District Administration December2017 - 57

SPONSORED WEB SEMINAR DIGEST

Kim Alexander
Superintendent
Roscoe Collegiate ISD (Texas)

Salvatore Menzo
Superintendent
Wallingford Public
Schools (Conn.)

Paula Love
President
RFPMatch.com

move forward. We continue to hear from businesses
that they want students to have soft skills: perseverance,
communication, empathy. So we're preparing students
to be good communicators and collaborators. When
we look at the soft skills, it's work ethic, socialization,
technology, written communication. All of these come
together.
Makerspaces with design thinking are a key to
program development and to program enhancement
and augmentation. Some people might equate design
thinking to inquiry-based science, but it's different in
that it provides a broader opportunity for students to
investigate and solve problems. It provides them less
context and more opportunity to explore their own
interests in their areas of concern, which then increases
the relevance and their ability to actually connect in
a social and emotional way with the problem they're
trying to solve.
I would encourage anyone who is setting up a
makerspace not to fall into the trap of just developing a
room and then having it collect dust because you don't
know what to do with it. Ground your makerspace in a
curriculum, with a foundation for students to learn and
grow, and for teachers to be able to actually use this
space in the most authentic and relevant way.
Paula Love: STEM is taking a front-row seat on the
national level.This is going to eventually roll down to the
state and local level. In late September President Trump
signed a new memorandum intending to increase
access to STEM and computer science education across
the country. Following that announcement, a collective
group of companies including Amazon, Facebook and
others pledged to support computer science instruction
through $300 million in grants.

There are some real actionable funding streams
that you can follow right now that will help bring
some of your projects to fruition: Title IV Student
Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, the Carl
Perkins grant, the CTE Makeover Challenge, the
Education Innovation & Research Grant, the 21st
Century Community Learning Centers-and don't
forget funding in the form of bonds and facility grants,
because those also can support your efforts to build
makerspaces in your schools.
Another important resource for funding is state
workforce initiatives, and yet another is the National
Science Foundation. The Innovative Technology
Experiences for Students andTeachers encourages and
engages students in STEM career pathways, and the
Computer Science for All program and Cyberlearning
for Work at the Human-Technology Frontier create
opportunities for students, teachers and workers to
come together. And NASA has a great number of
educational opportunities, contests and resources for
classroom sets of activities.
In addition to all of those, private funders are excited
to support STEM, such as Fiat Chrysler Automotive,
and the National Math and Science Initiative with
support from donors such as Exxon-Mobile, the
Gates Foundation and Dell. Code.org is increasing
participation in computer science by women and
underrepresented minorities. The IEEE Foundation
is known for its work in robotics competitions, and
Toshiba America Foundation offers many grants to
support teachers. Northrup Grumman operates a STEM
Academy for middle school teachers in conjunction
with the National Science Teachers Association.
We offer a free resource called GrantsAlert.com,
which tracks grants for teachers and schools.

To watch this web seminar in its entirety, please visit: www.districtadministration.com/ws101717
www.DistrictAdministration.com

December 2017 57

http://www.RFPMatch.com http://www.Code.org http://www.GrantsAlert.com http://www.districtadministration.com/ws101717 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration December2017