The Freedom Machines film, discussion guide, lesson plan, and resource guides are designed to dramatically broaden the concept of diversity for all students through telling the intimate stories of adults and children with disabilities who are using modern technologies to change their lives. Original Freedom Machines website

This paper aims to share EDC’s learnings from developing and implementing this method including addressing issues of trust between youth and adult team members, appropriately acknowledging youth contributions, balancing the roles of mentors and adult design partners, and making dynamic curriculum adjustments based on participants learning styles and skill levels.

An ongoing and at times seemingly intractable issue in science education and STEM fields is the underperformance and underrepresentation of marginalized youth. This is often attributed to disconnect between school in general, school science specifically and the cultures that youth enact and experience in their daily lives. Although research demonstrates that youth become engaged in STEM when it is relevant to their well-being and that of their community, the question of what motivates underrepresented youth to pursue STEM interests is still not fully understood. This white paper argues for

This article features schools and school districts with successful induction programs, all easily replicable. Increasingly, research confirms that teacher and teaching quality are the most powerful predictors of student success. In short, principals ensure higher student achievement by assuring better teaching. To do this, effective administrators have a new teacher induction program available for all newly hired teachers, which then seamlessly becomes part of the lifelong, sustained professional development program for the district or school. What keeps a good teacher are structured

Originally released in the Spring of 1999, has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This book includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning.This book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non

Understanding the dynamics of individual or group adaptation can provide valuable information for constructing professional development strategies to increase chances of instructional success. This paper reports on an exploratory study that identifies indicators of convergent vs. non-convergent adaptation in two cases of teachers working together on a technology-based curriculum construction activity and explores the relationship between group characteristics and adaptation processes. We have used the core complex systems concept of adaptation as a lens for understanding how and why some

The goal of this article is to present a description of a professional development program designed to immerse middle and high school teachers in an inquiry-based learning environment using a forensic science context and the consequent impact participating in this program had on teachers’ pedagogy. Teachers participated in a year-long program consisting of two summer institutes and one programming during the academic year. Teachers spent the first week of each summer institute exploring various science domains using a forensic science context. Week 2 was spent with approximately 100 seventh –

During the past three years we have been designing and implementing a technology enhanced urban ecology program using geographic information systems (GIS) coupled with technology. Our initial work focused on professional development for in-service teachers and implementation in K-12 classrooms. However, upon reflection and analysis of the challenges that our in-service teachers faced while implementing our projects in their classrooms, we began to infuse our National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded ITEST work into our pre-service teacher preparation program. The primary reason for this

The Arctic Climate Modeling Program (ACMP) offered yearlong science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professional development to teachers in rural Alaska. Teacher training focused on introducing youth to workforce technologies used in Arctic research. Due to challenges in making professional development accessible to rural teachers, ACMP modified the traditional ITEST format, instead offering unique “curriculum resource-based professional development” that provided a year-round mix of training options for 165 teachers. Sustainable program resources were created in collaboration with

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program provides a unique opportunity to assess a broad spectrum of professional development projects that share key characteristics but were designed to meet distinct local school and community contexts. To better understand how innovative information technology (IT) classroom applications are integrated into teacher professional development and can ultimately lead to changes in teaching practices and increases in student performance, we conducted an exploratory study of NSF-funded ITEST