Hughes High School, a STEM-focused school in Cincinnati, has an intersession which students devote to their projects. As luck would have it this year, the intersession is the same week as the NSTA conference in Philadelphia. Kathy Wright, a program facilitator, wanted to attend the conference but keep in touch with the teachers and students to support their efforts.
When I met her, she was Skyping with students in the classroom while conference-calling others who were out in the field. She was also following tweets from other classes. They were apprising her of the status of their projects, which they will document and upload via YouTube for her presentations on Saturday morning. And to think that these social media sites are blocked in many schools! What opportunities are their students and teachers missing out on?
I’ll add a comment after the session as an update.
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In their session on Saturday, Kathy and her colleague Kelly Orbarski from the University of CIncinnati shared a description of the Hughes STEM High School, a new school (only 9th graders this year). The school incorporates practices such as focus on “transdisciplinary” subjects, block scheduling, intensive professional development, technology, and community partnerships. And we did see some student work – hot off the press, to use an old-fashioned analogy.
Kathy and I had a blast presenting. We used Twitter and Polleverywhere.com in our presentations as well as showed videos our students great and posted on iTunes You and You Tube. Find out more about our work at http://vision21online.com/Resources.aspx and click on the Cincinnati link. Please feel free to contact us to find out more about Hughes STEM!