Lesson 1: STEM Lab Format and How do I prepare to teach a STEM Lab?

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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the VEX classroom. Today, we are gonna talk about our STEM Labs for VEX IQ and how you can actually prepare to teach a STEM Lab.

In the previous video, we talked about creating a classroom culture, classroom organization, and also engaging parents. If you have not seen that video yet, I would highly encourage you to go check that out because, as I mentioned in that video, if you don't get the culture of your classroom right, if you don't create a classroom of risk-taking, and if you don't do things to make sure that you have high student engagement, and if you aren't doing things to enhance creativity in your classroom, then really understanding the STEM Lab format is really just gonna be more of a procedural thing for you.

The big impact that you're gonna have is utilizing the STEM Lab format in that classroom culture that I talked about in the previous video. So if you've not seen that, go ahead and take a look at that. Then you can come back, and now you can learn about the actual format of our STEM Labs.

Now, we have a lot of curriculum that we have for VEX IQ. We have activities, which are a one-page Google Doc, which I'll talk about here in a minute. And then we also have STEM Labs. The STEM Labs that we have are in two different formats, okay? The one set of STEM Labs we have is for what we call our SPARK format. In that format, there's a lot of different teacher notes. There's a lot of facilitation for you. There's a lot of things in that SPARK format to help you be successful with those STEM Labs.

We created a new set of STEM Labs when VEX released IQ second generation. Those STEM Labs have a slightly different format. Honestly, the two biggest differences between them are, number one, the videos. We didn't have this studio when we created that first set of STEM Labs. Number two, the STEM Labs are all organized and themed around competitions—classroom competitions.

In this particular video series, I'm going to be spending more time talking about the STEM Labs for the second-generation VEX IQ because, again, I think they're easier for you to implement, and I think they're easier for you to be flexible and do different things in your classroom with. There are still a lot of different resources that you can use with the other STEM Labs that follow the SPARK format. If you want to combine the two, you can certainly do that. We have pacing guides that show you how you can do that. Of course, you can always ask those questions in the professional learning community as part of VEX Professional Development Plus.

The bottom line is we have a lot of different curriculum for you. But for this video, we're gonna be focusing primarily on our learn, practice, compete format with our classroom competition STEM Labs. So let's go to education.vex.com and take a look at what I'm talking about here.

For our STEM Labs, if I go and I select VEX IQ, here are VEX IQ activities right here. Again, these are the one-page Google Docs. They're really just a light way for you to introduce VEX IQ, differentiate instruction to supplement what it is that you are doing. I'll just select this one right here. Because they are Google Docs, they give you the opportunity to adjust them however you like. Again, you can use this to supplement what you are teaching. You can use this if you have students that get done building a robot early, and they're looking for some more to do. If you want to dive in or reteach a particular concept, these are here for you. They all have the same format. They're all written to be student-facing. So your students can just get this activity and then just go on their own and do it, as you can see with the step-by-step section right here. Level up if they want more challenge. Tips. And then you can see the standard link down for it below.

So this is linked to a CSTA standard because this is more of a coding activity that we have here. These are great. And again, these are flexible for you to use however you want in your classroom. But again, if you wanna see how to use the activities in the STEM Labs together, we have all of that in our pacing guides, which you can utilize and follow.

We have many different activities for you to choose from right here. You can use the filter over here. If you're more interested in doing engineering, we have activities that are focused on that or on a particular subject.

All right, back to the STEM Labs themselves. The first set of STEM Labs that we have here are the ones for second generation. You can see them labeled second gen right here. Now, you can do these STEM Labs if you have a first-generation kit. If you have questions about that, schedule a one-on-one session with us, or ask the question to the professional learning community, and we'll go over all of that with you. Even though they're labeled second generation, you can do these STEM Labs if you have a first-generation kit. So don't worry about that.

As I scroll down a little bit further, you'll see some of the ones like Tallest Tower, Draft Forward and Reverse, Turning. These are the STEM Labs under that previous format, the SPARK, the seek, play, apply, rethink, and know format that we talked about. There are two different sections to these STEM Labs. You have what we call the teacher version and also the student versions. Just to show that to you again, if I go on the Turning one, you see here, student, student facing, and then the teacher version. The teacher version is what has all the notes in it. This is your online teacher's manual that you can follow on here for you. You can see it's very thorough. Everything that you need in order to be able to facilitate the STEM Lab is in here for you. Very comprehensive, very thorough.

If you do wanna do one of these STEM Labs, you can obviously do it with a second-generation kit also. If you want to, you know, basically make your own scope and sequence in which you do some of these STEM Labs in the SPARK format and some of the ones in the competition format, you could do that. If you love the concept of a classroom competition, and you wanna do this Turning STEM Lab and make it a classroom competition, again, schedule a one-on-one session, ask that question to the community. We'll be more than happy to help you show you how to do that, okay?

For the sake of this video, again, I'm gonna turn on the Tug of War one right here. These are all designed to be student facing. What do I mean by that? You would ask your students to go ahead and log on, and they would, for example, go to lesson two right here. You see the introduction. You can see what I mean by student facing. In this lesson, you'll learn about force, how unbalanced forces create motion, and how that applies to your robot. This is all written in the language of the students. This is designed for the student to be able to follow along with this for you.

Now, what you have in order to be able to prepare for this, as I talked about in a previous video, is you have the teacher's portal right here, okay? This is your, as I mentioned before, your online teacher's manual right here. If you want a thorough deep dive into, and I'm gonna talk about a lot of these concepts in these subsequent videos, but a thorough overview of the STEM Labs and how to implement it, that's this video right here. This is me talking. It's just another resource for you about how to actually implement the STEM Lab. The video underneath here is gonna show you how to get started. The actual teacher notes are right here. These are your teacher notes. I'm gonna be referencing this throughout this video.

Thank you for your attention and dedication to enhancing your classroom with these resources. We are here to support you every step of the way. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

These are your teacher notes that you can utilize to implement the STEM Lab. Building your first robot. I've already gone over the teacher's portal for you and what's in there, so I don't want to belabor the point. But you have all that information there to help you actually get started with the particular STEM Lab.

If we take a step back for a moment and really think about how to prepare to teach the STEM Lab, there are a couple of things you want to consider. First, what is the big goal you are trying to achieve with the STEM Lab? It's important to distinguish between the actual STEM Lab competition itself and your goals as the teacher for your classroom.

In this particular STEM Lab, students will try to create a robot that can win a tug of war against another robot. We will cover concepts like unbalanced forces, gear ratios, center of gravity, and center of mass. As a teacher, you need to decide what you want to emphasize to your students throughout the lab. It could be one of those concepts, such as balanced and unbalanced forces, which is a standard you want to hit in your science or STEM classroom. It could also be about collaboration, iteration, or applying the engineering design process, or a combination of these elements.

Whatever it is, decide on the goal you want for your students. Then, consider what an exemplar looks like. What does it look like when students have mastered collaboration, the engineering design process, or the concept of balanced and unbalanced forces? Think about what that would look like in the application of the STEM Lab and how you want the students to document it. They will document their work in their engineering notebook.

I talked about the idea of securing success in the previous video. The teacher and the student should be on the same page about what success looks like. At the classroom level, success is them competing in the competition. But above that, what is the big idea or essential thing you want your students to get out of the STEM Lab? Once you identify that, determine how you want your students to express it in their engineering notebook, how you want it documented, and what it would look like.

After you understand that, you can be the facilitator to guide your students through the process. Think about what you want to see in your classroom. How do you want to see your students collaborate? How do you want them to demonstrate their understanding of balanced and unbalanced forces? How do you want them to apply the engineering design process successfully? Write these down as "look fors"—the things you want to see in your classroom. Document these in your engineering notebook, lesson plan book, or Google Doc as a reminder of what you want the students to focus on while applying the STEM Lab in the classroom.

That is really step one that you really want to be able to accomplish in preparing for the STEM Lab. You identify what are the exemplars, what are the look-fors, that you want your students to utilize in the STEM Lab. Then, write those things down, document them somehow, and that's going to organize your facilitation throughout the entire STEM Lab. Again, what you want that to be is totally up to you. It's your classroom, it's your goals for your students, but you want to identify and document it.

Now, if you want to talk about that, if you want ideas from other educators, you can ask that question to the community, and I'm sure you'll get some great feedback on that. So, identify what those things are.

Secondarily, another great thing that you can do in preparing for the STEM Labs is looking at the formative assessment. The formative assessment that we have in the STEM Lab is designed to check the understanding of the students. You want to be familiar with that because the whole purpose of formative assessment is to form your teaching, your facilitation, based upon the feedback that your students are getting from you. That should feed into the big ideas that you are trying to actually teach in your classroom, which is the formative assessment that we have.

So, let's go ahead and take a look at that in the STEM Lab. If I go back to the STEM Lab itself, let's just go to Lesson 3: Using a Gear Train. In here, we're going to add, let's go to the Learn section where there's going to be a video. We're going to talk, as you see here, about gear, force, and mechanical advantage. Here are your check-your-understanding questions right here for the students to complete.

Now, again, this is a Google Doc. If there are things that you want to add onto here, if you're doing something about student collaboration or whatever, you can make a copy of this Google Doc and add on there. Or if you're really focused on things like gear trains and stuff like that, all that is in here for you.

In the teacher's portal, if I go back to the teacher's portal and scroll down a little bit here, there's the answer key for the check-your-understanding questions right here. To prepare for the STEM Lab, what you can do is go through and look at the questions and then look at the answer. This is all the scaffolding that we provide so the students can be successful in the competition, but it's a great way for you to be able to prepare for the STEM Lab itself.

You have, at a high level, the large concepts that you want the students to understand, but then at a micro level, you have the smaller ideas that are going to lead into that large understanding. That's in the check-your-understanding questions. Becoming familiar with those and going over those is really going to help you prepare to actually teach the STEM Lab itself.

Now, those concepts are taught in all of the learn videos. I'm going to talk about the learn videos more in a following video. But if you want to watch those learn videos before you implement the STEM Lab, that's also a great idea to familiarize yourself with the concepts. If you do not have the time to watch the learn videos, each of the learn videos has a summary next to it. It's a Google Doc. You can review the summary and have an understanding of what your students are supposed to know. That will help you, again, be the facilitator when it comes time for you to teach the STEM Lab.

So again, if I'm trying to think about preparing how to teach a particular STEM Lab, I want to draw a picture in my mind of what success looks like for my students. I want to think about that exemplar. I want to think about how the students are going to show that to me, and then I want to document that. That's going to organize my facilitation for me.

And then, after I do that, I wanna review the check your understanding questions during the STEM Lab itself, review those videos, so now I have an idea of the concepts the students are actually going to be involved with during the STEM Lab itself. Now, you don't have to do that through all the sections of the STEM Lab.

And that then brings us into the actual format of the STEM Lab. Again, the STEM Labs have a learn, a practice, and a compete section, okay? With the learn section, that is where we are doing the direct instruction. And we're doing that via the video. So that's where the students are gonna watch a video, and they're gonna learn about balanced, unbalanced forces. They're gonna learn about gear trains. They're gonna learn about all of those concepts, which they're then going to apply as they move forward throughout the rest of the STEM Lab. But that is where the heavy teaching actually takes place. That is where the direct instruction takes place.

The practice and the compete section is where they're gonna apply those concepts. So for you to prepare for the STEM Lab, it's great for you to become familiar with those learn sections so again, you are familiar with the concepts, so that you can then guide the students and facilitate the students as they're applying those concepts in the practice and the compete sections.

Overall, in the STEM Labs itself, we're going to take a look at that in terms of the format of them. Overall, there's an introduction, again, where we introduce a challenge to the students, okay? And then we have the subsequent lessons that break down the concepts the students would need in order to be able to do the competition here. And all of these lessons follow the same format: it's the learn, practice, and compete.

So the learn, this is the direct instructions. So this video's gonna talk about center of mass. Here's the summary right here, the check your understanding question. Now, amongst themselves, they're gonna practice that, okay? So now the video here is gonna show them how they can apply what they just learned from the learn video. So they're gonna go and they're gonna practice that, okay? Then we're gonna give them an activity to complete. We talk about documenting everything in your engineering journal right here, okay? Check your understanding so they know what to actually do.

And now you can have a mini classroom competition, okay? So now you can have the students take what they've learned, but apply it amongst the other students in a mini classroom competition that's in this video right here, okay? And then you have a wrap-up reflection. This is where we put things in their engineering notebook. This is really where those exemplars, like I talked about, are gonna be, okay? This is really what you wanna think about, what you want your students writing about here and documenting to show you what they have learned.

Now, here, it's important, you know, we make a distinction between performance and learning, okay? Learning is a messy process. Learning takes some time. I describe the process of learning like the flight of a butterfly. Butterflies don't fly like this. You know, butterflies, you know, they fly around like this as they're flapping their wings. We know from cognitive science that's how our students learn, okay? Performance, though, being able to regurgitate something to you very, very quickly, that is not learning. And what we know from science is that an emphasis on performance can actually have an inverse effect on our students' learning, okay?

So what I'm trying to say with all that here is you really wanna emphasize what the students are learning and not a specific performance. How that relates to the STEM Lab: Don't just talk to the students about how their robot performed. That's performance, okay? Talk to them about what they learned, what they would do differently, how they're going to apply what they've learned.

Have them reflect upon what they just did. Okay? That is the process spanned out over a period of time that we're really gonna see the students develop their understanding. That's where we wanna emphasize, and that's why we have the wrap-up reflection right here, after they go through the learn, the practice, and the compete. It's not just about, you know, telling me about the gear ratio that you used or what your robot did, but talk about the learning. Think about the learning. Think about the process that you want the students to do. Again, these should be the bigger ideas that you identified at the beginning as you were preparing for the STEM Lab. How are the students actually showing you what they learned there as they went through that, okay?

Now, again, if you want a more tactical look at the STEM Labs, we have that video in the teacher's portal that you can go and take a look at and really see the different formats of the STEM Labs. I go into a little bit more detail about it. But again, overall, to prepare for the STEM Labs, you wanna be able to identify what are the big learning goals that you wanna really see your students achieve during the course of the STEM Lab? And I'll talk about in another video how you can communicate that to your students. Write that down as look fors. These are the things that you wanna see your students doing during the course of the STEM Lab. As they're practicing and as they're competing, these are the things that you wanna see your students do. Go ahead and document and write those things down, and then use that to organize your instruction as you work with the students, okay?

That's step one. Step two, in terms of preparing for the STEM Lab, is to look at the check your understanding questions. Understand what you're trying to achieve with the check your understanding questions. And then think about how the students are going to apply them for those large understandings that you're trying to derive from them. Finally, the last thing that you can do is think about potential misconceptions the students may have. And we actually have those in our facilitation notes. Let's take a look at those right now.

So if I go back here to the teacher facilitation guide, okay, we have the overview. We talked about the teacher as a facilitator for you, what that means. Then we talk about troubleshooting tips here. Here's where we talk about potential misconceptions the students may have. It's important to be aware of those and to essentially get ahead of those things before your students actually do the lab. And think about how you're going to handle them, okay? So that's the important thing. Think about how you're gonna handle when something goes wrong in the actual STEM Lab. This is a great conversation to have in the professional learning community about what happens when things go wrong. Things can go wrong from the operation of the robot. Kids can get frustrated and not want to collaborate. Kids can get frustrated and not really want to iterate on the robots. Those are all conversations that we can have and learn from each other in our professional learning community. But that's another great way that you can prepare for the STEM Lab, for you to be able to successfully implement it in your classroom, okay?

So hopefully you got something out of this video about preparation for the STEM Lab, whether it's around the teacher facilitation notes, watching the learn videos, thinking about the big ideas you want your students to achieve and writing them down, and you feel better about going ahead and implementing one of the STEM Labs. But again, if you want some more information, schedule a one-on-one session, or go and ask the question to the professional learning community, and we can all chat about it there and learn from each other there.

Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you again in our next video.

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Welcome to today's episode of "The Creative Journey," where we explore the fascinating world of art and innovation. I'm your host, Alex, and I'm thrilled to have you with us today. In this episode, we're diving into the world of digital art and how it's transforming the way we perceive creativity.

Our guest today is renowned digital artist, Jamie Lee, who has been at the forefront of this movement. Jamie's work has been featured in galleries around the world, and today, she'll be sharing her insights on the evolution of digital art and its impact on the art community.

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Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Can you start by telling us a little about your journey into digital art?

Thank you, Alex. It's great to be here. My journey into digital art began about a decade ago when I was experimenting with different mediums. I was fascinated by the endless possibilities that digital tools offered, and it allowed me to push the boundaries of traditional art forms.

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As we wrap up today's episode, I want to thank Jamie for sharing her incredible insights and experiences with us. It's been an enlightening conversation, and I'm sure our listeners have gained a lot from it.

Thank you to all our listeners for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this episode and found it inspiring. Don't forget to subscribe to "The Creative Journey" for more exciting content.

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Until next time, keep exploring and stay creative!