NSTA Day 1

Had a great first day at the conference here in San Antonio. After waking up to a very chilly morning in San Antonio and starting my day with my usual Starbucks, I began my conference day in a session about the water cycle that was sponsored by NASA. I chose to attend this session because we will be discussing this topic next week. I wanted to attend this session to gain new ideas and any resources that could help all my students learn and understand the water cycle and be able to describe how it works. While at the session, I learned about the many free resources that have been put together for educators to use in the classroom and I look forward to sharing these resources with the other science teachers at North Penn. One of the resources that I really liked from this session was a web quest about the water cycle. I look forward to using this web quest with my classes next week because it is a very student centered approach to teaching about the water cycle, while it incorporates the use to technology. You will have to let me know what you think about it and activities like it.

After taking a short break to walk around the exhibit hall (the area where all the venders are) and finding time to eat some lunch, I then attended a fun and highly interactive session called Rock and Roll Through the Earth. During this session, I was picked for an audience participation activity to act and represent parts of Earth's interior. I was asked to played the role of the Earth's inner core. Using what you already know about the Earth's inner core, what quantities do you think I had to possess? Hopefully you guessed that I have to be strong, very dense and hot. Of course I had to flex my muscles and growl at the audience to show what a beast I am. I love how things like this always happen to me, however, I was thankful not to be the only participant making a fool of themselves because all the other layers were represented in this interactive and entertaining activity. After this fun and silly activity, we played a dice game that demonstrated how materials flow through the rock cycle and the presenters tied in math and the analysis of the data that could be collected through this activity. I look forward to trying these activities out with my students next year. This was by far my favorite session of the day.

Later in the afternoon I attended two other sessions, one about infrared radiation and how to detect it, and the other was about classifying clouds. Both sessions were full of useful information, ideas and free resources. I am definitely looking forward to more exciting sessions tomorrow, but for now, it is time to eat and relax before another fun filled day. Oh, by the way, Bill Nye is here and he says "Science Rules!"