Resources included in these libraries were submitted by ITEST projects or STELAR and are relevant to the work of the NSF ITEST Program. PDFs and/or URLs to the original resource are included in the resource description whenever possible. In some cases, full text publications are located behind publishers’ paywalls and a fee or membership to the third party site may be required for access. Permission for use must be requested through the publisher or author listed in each entry.
ITEST PI Meeting 2022: Day 2, Session 2: Sparks and Levers - Career Awareness Identity, Engagement, and Persistence
VideoNSF Program Officer Joan Walker moderated a panel discussion of five ITEST Principal Investigators to reflect on essential questions around the session topic. Speakers had originated some of the most powerful and popular frameworks used by the field today.
ITEST PI Meeting 2022 - Day 1, End of Day Plenary and Reflection
VideoITEST PI Meeting 2022 - Day 1, Welcome & Opening Remarks by EDU Assistant Dir. James L. Moore
VideoDuring this opening session, we heard opening remarks from NSF leadership on the meeting themes and an overview of the past year’s ITEST award portfolio.
ITEST Snapshot 2022: An Overview of NSF's ITEST Program
PublicationsAccessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment
PublicationsIn the ConnecTions in the Making project, researchers and district partners work to develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that support diverse elementary students’ science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. In the community-connected units, students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades use human-centered design strategies to prototype and share functional solutions to a design challenge rooted in the students’ local community while scientifically exploring the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.One of the units
Delivering Hands-On Experiences with STEM Technologies in Virtual Learning Environments: Professional Development for a Diverse Network of School Educators
PublicationsDiversifying the STEM pipeline requires reforming school educator practices to adjust how STEM messaging and learning experiences influence diverse young people’s interests and trajectory into STEM long-term. Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experiences All Year Round (CISTEME365) is an NSF multi-pronged project designed to offer professional development and networked community for school educators to improve their knowledge and implementation of STEM experiences for their students. We worked with school educators to create and implement informal hands-on activities with STEM technologies for
Your Phone as a Sensor: Making IoT Accessible for Novice Programmers
PublicationsDistributed computing, computer networking, and the Internet of Things are all around us, yet only computer science and engineering majors learn the technologies that enable our modern lives. This paper introduces PhoneIoT, a mobile app that makes it possible to teach some of the basic concepts of distributed computation and networked sensing to novices. PhoneIoT turns mobile phones and tablets into IoT devices and makes it possible to create highly engaging projects through NetsBlox, an open-source block-based programming environment focused on teaching distributed computing at the high
Exploring Generative Models with Middle School Students
PublicationsApplications of generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have made their way to social media platforms that children frequently interact with. While GANs are associated with ethical implications pertaining to children, such as the generation of Deepfakes, there are negligible eforts to educate middle school children about generative AI. In this work, we present a generative models learning trajectory (LT), educational materials, and interactive activities for young learners with a focus on GANs, creation and application of machine-generated media, and its ethical
The Effects of Providing Starter Projects in Open-Ended Scratch Activities
PublicationsGiven the importance of broadening participation in the field of computing, goals of supporting personal expression and developing a sense of belonging must live alongside the goals of conceptual knowledge and developing disciplinary expertise. Integrating opportunities for students to be creative in how they enact computing ideas plays an important role when designing curricula. We examine how student creativity, as expressed through theme and the use of costumes, backdrops, and narrative in Scratch projects, is affected by using a themed starter project. Starter projects are Scratch projects
Artificial Intelligence and Learning: NSF ITEST Projects At-A-Glance
PublicationsArtificial intelligence (AI) is permeating the world around us, changing the ways we live, work, and learn. The National Science Foundation (NSF) lists AI as one of its organization-wide priorities, and is encouraging programs like ITEST to pursue what it means to prepare youth for careers in AI. In response to this, the STELAR convened an AI working group comprised of more than 20 projects funded through a variety of NSF programs. This paper is designed to highlight the areas being explored by these projects, to provide an overview of what has been funded within the ITEST portfolio to date