Science Modeling Talks Mark Royce

Mark and Amanda talk about her background as a middle school teacher, the STEM master's program she took at ASU, which introduced her to modeling instruction and eventually led her to found the Cactus Caucus, which advocated for funding for teachers to recertify to teach physics, chemistry and other high-needs areas in Arizona schools. They talk about her move from teaching to the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project at ASU, how this project works, and about building community among our teachers.

In this episode, Mark talks with Paul Sasso, a physics and astronomy teacher from Maine. They talk about Paul's experience as a new teacher and his introduction to modeling instruction, and later to the new modeling astronomy materials. After taking the modeling astronomy workshop and returning as both participant and "intern," Paul was invited to attend modeling workshop leader training. They talk about that experience and then dive into more thoughts on the astronomy and exoplanets materials, the virtual course, and engaging hands-on activities for the students.

In this episode, Mark talks with chemistry teacher Scott Milam. They talk about his interest in the history of chemistry thinking and the development of models in chemistry as far back as hundreds of years ago. They talk about how Scott thinks about teaching chemistry, and the questions he is focusing on right now. This leads them to talk about setting up assessments so he focuses very intentionally on key goals in each unit. They also talk about his chemistry content, his YouTube Channel, and Scott's book Teaching Introductory Chemistry.

In this episode, Mark talks with Mark Lattery, professor of physics at University of Wisconson, OshKosh. He has taught using modeling methods since 1999. He does research in experimental particle physics and modeling methods. They talk about modeling physics in Mark Lattery's college-level physics course for non-majors, and how Mark first learned about modeling early in his teaching career.

In this episode, Mark talks with Karle Delo about how teachers could use AI tools to generate ideas for connections between topics of study and areas of interest for their students. She talks about how to get started using AI and discusses the importance of not ignoring it entirely. She has many good resources and encourages teachers to take a look and see what could help them improve their practice or even streamline the sub plan building process.

In this episode, we hear from Larry Dukerich, one of the key people who developed modeling resources for chemistry instruction. He talks about how modeling changed the way he taught and expands on the three main ways that modeling differs from a traditional lecture-style classroom.