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1. COSMOS educational toolkit: using experimental wireless networking to enhance middle/high school STEM education

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3431832.3431839  

   Skrimponis, Panagiotis; Makris, Nikos; Rajguru, Sheila Borges; Cheng, Karen; Ostrometzky, Jonatan; Ford, Emily; Kostic, Zoran; Zussman, Gil; Korakis, Thanasis (October 2020, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review)

   null (Ed.)

   This paper focuses on the K-12 educational activities of COSMOS-Cloud enhanced Open Software defined MObile wireless testbed for city-Scale deployment. The COSMOS wireless reasearch testbed is being deployed in West Harlem (New York City) as part of the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program. COSMOS' approach for K-12 education is twofold: (i) create an innovative and concrete set of methods/tools that allow teaching STEM subjects using live experiments related to wireless networks/IoT/cloud, and (ii) enhance the professional development (PD) of K-12 teachers and collaborate with them to create hands-on educational material for the students. The COSMOS team has already conducted successful pilot summer programs for middle and high school STEM teachers, where the team worked with the teachers and jointly developed innovative real-world experiments that were organized as automated and repeatable math, science, and computer science labs to be used in the classroom. The labs run on the COSMOS Educational Toolkit, a hardware and software system that offers a large variety of pre-orchestrated K-12 educational labs. The software executes and manages the experiments in the same operational philosophy as the COSMOS testbed. Specifically, since it is designed for use by non-technical middle and high school teachers/students, it adds easy-to-use enhancements to the experiments' execution and the results visualization. The labs are also supported by Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-compliant teacher/student material. This paper describes the teachers' PD program, the NGSS lessons created and the hardware and software system developed to support the initiative. Additionally, it provides an evaluation of the PD approach as well as the expected impact to K-12 STEM education. Current limitations and future work are also included as part of the discussion section. 

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2. Self-paced E-learning: Exploring the Development of a Cybersecurity Micro-credential through K-12 Teacher Professional Development.

   Borowczak, M.; Mugayitoglu, B.; Burrows, A.; Kennedy, C.; Carson, A.; C. & Finch, A. (January 2020, Proceedings of SITE Interactive Conference 2020)

   Langran, E. (Ed.)

   This work discusses ongoing experiences in creating interdisciplinary solutions to the development of cybersecurity/computer science skills for K-12 teachers. Participants for this work were K-12 teachers; the work was conducted during the summer semester of 2020. Nine K-12 teachers enrolled in the pilot course, and five K-12 teachers completed modules 0 & 1 of the cybersecurity course. This work describes a month long, self-paced cybersecurity micro-credential which consisted of an introduction to cybersecurity and the CIA Triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Accessibility). The primary research question explores the extent to which the cybersecurity micro-credential was considered helpful in understanding cybersecurity concepts and principles. The authors utilized quantitative and qualitative data collection via four methods: 1) content knowledge quiz (quantitative); 2) focus group (qualitative); 3) five semi-structured interviews (qualitative) and 4) two bi-weekly progress reports (qualitative). Qualitatively, focus group, semi-structured interview questions, and bi-weekly progress reports were coded and grouped into major themes by searching descriptive words. Quantitatively, a moderate positive relationship was found between post-test scores and total time in hours spent on modules 0 & 1. The main limitation is the sample size (n=5), which is too small to produce generalizable results. The work showcases innovative tools for teaching cybersecurity. 

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3. Beyond Content: The Role of STEM Disciplines, Real-World Problems, 21st Century Skills, and STEM Careers within Science Teachers’ Conceptions of Integrated STEM Education

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110737  

   Dare, Emily Anna; Keratithamkul, Khomson; Hiwatig, Benny Mart; Li, Feng (November 2021, Education Sciences)

   Understanding teachers’ conceptions surrounding integrated STEM education is vital to the successful implementation of integrated STEM curricula in K-12 classrooms. Of particular interest is understanding how teachers conceptualize the role of the STEM disciplines within their integrated STEM teaching. Further, despite knowing that content-agnostic characteristics of integrated STEM education are important, little is known about how teachers conceptualize the real-world problems, 21st century skills, and the promotion of STEM careers in their integrated STEM instruction. This study used an exploratory case study design to investigate conceptions of 19 K-12 science teachers after participating in an integrated STEM-focused professional development and implementing integrated STEM lessons into their classrooms. Our findings show that all teacher participants viewed STEM education from an integrative perspective that fosters the development of 21st century skills, using real-world problems to motivate students. Our findings also reveal that teachers have varying ideas related to the STEM disciplines within integrated STEM instruction, which could assist teacher educators in preparing high-quality professional development experiences. Findings related to real-world problems, 21st century skills, and STEM careers provide a window into how to best support teachers to include these characteristics into their teaching more explicitly. 

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4. Learning to teach computer science: Professional development design and teacher outcomes.

   Mouza, Chrystalla; Codding, Diane; Pollock, Lori (January 2018, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE))

   With the increased attention on integrating computer science concepts into K-12 curricula, there has been a growing investment into professional development opportunities that prepare teachers to teach computer science principles. Yet, little research exists on design features of professional development that help teachers gain the computer science content, skills and teaching pedagogy that ultimately make an impact on student learning and participation in the classroom. In this work we present a professional development model for helping K-12 teachers integrate computer science principles across the curriculum in a variety of content areas. We subsequently investigate the ways in which the design features of the model promoted teacher learning of computer science content and pedagogy. 

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5. On the Development of Cybersecurity and Computing Centric Professional Developments and the Subsequent Implementation of Topics in K12 Lesson Plans (RTP)

   Robins, Andey; Burrows, Andrea C.; Borowczak, Mike (August 2022, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   In recent years, Wyoming has developed Computer Science (CS) standards for adoption and use within K-12 classrooms. These standards, adopted in January of 2022, go into effect for the 2022-2023 school year. The University of Wyoming has offered two different computer science week-long professional developments for teachers. Many K-12 teachers do not have a CS background, so developing CS lessons plans can be a challenge in these PDs.This research study is centered around three central questions: 1) To what extent did K-12 teachers integrate computing topics into their PD created lesson plans; 2) How do the teacher perceptions from the two CS PDs compare to each other; and 3) How was the CS PD translated to classroom activity? The first PD opportunity (n=14), was designed to give hands-on learning with CS topics focused on cybersecurity. The second PD opportunity (n=28), focused on integrating CS into existing curricula. At the end of each of these PDs, teacher K-12 teachers incorporated CS topics into their selected existing lesson plan(s). Additionally, a support network was implemented to support excellence in CS education throughout the state. This research study team evaluated the lesson plans developed during each PD event, by using a rubric on each lesson plan. Researchers collected exit surveys from the teachers. Implementation metrics were also gathered, including, how long each lesson lasted, how many students were involved in the implementation, what grades the student belonged to, the basic demographics of the students, the type of course the lesson plan was housed in, if the K-12 teacher reached their intended purpose, what evidence the K-12 teacher had of the success of their lesson plan, data summaries based on supplied evidence, how the K-12 teachers would change the lesson, the challenges and successes they experienced, and samples of student work. Quantitative analysis was basic descriptive statistics. Findings, based on evaluation of 40+ lessons, taught to over 1500 K-12 students, indicate that when assessed on a three point rubric of struggling, emerging, or excellent - certain components (e.g., organization, objectives, integration, activities & assessment, questions, and catch) of K-12 teacher created lessons plans varied drastically. In particular, lesson plan organization, integration, and questions each had a significant number of submissions which were evaluated as "struggling" [45%, 46%, 41%] through interesting integration, objectives, activities & assessment, and catch all saw submissions which were evaluated as "excellent" [43%, 48%, 43%, 48%]. The relationship between existing K-12 policies and expectations surfaces within these results and in combination with other findings leads to implications for the translation of current research practices into pre-collegiate PDs. 

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