Engaging STEM Professionals in Outreach

  1. Home
  2. Uncategorized
  3. Engaging STEM Professionals in Outreach
News

Engaging STEM Professionals in Outreach

Kids think Scientists are Cool, Even in Virtual Class!

Connecting scientists to young learners in person has always been a hallmark of our work, giving students the opportunity to connect with real life role models. When school doors closed in March, we needed to quickly find a way to keep the learning and outreach going, virtually

"We weren’t sure what to expect,” explains Tyler Chuck, senior manager for education and outreach at CRS.  “How would students engage in a virtual format? How can we keep their focus and attention when we are not together in a physical classroom? How can we keep it interactive and fun? We had so many questions.”
Fall Kickoff 2020 Square

Fortunately, many dedicated grad students from our Bay Area Scientists Inspiring Students (BASIS) program were happy to have a new type of experiment -- how do you take an in-person lesson and adapt it for online Zoom classrooms?

Teachers and students were eager to have the scientists visit, and the early virtual BASIS lessons let us learn quickly what worked well and how to build robust, effective online lessons using interactive tools like polls and chat, and embedded videos, and other tools. Some scientists also made videos for schools that were using only ‘asynchronous’ lessons, so that teachers could share the videos for students to watch and do an experiment along with the scientist, and then share their observations and ideas in their science notebooks. All of this experimentation allowed CRS to revise our outreach, training, and lessons to meet the challenges of a new school year of distance learning.

"While we’re not able to bring hands-on materials to classrooms, it is so important to focus on the important relationships and interactions that we can still provide over Zoom.” Kids still laugh, share their ideas, and ask awesome questions. Some scientists even discovered they had more time for outreach since they didn’t need to travel to and from schools.

Teachers are snapping up the virtual lesson presentations as quickly as they are offered -- more than 100 so far in the first months of school. The Virtual BASIS Lesson Libary continues to grow with new lessons, including a 1st grade vision science presentation, a 5th grade lesson on polymers in everyday life, to a 4th grade nutrition science lesson titled “Survival of the Fattest,” that teaches about the biological importance of fat.

We miss being together in classrooms, but until it is safe for us to come together again we will keep the science and engineering explorations going, at a distance.

Recent Posts

Categories

Community Resources for Science
1611 San Pablo Avenue, Suite 10 B
Berkeley, CA 94702

 

Phone: (510) 527-5212
Fax: (510) 527-5216
Email: community@crscience.org
EIN: 94-3262587

 

Privacy Statement
Join Our Team

The mission of CRS is to empower teachers and STEM professionals serving schools in historically marginalized communities to activate TK-8 students’ curiosity about the world, foster critical thinking, and inspire children to imagine future career pathways. We envision a community of educators, scientists, families and partners working together to build school cultures that equip all children to explore the world around them and build the skills needed to become innovators, problem solvers, environmental stewards, life-long learners and leaders. CRS leads a dynamic network, fostering relationships and collaborations that leverage expertise and resources to transform science teaching and learning toward greater equity, opportunity, and success for all students.

 

Our goal is simple: help teachers give students more opportunities to “do science” – to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands on real science activities. We need to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders!