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Bringing Excitement to Schools Through STEM Challenge Competitions

,
Colorado Convention Center, 603

Participate and share: Interactive session
Recorded Session
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Presenters

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College and Career Supervisor
West Baton Rouge Parish Schools
Candice Breaux is the Career Technical Education Supervisor in the West Baton Rouge Parish School System. She previously served as the Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Career Tech Ed in the Iberville Parish School System. She is a former high school math teacher and principal who still teaches any chance she gets. Teaching is her passion and now she gets to teach those around her about STEM and career opportunities.
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District CTE Coordinator
West Baton Rouge Parish
@Jill Edwards
ISTE Certified Educator
Mrs. Edwards is the West Baton Rouge Parish CTE Career Academy Coordinator and currently works at the newly established Career and Tech Ed Academy in her district. She has 25 years of experience in education and has worked in the field of CTE for the last 12 years. While she is passionate about bringing career opportunities to high school students, she has spent the last 10 years finding ways for teachers to incorporate technology in the classroom!

Session description

This sessions brings practical ways to include competition in schools through STEM activities. Attendees leave with a blueprint of our STEM Challenge and ways to adapt it to their school. With over 20 events included, everyone is sure to find events that will work for their students and their budget!

Purpose & objective

Purpose: Bring STEM to life for students in all communities through fun and engaging competitions.
Objectives: Participants will be able to implement their own STEM Challenges in their school communities by using the blueprint provided.
Participants will be able to leverage local industry partners to help grow student competitions and student interest in STEM.

Participants will "play" some of the competitions during our session to experience the excitement and fun created in these environments. No special equipment is needed. We will go through each event with rules and descriptions to give educators a complete blueprint of how this can work.

We have implemented STEM Challenges for the previous two years and it continues to grow with each event. Students often ask if we can host them more frequently and if we can add events to the overall challenge. Industry partners are asking for more ways to get involved as judges or event sponsors because of the positive impact they see when they attend.

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Outline

I. Presenter and Topic Intro (3 minutes)
II. The History of the Challenge (5 minutes)
III. Included Events (including opportunities to participate in events like Math 24, KenKen, and Quiz Bowls) (30 minutes)
IV. Scoring (5 Minutes)
V. Q&A (Remaining time)

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Supporting research

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/improving-workforce-development-and-stem-education-to-preserve-americas-innovation-edge/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Bureau,and%20require%20highly%2Dtrained%20workers.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/11/increasing-access-and-opportunity-in-stem-crucial-say-experts/

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Session specifications

Topic:
Games for learning & gamification
Grade level:
PK-12
Skill level:
Beginner
Audience:
Library media specialists, Teachers, Technology coordinators/facilitators
Attendee devices:
Devices required
Attendee device specification:
Smartphone: Android, iOS, Windows
Laptop: Chromebook, Mac, PC
Tablet: Android, iOS, Windows
Subject area:
Career and technical education, STEM/STEAM
ISTE Standards:
For Students:
Empowered Learner
  • Students understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose, use and troubleshoot current technologies and are able to transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies.
Innovative Designer
  • Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
Computational Thinker
  • Students break problems into component parts, extract key information, and develop descriptive models to understand complex systems or facilitate problem-solving.