Goals
The primary goal of this workshop is to advance middle school teachers’ technology skills for efficiently educating their students about global warming through Project-Based Learning (PBL) method utilizing NASA resources related to global warming and climate change.
The workshop will run as a synergetic combination of three critical parts, such as an instructional method (PBL), useful tools (technologies), and content knowledge (NASA educational resources) to support middle school STEM teachers teaching global warming and climate change.
- Instructional method: Participants will learn about the concept of PBL, the procedure to use the PBL method in classrooms, the benefits learners can take through the PBL method, and practical tips when implementing PBL in the real situation.
- Useful tool session: Participating teachers will explore and learn digital tools that can be used when they implement the PBL method in the classrooms. With the tools, teachers would make an online newsletter, digital posters, multimedia, and web-based media storage, etc. upon their needs.
- Content knowledge session: Teachers will learn about global warming through NASA educational resources and hands-on activities using the tools introduced during the workshop. At the beginning of this part, teachers will be exploring various resources about global warming at the NASA website.
- In Participant Support session, you may want to a bit more elaborate “follow-up activity” as “follow-up educational data collection”.
The anticipated outcomes of this workshop are as follows:
- Outcome 1: Teachers will be able to design lesson plans using PBL methods with various technology tools to teach about global warming.
- Outcome 2: Teachers will be able to demonstrate increased confidence in teaching about global warming and related concepts. This will be measured by pre- and post-tests of Confidence in Teaching Global Warming survey.
- Outcome 3: Teachers will be able to use the NASA resources about global warming and guide their students to use the resources for their project. This will be verified by observation rubrics assessed by the workshop facilitator.
- Outcome 4: Teachers will be able to demonstrate their proficient level of technology skills (e.g., creating digital posters, developing multimedia, web-content management, etc.) to teach global warming. Video records of their classroom instructions will be used to assess the teachers’ instructional practices.
- Outcome 5: Students will be able to show increased content knowledge related to global warming and aligned with NGSS by the end of the school year. This will be measured by the pre- and post-tests.
- Outcome 6: Students will be able to demonstrate the use of technology tools included in the teacher’s lesson plan about global warming project. This will be verified by video records of classroom activities.
| Day 1 (5/18) | Day 2 (5/19) | Day 3 (5/20) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08:00–08:30 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 08:30–10:00 | Overview of Project-Based Learning. | Getting familiar with NASA educational resources related to global warming. | Planning projects for students using the digital tools and the NASAeducational resources. |
| 10:00–10:15 | Break | Break | Break |
| 10:15–11: 45 | Exploring useful digital tools for PBLT. | Experiencing NASA global warming lessons and hands-on activities using digital tools. |
Presentation: Creating and sharing lesson plans using PBLT method to teach global warming to demonstrate how they will implement it in schools in the Fall 2022. |
| 11:45–12:00 | Wrap-up | Wrap-up | Wrap-up |
Paticipant Support:
The 15 teachers who will join this workshop will each receive a $600 stipend that covers the participation in the three half-days workshops ($400) and the follow-up activity ($200) that will involve classroom data collection for the evaluation.
Eligibility:
- Any middle school teachers teaching STEM courses
Contact information:
- Dr. Byun Jaehwan (jaehwan.byun@wichita.edu)
- Dr. Alagic (mara.alagic@wichita.edu)
- Dr. Hwang (gisuk.hwang@wichita.edu)