Combining a hands-on experience with a light-hearted competition is a great recipe to introduce the scientific method to students. I have students make and test paper airplanes which is a gateway to a natural understanding of the scientific method besides being a lot of fun. Further details are found in this KBLOG.

To most students, at first, inventing something seems like a huge and almost impossible mountain to climb. An effective way to help students on their invention journey is to have them explore the different routes that inventors of familiar products took to arrive at a successful product. This KBLOG highlights the invention of the Super Soaker, Microwave, Windshield Wiper and Frisbee.

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Check out these timely amazing teacher/parent/student STEM Ed opportunities, the magic of ordinary people as inventors, NASA photo contest and properties of water in outer space.

A solution, based on an invention, is derived from a problem. Any invention or creative solution is born out of the ability of a person to recognize a problem. This KBLOG introduces an assignment to help students recognize problems, called Forty-eight Hours of Problems. For 48 hours students write down every challenge or problem that they or others encounter in their everyday lives.

Your students do not have to have a fancy lab, a huge budget, or high-end equipment to do great science. There are only two requirements. Those are the ability to observe and to be curious about what is observed. KBLOG 31 offers material to support student observation skills and curiosity.

No matter what the project or experiment is, it is important to offer students the guided opportunities to take ownership of a self-generated idea.  The educator’s job is to guide students and help them realize that all their questions have validity and with hard work and patience it is possible to find project ideas. This KBLOG is about finding obscure and odd books to help with idea generation.

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Facilitating an invention course involves creativity, innovation, teamwork, hands-on experience, independence, not being test driven, and fun challenges. I was amazed by what students could create and make real. I have been following a group called Project Invent for a while. They just came out with a free curriculum and fellowship opportunity that you may want to look at in this KBLOG ALERT.

There is always a collective groan when I tell students that they have to develop a science project or design an experiment. They DO NOT relish this “opportunity.” To them it is a burden not an opportunity. Inevitably because of my approach the burden evolves into the opportunity that I envision for them. This KBLOG examines one part of my approach, PASSION, an ingredient needed for new ideas.

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Interesting, exciting and timely educational material often catches my attention. This includes upcoming webinars and science competition announcements. When I do find any time-sensitive material relevant to helping educators and their students I will pass those on in my KBLOG ALERTS. GeneLab for High Schools

ChatGPT has resulted in a lot of discussion among educators about what the effect of AI will have on education. The concerns are immediate and serious as the use of AI by students and educators is accelerating in both negative and positive ways. In this KBLOG I followed the paper written by Mollick and Mollick, 2023 and came up with five of my own prompts for an Advanced Placement Biology class. The ChatGPT output is fascinating and helpful.

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Interesting, exciting and timely educational material often catches my attention. This includes upcoming webinars and science competition announcements. When I do find any time-sensitive material relevant to helping educators and their students I will pass those on in my KBLOG ALERTS. GeneLab for High Schools

When I started out as a teacher, it was a struggle. I was not connecting to the students; most did not care about the course material. This inevitably led to discipline problems. I eventually realized there are innumerable ways of shaping a group of students so that they want to be in your classroom, are interested in learning, are respectful of the teacher, and fellow classmates. In this KBLOG I offer ten fun examples on how to create a top-notch classroom environment where students want to be. are ten other examples. — K12STEMspace: Teaching STEM to Your Children & Students

Educators and parents check out “science take out”, a company that produces inexpensive, practical, relevant and hands-on life science kits for k-12 students. These kits solve many practical problems for teachers and parents who want to make science real for their students.

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Interesting, exciting and timely educational material often catches my attention. This includes upcoming webinars and science competition announcements. When I do find any time-sensitive material relevant to helping educators and their students I will pass those on in my KBLOG ALERTS. GeneLab for High Schools

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Interesting, exciting and timely educational material often catches my attention. This includes upcoming webinars and science competition announcements. When I do find any time-sensitive material relevant to helping educators and their students I will pass those on in my KBLOG ALERTS. DataClassroom Science Fair Spectacular

Datawraper has all the ingredients to make a teacher, homeschooler and student very happy. It is intuitive, easy and quick to learn, and it is free and fun. Datawraper can make charts, maps and tables from the data that is inputted. Under the Resources heading there is also tons of instructional information to help, if needed.

We cannot prevent our students from using it and I do not think we would want to. OpenAI’s artificial intelligence ChatGPT and tools like it will get more common, more advanced and penetrate our lives more and more. ChatGPT is by far the fastest growing app in history. It has one hundred million monthly users and has only been around for two months. We must start to figure out how we as educators can use this tool to help our students, I am sure our students will be helping us too. I test some ideas out in this KBLOG

Changing direction to a more student-centered environment has been a slow process, with stops and starts and inconsistent application across disciplines. Even with the obvious and not so obvious classroom challenges of AI, it just may be the push needed for educators to properly implement student-centered learning where critical thinking, creativity, problem solving skills and real-world learning opportunities abound. This KBLOG POST points out some possibilities that are emerging.

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Interesting, exciting and timely educational material often catches my attention. This includes upcoming webinars and science competition announcements. When I do find any time-sensitive material relevant to helping educators and their students I will pass those on in my KBLOG ALERTS. DataClassroom Science Fair Spectacular