TEACHER WORKSHOP: From Solar to Polar – Designing Sustainable Solutions

Spend a week during your summer to “charge” your mind during an energy-themed course designed to help you meet the revised MA Science and Technology/Engineering Standards! Visit the Lloyd Center for the Environment, Battleship Cove, and the National Marine Life Center and delve into “hands-on, minds-on” experiences that use a variety of tools, methods, and technologies that will build on your previous knowledge and experience. Use your new skills to create exciting inquiry-based energy and climate science activities for your students. Explore energy in all its forms. Investigate energy systems of the earth and its oceans to help you to better contextualize climate change for your students. Examine alternative energy sources as you learn about how technology and engineering have advanced our development and utilization of such sources.

Experiment with solar panels and motors during inquiry-based activities to experience how solar power works. Tour local buildings that have successfully incorporated alternative energy sources as part of green initiatives, build model wind turbines, and discuss how to incorporate simple solar solutions into a classroom curriculum. Engage in science and engineering practices; challenge yourself to design an innovative solution to an environmental problem in a group setting. Learn more about how energy and climate science fall within the revised 2016 STE Standards, and how you can implement these standards in your own classroom. Join us this summer for a week of investigations, hands-on activities, and group discussions and return to your classroom fortified and ready to excite your students about sustainability, technology, engineering and math!

Partners:

Course Dates:

July 17-21 (8:30 am – 3:30 pm)
Half Day Introductory Session June 10
Half Day Fall Call-back November 4

Registration Fee:

$375/participant
$350/participant for team of 2 or more teachers from the same school district

PDPs and Graduate Credit:

Framingham State University (3 credits, 67.5 PDPs, $225)
40 PDPs available without graduate credit