CREATE Lab

in a guest post by Prof. Illah Nourbakhsh

"Six counties are preparing to take on WaterBot on a larger scale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, epicenters of the Marcellus Shale drilling controversy. As schools and citizen groups take this on, adopting local waterways, measuring them and sharing the data using Fusion Tables, we believe citizens’ abilities to directly impact policy will be greatly amplified, armed as they will be with real data that is easy to visualize and communicate in powerful ways." read the full post

The Marshall University Early Education STEM Center is one of the Professional Development Schools piloting the Arts and Bots project.  The project, originally started for middle school girls, has expanded to include both genders as well as other ages.  This is the first time the project has been used in elementary grades as well as pre-k. Many thanks to graduate assistant Lee-Dorah Wokpara for taking on this task and being creative and flexible with the curriculum. Children were encouraged to make a plan and draw a design before creating their robot.  We can't wait to see what the children come up with! 

Teachers from Huntington High School, Ceredo Elementary, South Point High School and the MU Early Education STEM Center took part in a 2-day training on arts and bots on February 17th and 18th on Marshall's campus.  The 8 teachers agreed to pilot the project and integrate it into existing classroom curriculum and will be using it in a variety of subjects including engineering, physics, chemistry, science and math.  Jenn Cross from CMU's CREATE Lab was on hand to help train the teachers on equipment use while the Harless CREATE Satellite team assisted with curriculum. The project will expand to include additional schools and teachers in the fall and a summer training is planned.   We look forward to seeing what the teachers and students come up with!

The June Harless CREATE Satellite held a two-day training on September 30th and October 1st at Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia.

Around 40 teachers from Cabell, Wayne, Nicholas and Randolph counties from year one and two of the grant learned about GigaPan technology and how to integrate it into existing curriculum. Advanced integration strategies for every day use in reading, writing, vocabulary, social studies and science were examined as well.  Teachers left with projects planned and ideas ready to incorporate into their classroom.  We're excited about beginning a new year with GigaPan and looking forward to working with a great group of teachers!    

Teachers at Huntington High School are combining GigaPan technology with West Virginia history to engage students and help them understand the unique culture that surrounds them.  

Coal and coal mining in West Virginia has had perhaps the biggest impact on shaping the history and now the future of our state. Coal is found in 53 of its 55 counties with 43 of them having minable reserves. Even though coal has played such an important role in developing WV and the future of our state depends on its use as an alternative fuel, few WV students know much about it. School teachers from Cabell County are embarking on a unique project this summer to develop the skills necessary to bring place-based curricula dealing with WV coal to their own classes. These teachers traveled throughout West Virginia utilizing GPS, scientific probeware, blogs, still/video cameras, and a host of software to develop a "virtual Tour" to many of the mining sites, both past and present, that have helped shape our WV history. Cabell county teachers learned about deep coal mining, surface mining, stream run-off, and the history of coal mining in general during their trip. 

 

Below is a video created by Josh Ratliff showing how GigaPan was used to document historical sites in West Virginia history.  

Marshall University's Early Education STEM Center was featured last week on WV Public Broadcasting's show "This Week in West Virginia" highlighting science initiatives in the state. Check out the video and the children using a GigaPan puzzle during their discovery and play!

3rd and 5th grade students utilized GigaPan technology to learn about Brazil and other cultures in their "World of Diversity Project". They took GigaPans, made diary entries, Venn diagrams, and acrostic poems during the course of the semester