Science In-Between

This week, we take a momentary break from our podcast book club and reflect on 2020. Scott and Ollie discuss the lessons they've learned from the wild, disruptive year and what we can apply to the new year ahead. As always, in this episode, we disucss a bunch of stuff including the Hidden Brain podcast, in particular, When You Start to Miss Tony in Accounting , Cal Newport and Kubb Things that bri...

Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education by Bryan Brown Benajmin Lee Whorf Worf Curveballs Things that bring us joy this week: Dune by Frank Herbert Harley Quinn Series on HBO Max Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Eviction by Legally Blind Production assistance by Enzo Dreon

Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education by Bryan Brown Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values by Jay Lemke Things that bring us joy this week: Mandalorian on Disney Plus Sonos The Encyclopedia of Bittany Radio Show Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Eviction by Legally Blind Production assistance by Enzo Dreon

Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education by Bryan Brown Things that bring us joy this week: The Queen's Gambit on Netflix Revisionist History with Malcolm Gladwell Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Eviction by Legally Blind Production assistance by Enzo Dreon

Starting with episode 16, we'll be reading Science in the City: Culturally Relevant STEM Education by Bryan Brown . Join us as we examine how language and culture matter for effective science teaching. Over the next several episodes, we'll be reading a chapter a week. We hope you'll join us on this "In-Between Book Club." Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Eviction by Legally Blind Production assistance...

In our discussion on engaging students, we cover a lot of territory and drop lots of resources. The concept of control value theory can be found in The Spark of Learning by Sarah Rose Cavanagh and in How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts and Cultures by the National Academies Press. If you're interested in Hank Green, check out his website where he bills himself as a "science communicator." Hank...

Things that bring us joy this week: Fargo (The TV show, Season 4) on FX Watchmen on HBO Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Eviction by Legally Blind Production assistance by Enzo Dreon

Our top picks for content students need to learn in science: Ollie - HS-ETS1-3 Scott - HS-ESS2-4 Ollie - HS-LS2-8 Scott - HS-LS2-2 Ollie - HS-LS4-5 Scott - HS-LS4-1 Ollie - HS-ETS1-1 Scott - HS-ESS3-3 Ollie - HS-LS2-7 Scott - HS-PS1-2 To see the specific standards, check out the Next Generation Science Standards Radiolab Podcast - Fungus Among Us Episode Things that bring us joy this week: The Adv...

How do you talk with kids about their ideas and how do you use questions to support their learning? Initiate - Response - Evaluate pattern of talk is a class in classroom discourse. The teacher asks a question for which they have a specific answer in mind, a student answers, and the teacher evaluates that response. This pernicious pattern leaves kids without a sense of agency in their own science...

In this episode, Scott and Ollie discuss the challenges with assessment in face-to-face and online classrooms. While the conversation begins with an observation Ollie makes of his son's math class, the scope broadens to explore why we assess and how we assess to better reflect reform-minded teaching. Things that bring us joy this week: Mission to Zyxx Gideon Falls Intro/Outro Music: Notice of Evic...

Teaching K-12 Science and Engieering During a Crisis - National Academies Press They articulate four key principles: 1) Maintain a focus on the Framework ’s vision for high quality science and engineering education; 2) Prioritize relationships, equity, and the most vulnerable students; 3) Families and communities are critical assets for science and engineering learning; 4) Adjusting to changing le...

This week, the dynamic duo (Scott and Ollie) discuss how critical phenomena are to ambitious and equitable science education and how it helps us go beyond "moving the chairs around." In our discussion, Scott critiques the use of Zombie Ants as a "fun" phenomenon to engage students in science. We use this discussion as a springboard into a larger conversation about how we select phenomena around wh...

This week we talk about how to think about the laboratory experience in online, remote, and mixed mode environments. What is the difference between things that can't normally be done in a classroom that you might use even in face to face environments, and things that are replacements for thing that you would have done face to face where you are using video to show the procedure of a lab and then g...

Prompted by an activity that Ollie did with one of his classes, Ollie and Scott discuss their "origin stories" and detail how they became teachers. As Scott explains early in the episode, we deconstruct these stories to examine the bigger question "What do we teach?" Students? Or content? Both? Things that bring us joy this week: East of West Documentary Now ; In particular, Season 1 episode named...

First, we are in a time where there is absolutely no continuity in how class time is organized, so how do you think about structuring class. Second, we have a long-standing over emphasis in schools on curriculuar continuity - every lesson is its own thing, and this leads to its own kind of disconnection. Standardization and consistency is in tension with individuality and responsiveness. We say, j...

In this episode, Scott and Ollie discuss the Processes, Principles, and Practices that inform the integration of technology into our face-to-face, online and remotes classrooms. We share a some "design principles" about creating effective learning environments that are embedded in learning theory. We also promised that we'd include the definition of "reify" in the show notes: reify (verb) - to mak...

We talk about how to think about supporting science teachers as they learn and also the complexities of managing groups of learners in a remote context. We also address some of the issues of digital records of learning and the implications of the shift to remote contexts. We recognize that getting coherence in this brave new world is hard and that technology is often built on outdated models of le...

We discuss the sage on the stage, the guide on the side, and our own variation the coach on the bench and what this means for who does the hard work of the science thinking in science classrooms. We also talk about how COVID is an example of how science really works, but it is happening in a public way. Things that bring us joy: Memory Palace Podcast Cautionary Tales Podcast Intro/Outro Music: Not...

In this discussion of virtual and face-to-face grouping in science classes, Scott and Ollie examine some practices that promote more participation in online spaces. Beyond an "esoteric" analysis of online interaction, we discuss how we use different technologies to get groups of students to engage with one another and with course content. Links to things we mention in this episode: The reason Zoom...

As we start this adventure, we discuss the challenges facing schools and science educators during the pandemic. As we move to online instruction in more schools, what does science teaching look like? How do our roles as science teachers change? We don't necessarily have the answers but we think we're asking the right questions and offering some thoughts. We also share "things that bring us joy." T...