 Welcome everyone. Today we're talking about Stemtastic Science Learning with CESA. I'm Angela from the CESA team and I'm so thrilled to have Rachel here with us today. She has so many slides and so many great things to show you that will really help you out in your classroom. So welcome Rachel. So excited to have you here. Thank you, Angela. I'm really excited to be here and I just want to give a shout out to you for anyone that's up really early or staying up really late to listen. I really appreciate the support and I'm excited to show you what I'm doing with CESA in my science classroom. So for those of you that are on Twitter, I've put my Twitter handle here. So I'm at Rachel there on Twitter and I've got the extra A there which is important. So I'm just a bit about myself. I'm a primary science and digital specialist teacher at a primary school in Western Australia, West Beachboro and I'm also a host of primary STEM chat which is a weekly Twitter chat. Probably not a great time for a lot of you there in the US but it's on a Thursday evening here in Australia. So we talk all things STEM on a weekly basis and CESA is often something that comes up too. So now I'm just going to talk tonight really about my science learning and how I'm trying to bring STEM into that and I often think about this and I don't know what you would think when you ask this question but is science learning STEM and I often hear science teachers talking about themselves as STEM teachers. I don't call myself a STEM teacher or a STEM teacher because I don't think necessarily that just because you're doing science that you're doing STEM and I'm going to talk a little bit more about what I think STEM is and how I see it fitting into science classroom because I think sometimes you just are purely doing science. And so my focus over the last few years and with embedding CESA and other technologies in my classroom has to bring a STEM focus into the science learning. So I hope this will make sense to you and please ask questions and if Angela can't answer them I'll try to answer them later. So you would have heard of STEM as an acronym or STEAM with the extra A in there as being science, technology, engineering and maths or you can add the art in there and that's a very common acronym and I like to think of STEM less being about the four subject areas and there's this really nice quote here that I found and it says the overarching theoretical framework for STEM education is integration so it's curriculum integration but this second part is what I really love is a focus on deep learning and engaging students in creative thinking and problem solving through real world learning experiences. So for me it's less about checking that I'm teaching science with technology and I'm bringing in engineering and maths but it's thinking about STEM perhaps like this that it's students thinking and it's students exploring and making and so students are thinking deeply about designing solutions to real world problems and then they're exploring solutions and then they're making. So for me STEM is quite a hands on style of learning in the classroom. So I found this great website if you haven't come across that GE STEM and there's a link here and I love that they talk about STEM here as a culture of learning or a pedagogy rather than a separate content area so that comes back to why I don't call myself a STEM teacher. I embed a STEM learning into my science classroom and that's where I love CSOL because it helps me to do this. Now at my school West Beach Grove I am a science teacher and I'm a digital technology teacher. I have to report on science. I have to report on technologies in the curriculum and so there is no STEM. I don't know in the US but in Australia we don't have a STEM curriculum. It's science and it's technology and it's maths. So I like to embed STEM learning because I want to first of all keep alive the why and that science curiosity, the wonder of children but also to embed those skills and capabilities to help them succeed in the future that I think STEM can do. So that's why my goal is to integrate science with STEM. Now I'm going really fast so like I said just ask questions. Angela may be able to help or I'll talk at the end so I'm happy to ask any questions. I like to think about STEM in terms of this model and this is what I'm going to be looking at tonight with CSOL. There's these seven essential aspects of project-based learning that I think fit really well into STEM learning in a science classroom. So I'm going to talk about how CSOL and other technologies help us do these seven things. This is an image which I've retrieved from this site. I don't know where it came from. I've seen a few others similar images so I apologise if this is your image and I don't really know who designed it but this is the link to where it came from. So the first aspect of this is driving questions and I think that is just the key to both science and to STEM learning. So the questions are questions that are coming from the students about what they want to know about what they want to ask others and also questions that the teacher myself is asking of the students. So you can see here we're looking at activities in CSOL. So I use activities in CSOL to just give the students a chance to ask those burning questions. So whatever our topic is, this one was an example from space where I just want to know what the kids really, really want to know. And another way that I've used CSOL to help drive those questions is by putting links to a padlet and then when we've had a presenter and we were in this fabulous lady came to speak from Homeward Bound which is a program where women go to Antarctica and my students were able to then ask the questions here in this shared platform via CSOL to ask of this presenter and it was a really great way for them to actually articulate what they wanted to know. And driving questions too, when we're doing STEM learning in the class I want to know what the kids think before we do the task. So we've been exploring with making instruments out of cups and so I'll just simply put an activity and the question is just how could you make sounds with cups? So I just find CSOL a great tool to just put a simple question in. The kids can answer those questions really easily in CSOL. We're also making pasta cars at the moment that we're trying to get to roll really well. So in CSOL a question that's going to guide their learning why we're also here with this penguin we're learning about the light and how light travels and refracts and we're using that for different tasks. So again putting questions in that the students can answer and CSOL activities is great for that. Now the other part aspect of this STEM learning I thought that was great was the 21st century skills. Now you might see up to seven of these listed. I'm just going with these four key ones so collaboration, critical thinking, communication and creativity and they have four things I'm trying to really nurture in my science classroom through STEM learning. And if you've had any experience with CSOL you can see that it's a tool that lends itself so well to students working together. I find that they rather than being face down into an iPad not communicating that students are sharing the task together. They're working together. They're talking about things and then when they post their learning their shared learning obviously they can tag one, two or more students. So I find it's a really great tool for capturing the learning of the students in groups and working together. Another thing I think if we think about critical thinking about looking at problems in new ways and linking learning. I love that in CSOL you can first of all articulate these visible thinking routines like this one here. We often do a see, think or wonder. You can make it quite explicit in CSOL activities what you want the kids to do so that you can actually get them to really think deeply about the experience. And I think this activity like a see, think or wonder those kind of visible thinking routines are great in CSOL. And the other thing I like is that they can go back to their prior learning quite easily. They can go to their journal. They can find something from a previous date and then they can go and build on that learning. Everything's kept together and I love how that they can go back to that and then keep thinking forward. Communication. I mean I really can't think of a better tool for enhancing the students abilities to share their thoughts, their questions, ideas and solutions. And if you've had any experience with CSOL you know that there's so many ways for the students to do this. They can share drawings, they can share photos, they can share recordings, they can share videos, they can type, they can link from other apps. And I find that it's such a great tool in the STEM aspect when we're doing STEM learning that some of those kids with the lower levels of literacy but they have really good understandings. They can pick up CSOL and they can add a recording to their work. They can take a video, they can take a photo and it really can help me see that they understand but they maybe couldn't articulate it in a traditional way. So that's communication and I think creativity, CSOL and a whole lot of other apps just allow the students to be innovative. If you're using this as a tool to let the students show what they know creatively. So I've just got here a slide where we don't have very many apps on our iPads, the student iPads. And CSOL is our main app that we use but with CSOL we use these few other apps here. But every app on the iPad has a purpose for the students to create something in a digital format that will show what they know and understand. There are no apps to consume, the apps are to create and to share that they need the CSOL. So everything we do gets shared back to CSOL. Now the third aspect of these seven aspects of project-based learning was that students inquire. And one way that I've used CSOL with this is to put links into the activities. So the students go into the activities but they don't actually complete anything there. I think this is a great way for me to give students some safe places to go to learn the things that they need to do their project. So there's an example here where I've just put a link to a Planet website which was a really great website that was at the right level for the students. And I find it safe rather than the students having to type in a URL and maybe get to the wrong place or to Google search. CSOL gives you a really safe way to give students some information for their inquiry. I do the same with video clips here and also web interactives. So you can link these all in CSOL activities and the students don't necessarily complete anything there. They may but there's also a link to where they can get information to learn. Also when we are inquiring through doing, I find that just creating a simple little template in CSOL gives the students somewhere to go and record. What they're finding from their hands-on investigation and inquiry. So in science classroom it's perfect for doing our experiment write-ups. I create all these little activities. I just use Keynote or even PowerPoint and take a screenshot or save them as a JPEG. And then the students work on these little tables and things. So really maybe it's like a glorified worksheet but I find it helps the students do the work fast. And then they are able to share what they've learned through a hands-on experience in CSOL. Now I love this fourth aspect about students having voice and choice. And I think that through using CSOL and a range of other tools with CSOL, there's a really great way to give students this voice and the choice. I've put links into CSOL for things like Padlet. And so the students can go in here and they can have a choice about how they present the information. And this is the same in CSOL directly. They can type what they've learned. They can show videos. They can add photos. And also they can actually articulate in a shared platform through adding a link to say like this problems I care about. They can articulate that in a shared community. And I find that when you have these shared walls of information, the students feel more accountable for adding quality information because they know other people are going to be seeing it. And I so often in STEM learning and in my science classroom give the students a choice for how they're going to show me what they've learned. So we've been inquiring about electricity and we've been doing a range of tasks towards the end of this unit. It's quite broad and I'll say what can you show about electricity and you can use any of the apps on the iPads and the robots and resources. And then you can see here that students have used Minecraft. They've used Padlet, sorry, Poplet. They've made a keynote. They may have used a robot and filmed it in CSOL. They've used different circuit kits. So they've chosen something that gives them the chance to really show their voice so that they feel comfortable and that they can shine. And then everything that they do then gets shared back to CSOL. So and we find that using Flipgrid and again sharing that back to CSOL is a great way for the students to really have a voice in their learning and to actually talk about what they've done and to share that. So when there's no other way, for example, with some of this scratch coding for them to share it, they can go in here, they can create a video, they can talk about what they've done and then we can put it to CSOL and others can see that. Now, STEM learning, I think, needs to have a foundation into some content. I don't think that it's, in my opinion, it's sensible to send the kids out just without the resources they need to be successful. So I think that it's important that they have science content in my case because I'm a science teacher or the knowledge of how to use a digital tool so that they can build on that and apply it to problem solving in a STEM learning environment. So in CSOL, I find, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, that you can have links there for resources, a PowerPoint that we've watched that I've saved as a PDF, a link to a video, and students can go to it when they need it. So they're off doing their learning, they're off inquiring, they're off designing, they're off building, but they can go back to CSOL and the activities and find this information at any time so they can find it when they need it. And that's the same thing here with links to other PowerPoints and some websites that we've used and some web interactives. So I use a lot of those and it's great that we may have shared it as a class but the students can go back to that when they need it to enhance their learning. Now, students revising and reflecting and if I'm super honest, I feel like this is something that I tend to skip because we get so time poor in the classroom and I'm sure you can empathise with that. And it's something that I don't do well but I love how CSOL lends itself so well to students going back and looking at their work and reflecting on their work. And so what I've used it for, if we do an experiment or an activity or an investigation one week, the next lesson I'll get a photo or a video of that experience and I'll put it into CSOL and then we'll start that lesson with a really short, maybe just three minutes where the students go in and explain what they observed and what they learnt. And I think it's just a good way to revise what we've done in the past and to just consolidate learning and to see if students are understanding the concepts. And so that way you're not forging ahead to things that are too challenging for the students if they haven't understood the basics of the previous lessons. So I often begin my lessons with a little task, a fast task where they are actually just sharing what they understood from the previous experiences. And I also, I'll just go back to that. I just wanted to say that I love how that in CSOL that students can go into the journal and in the comments and they can comment on not only their own work and how well they thought they did and what they could do better but they can comment on other students' work and I like to build a community where we feel safe in sharing constructive comments and when we've finished a task and we've put it into CSOL we'll often come sit on the mat and we'll choose get a pop stick and choose a few students and we'll look at their work and they will tell us how they thought they went and then as a group we can reflect on what they can do to improve. So I love how CSOL brings it all up on the board and you can actually just see right there what they've done at a quick glance, especially when you're using activities. And then finally I know I'm flying through so you might want to listen a few times to catch everything but I think it's very important with STEM learning that students are presenting to an authentic audience and CSOL has been a tool. I've been using it now since 2016 in the classroom so it's been a tool that has really changed the way that we learn and it has opened an audience for my students. Historically we were just in the science classroom in the four walls we were not sending work home very often. Now everything we do gets shared to an authentic audience with our families. The classroom teachers are seeing what they're doing in the science classroom the administrators are seeing and commenting and more than that we can actually share as I've mentioned before to platforms like Padlet and Flipgrid and I haven't actually started exploring this yet but the CSOL blog is fantastic and some colleagues have shared it and so you can actually share things right within CSOL so without having to share any other tools, use any other tools that can actually connect you to other classrooms, other teachers around the world even so I've heard some amazing things about that. I've just got some examples of when students have done a shadow puppet show rather than taking that time for every student to stand up in front of the class and to present that puppet show you can use CSOL with things like Flipgrid for them to make their video and then we post it into CSOL and then they can view these at home so by using the blog again these can be shared to a wider audience and these are my girls' STEM club goals about what they wanted to do in the future again I shared it publicly, I often share them to Twitter and it just gives them a space to share their dreams for their future as well as what they're learning and I just think really if I was going to pick one app and out of all the apps that we use, CSOL is the only one that I would pick so that was a really fast fly-through on how I'm using CSOL to promote some of those aspects of STEM learning in the classroom so I'll hand it over for questions. Awesome Rachel, thanks so much for all those amazing ideas and of course we could spend hours together I'm sure going in detail and talking back and forth with questions and things like that but I want to let people know too that if you want to connect with Rachel she obviously has her info here I'm sure she's more than excited to answer your questions so make sure you take her up on that offer but we're going to go into live questions now.