Workshops

Need an engaging speaker for your conference or event? Professional development for your teachers?

Together we can prepare your teachers, leaders, or students to face the challenges of a changing science education landscape.

Workshops

I've created a large number of teacher professional development workshops that can be run completely online through Zoom, Skype, or any other meeting platform. These workshops have already been tested and attended by over 1,000 teachers throughout the USA in 2020. Two of the workshops below have video versions anyone can complete on their own time for free. All of the workshops can be run live for your district or school without travel costs, and can use whatever online meeting solution you already use or I can provide the online meeting space. Links to previews/slides are below. Interested? Contact me.

Face-to-Face Options

Once we're all able to travel again, the workshops above are all available as live workshops. Plus, there are plenty more options of ready-to-go workshops your group can choose. Click here to see a list of available workshops that are fully developed and ready to run. I can also tailor an entire program for your group.

Keynotes and Lectures

Does your organization need an engaging speaker for your conference or event? I can speak on a wide range of topics in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. I have provided keynote addresses and large lectures for conferences and groups all over the world, with attendances up to 3,000 people. Here are some examples of keynote addresses:

Science Education

Building Depth Through Storylines: Protein Folding, Hydrogen Bonding, and Coulomb’s Law

The way a protein folds determines its biological function, with misfolded proteins leading to diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s. If we want to create the next generation of scientists that can cure these diseases, they have to first be able to answer the question: why does a protein fold into weird and funky shapes? That’s a complex question to answer, requiring depth of understanding and a storyline that crosses biology, chemistry, and physics. There is no way for students to make the connections necessary to answer this question (and many others!) if we as teachers think about NGSS performance expectations as individual “products” to check off a list in our own little silos. We’ll discover that building a compelling storyline requires synthesis across the DCIs, performance expectations, and crosscutting concepts.

Building Depth Through Storylines: Why Can’t We Walk Through Walls

If we only consider the volume of the electrons, protons, and neutrons in your body, then your entire mass would be about the size of a small sugar cube. Your body is mostly empty space. However, everything about you seems pretty solid. When you lean against a wall, you don’t fall through the wall. Why can’t you walk through walls? That’s a surprisingly complex question to answer, requiring depth of understanding and a storyline that crosses chemistry and physics. There is no way for students to make the connections necessary to answer this question (and many others!) if we as teachers think about NGSS performance expectations as individual “products” to check off a list in our own little silos. We’ll discover that building a compelling storyline requires synthesis across the DCIs, performance expectations, and crosscutting concepts.

Example Public Lectures

Science, Education, and Humanity: Elevating Human Potential

The Next Generation Science Standards: What are they and why are they awesome?

Creating scientists: Teaching how to think and practice like a scientist

Pushing past thresholds to learning

How we learn and why school sometimes fails

STEM education in the USA: The good, the bad, and the ugly

How the migrant crisis in Europe is affecting education

How robots are changing the way your kids learn

Why its awesome when your kids break stuff

CONTACT ME

For more information, send me an email through the contact page here.