurately called the “Learning as Inquiry” Institute, worked well in giving the participating teachers adequate access to multiple different resources to build their own lessons. Although these two weeks were beneficial to the participants in more ways than one, there are some areas where there could have been better control over the workshop. The time management skills and utilization of the interns could all have been better. The amount of effort placed preparing for the weeks to come became the biggest issue throughout the two weeks and needs to be addressed to better future Inquiry institutes.

This institute’s main goal of familiarizing K-12 teachers about neurological and behavioral situations to allow them to make useful educational implications was without a doubt, a complete success. But it is important to point out that a lot of participating teachers felt once they entered the institute is an uneven balance between the science they were learning and the educational importance they were receiving; many participants thought that there was not enough focus on what everything they have discussed on the Brain suggests for education. As the teacher conducting this institute, Grobstein, it is important that you not only encourage the new and different pedagogical tools

There are some of you who will be interested in applying for this award . . . and some of you will truly deserve it!

Guidelines Now Available for the Zula International–NSTA Early Science Educator Award

First, we had discussed "moving away from the use of textbooks." Along those lines in one of the newsletters I receive there was this special report. Here's the title:

eSN Special Report: Virtual Desktops
How virtual desktops will revolutionize personal computing

. . . and it speaks to the idea of moving away from the use of textbooks.

Our Papermaking Activity

I believe that Wil's Papermaking Activity would fit in very well with my elementary school students. Actually, teachers could create a unit that incorporates several subjects (such as science, reading, writing, social studies, and math) so that we'd be teaching across the curriculum.

DEVELOPING THE PROCESS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

for the PRE-K CLASSROOM

What is scientific inquiry?