This fall, the Mebane Masters will be finishing up their final semester of ASU coursework with a bang.  They will each complete an internship and a planning project, both of which are designed to look at STEM curriculum and technology issues at the district level.  All of our Masters met with Dr. Bost and Butch Rooney to discuss possible internship projects and decided to focus on three areas of need; researching and recommending various technologies in relation to curriculum areas, exploring the development and security of what is being termed a “walled garden” and the development of STEM institutes for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and our community.

In looking at various instructional technologies, the Masters will research and develop pros and cons of each type of device and determine to which curriculum areas each device may best be suited.  The Masters will study laptops, tablets, IPods, Kindles, interactive video conferencing (IVC) and cell phones. They will also focus on sustainability and return on investment issues.  

A second group of Masters will be exploring the possibilities of creating a “walled garden” which refers to control over applications and content and restricting access to non-approved applications or content. This group will be responsible for researching other K12 districts throughout the state in order to learn how this is being addressed.  They will also gain expertise in SOPHOS filtering, look at updating the acceptable use policy for students and employees, and exploring student e-mail account possibilities.

The third group will be developing STEM institutes for students, teachers, administrators, parents and community members.  They would focus on continuing to work with Davie County leadership to gather a list of mentors and community volunteers who would come in and work with students on STEM projects in the classroom and to organize and hold a STEM Career Fair. Another task for these Masters would work to develop collaborative activities through IVC for high school science students to help teach elementary students. These Masters would also create high quality professional development opportunities for beginning teachers and our administrators by planning and implementing STEM institutes for both groups as well as focusing on STEM enhancements for elementary and middle school clubs and summer camps in hopes of creating more excitement about STEM careers.

The Mebane Masters will be reflecting on their progress and experiences in each of these areas through a blog that will be accessible through this website.  We look forward to your comments on these exiting district wide initiatives.

Q:  We understand you spent three weeks in beautiful downtown Boone this summer.

Karen: Yes, we got to participate in an institute called Project Smile. We were there from July 12 – 31.

Heather:       SMILE is an acronym for Science Math Integration for Literacy Enhancement. This project is based on STEM type activities and solving real world problems.                                                                                                                     

Karen: The emphasis was on finding a real world topic/question that students would be interested in or something that might affect them to increase student buy- in.

Q:  Who funded this project?

Heather: Project SMILE is a research project funded by the National Science Foundation in cooperation with Appalachian State University. Part of our costs was covered by our Mebane Master funds.

Q:  What was your favorite activity?

Karen: On the first day we did an activity with InspireData to determine if there was a correlation between arm length and height of a person. We measured these lengths, entered the data into InspireData, and then experimented with different    types of graphs/plots to display findings.

Heather: During the first week, the professors instructed us to act as “students” and took us through the module entitled The Oily Gulf that they had created.  We looked at websites, videos, and did different labs to study different aspects of the oil spill in the Gulf.  My favorite activity was choosing a type of detergent to clean the oil off of the feathers.  We looked at how well it cleaned the feather as well as how the detergent affected the feather.

Q:  What did you do the rest of the time there?

Karen: We worked to create our own module to use with our students.  We chose a topic based on our Standard Course of Study, something that had a STEM focus, and student buy in.                                                                             

Heather:          We looked for videos, activities, and ways to incorporate InspireData.

Q:  You have mentioned InspireData several times. Can you tell us more about it?

Heather: InspireData is software that allows students to add data to a table and the program will graph the data.  Students can then manipulate the graphs by changing what is on each axis.

Karen: They are also able to change the graphs from line graphs to circle graphs and even to a box plot that would be similar to a box-and-whisker plot.

Heather: Students can either collect their own data to put into InspireData or they can use    data from the internet and copy it into InspireData to then analyze.

Q:  Tell us more about the module you created.

Karen: My Movers and Shakers module focuses on the recent Haitian earthquakes and Icelandic volcanic eruptions and why they occurred.  Students will take the roles of either a seismologist or volcanologist and use data to plot locations on Google Maps to discover patterns of where earthquakes or volcanoes take place.  They will then collaborate to compare patterns for earthquakes and volcanoes and the plates of the Earth.

Heather: My module focuses on physics and one thing that most middle school students love – roller coasters.  The students will study roller coasters around the world to find out about the Laws of Motion, forces, gravity and g-forces.  They will collect data on those roller coasters and put it into InspireData to do several comparisons. For example, does the speed of the roller coaster affect the g-forces experienced during the ride?  They will then take all of the things they have learned and build their own coaster to test the concepts that they have learned.

Q:  What are you most excited about bringing back to your students?

Karen: We are very excited to connect students to their learning through these modules. In this type of inquiry based learning, students are involved in creating the questions they will study.  They will then create ways to solve or answer these questions and find solutions to problems.

Heather: We are also excited about building an interest in STEM careers and using technology to help them solve real world problems.

Mebane Masters, NCSTEM Collaborative and local funds are supporting summer camps and teams for the upcoming school year at Pinebrook, Cooleemee, Shady Grove, Ellis, and North Davie Schools. Each team will compete in local and state competitions throughout the 2010-2011 school year.

The Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund was established under section 14007 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to provide funding to support (1) local educational agencies (LEAs), and (2) nonprofit organizations in partnership with (a) one or more LEAs or (b) a consortium of schools. The purpose of the program is to provide competitive grants to applicants with a record of improving student achievement and attainment in order to expand the implementation of, and investment in, innovative practices that are demonstrated to have an impact on improving student achievement or student growth, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates.

In order to receive i3 funds, each applicant must secure a 20% match from a private sector entity for the total grant package. Davie County Schools requested $3,751,200 from i3 funds and received a 20% matching pledge of $937,000 from the Mebane Charitable Foundation for a total grant proposal of $4,688,200.

Davie County Schools’ i3 grant application addresses Innovations that Support Effective Teachers and Principals. Titled STEM Cell Infusion (SCI), the design is to develop and implement dynamic solutions to the systemic challenges of providing high quality 21st Century STEM professional development for existing and beginning classroom teachers through technology integration. Our model forms three small professional learning communities, STEM Cells, populated with master, student and first year teachers who will, with the support of an additional Resource Cell, intervene with 130 teachers to model delivery of STEM curricula and instruction and provide individual teacher professional development.

SCIis designed to identify, recruit, develop, place, reward, and retain teachers through the development of high quality professional development inclusive of on-the-job training, coaching and mentoring. Our proposed outcomes are to increase the number of effective teachers to improve student achievement, especially that of high need students. The project aims to serve 4,800 Kindergarten-14 (Early College) students.

Stem Cells are independent professional learning communities which are not assigned to specific classrooms, but who embed themselves into the classrooms and professional learning communities in all of our schools. Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy will use quantitative data obtained from standardized state academic achievement assessments, conducted on an annual basis, as the primary data source. The evaluation will have three distinct components including: a process evaluation documenting the implementation process, a practice evaluation measuring changes in teacher practice, and an outcomes evaluation measuring student achievement and growth. Our intention, based on the findings generated from this project, is to bring the STEM Cell Infusion design to scale for implementation at state and/or national levels.

The Mebane Master teachers from the high school and middle schools developed STEM Cell Teams that consisted of an English/language arts teacher, math teacher, science teacher, social studies teacher and an elective teacher from their school. Each of the teams had to develop a “real world” problem to solve that integrates the curriculum needs of all disciplines and addresses global awareness. The STEM Cell Teams developed a unit that addresses the proposed problem and provides students with opportunities for critical thinking, problem solving, and information and communications technology literacy. Each of the teams used advanced Smart Board instructional technology techniques and developed a product that will be produced using the Smart Platform. The STEM Cell Teams also explored ways to incorporate community involvement through Interactive Video Conferencing (IVC) or other methods into their unit design.

The units that were developed over the three days by the STEM Cells included:

Teachers at a DCS STEM Integration Workshop.

The teams developed lesson plans, explored hardware and software options, examined websites to expand learning and developed a list of community resources to help support and teach the unit.
These units will be implemented during the 2010-2011 school year. The teams will reconvene during the spring semester in order to evaluate the success of unit integration.