2012 DR K-12 PI Meeting Session Materials

Meeting rooms available for PO and grantee discussions. (Prior to the meeting, send requests to CADRE@edc.org. During the meeting, sign up at the registration table.)

(By invitation only – Fellows and nominating PIs)

During this welcome meeting for the 2011-2012 Fellows and their PIs, participants have the opportunity to meet informally with each other, National Science Foundation (NSF) program officers, and CADRE staff.

(Open to all grantees)

Participants share their experiences transitioning to digital curricula, explore what curricula should look like, and define how digital curricula enhance and deepen science learning.

CADRE invites feedback on a draft paper that identifies alternatives to conventional dissemination in current DR K-12 projects, as well as other creative options worth considering.  

(Open to all grantees)                 

This session includes a presentation on English Language Learners and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards, followed by discipline-based discussions.

(SIG members only)

This group continues their December 2011 discussion of their gaming/virtual environment work. SIG members focus on successful approaches to common challenges, establish priorities for implementing recommendations from their group meeting, and share the current versions of their games/virtual environments.

CADRE invites feedback on a draft paper that describes how evaluation can add value to an R&D project, with special attention to the challenges of making a distinction between evaluation and the project’s research activities.

(Open to all grantees) 

Engage in extended play and in-depth discussion around selected DR K-12 games or virtual environments.

(See list of projects presenting posters.)

(See the list of local restaurants.)

Meeting rooms available for PO and grantee discussions. (Prior to the meeting, send requests to CADRE@edc.org. During the meeting, sign up at the registration table.)

Welcome: Barbara Brauner Berns, CADRE PI, Education Development Center, Inc.; Elizabeth Vanderputten, DR K-12 Lead Program Officer, NSF
Plenary: Joan Ferrini-Mundy, Assistant Director, Education and Human Resources, NSF
Joan Ferrini-Mundy welcomes DR K-12 grantees and focuses on the important work of their project teams. She discusses the strategic vision for NSF and the EHR Directorate, and the role that DR K-12 projects have in that vision.

Within Crossroads sessions, PIs share a vexation about their NSF projects, identify a venture to address the challenges, and then attend to collaborative problem-solving discussions. In this inaugural Crossroads session, participants examine challenges of coordinating across states within a collaborative project and discuss sharing project activities with a wide array of constituencies.

The session provides an overview of and stimulates discussion about current DR K-12 projects initiating STEM classroom uses of scientific data sets using geospatial technologies and data visualizations.

Professional development frequently doesn’t achieve major increases in effective STEM teaching. Can innovative, technology-based models for professional development help us achieve sustainable, substantial changes in practice?

The presenters share challenges faced by DR K-12 longitudinal research studies, with attention to addressing these challenges. Benefits also are addressed.

A 2011-12 CADRE Fellows presentation

The panel presentation addresses the role of the teacher in online, game- and simulation-based learning. 

This session reports the findings of a systematic review of research on elementary science. Treatments reviewed included instructional processes, science kits, and technology.

This session provides an update about the development of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), with a special focus on implications for curriculum development, professional development, and assessment. 

This session examines different approaches to engaging mathematics and science teachers in analysis of practice (e.g., using video, student work, and online tools) and different strategies for assessing impact of this work.

The panel provides an overview of what presenters know about how learning takes place in games and how each of these projects is crafting assessment in virtual and game-based environments.  

Learn about the process, findings and recommendations of the 2011 NRC report, Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. * This is a one hour session with the option to stay in the room for informal discussion afterwards.

(Open to all grantees)

This group discusses current research and practice in K-12 engineering education and issues related to content and delivery.

Presenters seek feedback on activities, now in field test, in which students build mathematical and statistical models to improve their game-playing strategies. Bring a laptop.

(Open to all grantees who might commit to the work group activities during 2012)

CADRE invites you to join a newly established group on embedding formative assessment into STEM education curricula and materials.

Presenters from six technology-rich projects explore how they are using new representations, activities, and practices to help learners become more fluent in expressing their thinking.

In an environment structured for productive thinking, educators from different content areas collaboratively begin to develop a set of recommendations or considerations for cross-content generative engineering lessons.

This session provides an overview of the design of the PARCC assessments and describes the research studies and resources PARCC has or plans to develop to support the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).* This is a one-hour session with the option to remain in the room for informal discussion after the presentation.

How have technology-enhanced assessment projects studied their technical quality, effectiveness, and feasibility? Four mature assessment projects share designs, research methods, findings, and challenges.

Presenters describe struggles with sustaining science teacher professional development across remote sites and explore simulation training of science educators beyond one institution’s existing capacities.

This session examines the potential and challenges of developing effective formal-informal partnerships to support STEM teaching and learning and embedding research agendas into this work.

Three projects report findings about supporting mathematics and science teachers’ development of ambitious teaching and focus analyses on equity perspectives related to students’ opportunities to learn.

Dynabook and SmartGraphs answer the questions: What are the major challenges in scaling up, and how do you plan to meet them?

What have we learned about designing computer-based materials that transform science education? What do we need to investigate? How can we collaborate to stimulate change?

Presenters from two projects developing and researching ninth-grade “double-period” algebra approaches and materials present their distinct but compatible perspectives. Group discussion is encouraged.

(See the Poster List of projects presenting.)

*Light refreshments served.

(See the list of local restaurants.)

(2011–2012 Fellows only)

Meeting rooms available for PO and grantee discussions. (Prior to the meeting, send requests to CADRE@edc.org. During the meeting, sign up at the registration table.)

(An opportunity to meet with DRL program officers)

Learn how to create free, online interactive lessons of your own design to help students understand graphs and the STEM concepts represented in graphs. Bring a laptop.

The project seeks feedback during this session for the development of interdisciplinary high school curriculum materials, including assignment to grade levels, specific course usage, and teacher needs.

DR K-12 project members will discuss their purposes and strategies–such as recruiting user partners, establishing a relationship and role, communicating, and gathering data–for engaging end users. 

Presenters discuss creating and evaluating a substantial revision of an existing assessment of early mathematics using emerging, multidimensional, cognitive and psychometric, theoretical models.

This session provides an opportunity for participants to discuss findings from a systematic review of instrumentation that DR K–12 projects proposed for assessing teacher’s content knowledge, classroom practices, and pedagogical content knowledge.

Presenters share instructional materials for supporting science inquiry practices and academic language development, and seek feedback for increasing classroom implementation of materials.

“Authentic experiences” are core to many projects. The session shows ways authenticity is used in engineering/technology with examples from projects.

This session presents the development and use of observational protocols. The collaborative team elicits feedback from the participants to enhance the protocols.

Learning-progression research creates new possibilities for improving teaching practice while creating new challenges. Five projects exchange views focusing on problems of teaching practice.

This panel provides various perspectives on recommendations needed to ensure successful implementation of the Common Core Standards for Mathematics, with a focus on professional development. *This is a one-hour session with the option to stay in the room for informal discussion afterwards.

Facilitator: Pat Wilson, NSF

NSF program officers discuss Directorate for Education & Human Resources (EHR) programs and related funding opportunities.

This interactive poster session brings together 11 projects using digital computer technologies (games, simulations, tools) to discuss current research questions, corresponding methodologies, and next steps. 

Five research teams describe various methodologies used to develop, refine, and validate learning progressions/learning trajectories and describe challenges encountered in relation to those methods of investigation.

Two projects that are investigating how middle school geometry professional development materials support teachers’ learning. Presenters compare approaches, present preliminary results, and discuss strengths and challenges.

Explore whether Network Improvement Communities might inform and guide dissemination efforts, and then engage in debate about STEM reforms at the local or global level.

Presenters explore how DR K-12 projects address the Climate Literacy Essential Principles and Environmental Literacy Competencies and how that information can increase projects' effectiveness.

*Working Lunch

To meet the disruptive challenges of a global, knowledge-based, innovation-centered economy, scholars must apply new collaborative technologies to diffuse and scale systemic educational solutions.

Concluding Remarks: Elizabeth Vanderputten, DR K-12 Program Officer, NSF