ITEEA's Technology and Engineering Dedicated STEM Professional Development Webinar Series

ITEEA's specially designed professional development webinar series focuses on Technology and Engineering Education best practices for leading Integrative STEM Education (I-STEM Education) in your school.

NASA OPTIMUS PRIME

Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge (OPSPARC)

January 10, 2018 at 7pm EST

Presenter: Dr. Sharon Bowers

This webinar series is FREE to ITEEA members. The fee for non-members is $45.

REGISTER HERE

Open the door for your students to engineer spinoff technology and compete internationally within the world of NASA OPSPARC. Students are asked to use their imagination and creativity to identify NASA Spinoff technology in their everyday world. Items such as memory foam, invisible braces, firefighting equipment, artificial limbs, scratch-resistant lenses, aircraft anti-icing systems, shoe insoles, water filters/purification, cochlear implants, satellite television, and long-distance telecommunications were first developed for a NASA mission and then, re-worked to make everyday life easier.

NASA OPSPARC is just one of many NASA challenges and resources that will shared during this 45-minute webinar that will help you discover ways to build context for learning and use your classroom as a portal to current NASA missions. Sharon Bowers, Senior STEM Education Specialist at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) will share NASA and NIA engineering and design challenges and resources appropriate for Grades 3-12 during this session.

ITEEA and the Center for Integrative STEM Education (CISE) at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) celebrate their newly formed partnership. CISE at NIA is excited to share NASA and NIA resources with ITEEA members to add real-world context to EbD coursework, modules, and classrooms. NASA OPSPARC is one example of a NASA engineering design challenge that will push your students to research, think critically and creatively, and use an engineering design process to develop spinoff technology to solve a real-world problem. Join us for this webinar to learn more about NASA OPSPARC and other NASA and NIA challenges and resources.

Dr. Sharon Bowers, Senior STEM Education Specialist: 

Sharon Bowers has been an K-8 educator for more than 30 years and her work with children earned her several honors, including recognition as a Secondary Science Presidential Award Winner for Virginia. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology and her Masters in Special Education, both from McDaniel College. Sharon recently completed her doctorate in Integrative STEM Education at Virginia Tech. 

Sharon’s work at the Center for Integrative STEM Education (CISE) at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) focuses on developing resources that model best practice in the use of instructional technology to support STEM education. In this capacity, Sharon is the program manager for NASA InWorld OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge (NASA OPSPARC), an engineering design challenge for secondary school students within a multi-user, interactive, synchronous virtual world. Sharon also develops professional learning experiences for pre-service and in-service educators. She has designed and teaches graduate courses for McDaniel College that lead to a certificate in STEM instructional leadership.  

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