For three days in early August, teachers representing the Council's four STEM-Focused Classrooms - Mt. Pleasant Middle School, Des Moines Hoover high school, Davenport West high school, and Sioux Center high school - were treated to some of the best professional development on planet earth. Experts from Ohio's Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM (TIES) came to Grand View University to equip fourteen classroom teachers and sixteen support professionals to be Lead STEM Practitioners
commanding the skills of problem-based learning capstone design. (continued...)
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Waukee High School students prepare for the presentation of their website design to employees of Shive Hattery, one of their business partners for the Waukee CAPS program.
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Kids participating at STEM Day at the Iowa State Fair had fun seeing how far their balloon cars moved down the track.
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Mary Carlson worked with the Department of Natural Resources as a Real World Extern this summer.
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Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) Launches in Iowa
Fourteen CAPS Young Professionals are diagramming how Shive Hattery-West Des Moines multi-discipline design team works together to complete a project. Waukee CAPS students were given Shive Hattery's work-process template, and after over 40 staff interviews, the class presented to a design jury their design concept development for the project. Working in smaller groups, they then developed a web-site to host artifacts from the interviews, designed QR codes for active engagement, as well as a carefully designed mock-up of the final product. And this was all in the first nine days of classes.
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STEM Day at the Fair Reaches Thousands
The Governor's STEM Advisory Council made its first appearance on the Grand Concourse at the Iowa State Fair this year on August 17. After the fog cleared for exhibitors setting up, the day kicked off with a bang. Four stage shows bringing together hundreds of fair-goers started STEM Day at the fair, while hands-on activities provided by over 20 exhibitors continued to supply mounds of entertainment throughout the day. Along with these activities, fair participants went on our STEM-worthy scavenger hunt and learned more from our partners throughout the fairgrounds.
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Southwest Iowa Educator Tests the Waters with DNR through Real World Externships by Lori Carter
Mary Carlson is a science teacher at Red Oak Schools in Red Oak, Iowa. Mary completed her Real World Externship with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) team in Lewis, Iowa.
Mary was immediately accepted as a full member of the team. They included her in every project they undertook this summer. Carlson said her experience was amazing and varied. As a member of the team she helped improve the water quality of our lakes and rivers by working with vegetation, which included starting a lily bed.
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