New Beginnings in Porcupine, SD

The STEM on the Road team is winding down this week in South Dakota. We had the opportunity to finish our week with the teams from the Pahin Sinte Owayawa Porcupine school. The school is located in Porcupine, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Every morning our drive has taken us through the ghost town Scenic and Badlands National Park and then we come to the beautiful K-8th grade school building to help co-design what problem based learning will look like at Porcupine.

We have had the opportunity to meet with educators who serve students in grade 5-8 and range from being paraprofessionals to the Lakota language instructors. And, they have rocked the house in their first design plan for what a problem based curriculum can look like for their students and their communities. Teams have designed work that will engage their students in proposing the construction of a cultural center, and investigating how a wolf traveled all the way to the reservation, and exploring the existence of the yeti! The planning stages are always exciting for us, but what will be really exciting will be the opportunities throughout the year to help make these ideas come to fruition for the educators and students alike. Presentations are tomorrow which will end our week of professional development, but really this is just the beginning of what this journey and transformation will look like! Cheers to every new beginning and redesigning what "school" can look like!

Stories from South Dakota 2

Annalies, Sheli, Ketal, Sylvia and I left Lower Brule yesterday after a wonderful afternoon of presentations. Teachers from Lower Brule and Crow Creek are well on their way to implementing some fantastic projects which are meaningful to their students and community. Teachers really came together to collaborate. Projects included: exploring the sense of self through cultural art and ethnobotany, what food security means and how to improve their community.
We arrived in Rapid City last night and celebrated Ketal's birthday. We set off this morning and traveled through the Badlands to Porcupine Day School. Teachers brainstormed and designed transdisciplinary projects that are really going to excite student learning. Today was a great day. Looking forward to tomorrow...more creativity, further design and continued collaboration.

On the Road in South Dakota

So the temperature is cooling off here in South Dakota, we only reached 100 degrees today, in comparsion to our 107 degree day yesterday. STEM on the Road was at it again today, plotting and planning some amazing projects with teachers from Lower Brule and Crow Creek. Teachers expanded upon projects devloped yesterday and moved into planning their first quarter. Jill Weimer, PhD from Sanford Health, joined us today to continue our partnership and share some engaging science resources. Tomorrow are presentations by teachers to share out what they have planned. Looking forward to hearing about the exciting and enriching projects.The landscape here in the high plains is vast and breath taking. The road seems to go on forever. During our morning drive we saw a number of different animals: deer, a coyote, pheasants and my favorite, prairie dogs. Wondering what animals will greet us on our drive tomorrow....

Stories from South Dakota

So, it turns out July in South Dakota is blazing hot!!!  But, the 107 degree weather is hardly something to keep the STEM on the road team at home.  So, Sheli, Annalies, Kat and I are once again making our way across the great state of South Dakota, having mini adventures in Chamberlain and definitely getting a view of the bridge from the aptly named Bridgeview Inn.  But, of course those stories are for another time.  This story is about us meeting teachers and administrators from Lower Brule and Crow Creek to design problem based learning that makes sense for their kids and their communities.  The energy and conversation have been great, teams are excited to design ways to improve their community as well as how to truly explore the cultural identity that exists within these systems.   From there teams have started talking about designing projects for their kids around ethnobotany and the relevance to Native American people, examining the Lakota and Dakota languages, and engaging students in creating a new playground, and so much more.  And, here is my favorite part, we get to do this all summer long, and the process stays the same and we play with everyone to every idea the same, but the stories are all different, and that really is the best part.  Every story is different and everyone brings their own spin.  We pride ourselves on throwing out the "one size fits all" model of education, and we get to do that because we get to be part of all the collaboration and the stories!  More great work tomorrow, and of course more stories!

Thoughts from Atlanta

Problem. Project. Product. These words are used interchangeably sometimes but mean very different things. Problem based learning is a whirlwind to learn. It focuses on solving a real world problem, relevant to students  Entrenched ideas and tools like pacing guides and textbooks are not completely discarded but definitely diminished. Connections to community are especially relevant in problem based learning, the first question asked while brainstorming topics is "what matters to our students?"

One of the groups I had the opportunity to work with had the broad topic of "cycles". We brainstormed how this could be applied in science, social studies and math. Civilizations can be described in cycles, governments and societies have risen and fallen with time. We found a tool published by Stanford that can give students a hands on approach to understanding transportation in the roman empire. http://orbis.stanford.edu/

We've also had the chance to see what common things make a STEM school work well. We hope to bring what we've learned here back to Tech High and continue the constant improvements at the school.

• Grade level common planning among cohorts of teachers seems to be crucial when converting a school to STEM.Giving teachers time to work together on projects and then the flexibility to implement them together is a great start to the collaborative atmosphere that problem based learning requires. The schools we worked with have an entire week during the summer to lay out the plans for next year
• Creating a cohesive atmosphere for students gives them another reason to be passionate about school. Teachers picked out themes, planned cross subject projects and aligned their problems with common core standards.
• Mixed grade level advisories are a great way to establish and maintain a sense of culture and identity in a school.

Problem Based Learning In Action

A simple electric generator that should cause the light bulb to turn on when the magnets are spun inside the copper coil. Note that the design process allows for, and usually requires multiple iterations of failure and modification before success is achieved.
Problem Based Learning in Action!
Energy has been a common theme for several teacher teams working at PAST these past two weeks.  The eighth grade team from Starling Middle School plan to explore how energy transformed.  The problem is to transform mechanical (kinetic) energy into electrical energy.  The students will research, design, and build a simple electric generator.  Personally, I have always wanted to do this, so I was very excited to help research examples of electric generators built in classrooms.  


Of course, just watching a video of someone building hand powered generator makes me want to build my own. So Elliot and I headed down to the hardware store after the workday was over and acquired all the items we planned to use.  We are unable to light up a flashlight bulb, yet, but we have ideas for why the generator is not working yet.  We will continue to work through the design process in Atlanta, where we have access to a few additional tools.  Please see the design process below for more details.

Problem: How can we generate electricity to turn on a light bulb?
Brainstorm:  Make a generator using magnets and copper coil.  Power the generator using a windmill, water wheel, steam engine, or human power.
Design a Solution:  Human power is abundant in classrooms, so we’ll use that. The design is based on previous work by Bill Beaty, please see this website for details.  An abbreviated procedure is outlined below.
1. Build a cardboard box open at opposite ends.  The box must be large enough that the magnets can freely rotate with it.  Use tape to hold the box together.
2. Poke a hole through opposite sides of the box and push the iron rod through the holes.
3. Wrap copper wire tightly around the box to create coils on both sides of the iron rod.
4. Connect the copper wire to the leads of the light bulb.  Wrap one end of the copper wire tightly around the leads using pliers.  Pinch the wire together to make the best possible contact between leads and wire.  Wrap each wire/lead combination in electrical tape.
5. Put the four magnets on the iron rod such that the magnets are orthogonal to the rod.
Build Your Solution: See above procedure.
Test/Evaluate Your Solution: The box of the assembled generator was held between the knees while the iron rod was spun as fast as possible.  No light was observed from the bulb, even in a dark room.
Modify Your Solution: The modifications listed below will be performed in Atlanta.

Possible Problem	Potential Solution
Not enough turns of copper wire.  The example from the internet used 200 turns, we only had 118.	Rebuild the generator using a longer strand of wire (not currently available at the hardware store).
Poor electrical contact between copper wire and light bulb leads.	Solder the wires together.
Magnets are not spinning fast enough, they slip off of the rod at high speed rotation.	Make cardboard spacers to hold the magnets parallel to each other. Use hot glue or crazy glue to adhere the magnets securely to the rod.
Not enough voltage or current is generated to power the light bulb.	Connect the generator to a multimeter and see if a measurable voltage or current is produced.

Share Your Solution:  We have already discussed this process with the eighth grade Starling team.  An important lesson in science and engineering is that just because someone else has already succeeded, the product may still be difficult to build (Please see this article on North Korea’s failed rocket launch).  The students should work through the design process, which usually included iterations of failure and modification.  Hopefully we will reproduce a working model to show as a backup should the students not be able to develop their own working generator.  

South Dakota Innovation Labs Summer PD 2012

It was our final professional development day with all of the wonderful teachers who came together to work on Problem Based Learning ideas at Platte-Geddes Elementary School.  We ended this week with the opportunity to see a variety of  PBL plans from educators representing Marty Indian School, Gregory, Platte-Geddes, Burke, Wessington Springs, Colome, Ethan, South Central, Whitelake, and Wolsey-Wessington.  I began the week sharing with everyone that I enjoy working with educators to brainstorm problems and ideas that our students can get into.  But, the end of the week is always inspiring for me!  We heard about teams that will work with their students to build a virtual museum, and others who will examine their own town through a lens of garbology, and even more who wanted to redevelop their community with the students as an active voice within the process.  I am always of course inspired by the folks that use the week to design a whole year's worth of PBL curriculum and the teachers who design their first quarter or semester with a grasp on how we align our standards through problems, projects, and products.  But, mostly I am inspired by the educators who wrestle with the process and come away with a deeper appreciation and understanding of our craft and how we must continually evolve to meet the needs of our students and the world they are entering into.  And, my favorite part is that this can and should look different, so in one place it looks like teachers and students building a better cow, and in another place its students with plastic baggies attached to themselves monitoring their individual production of waste, and in another place it looks like a a teacher and students redesigning  their classroom to represent Westward expansion creating model trains...and boats of course.  But, the end goal of all of that is the same isn't it?  To help raise a generation of critical thinkers that not only have a true sense of where they come from but also a whole "toolbox" of tools that help take them wherever the future leads.  A great, fun week with many many many thanks to Mary, Slim, Mari , Casey, Joel, Jill, Sam, Dr. Schopp, Dan and his team, and of course Donna (for the amazing meals!)!

Summer PD in South Dakota Day 2!

We're back again reporting from Platte-Geddes Elementary School for a second day of professional development with teachers coming together to design what Problem Based Learning will look like in their districts.  Teachers from Platte-Geddes, Ethan, Burke, South Central, Gregory, Marty Indian School, Colome, Wessington Springs, Wolsey Wessington, and White Lake worked on designing numerous projects to fit under the topics and problems to build upon the work they began yesterday.  We all had an exciting day as we had an opportunity to hear from South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp PhD and the support for this innovative work. Today was full of teachers collaborating and brainstorming for possible projects that can take place throughout a full semester that are meaningful to their students and communities.  In addition to the collaborative planning time, teachers also had a chance to attend break out sessions with Jill Weimer PhD from Sanford Research, to hear about great ways to incorporate this wonderful resource into their problem based work.  Over all a productive day with great conversation and lots of ideas flowing around the room.  We're at it again tomorrow!

South Dakota Summer STEM Professional Development

Today, 116 teachers from across South Dakota descended on Platte for the first of four days of STEM teacher professional development.  PAST was joined by staff and facilitators from the MidCentral Educational Cooperative based here in Platte.  We spent the day introducing STEM as a delivery system, the common core standards, and brainstorming the first of several problems, projects and products that will be developed during the next four days.

Teacher's brainstormed projects that focused on topics including community development, communication issues between towns, citizenship, lack of local grocery stores in some towns, revitalizing business and industry, and sustainable farming.  Other schools decided to take on themes that focused on more specific targets including understanding water quality, how to manage our local landfills, community recycling, and how to increase attendance at school arts programs.  Lots of ideas, lots of collaboration and so much more to come tomorrow.

Murals for change

As the 2012 school year winds down, we have a chance to reflect back on our work with students and teachers in implementing problem based learning.  We often get the question what should PBL look like?  The Girls Empowerment Mural(GEM) Program is an example of a possibility of what it can look like.  "It" can look like educators brainstorming together on how we can empower our students.  And, it can look like students coming together to share ideas on how they can become change makers in their community.  When all said and done it can look like the murals pictured where students answered the question "How can you create change, in your home, your, school, and your Linden community?" through art making.  The panels created on recycled boards, were conceived and created by our 5 GEM high school leaders.  They came together once a week to brainstorm ideas and discuss how they would take on such a project.  Along the way they recruited the help of fellow students, educators, and artists.  In the end their concepts ranged from young women combating cyber bullying to creating safe and clean community spaces for all.  The leaders are immortalized in portraits through out the panels, but in reality the ideas are going to live on through the dialogue they inspire.  So as people try to envision how PBL can look, we look forward to designing more solutions that empower our young people to take on meaningful work!  

Linden STEM at COSI

Friday night families and friends from the four STEM elementary schools, Hamilton, Linden, South Mifflin, Windsor, along with Linden McKinley 7-12 STEM Academy enjoyed an evening at COSI celebrating all the student projects from the spring term. From the Hamilton's awesome new garden to Windsor's wonderful penguins, from the hilarious murder holes in the 7th grade castle to Linden's beautiful paper airplane quilt, from South Mifflin's moving PowerPoint presentation to the 10th grade's funmation social studies board game, visitors were agog at the talent of the students. Crowning the one night exhibit was the debut of the GEM murals designed and painted by Linden McKinley art classes. If you missed the spring COSI Linden Nigh mark your calendar now for the February Fall Term Night.

Change the Equation: Vital Signs Forum

The South Dakota Innovation Labs Project sent a team to Washington DC for the Change the Equation: Vital Signs Forum. The team, Dan Guericki, Tiffany Sanderson, Jill Weimer and Annalies Corbin spent the better part of two days learning a lot about STEM around the country. We met lots of people with similar ideas and initiatives in their own states. We are looking forward to watching as Change the Equation moves forward.

Great Lakes Field Station at Kelleys Island

Just experienced an amazing day trip to Kelleys Island with Annalies, Sheli, Nick, Beth, and Megan. My name is Rich Rosen, a board member with PAST Foundation, and a guest blogger for this post on STEM on the Road.

Over the course of the next few years, this small school in the middle of an island on Lake Erie is seeking to transform itself into a field station using the Great Lakes as the learning laboratory for students to explore as part of their high school education. To get started, 3 summer bridge programs are being designed by PAST in conjunction with the Kelleys Island Schools District (KISD), and will be offered to about 60 students across Ohio in June/2012.

Sheli, Megan, Nick plan the locations
 on the Island for Entomology Program.

The Board of KISD has taken a bold step with the upcoming summer bridge programs they are planning with the support of PAST. With what is learned about the island as a field school this summer, the long range plan is to establish a year-round Field School. This offers the potential to add more robust learning environments at the local school for the teachers and students who are year-round residents, as well as a magnet to attract students from other STEM schools in Ohio and elsewhere who would attend the field school for extended periods of time. No other resource like this is available to students or teachers in Ohio or in the US.

Beth (middle) is coordinating the sessions, and she's joined here by graduate students Megan and Nick from The Ohio State University sitting on the banks of the quarry.

Here's Nick at the quarry, one of the sites for
Entomology - Miniature Masters of Human Fate

Geology will be seen close-up as students
see Glacial Grooves and Geological
Mysteries of the last Ice Age

All that remains from an abandoned winery is this beautiful stone wall.
A site that holds some mysteries for the students to explore.

The school is located in the middle of the island. Kelleys Island is off the north coast of Ohio and students will reach the island on a ferry leaving from Marblehead, Ohio.  

I can just imagine the problem based learning (PBL) opportunity that exist in this island community. Stay tuned to see what the students create.


Oh, and a final discovery that Annalies and I found during our drive home! For those who drive up from Columbus to Kelleys this summer, we highly recommend stopping in Norwalk at Sheri's Coffee House - 27 Whittlesay Avenue - for a nice mocha. We met the owner, and the cafe was filled with local after-schoolers hanging out. Maybe some of them are future summer bridge program students at Kelleys in 2012 and beyond. You never know?

STEM and GEM!

Exciting work has been going on at PAST and all of our buildings as we explore what 2012 has to offer. In December we were generously awarded a grant from the Women's Fund of Central Ohio (check out their site and see all of the 2012 projects they support: http://www.womensfundcentralohio.org/) to fund our Girls Empowerment Mural(GEM) Program. This program will have students design and manage a community based mural program within the Linden Area. To kick off our introduction to murals and community based art The Ohio State University Art Education Department generously offered to invite Mural Artist and Educator Olivia Gude to help share her expertise and experience with our teachers and community partners. We came together at the newly renovated Linden McKinley STEM Academy on Saturday February 3, 2012 to explore the space as well as begin possible mural ideas to share with our schools and the Linden community. This was a phenomenal experience as we heard Gude speak to the notion "Teachers who instruct...through collaborative public art projects understand that, while it is true that people are shaped by their environments, it is also true that people have the capacity to alter and change environments, and thus to be reshaped themselves." It was a wonderful day and a great catalyst in brainstorming ways to share with our students that they can be agents of change in their communities through thoughtful creation of space!

Teachers and community members came together to brainstorm and share ideas on beginning our collaborative mural program.

Roller Coasters!!!

Roller Coaster Challenge 2012 was a huge success and an amazing opportunity to see students from Columbus and China come together in the spirit of friendly competition. Teams from Linden McKinley STEM Academy, METRO School, and New Bridge International School from Beijing, China joined us at COSI to pit their designs and ideas against one another! Lisa, Walker, Maria, Laura, and I were the PAST folks that got to watch all of the excitement and see all of the students hard work come to life in their model roller coasters, marketing presentations, and scientific posters. The artist in me has to appreciate that 9th grade teachers that gave their students spray paint to decorate their final creations! Also, major points to the team with a zombie themed coaster titled "House of the Dead". The students got to have center stage on February 1st, 2012 as we were generously given the Atrium in COSI to house the coaster competition. It was a huge win for everyone involved and a wonderful day, that our students aren't going to forget anytime soon!

One of our Chinese teams putting finishing touches on their coaster before the last test cycle! (They won the coveted Golden Ticket and took home 1st Place!)

Linden McKinley teams showcase their winning coasters and posters in their front entrance way! Congrats to all what an amazing day!

Bonesteel, South Dakota. February 1, 2012

Hi, Diana Wolterman here. Since I am currently on my inaugural STEM trip with PAST, I have been asked to record my impressions of today as a "guest blogger".   Early morning found me and Annalies and Sheli heading south and west (barely missing the border of Nebraska) on our way to Bonesteel and the South Central School District.  We spent the morning meeting with teachers in various stages of transforming their teaching methods to problem- based learning. Sheli worked her magic on the slightly reluctant ones and even they could clearly read the look in her eye: "I'm going to win you over and resistance is futile." Others were obviously already converts and gleefully recounted the exciting projects their students have been working on. Annalies and Sheli shared ideas about how next year will be even stronger due to collaboration across the innovation lab schools.

For lunch, we swapped war stories with Sam Shaw from the SD Dept. of Ed. over burgers and onion chips at Bonesteel's renowned "TeePee Cafe".  He seems very pleased with PAST's work in South Dakota.

Afterward we visited some classrooms to see the kids in action. Our favorite of the day was Mrs. Johnson's kindergarten class, where they are currently learning about the rain forest by coloring and hanging tropical animals under an improvised palm tree made from a beach umbrella. We met Baronn, who proudly told us he lives in Fairfax and it is 4 whole miles away! After the class finishes the rain forest they will tackle "Kindergardenville" and they all invited us to come back and see their completed neighborhood.




On our trip home, we saw a sign for a lookout point over the Missouri River at the Ft. Randall Dam and since we haven't refused an opportunity to have an adventure yet, we said "Heck yeah!" we were rewarded with a picturesque vista and got several photos that reflect what a beautiful sunny day it's been in South Dakota. This rookie is having a great time!

by Guest Blogger, Diana Wolterman, 2012

Armour and Platte-Geddes, South Dakota

The fair weather followed us from Ohio to South Dakota, even the native South Dakotians are having a hard time remembering a more mild end to January. This week the team includes Annalies, Sheli, and Diana Wolterman - who has never been to South Dakota. We are staying at the lovely Molly's Manor in Platte where our host Donna is quite wonderful.

Sheli and Diana spent the morning in Armour where they worked with the combined science and English classes - the Schneider's (Mr. And Mrs.) where the primary topic of conversation and instruction was infectious disease. The task at hand was to solve the problem of where most of the communicable diseases present in the high school came from and how they were spread from student to student. One can only image the journey this conversation took. Sheli and Diana took the scenic route between Platte and Armour which gave them the chance to see the new "hot house" enterprise.

In the afternoon, Sheli and Diana returned to Platte-Geddes Elementary School to work with 2nd grade teacher Mary Biehl. The second grade students greeted us warmly and shared with them their recent studies and adventures with their new baby worms in their composter. They are using their own composted
soil in their terrariums and also getting ready for gallery show - "The First 100 Days of School" - for parent teacher night.

Annalies spent the day with the staff of the MidCentral Educational Cooperative in Platte planning for next year. We ended our day at the Yellow Rose a restaurant and tavern where we enjoyed a wonderful - all beef meal followed by the first night of league horse shoe throwing competition - or as the locals say - "pitch night." It was a great time had by all. We always enjoy meeting the local folks who share so much with us about life in South Dakota.




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Location:Armour and Platte, South Dakota