ICE Scholarship 2014 Application
Thank you for visiting our digital application for the ICE 2014 Scholarship! Please take a moment to read the information in each section, peruse our STEMagination Station full website for more details on our efforts, and enjoy the creative videos to help us "break the ICE" and show our intentions and potential if awarded the scholarship!
-STEMagination Station Presents-
|
THIS JUST IN: Two teachers in NSSD 112 are at the tip of the ICEberg when it comes to STEM integration and multi-age collaboration, but there’s so much more below the surface that they want to learn and share! Help them break the ICE to expand their professional development in order to learn and apply new tech-integration strategies and share with their colleagues in their school, district, and at state and national conferences. |
Who We Are & What We Do
|
Take a moment to explore our "ICEberg" partner project!
-Learn about our amazing approach to multi-age STEM education. -Meet the creators -See photos, videos, & movie trailers from our STEM challenges thus far. -Read about the foundation for our instruction & challenges, including standards correlations. -See the beginning stages of our parental communication blog. |
|
Please Help Us Go BEYOND the "Tip of the ICEberg" with our STEM efforts, Professional Development, & Outreach!
Tech-Integrated
|
What better way to help than to send us to a place that is SIZZLING with new ideas and leaders in the field to help us defrost our great ideas and share them on a broader level? We need the ICE emergency rescue crew to save us from getting frozen in our professional development path! The SDE Differentiated Instruction Conference in Las Vegas this summer will be just the ticket to help us break the ice and expand their professional learning network.
Check out the many benefits of this conference and tech-integrated sessions that will help us "break the ICE" and take our classroom efforts and professional development outreach beyond surface level to reveal the vast potential of our "ICEberg" idea for STEM education! Conference Overview Conference Sessions Conference Brochure Attendance Info.The entire conference spans five days, July 7-11, but we are applying for two days of attendance on July 9-10. Each day of the conference spans the time of 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. for sessions, and additional professional development activities both before and after.
Inve$tment
|
Our "Out of the ICEbox" application Response
Application Question: How do you feel that the course(s) described above will help you to be more effective in your current position? *Please include a narrative of how the workshop or conference events you plan to attend might help you to incorporate new instructional strategies as defined in the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards to your own professional planning or classroom instruction.
STEMagination Station is the brainchild of two passionate elementary school educators dedicated to a grassroots effort to infuse engaging STEM education into our school and the experiences of our students. What we have been able to implement thus far has been exciting, and the creations and discoveries of our students have been beyond our wildest dreams, but we know this is just the tip of the iceberg. We cannot image what lies beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered, if we gain additional, exceptional professional development resulting in an expanded professional learning network and improved tech-integrated differentiation strategies.
The insightful sessions, expert presenters, and relevant differentiated instruction topics will provide a vast array of learning experiences aligned with ISTE NETS for teachers that will allow us to engage in professional growth and leadership, as well as facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, model digital age work and learning, and promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility. It’s through these educational technology integrative methods that we will achieve maximum effectiveness in differentiating for our multi-age students as they embark on future STEM challenges.
The insightful sessions, expert presenters, and relevant differentiated instruction topics will provide a vast array of learning experiences aligned with ISTE NETS for teachers that will allow us to engage in professional growth and leadership, as well as facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, model digital age work and learning, and promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility. It’s through these educational technology integrative methods that we will achieve maximum effectiveness in differentiating for our multi-age students as they embark on future STEM challenges.
- Engage in professional growth and leadership: We are constantly in search of blogs, workshops, trainings, webinars, and mini-conferences (such as the NICE mini-con) to help us “improve our professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership within our school and professional community.” The SDE Differentiation Conference perfectly blends the elements of local and global professional learning communities, instruction and reflection on current research and best practice in utilizing technology as a differentiation tool, and strengthening our leadership capabilities by enhancing our vision of technology infusion and sharing that with our school, district, and on a more global level through blogging and potential future conference speaking.
- Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity: During STEMagination Station challenges, we “promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.” Our kindergarten and fourth grade students collaboratively engage in and reflect upon “exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources.” It is our goal that attending sessions at the SDE DI conference will arm us with new tools and tactics to continue such endeavors, focused on technology as the vehicle for maximum differentiation in both traditional classroom and multi-age, STEM-centered settings.
- Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments: Our joint endeavor to provided student-driven, naturally differentiated experiences and challenges for students is centered on our efforts to “design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessments incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the standards.” Both as part of our STEM challenge student experiences and communication to parents and colleagues, we use technology to plan, analyze, evaluate, assess, and communicate. The SDE DI conference provides numerous sessions that will arm us with newer, better, more efficient and effective tech tools to continue on this journey, resulting in learning experience and assessment benefits for students, parents, colleagues, and us as teachers.
- Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility: We are fortunate to have iPads, laptops, and a 1:1 implementation of Chromebooks (in our 4th grade classroom) as technology devices in our school. We aim to maximize the impact of these tools, while successfully navigating the “local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture.” Rather than dominating and controlling every aspect of these tech tools, we teach our students digital citizenship and responsibility. We see differentiated learning experiences as one of the most powerful impacts of leveraging the possibilities of these devices. One of the central purposes of the SDE DI conference is to “address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources.”
- Model digital age work and learning: In order to be on the cutting edge of “knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society,” teachers must expand and enhance their professional learning network (PLN). Both of us have maximized our opportunities within Lake County, as well as expanded PLN’s through blogs, social media outlets, webinars, and more. Attending a conference on the national level such as the SDE DI conference will provide us with a plethora of new information, techniques, and tools to increase the fluency and proficiency of our tech-integration for differentiation purposes. It will also provide collaborative networking experiences with other educational professionals and introduce us to new ways to utilize technology as a collaborative tool for use with students, parents, and the larger community.
