HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I sincerely hope that each of you got time to unwind, to relax, to socialize and most importantly, TAKE A BREAK over the holidays. That would be right before you had the last mad dash of finishing your ASEE papers before the January 7 due date of course J!
Below are the updates for this first missive of the New Year. Winter and spring are busy times for our division, so I encourage you to read through these update mailings and as always, please feel free to drop me a note, text or phone call with any questions, concerns or issues. I won’t know all the answers, but I do have an amazing team on the executive board that can either help or help me find the right folks.
Take care, stay healthy (and get a flu shot if you haven’t yet!), and please accept my thanks for all you do to improve engineering education.
Liz
ASEE Annual K-12 Workshop in Atlanta
It’s proposal time! Share with your contacts! The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will hold its 10th Annual K-12 Workshop on Engineering Education, “Tying STEM Together with Engineering”, presented by Dassault Systems, this June 22, 2013, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. This day-long program for teachers, administrators and engineering educators from Georgia and across the nation will provide an energizing, interactive overview of successful engineering education instruction for the K-12 classroom. Attendees will discover engaging hands-on lessons and interactive activities to share with students, takeaway materials for the classroom, and networking opportunities.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
– Workshop proposals are being sought November 5, 2012 – January 27, 2013.
– To submit a proposal, go to: http://www.asee.org/conferences-and-events/conferences/k-12-workshop/2013/call-for-proposals
– Individual sessions should prominently feature hands-on classroom activities, provide take-home or classroom-ready materials and be designed to engage participants in exercises for the majority of the session time.
– Workshops that offer tangible materials to attendees, in addition to written material, are specifically solicited.
– All sessions must be linked to national standards, including the new Framework for K-12 Science Education upon which the Next Generation Science Standards are being developed.
– Proposals addressing 1) elementary/primary grades and 2) demonstrated methods for involving practicing engineers and engineering students in the classroom are also highly sought.
– Note: Depending on submissions, a new “policy track” may be added to this workshop for sessions that meet the other criteria above and address policy issues.
For additional details, please contact Libby Martin, Manager of K-12 Activities, at k12workshop@asee.org
2013 Atlanta ASEE Annual Conference – Registration and Housing are now open!
The ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition is the only conference dedicated to all disciplines of engineering education. It is committed to fostering the exchange of ideas, enhancing teaching methods and curriculum, and providing prime networking opportunities for engineering and technology education stakeholders such as deans, faculty members, and industry and government representatives. Please visit:http://www.asee.org/conferences-and-events/conferences/annual-conference/2013/registration/registration-fees to register online.
Achieve releases The Next Generation Science Standards 2nd Draft (NGSS)
The second-and final–draft of the Next Generation Science Standards will be available for feedback from January 8, 2013 through January 29, 2013. We fully encourage all interested parties to review the draft as individuals or in groups and provide feedback to the Lead States and writers. In this draft, the standards are coded by Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) from the NRC’s Framework for K-12 Science Education, and are available in two different arrangements- by DCI and by topic.
The NGSS will be completed in March of 2013. Since the May draft release, the Lead States and the writers evaluated all feedback and worked on revising the standards. As a result, over 90% of the standards have been revised. In addition, the lead states charged the NGSS team with finalizing the definition for college and career readiness in science. The NGSS then went through a second round of revision to ensure the standards supported this definition. ASEE did provide an organizational response to the last stakeholder draft.
NSTA: January 15 Deadline to Submit a Session Proposal for the 2013 Area Conferences
Share your good ideas at NSTA’s 2013 area conferences. Don’t delay—the deadline for submissions is January 15, 2013. Our 2013 area conferences include Portland, Oregon (October 24–26), Charlotte, North Carolina (November 7–9), and Denver, Colorado (December 12–14). For more information, visit www.nsta.org/conferences. There you can also submit a proposal for the 2014NSTA Boston National Conference on Science Education (April 3–6). The deadline for submitting a proposal for the 2014 Boston National Conference is April 15, 2013.
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: NSF-funded project to develop engineering faculty virtual communities of practice
Engineering education research has shown that many research-based instructional approaches improve student learning but these have not diffused widely because faculty members find it difficult to acquire the required knowledge and skills by themselves and then sustain the on-going implementation efforts without continued encouragement and support. ASEE with a grant from NSF is organizing several web-based faculty communities that will work to develop the group’s understanding of research-based instructional approaches and then support individual members as they implement self-selected new approaches in their classes. Participants should be open to this new technology-based approach and see themselves as innovators in a new approach to professional development and continuous improvement.
The material below and the project website (http://www.asee.org/asee-vcp) provide more information about these communities and the application process. Questions should be addressed to Rocio Chavela atr.chavela@asee.org. If you are interested in learning about effective teaching approaches and working with experienced mentors and collaborating colleagues as you begin using these in your classroom, you are encouraged to apply to this program. If you know of others that may be interested, please share this message with them. Please consider applying for this program and encouraging potentially interested colleagues to apply. Applications are due by January 25, 2013.
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Thanks,
Liz