ELP Mo. Valley

Over the last couple of weeks the 5th ELP group has departed from basic coding/computer programming skills to focus on sensory robotics with an activity called "Cubelets."  The students collaborated to create small scale sensory robots:  the cubes stack together in certain orders to perform certain tasks as programmed by the color of the cubes.  Below are pictures and/or video of the early trial and error phase of the robot building.  In the next few sessions students will be given challenges to complete with the robots and cubes allotted.  Stay tuned for more pictures, videos and evidence of STEM being applied in all areas of learning..... Standards CC.K-12.MP.5 Use appropriate tools strategically. CC.K-12.MP.6 Attend to precision. CC.K-12.MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. trial and error....take 1..... The very beginning of stacking cubelets... collaborating in a larger group to create a hypothesis for what they thin

In early December Mrs. Jenny Stessman, Instructional Coach, contacted Mrs. Christensen, ELP Instructor, regarding an Iowa Space Grant Consortium.  Teams submitted an application and those 4 teams selected would go to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL for the Professional Development of a lifetime.....NASA Educational Instructors would create professional development geared toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)! On January 3, 2017 the 2 teachers received word they were 1 of the 4 teams from Iowa selected!!! The NASA PD was from February 8-February 11, 2017.  Below are pictures from their experiences: Mrs. Stessman and Mrs. C.  ready to lift-off into learning.... teamwork to develop a model of  a lunar landing module Mars, the next giant leap create a plan, prepare the plan, test the plan, revise as needed:  engineering is always evolving, not just the "right answer" the first testing phase.....yes, Mrs. C. was concentrati