Tag: CPS

Presenter at ESE Annual Education Conference

Cambridge Creativity Commons and Cambridge Public Schools STEM department presented our project, Interactive Eco-systems, at the annual State Elementary and Secondary Education conference in Marlborough, MA on Tuesday. This was to specifically highlight the Creativity and Innovation grant award and how we’ve used the new Creativity Rubric to shape and improve our project going into the second year. Thankful for the continuing support and award from DESE and CPS and excited to begin the work this year integrating art, science and technology!

IECollaboration_Tech

Eco-System STEAM learning – CPS article!

Check out the article on the Rindge Avenue Upper School website!!! http://rindgeavenue.cpsd.us/flash/ecomuve_2014

EcoMUVE and STEAM 01 Suchy-STEAM EcoMUVE EcoMUVE and STEAM 03

Overview
As part of 6th grade life science and ecology/ecosystems studies, Cambridge Public Schools uses a computerbased virtual environment developed by Harvard called EcoMUVE
(http://ecomuve.gse.harvard.edu/module2.html). Students are presented with a scenario related to a forest ecosystem and utilize the virtual environment in EcoMUVE to come to a solution. From the EcoMUVE website, “students work in teams to visit the two islands over a span of fifty years to see how the populations and forest structure change on each island over time.” This year, 6th grade science teacher Dave Suchy and his students at RAUC expanded upon the EcoMUVE curriculum by collaborating with Ingrid Gustafson, CPS Instructional Technology Specialist and Kyle Browne, director of Cambridge Creativity Commons (cambridgecreativitycommons.org). As a final project articulating a hypothesis and solution to a problem, students created mixed media scientific illustrations depicting the EcoMUVE web of organism interactions. Their paper based ecosystem webs were made into computer based interactive simulations by connecting MaKeyMaKey kits (http://MaKeyMaKey.com/) and were controlled by programming with Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/). Students gained practice in 21st century skills such as collaborating and creativity throughout the duration of this project by engaging in STEAM education Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.  Continue reading Eco-System STEAM learning – CPS article!