 Welcome everyone. Welcome to our webinar, Making the Case for Early STEM Learning. My name is Susan Hope-Bart, and I am going to be your host today for this webinar, and I am the Training and Education Manager here at TechSoup. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about our platform that we use for our webinars, which is ReadyTalk. What you should see on your screen right now is a slide that says, Using ReadyTalk. And on the left-hand side of your screen, you should see a chat box. The chat box is for you to use to chat in all of your questions, whether they are related to any of the presentation, or if you are having any difficulties with the audio or visual. Please don't hesitate to chat and ask us how we can help you. If you lose your Internet connection, you can simply reconnect using the link that was emailed to you, either when you registered, or in any of the reminder emails that were sent out over the past week, and then again this morning. 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On the right-hand column of the email underneath downloadable files or downloadable documents, there are two links and those are the presentations for today. You can also tweet us at TechSoup or use hashtag TSwebinars. I'd like to introduce our speakers for today. She is also here with the Early Learning Lab and she is amazing. She is super knowledgeable and full of enthusiasm. She works to build the capacity for innovation and the use of new technologies for preschools and community-based organizations. And she works with families of children, birth to age 5. Her work at the lab builds upon 15 years of experience in digital media and technology to solve social problems. Julie Sweetland is an associate of linguists and vice president for strategy and innovation at the Frameworks Institute where she leads efforts to diffuse the organization's cutting-edge, evidence-based reframing recommendations through the nonprofit sector. She has led the development of powerful learning experiences for nonprofit leaders and has provided strategic communication guidance for advocates, policymakers, and scientists. And her work has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Sociologistics, Educational Researcher, and Education Week which I get emailed to me. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and completed her MA and PhD in linguistics at Stanford University. And she has prepared an amazing presentation for today and I know you'll enjoy it. As I mentioned, I'm Susan Hope-Bard here at TechSoup. And also on the back end is Becky Wiegand. She is our webinar program manager and she will be assisting with chat in the back end. So please don't hesitate to ask any questions or if you're having any difficulties with the technology. Before I turn it over to Chateau, I do want to chat a little bit about TechSoup. Some of you that are coming today may be new to TechSoup. TechSoup is headquartered in San Francisco, California. I'd like to know where some of you are from. Go ahead in the chat box, text out that chat box. Go ahead and tell us the city and state that you are joining us from. And while you're doing that, I'm going to talk a little bit more about TechSoup. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. Like some of you that could be joining us today, we work to empower organizations around the world to help them get the latest tools, skills, and resources to help them achieve their mission. And you can see from the map here what we serve almost every country in the world. And we have 62 partner NGOs from around the world. And our impact, we have helped organizations get more than $5.4 billion in technology products and grants. And these tech products and grants come from more than 100 corporate and foundation partners. And towards the end of the presentation, I'll talk a little bit more about TechSoup and how you can connect with all of our free webinar events, and also be able to access some of our online courses. With that, I do wish to turn the presentation over to Chateau from the Early Learning Lab. Chateau, welcome. Thank you. It is so great to be here and to be speaking to so many of you. I'm just going to speak for a couple of minutes to tell you a little bit about the organization that I work for, the Early Learning Lab. We are an Oakland, California-based nonprofit that is dedicated to supporting the early childhood education field. We work with both preschools and community-based organizations, libraries that support families of children from zero to five. We believe that all children deserve the chance to grow, learn, and fulfill their potential to be creative thinkers and doers. And the best way to support that is by investing in the adults, the teachers, the parents, the caregivers, and the community leaders who care for them. We really try to pull from techniques and tools from the social innovation sector to bring those strategies to those adults in the lives of children. We focus on technology because we really do feel that it has the potential to reach all children, all parents, and all schools in the country and accelerate the meaningful work that community-based organizations and schools do for children. And we really look at our technology work on three different levels. So we work on the supply sides, working with technologists who are building tools for schools and for community-based organizations that are supporting families, making sure that the products are research-based and that they really meet the needs of the people who are working in the field. We also work on the demand side, and that is working with nonprofits and schools to help them understand how they can best use technology to advance their mission, what the latest tools are. We do some research and quality control and just make sure that they don't have to spend all their time going through product catalogs. We can do that research for them. And then we also believe in bringing the latest research to people who are working in the field, really bridging that research to practice gap. And we have been so fortunate to partner with TechSoup to produce this series of webinars that really looks at how technology is being used in the early childhood field and bringing that to the people who are working with children and families on a day-to-day basis. Our last webinar was focused on media mentorship and fostering early literacy. And we thought for this one it would be really great to spend some time talking about early STEM and really making the case for science, technology, engineering, and math for young children. So overall, back to our technology work. These webinars are one of the products that we've been bringing to the field. Please stay tuned for more events and more webinars coming up in 2017. We have a lot of exciting work around the corner. And you can keep up with us at our website which is earlylearninglab.org. And with that, I am going to turn it over to Julie from the Frameworks Institute who has this fascinating presentation put together for you, and I hope you enjoy it. Great. Thanks, Chuchotl. And thank you, Susan and TechSoup at Early Learning Lab for reaching out to us and inviting us to share what we've been learning with your community so it can be of use. So the topic today is making the case for early STEM learning. As I already mentioned, I'm from the Frameworks Institute. The Frameworks Institute is a nonprofit think tank that investigates the communications aspect of scientific and social issues. So we work on a range of issues which I'll describe a little bit later, but we are delighted to have this chance to share what we've been learning about how to talk about STEM, and particularly in the context of early learning. So we get up every day and think about frames. What is a frame? Frames are sets of choices about how information is presented, strategic choices about what to emphasize, how to explain it, and what to leave unsaid. Those are some of the most difficult decisions about how to talk about a topic. They are decisions that you need to make regardless of the audience you're talking to or the kind of genre you're working in. Are you writing a grant proposal? Are you reaching out to parents? Are you getting legislative testimony on the topic? So you're always framing a communication regardless of the situation. So our point of view is that you're always framing, so you should always frame strategically. And we see that as an empirical kind of process. We are a group of researchers, so we're a staff of about 20 PhD level researchers from across the social sciences. As we mentioned, I happen to be a sociolinguist. We have other linguists on staff, political scientists, and sociologists who help us think about the structures and systems that language is being used in. Anthropologists and psychologists that really bring to bear a sense of culture and the way people mind work and processing communication. And all of our work is intended to be used by advocates on a very social issue. So we're not just doing this research for research's sake. We've all kind of fled the ivory tower and landed at this particular nonprofit because we want our research to be really useful and applicable for people that are writing websites and framing tweets on a given date basis and really working in the institutions that make our society strong and resilient and have a strong civic body. So we bring that to bear on lots of different kinds of issues. Our organization is probably best known for the work we've done. It's been really advanced by the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. So if you happen to have heard phrases like brain architecture or toxic stress or heard the argument that we can invest now in early learning or pay more later in the form of increased social costs, those are metaphors and principles and data points that have come out of our long-term partnership with the Center on the Developing Child and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child and their really leaders in the field and really showing how to bring science into thinking about a policy. We started a lot of that work with them but the way we work as a nonprofit is to take the research that we do with one group and spread it to other networks. So if we work with Harvard to translate the science of early brain development into metaphors like brain architecture but the Kids Count Network, which is operating in every state in many of the territories to do legislative advocacy on children's issues, they use those frames. The research I'm going to talk about today was sponsored primarily by the Noise Foundation and it was specifically focused on how to make the case for STEM learning but it's especially informal STEM learning and how can STEM learning in informal spaces like zoos or aquariums, science centers, after-school programs, libraries, how can those spaces be seen as a complement to an unnecessary piece of a STEM learning ecosystem and not just an afterthought or a nice extra where the real learning happens in school. So that's what I'll begin to today. And just a quick shout out to some of the folks in informal science settings. We do quite a bit of work with zoos and aquariums. The National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation, that's a project where the live interpreters are in front of their live exhibits standing in the aquarium in front of the kelp or the penguins and have learned to make those interactions with visitors a teachable moment about climate change. And that was a project that found its roots in the IMLS grayups which many of you are probably familiar with. So we get up in the morning and think about how to talk about dire social issues like children's equity and climate change. And we go to bed happy because we know that by changing the way we communicate about these topics we can really engage the public in a more productive way and create real change for folks. So our work often, that's who we work with and who we are, our work often begins when our partners realize they have a problem like this. They're saying one thing, AAA, and based on how the comment that comes back from the group or people's responses, they realize it's as if the public had heard B, B, B, something was getting lost in translation. An example of how this might play out on issues of early STEM, someone like you might say science literacy is just as important as the traditional literacies of reading and writing and we need to promote those literacies in the early years. And the public is likely to react with something like this. Well, science is important if you want to be a scientist, but little kids don't know if they want to be when they grow up. Early on they just need the good old basics, you know, reading and writing and maybe some manners. Another example of this you say they think phenomenon, saying something to the extent of every child is a natural scientist. They explore, inquire and test what they learn. This is very common framing in the field. It's absolutely true. It's an inviting kind of statement. I've said this myself before. If you understand how young children work, this is something you can observe and see that they're working through a scientific process of inquiry as they explore their world. The public in our research is likely to react that some kids are into science and for others that's just not their thing. A third kind of you say they think of a topic of early learning, early STEM learning might be making a statement like this. The children need to engage with STEM concepts in multiple ways, multiple times to really build up that knowledge and skills. And hey, after school programs can be a great setting for these kinds of important learning opportunities. But based on framing like that, it's likely that the public will have a reaction like this. Engineering class after school, kids just need any time just to be kids. They need to recharge. I don't see the value of them doing the same thing after school that they do in school. So these are representations of public opinion that are formatted for us to be able to do this on a webinar. I encourage you and also need a link afterwards to explore our multimedia message window where you can see video of lots of different Americans across the country across opinion groups holding opinions like these or expressing thinking like this. But we just wanted to make the point here that communication is not a one-way street where you are just taking your message and transferring it directly to a passive recipient. But people have prior assumptions and those prior understandings, the ways they think about issues and influences the way your communications are interpreted. So it's a little bit less about what you say and more about what they hear. And when we can anticipate what people will hear, we can be sharper in what we say. But that first kind of thought about framing and how to think about framing from the public's point of view and anticipate the public's reaction will go, we're ready for our first live poll. Susan, can you make it go? Absolutely. I will make it go. Thank you so much. And as a quick reminder to everybody that's on, we are recording this. So not to worry, we'll be sending out a link to the archive along with the presentations. You should see that in no longer than a week. So everyone on the call right now, this is your opportunity to participate. I'd like you to look at these assumptions and which of these assumptions have you personally run into recently? And you can click on the one that you've run into recently. STEM isn't for young children. STEM is only for kids who are into it. Or STEM is hard and click time should really just be for fun. So go ahead and click in. This is just interactive. You can take your mouse and click on the one that you've heard or you've run into recently. And we're going to be able to show you the results. And I have about half the folks that have responded. Okay, great. So it looks like... I'm going to give you about five more seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. Now you should be able to see the results. Wow, look at that Julie. Yeah. And it is not surprising to me as a researcher here that people both recognize these and that multiple ones are in play. So that's a natural feature of human cognition. We have lots of different ways of thinking about a topic. And that's okay. So when we can anticipate these kinds of reactions, when we can predict, we can prepare. So in the course of the webinar today, we'll talk about some ways to kind of side-step these reactions, prevent these reactions. You can't argue people out of these sorts of things, but you certainly can navigate around them. So the first thing to think about is just anticipating these kinds of misunderstandings. And remembering what the great, I think he was a social scientist, although I suppose he was a playwright, George Bernard Shaw observed the biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has occurred. So here at Frameworks, we take that biggest problem in communication, the fact that we can anticipate that when people are close to an issue, when they have new information, when they are putting these issues on the agenda, they have ways of understanding the issue that the public just doesn't have access to and isn't practiced in ways of thinking. And we can use the tools of social science to really build better ways of getting our points across. So we have multiple methods to come up with framing recommendations. I'm just going to lightly say what these are, and then we'll spend most of the time talking about what the recommendations are and how they work. I'm not going to show the evidence behind each and every recommendation, but I absolutely feel free to ask questions if you're curious about that sort of thing. But we work through a systematic process where we talk about, we interview experts to see what are the main ideas that they want to get across, things like when children are exposed to science, technology, engineering, and math early on. They develop the kinds of habits, skills, and mindset that support later that have sophisticated STEM learning. We look at to the public and we basically send our anthropologists out into exotic locations like Baltimore and Tucson and ask ordinary Americans how they think about these issues. We really probe deeply for a couple hours to really dig into all the different cognitive tools they have for modeling these issues as a participant in our shared culture. We look at how the media and how advocates are framing these issues. What are the frames that are in play, that are feeding culture, that are influencing people's thinking? And then from that, with a lay of the land, we design specific tools like value statements. You know, this is about making sure that our society is ready for tomorrow or sometimes examples or explanations or metaphors. We take those tools out, test them rapidly through short on the street interviews, take them through more rigorous trials that often include a large nationally representative survey where we're testing frames head to head and against what we want them to accomplish. So are these frames working to build people's understanding of the issue? Do they have improved attitudes? Do they support policies that are online with what the science is telling us on these things? So in this particular slice of the work where we looked at the way people think about STEM learning, that body of research queried about just over 6,000 Americans. We have a much larger body of research on how Americans think about early learning and early childhood development that probably queried close to 100,000 Americans at this point and our work on education has involved about 35,000 Americans. So it's a pretty robust sample of how Americans think and how we can invite them into updated ways of thinking. So one of the youth say they think that we just talked about was the idea that early years that STEM just isn't for early years. We saw in our investigations into how Americans think about these things that a source of resistance to early STEM is the sense that we're cramming too much into kid days that we're asking them to learn at a younger and younger age. And that really betrays a fundamental misconception about how early development works. It's thinking about the brain as like a container. And when we are passive, we're pouring information into a passive receptacle, whereas if you understand early childhood development, you know, it's more, they're an active process of learning through inquiry and exploration. So in talking about STEM it's really important to avoid giving off in a queue that this is about providing information at a younger and younger age instead find ways to teach the public that young children do learn through exploration and experience. There's lots of ways you can do that. One particular tool we have found to be really helpful in helping the public understand what happens in early childhood development is the metaphor of brain architecture. This compares the process of early brain development to the building of a house. It's built much like a house from the bottom up. I'll give you an example of what that means, bottom up in just a moment. And it's an active process just like building in an active process. I want to talk about the skills and concepts developing in the early stages of life established the architecture, the wiring, and the foundation that supports later learning. I'll note here that we found that really talking about architecture and wiring is a little stronger than talking about foundation itself. Foundation is a word that happens frequently. It's a high-frequency lexical item if you'll permit me to go linguist on you for a second. Whereas architecture and wiring we talk about a little less frequently and certainly not in the context of the brain. So it's kind of a perk up a notice effect on folks. But more importantly when we recruit what people know about the process of building a house into thinking about how young children learn we are also recruiting some ideas that are really helpful for them. It helps them appreciate how and why early matters. It's not just a child passively sponging up experiences, but rather that there are certain things that are happening brain-wise in these early years. In talking about the brain and talking about experiences that foster skills it expands public thinking beyond the way they typically explain why kids learn or don't learn. And that explanation usually starts and ends with parents or what we call the family bubble. This idea that everything that matters happens inside the home and nothing that happens outside the home gets into that bubble. And that kind of thinking although parents are quite important I don't mean to dismiss the importance of parents and family relationships but what it does is it obscures the role that libraries play, community centers, early caregivers of all sorts. And so I'm making this a brain story, an experience story. It really helps people consider more ways that we can shape society to foster early learning. And making the brain, making it something that is built over time or it can continuously be added to, it makes it very different than something that's like a container that once it's filled up, it's filled up. It can be an ongoing process that can keep happening. So brain architecture helps to frame early learning as an active process of exploration that's influenced in lots of ways. Let me show you an example of how you might change your communications to use this insight. So a typical metaphor that we see in an early childhood field all the time is milestones being kind of the marker of how children develop. It's a very typical kind of messaging that the overall goals of children's development in science are to deepen their conceptual understanding of the world around them, to increase their comprehension of how science is practiced and to develop their abilities to conduct scientific investigations. One of the most important things parents can do is to meet these milestones and to provide a supportive environment. So when I look at this as a framer, I see obviously this is all accurate and true but I see some framing hazards, the ways the public will interpret this that might not be as intended. If we are deepening their understanding and their comprehension and developing their abilities to conduct scientific investigations, that last part especially I see the public saying, I don't need my child to be doing experiments. Again, get kind of cramming too much too soon. And this last phrase here about one of those things parents can do, often we are talking to parents and so it's natural to want to say what parents can do. But when we only call out parents, we are reinforcing the sense that parents are in this alone and reinforcing the narrative that all of it happens in the family bubble, which makes it harder for us to make a case for strong libraries, great after-school systems, strong network of community-based child care or child development providers. So there is some framing shifting we can do. And of course milestone means it's a process where it's predictable and we are moving forward so that's the good thing about that metaphor but it also says we have to do this thing before we do that thing which lets us kind of say I want to do the most important thing first which can we stem, we want to wait for that later on before they actually get the good stuff and that's the most important stuff down. So brain architecture can help us avoid those framing, the backfire effect that we might get. We can talk about the developing brain and being wired over time through experiences, initial or simple skills form the circuits that are bundled up into more complex skills later as children explore and grow. So here it's not that I need to do this first and then that later. These things are going to build on each other and be mutually reinforcing so it's a little less sequential and a little less zero sum than a milestone. When children are supported in exploring the world around them and anyone can do that supporting in the way we phrase this here. It's not just parents, it could be other adult caregivers or others who interact with children. The architecture of scientific understanding is established. So again, we set the foundation here. It's not that I'm asking the child to master inappropriate skills for the age, but I'm setting the architecture. And as adults interact with children who are experimenting and asking questions, so that is seen as an age-appropriate kind of thing that kids do. They're building the foundation for the ability to investigate problems scientifically. So same concepts as on the left, but reframed subtly in order to prevent pushback or in order to reduce this understanding. A lot of these changes are subtle and that's the key concept of frame effects. But small changes in how information is presented can lead to relatively large changes in how that information is understood, interpreted, and acted upon. So avoiding, filler up, and advancing exploration and experience through brain architecture. The next kind of thing you want to avoid is an alternative frame to advance. I want to avoid this sense that we are either filling up the attention battery or draining it. And I just talked about filling up, but let me talk about the draining a little bit more. We found that Americans model children's attention span and their ability to learn is a lot like a rechargeable battery that when they are intensely focused during the school day or in other formal setting, slowly their attention is draining and they need to recharge that attention battery by doing unstructured free choice non-academic and quite frankly people think about it as non-learning activities. So after school they need to go play sports or run around or just be kids, do nothing in order to be able to engage in that more effortful attention later. So again this is zero sum that learning happens in school and not out of school, that some kinds of things or learning must be hard and effortful for it to even count as learning. If it's fun it must not be learning. And with those things in mind you can see how having STEM in informal settings in particular Americans are likely to reject that. These topics are seen as hard, especially technology and engineering and math, as requiring lots of attention. And so why would we want to place those things into kind of free choice hour settings is really just people can have trouble wrapping their minds around it, unless you can provide an alternative frame for them to think about that topic within. So instead can we talk about how STEM can really tap and fuel intrinsic motivation? That's a different way of thinking about what it takes to engage in STEM learning. The metaphor that we found to be very productive in helping people appreciate that informal learning sites have distinctive contributions, that learning can happen in lots of places including informal environments, and that suppresses the zero sum thinking about time. We need time for learning and then time for brain rest is this idea of activation. That by talking about STEM learning experiences in the afternoons, the summer, or on weekends where they can activate interest in these subjects by providing opportunities for children to really experiment, play with concepts, get hands-on, and be in real-world situations. If you are working in an informal learning environment, I think it could be really incredibly helpful to you in making the case for why your type of institution is a necessary and valuable contributor to the overall learning ecosystem and not just a nice extra. Here's how you might use this particular metaphor. I took here something from the Association of Science and Technology Centers which is quite accurately researched and I spared you the footnotes, but the children who participate in informal STEM programs show higher school achievement in science and math. They report higher levels of interest in STEM subjects and they're more likely to choose a STEM career. All things that people are likely to say, I want that for my kids, for kids in society, but it's less likely to say how it happens and these people are less equipped to think about what informal does that's different. It's just because we get more STEM or is there something unique about this kind of setting? So here's something that kind of advances that we're capping intrinsic motivation kind of thinking. When children participate in effective after-school programs, after-school STEM programs, they get hands-on experiences and have time to freely explore those subjects. This sparks their curiosity and allows them to build up knowledge over time. Activating a greater interest in STEM through such programs leads children to do better in science and math and school and they may even become more likely to pursue a STEM related career. So lots of cues here for this activating kind of language. You've got sparking curiosity, activating. You could talk about fueling or turning on. These are all material kinds of metaphors. It's a little less of the mental metaphor without inspiring and motivating. It's a concrete kind of metaphor with stuff in it that rubs against each other and makes things happen, physical things. But that's an example of that metaphor and how it shifts attention from more of this is better, which leaves you open to too much is too much is too much. And instead, the sense that more kind of spartans and generates things. Susan, is my audio okay? Yes, your audio is perfect. Okay, great. Great, next we're going to talk about differences in pies and cakes. I'm on the East Coast. It's time for lunch. Almost time for dessert, so forgive this. We want to avoid the sense that more STEM means less of something else, less reading, less math. And I know math is included in STEM, but we found the public really models it is science so much, and technology and engineering are seen as highly advanced. People don't see how these four disciplines go together. So more of STEM is going to mean less of something else that Americans kind of know to be valuable. In the early years, that might be just time to play, morals or manners, coloring, ABCs, one, two, three. But the general sense is we want to avoid having STEM be in competition with taking a slice of that limited finite pie of time. And instead, have it be something that can be thought of as like adding richness, multiple layers to children's experience and that we want those multiple layers and lots of experiences. A metaphor that we found helped accomplish that particular shift in frame was a metaphor of fluency or immersion. The idea that just as people need to be immersed in real-world situations to learn a language, children need to explore STEM concepts and use them to fully understand them and become fluent in these subjects. When we introduced this metaphor we saw Americans say, yeah, you need classroom learning and informal learning. They need to work together. And the kinds of things you do, I took French for years and that was great and really helpful, but I didn't really get it until I had to go to Paris and figure out how to get around the metro system. So that kind of thing was the experience that people would talk about. And so this let informal learning sites have a distinctive contribution without devaluing what the formal K-12 system can do. It really sets up a formal system to talk about why hands-on applied experiential learning is important. It doesn't have to be about informal learning per se, but it can rather be about the need to use and practice with lots of experiences with certain kinds of concepts. And we found that if this is a metaphor where people really understood learning to happen over a long period of time, it made time long and skinny for people, not a finite clock that was ticking, ticking, ticking. And so that means it's less about that we're taking a slice of a finite resource and we're making good and interesting use of an abundant resource. So fluency might use it like this. Here's an example of a very typical advocacy communication. Young children develop science understanding best when given multiple opportunities to engage in science exploration and experiences through inquiry. The range of experiences is what gives them the basis for seeing patterns, forming theories, considering alternate explanations and building their knowledge. This is from a position paper from the NSTA. So it's authoritative for that particular genre, for that particular communication context. This is the kind of communication that's necessary for kind of saying what does the field know to be true and what is our expert position on it? But when asking people who aren't in the field to think about these topics, a metaphor can really help them get on the same page with the field with the people who are very immersed in these issues. So here's how to make those exact same points using this particular metaphor. Just as people speak of a new language more fluently when they learn it over time and go out and use it, children learn a scientific concept best when they encounter the idea of multiple times. When they have a range of experiences, they have a chance to notice patterns, come up with ideas about how things work, test them out, and consider alternative explanations. When children are immersed in investigating their world, they become more fluent in science. So we've got the analogy to language. We've used the word fluency and immersion, so that's the metaphor doing the work here. But there's also a plain language kind of effect, a cause and effect in everydayness to this reframing. So instead of the list of the range of experiences, research showed us that this gives them the basis for seeing patterns, forming theory, considering alternate explanations, although things are true. But in a more colloquial kind of framing that when they have a range of experiences, then kids have a chance to notice patterns, come up with ideas about how things work. That's a forming theory. So really using more accessible language that lets your audience understand and access the expert information and not staying in an expert register. So that's two framing tools that we're modeling there. So if you have ever wanted to talk metaphors with a linguist, now is your chance. I'm going to check in on the question in the chat box. And so I just just went through three metaphors that we saw to be useful. And I'll also see maybe there are other questions. Stahl, did you want to queue up any questions in particular for me? Sure. Well, we have flagged a couple. There's one that just came up, Chris is wondering if the listeners are allowed to use your wording in presentations to stakeholders or press releases. What is the framework? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Please use it. These are open source concepts for your public-facing communication. There are nonprofit missions to be the huge communication backstop. Everyone wishes they had, but can't afford. And so we've done the hard work of testing these metaphors against other ones, figuring out why they work, what you're trying not to activate in public thinking, and what you are trying to activate in public thinking. So please use these concepts freely. After you've not used them commercially, and we ask that if you are giving a presentation about, hey, here's how you should frame this, and you cite us. You can see the full terms of use on our website. But if you're writing a brochure, you can slide back to say, hey, here's why early STEM matters. Please use this and don't cite us in that context because you really want the words to be your own. You want to be the author of your own communication. But yeah, they are open source concepts. Good question. What else? Great. And somewhat related, Matthew is wondering if there is an early STEM message brief available on a website that they can use? Yeah, we have tons of STEM messaging on our website right now. In terms of the early STEM, we do have something in production supported by the CUNY Center. And I just don't know. It's on our website right now, and I'm not sure when it's going to be published. So I'll say watch this space. I know we have something in the works. And I will check in after this, and if it's available, I'll make sure that Susan sends it out in the follow-up. So maybe stay tuned and we might have it right away. Thanks. So those are the questions that we have had so far. If anyone has another question, please feel free to chat it in. And while Julie continues her presentation, we could always circle back to the questions at the end. Okay, great. Well, I'll keep going. All right, final avoid advance kind of idea. We saw in public thinking that these subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math were modeled as for certain kinds of kids. So let me say a little bit more about that. First was just kids who are interested in that sort of thing. So we had people saying, well, I was really into science, but it's not everyone's thing. Some kids really love math, others, they just hate it. So it was seen as a topic where it really had to involve an element of free choice and affinity. And if that was kind of baked into kids, you either were that type or you weren't. What we see as an expert thing is that we're creating these types or not by creating interests or snuffing it out based on the kinds of experiences we're learning. And we need to be fostering greater attainment in these subjects overall to meet the needs of the future. And we really need to start that work early because the trajectory is influenced by early experiences. So one kind of type that we saw the public hold was about innate interests and that has some limitations in it. The other kind of typing we saw was when was around racial categories and gender categories. Advocates are rightfully pointing out that we have real disparities in educational attainment on these subjects that are African-Americans are less likely to pursue STEM careers, less likely to hold those kinds of degrees. Women are not represented fully in STEM careers and degrees and so we really need to really look at what's happening in the early years to address that. When presented with those kinds of ideas, we saw Americans fall back on really stereotypes about those groups, those things weren't valued in the home, that really those kinds of kids have other interests. And so we want to avoid framing that lets people stay comfortable in those assumptions and find frames that let us make the case that STEM is everywhere and STEM is for everyone. If this isn't limited to certain types of kids. One strategy, and I can't do this topic justice in this format so if this is something that interests you, I want to encourage you to go in and read the full of research. But one strategy that we use to kind of reframe from some types to for everyone was choosing, thinking about what kind of examples of effective STEM programming we used. We tested four different examples and I just wanted to curious, let's see which one would you predict was most effective at building support for informal STEM learning and building support for the idea that STEM is for everyone. Just take a guess on which one worked best with the public. Susan, can you make the poll go? Sure can. Alright, so I see a lot of people are fastest fingers. I'm moving in 17, 18, 19 responses. He will give you another 5 seconds, 4, 3, people are rushing to get in the answers, 2, 1. Wow, look at that. Are you doing a little bar grafting? Nope, you can go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, I do it? Okay. Yes, well, clearly you all should work on our staff. Community Garden was the one that worked the best. I'll say a little bit about the others. One, we selected them, particularly the programming apps and the robotics for kids as examples to test because the field is using them so often that they are kind of very popular, especially the robotics ones, examples of creative, innovative, forward-thinking kinds of experiences that turn kids on to these subjects. It's kind of a poster child for the field in a lot of ways. But we found it clear in a way that the Community Garden example had very productive frame effects for the public. It helped people think about, it really reduced their attitudes that this is for some kids, and it increased their support for this happening in informal settings for this being kind of more STEM all day, every day kind of thing. This example has some very specific productive effects. Here's an example of how we wrote the example. Here's an example of our example. Kids can learn many different intertwined STEM skills together. For example, in a setting like a Community Garden, students can conduct scientific observations on how the environment affects certain plants. We've talked about kind of the F in STEM, the science and the biology in particular, right? They can learn how to leverage technology, which can be as simple as deciding, you know, shovel or a hoe or as advance or setting up, you know, a digital sensor to track key indicators. So again, defined technology for the public is kind of selecting tools for tasks, which is very different than how the public typically thinks about technology, which is as an object, right? A computer or a mobile phone rather than as a subject, a way of thinking or a mindset, a set of skills for identifying problem-solving tools. They can think like engineers while building structures and systems for their plots. I think our original example actually had a steak, you know, for tomato plants. So again, it doesn't have to be retrofitting the Golden Gate Bridge, a very complicated kind of engineering task, but it can be designing solutions for specific problems. And they can exercise their math skills like calculating rainfall, nutrients, making the day that peppers will ripen. Because these learning environments are flexible and allow kids to explore their interests, afterschool STEM programs are especially effective at reaching a wide range of young people, and not just those who already think of themselves as quote-unquote math and science kids. You can see how this particular example, as opposed to perhaps some of the other ones we talked about, programming, robotics, music, is easily, people can easily imagine it as very young children as well as older children. So one recommendation is that if you have to get people to say, what do you mean by early STEM? If you've only got one example to, you know, the chance to trot out one example, we would recommend that the field make more consistent use of this particular example as an illustration of how these specific disciplines work together as a set, what makes STEM a thing. But also, you know, how it can be used in the early years. So this particular example is one that you all can feel confident and rely on. But it also has some effectiveness factors, characteristics that would let you, you know, think about, you know, how to make an effective example out of your favorite example, out of spraying your favorite example more effectively. So the community garden example and other examples that we found to be effective are concrete, meaning people can visualize them. They're very kind of specific. They're conceivable, meaning they seem easy to do. So we found that the music engineering, music production example didn't work well because people assumed it'd be very expensive and therefore couldn't happen everywhere or in every community. And that left them comfortable in saying, kids will do this and some kids won't, right? Whereas the community garden example, because people could think about it as feasible and pretty easy to do, it had spillover effects on, oh, STEM is feasible and easy to do. Or, you know, at least doable is not easy. It has causal change in it. What affects what kind of language? So not just a list of associated characteristics, but you can see my example here that when kids can kind of muck around, then they get interest built. You can see that kind of what happens in this setting that leads to the outcomes that we're saying are effective. So there's some cause and effect kind of language. If this, then that. They're credible examples. So they're not seen as exotic. They're not seen as, you know, only happening, you know, under certain circumstances but have a certain reality check level to them. And as well as find an example, we'll have collective benefits. So it's not, my community garden was great for these kids, but community, when we provide these kinds of experiences, all kids benefit. Our society or community is stronger. That kind of a collective sense. And it's seen as, you know, going beyond the usual suspects. So that is the last specific recommendation I'm going to dig into today. I want to just say that framing doesn't work like a switch. It's not a single thing that you can change, you know, and the advocate said let there be light and the public saw that it was good. It's framing as a practice for your communications works a lot more like a sextant below there in the corner there with lots of doohickeys to use the technical term that you need to fidget with and adjust to really navigate toward the understanding, you know, you're trying to bring to the people you're communicating with. So each of these frame elements and others that you can explore in our research, each have a small contribution to the overall frame you're trying to build. In terms of resources that you can look at, you can definitely look at our website. We have under education. There's a whole section on education and you can find the STEM resources fairly easily, I hope. I also want to point you to a toolkit that we built in collaboration with the After School STEM Hub which is an initiative led by the After School Alliance but it involves lots of organizations. A few of whom I saw are represented here today including the Y and 4-H Boys and Girls Club, some of the major youth-leading organizations are involved in this. So this is a very, I hope, user-friendly toolkit. So there are slides that you can steal and build into your presentations about why STEM matters. There's an animation that can be used in your presentation to really set up how STEM works. I think a pretty well done version of the community gardens example in it. Some talking points which you can use to outline your structure, structure your communications. Even infographics that you can share to build the case for STEM on social media or in other settings. So I encourage you to visit our partners there and take whatever is there and use it. I'm going to slow down now and just pause and check in with the questions and we've got a good amount of time to have discussions. So ask me anything and everything that might have come to mind as we're working through this. To talk, can you help me moderate here? Yeah, we had a great question from Carol who was wondering about framework developing culturally and linguistically diverse metaphors for early childhood caregivers who might not be English-speaking, for example. And wondering if, if we're going to develop that. Ah, very good question. So all of our research is sponsored and like every nonprofit we're on a strict budget. So this research was conducted in English. It's not to say that it didn't include anyone who is bilingual or speaks another language in the home. I would say that the cultural and linguistic diversity that we have in our sample is on par with what we would see in the American voting of public. So it is a limitation of the research. This research was done in English, not in other languages. That said, and we did not have the opportunity to really retest or do primary research in other linguistic communities. That said, I will say that a well-chosen metaphor can be a really strong tool for engaging people who speak a language other than English. Assuming that the basic concepts, you know, the house turning things on or language fluency, right? Assuming that that concept exists in their culture and their language, it can be a really great way to bring them into an English-language conversation on a topic, so this is, you know, how a lot of English-language instruction proceeds, right? It's through the use of analogy and metaphor. So I don't want to... Our evidence does not clearly prove that these particular metaphors work with lots of different... linguistically different populations. However, theory about metaphor would suggest that these are better than guessing, right, and likely to have lots of good effects. I also notice here, Carol, that your question talked about the idea that the zero's some gain concept is, you know, it's something that comes out of psychology, and if not, it's kind of everyday speak. Absolutely agree with you on that. I'm not suggesting that people are walking around saying, I believe that, you know, the limited day, school day, we have a zero's some gain between the basics and more advanced subjects, right? People aren't using that kind of language, but they are reasoning in that kind of way, right? So it's our job as researchers to pull out, hey, these folks are modeling this as zero's some, and that has implications for how people talk about it to get them past that way of thinking, but no, I don't think anybody in our research sample used the word zero's some, although it was very clear that they were talking about, you know, you only got so much time in a day, you know, you really have to make sure you get the basics down firmly before you do these more advanced things like technology and engineering. So they were thinking about it in that way even if they weren't using that language. Good question. I hope that wasn't too much there. I have a question for you, Julie. You know, what are, I love that the example of the gardening program is a concrete, believable way that children can be exposed to STEM learning early on. If you are running a program, say in a library, what would some activities or ideas of types of activities that a librarian might program to complement some of the more literacy-focused programming that libraries provide? Sure. Play with box and do the trick from a STEM point of view. So if your communication task is to make a case for libraries as part of the STEM ecosystem, then the challenge you've got there is saying, why is literacy part of science and math? People think of them as compartmentalized, discreet subjects. So that's the framing challenge you've got is showing how these concepts help each other out. And so for that particular framing challenge, I don't know that I would go with an example as a solution to that challenge. I would go with something like fluency as a framing tool that would help you build that challenge, that we need lots of kinds of experiences to get the concept. So, you know, we need to read an engaging book about tenders and bamboo to get this concept of how plants and animals work together and how they're paired in certain ways or matched in certain ways in ecosystems. And this gives us ideas that we can transfer to other kinds of similar concepts, you know, squirrels and acorns, you know. And that's one kind of experience, right? The literacy experience adds a certain layer, adds to the fluency. It's kind of a touch point, right? That helps scaffold up and build those concepts. But they need to be also played with in other ways. If you're doing, you know, hands-on things at a library, you know, I just took my five-year-old to Lego Club at our library down the street two weeks ago. And, you know, I think that talking about the library as one of the points, you know, one of the kind of pollination points in a robust ecosystem of learning, where all of these bills can be built, would be another way to do it too, to talk about the library as part of the ecosystem of STEM learning. Does that answer your question? It does. That was a great answer. Thank you, Julie. Anyone else have questions for our presenter today? Or comments or reasonably phrased complaints? I'll take them all. I have a new question from Tony, who is asking about how you get parents to invest in their child-vibration STEM activities. And, you know, Julie, I think that this is really hitting the central question of your presentation about STEM, about early STEM. Yeah. So, Tony, that's a good question. And I appreciate that it's an immediate challenge that if you're running one of these programs, what is it that will really make that program take off and have the resources at its disposal? The particular question you asked, how do you get a parent to choose this over something else? I don't know that I have an immediate answer for that. That's not what our work is exactly designed to do. It's more providing the surround sound that makes that decision more harmonious and fluid for a parent, makes it more likely to kind of dance in that direction. So, if we can have a society where people understand that active, engaged enrichment in the early years matters, matters for the long term, that the particular concepts, you know, that the STEM concepts go together, they go with early childhood, they are built over time, right? That's the kind of cultural understanding that would make your program a yes, of course, not a maybe nice extra. And that might lead parents to enroll in it at a fee, but it might open up sources of funding that make it unnecessary to have that point of purchase fee, right? It might create a space where those kinds of opportunities are built in in lots of different ways. So, I think that our work is the way we test it, but what gets people to appreciate this stuff at a conceptual level? It gets them to support the kinds of policies that make sure you've got access to really well-trained qualified staff to run that program, that there's funding streams that would support that kind of work, but I don't know that I could, as a researcher, say, hey, if you talk activation, parents will sign up. I can't say that this does that. It might give it a try, but that's not the specific problem we were solving for. So, I hope that wasn't too disappointing of an answer, but it was an accurate one. And one I know people are constantly wrestling with as, you know, if you're running that kind of program. All right, I want to give away one more pro-tip if there aren't more questions, which is I have broken one of our own rules, I guess, in our rule. I've done one thing that was not mine with our recommendations throughout this presentation, which is I've used the term stem, you know, a lot, and frequently and without a ton of explanation. And I'll just say that was one thing that our research found was not particularly effective with the public. So, in educational circles, the acronym stem has kind of become a word. And lots of people, you know, understand it as a thing. But we found the public had no idea what the term meant. When asked to guess, they assumed it had something to do with stem cells and stem cell research. And so, it's not a caution, everyone. You don't have to throw away the acronym. That was not a not, but you do need to explain it early and often. And explaining it isn't just saying this stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. That's good, do that. But you want to use the acronym, say what it stands for, and somewhere in your communications, as often as you can, provide ways for people to think about how those four disciplines are connected, right? So, these are the disciplines that have us look at data and generate hypotheses, test and learn, and, you know, look to evidence to solve problems. Those are the kinds of explanations you want to use. And there's a lot of examples for how to do that in the afterschool stem hub toolkit, as well as the toolkit that's on our website. So, that's my last study. I think that Susan had some more information to share if there aren't more questions now. Great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Well, yeah, it's nothing else. Thank you for, yeah, thank you for giving me the chance to share the work of our team here. This is a great project to work on, and we've just found tremendous enthusiasm for these, you know, explanatory techniques in the field of folks who are working on advancing stem learning in lots of different ways. And Early Childhood is a topic near and dear to our heart here at Framework, so it's especially exciting to get to smash these two things together. So, thank you for inviting us, and Susan, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, and folks still have plenty of time and opportunity to ask questions, and I do want to give a shout-out to Sarah Beth. Sarah Beth, go to libraries. She wanted to give a, just a comment that some things can share what she does in the children's department of her library. She's got a science math table, full of things like magnets, counting bears, magnifying glasses, fake bugs, real bugs, encased in plastic, and the kids all go for it and stay for a long time, and they love it. And that's a really nice story. I love libraries and things like that, and such a wonderful example. For all the folks that are still with us, please hang in there. We have a few more minutes. I have some other interesting information to share with you, and we also want to get some feedback from you. So, of all the things that Julie went over today, and it was a tremendous amount of useful and engaging information, I'd like you to chat in one thing. I know, just relegate yourself to one thing. You can chat too if you really want to. That you learned today, or something that you're going to try to implement, or something you're going to try to reframe. And perhaps also consider how you're going to share this with colleagues or parents. So, go ahead and chat that in, as I move on to talk about a few other things that TechSoup offers. I know we have a lot of folks on this call at all of these libraries. I do want to skip over to some upcoming free events before going to our online courses. But in a couple of weeks, we've got a one, two, three punch. We've got on the 15th of November, power up your data with Microsoft Power BI. So, if you're a beginner with data visualization and you want to see all the amazing things that Power BI can do, you can attend this. It is for beginners. So, Jordan, the presenter, will be able to identify and define a lot of the terminology that is used in the data visualization world. We also have a fix-it at the library. We'll do it yourself for para-programs. It's a wonderful webinar. That's on Wednesday the 16th. And then on Thursday the 17th, we have how you can successfully promote your year-end fundraising campaign. That's definitely a not-to-be-nest event. And then towards the end of November, the 4th Thanksgiving, we've got five things you didn't know about TechSoup's donation programs. And so, those of you that are new to TechSoup, or you're just joining us, you've been sent this link by the Early Learning Lab or Julie's community, we do want to tell you that we have some online courses that you can take. We have several free courses, and we are continuing to develop these courses. If you go to techsoup.course.tc, slash catalog, you can find out more about these courses. Currently, we have a course in there for tech training. So, for those of you that have to conduct training in your workplace, whether it's a nonprofit, an early learning setting, or a library, there are some tips here for change management through tech training. Some tips on how to really customize training for adult learners. We also talk about how to develop measurable learning objectives and give you some videos along with those as well. That's a free course we have available. And for those of you that have the task of tech planning, which everyone should do, but nobody really wants to do, Ideal Wear partnered with TechSoup to bring you, it's a four-course series. The first course is free, and it's an amazing course. There are 11 modules that lead you through the step-by-step process of assessing your IT infrastructure. There's a hardware safari, but you don't have to wear a hard hat or anything. It's a great interactive course where you can get the basics to get started for a tech plan for your organization. So, we encourage you to go there. And I wanted to see if there were questions to tell any other questions. I haven't seen specific questions come through, but there are so many comments that are coming through just from listeners who are sharing what they're doing and what they plan to do based on what they've learned today. And I was just typing in that I find this so enriching and so inspiring that people are going to share the notes with their colleagues. They're thinking about new programming for their programs and for their libraries. So, I think that this is really eye-opening and I appreciate this frame, Julie, that you brought to us because I think that this is really a new way of thinking about them learning and it has just been so valuable in eye-opening. Yeah, Carol's example is great. I was just writing to her personally. Go ahead, Julia. You can share her cover. This is really enriching. I think I'd be interested to go with that. Yeah. I absolutely would. So, Carol Clark from Santa Cruz and Monterey County talked about how she is using integrating literacy with STEM, particularly for dual language learners. So, they found Spanish-English books on everyone's favorite pill bugs and they use them in concert with the center gardens. So, the librarians introduced the books of the libraries and then the kids can kind of go and check out pill bugs. They also make sure that parents get library cards and the centers have books through center lending libraries. So, there's books at the center garden and garden stuff at the library and that's an integrated approach, particularly great for dual language learners. You know, who, like all learners, really need to encounter concepts in multiple contexts in multiple ways. That's great. And Carol also shared about how they're working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium on marine themed books and the aquariums donating free tickets to the aquarium for families as well. So, I love to see that kind of integration between libraries and museums and just that whole ecosystem of support for children and families within a community. It's great to see that integration. Yeah, Monterey Bay Aquarium is a great partner in so many ways. They are one of the leading aquariums and the initiative we're involved in to talk about climate change and its impact on our ecosystem in positive and productive and hopeful ways. And they also have been engaged in this particular research they shared today on how to make the case for STEM learning and informal STEM learning. So, we've worked with their staff before. So, Carol, you've now got not just a partner in crime but a partner in framing as well. Great. Thank you. Wow, we do have a lot of wonderful comments. Well, we do hope that the folks that are still on the call and on the webinar, it's important that we get your feedback today. TechSoup works hard to deliver content like this and we work with partners like the Early Learning Lab to develop this content and deliver for you. So, if you complete the survey that pops up at the end when you exit out of this event or when I close the event, there's about 10 questions. If you would please take 60 seconds to answer those so we can continue to deliver wonderful content like this and work with folks like Julie. We would really appreciate that. A huge thank you to Chateau and Julie for bringing this amazing content to our collective communities. We hope we can have them both on again in another webinar in the near future. I also want to thank Becky for handling all the chat on the back end and thanks so much Becky. And of course, we want to thank ReadyTalk. They are our webinar sponsors. And we hope to see you on an event coming up soon. Please go to TechSoup.org and check out our upcoming events. Remember, all of our webinars are free and we also have our TechSoup courses you can access. Thanks and have a great day, everyone.