47. What Maps Have To Do With Creativity
Everyone is born either creative or not, right? WRONG! Listen in as Claire and Natasha discuss creativity and an exciting project you can try in your STEM classroom. From Mapsco (if you feel bad, don’t - Natasha didn’t know what this was either) to creating your own compass, listen in and find out just how much technology has been replacing some important life skills and how Claire creatively brought them back into the classroom.
46. STEM Career Chat with Bioengineer Dr. Georgia Lagoudas
Everyone knows that engineers are nerdy guys with glasses and scientists always have crazy hair! Our STEM Career Chat with bioengineer Dr. Georgia Lagoudas is here to help students break down the stereotypes around STEM careers by showing them that anyone, including them, can be an engineer or scientist! Whether she’s sleeping on snow (not something she was used to having grown up in Texas) or fangirling in an elevator with movie stars and senators, Dr. Lagoudas discusses what it’s like to be a Congressional Science and Technology Policy Fellow and how you don’t necessarily have to narrow your life path down to one fork in the road.
45. The Best STEM Challenge Ever
Weather balloons, rockets, and space landers? Oh my! STEM has so many projects and products out there, it can be hard to narrow it down to not only what works, but what's fun and STILL educational for your students. From pizza-stealing aliens to homemade roller coaster projects taller than a third grader, tune in to learn about and become inspired by Natasha and Claire's favorite STEM challenges.
44. How Do You Manage Your STEM Classroom?
How do you manage your STEM classroom? Do you have labels on everything or a less organized but still (somehow) coordinated? Join Natasha and Claire as they jump into a STEM classroom management discussion with special guest, Julie Lyons, a 15-year veteran of STEM education and current guest blogger and curriculum designer for Vivify STEM. Listen in as she shares her information on how routines are useful to classroom management but sometimes you just have to let it (kind of) go and work within the boundaries of "coordinated chaos".
43. How Do We Define Success In STEM?
Can you design a roller coaster? How about a space rover or robot hand? How do we define success in STEM, especially with all of the variables presented to us as teachers? In this episode of The STEM Space, Natasha and Claire discuss all the learning curves the majority of us encounter when trying to map out a STEM curriculum, make sure all the proper standards apply, and trying to discern whether our students are actually taking anything away from their STEM activities and following the engineering design process or if something, somewhere needs to change.
42. How Do You Chew?
In this episode of The STEM Space, Natasha and Claire return to answer the much anticipated question: did Natasha get to eat her sandwich in class? Her professor had some very specific instructions (including but not limited to: don’t eat breakfast, bring a sandwich for lunch, and also bring a 1 pound bag of M&M’s) which left both Claire and our listeners scratching their heads. Listen now to find out what happened and how you can apply the thinking to your classroom!
P.S. Sadly, we could find no studies proving Claire’s statement that M&M’s taste differently.