Science ed. conference wrap-up and thoughts
by Timothy Boyle on Mar 29 2010 Posted in Boyle's law
I very much appreciated the opportunity to attend this year's National Science Teachers Association Conference. Meeting people from across the country facing the same challenges, while being innovative, was a good kick start in the midst of the long slog to the PSSA. Between the conference and reading Education Week's Technology Counts, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the state of my teaching, and the state of science teaching around me.
Some ideas I took away:
- We as teachers (science and otherwise) have the expertise to give children a 21st century education right now. Connecting knowledgeable people is the obstacle.
- Science educators want the measurement of our student's knowledge to matter as much as literacy or mathematics knowledge, but disagree on the worth of current assessment practices.
- The skills the next and current generation of teachers will need to have are the ability to collaborate and the ability to facilitate student-led learning.
- The concern over content knowledge of teachers should be secondary to