Programs

Robots have been a fixture in movies since the classic film Metropolis.  Since then, many science fiction movies and television series have included robots, androids, and artificial intelligence as key players in telling stories about the future.

Today, robots and artificial intelligence are used in manufacturing, exploration, transportation, and even education.  They offer increased productivity and easier lives.  This presentation will explore the depictions of robots and artificial intelligence by Hollywood and what they teach us about the possibilities and perils of using them now and in the future.

This presentation will provide lesson ideas and classroom resources such as articles, text excerpts, video clips, and activities to explore economic, social, and scientific issues for courses in Social Studies and Science.

Dr. Roger Ransom, president of the Economic History Association in 2004-5, wrote that “the rapid commercial and industrial growth in the Northern states before the war, played a part in fanning the regional tensions between the industrial North and the rural South. The economics of slavery were at the core of the antebellum disputes that led to the crisis of 1860, economic factors contributed to the North’s victory in the war, and America’s most destructive war left an economic legacy.”

This pair of webinars will share an economic perspective on the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War.  The first presentation will focus on the causes and course of the Civil War.  The second presentation will analyze the consequences of the war as seen during Reconstruction and even until today.  

We will combine articles, maps, images, data, and video resources to create lessons applicable to curriculums in American History and Economics.

The LEGO Movie emphasizes the importance of improvisation and play. Playing by the rules and following instructions achieves predictable results. They might be high quality (as is the case with many of the LEGO kits) but there is little creativity. The main message is to rely less on the instructions and more on your own ideas.

LEGO even offers a program called SeriousPlay that uses LEGO pieces to train organizational leaders and teams to imagine, interact, and learn to prepare for complex and uncertain challenges. Play helps people learn to take risks, to imagine solutions, and to try new roles.  This has led to key understandings of human behavior such as subtractive thinking.

Design thinking has become increasingly popular as an approach to solving problems or creating new products.  It is a companion to the scientific method, testing prototypes to determine the qualitative characteristics of how things should be.  Design thinking incorporates principles from STEM, CTE, and Social Studies and applies them to solve problems.

This presentation will provide lesson ideas and classroom resources such as articles, text excerpts, video clips, and activities to explore economic, social, and scientific issues for courses in Social Studies, Science, and Career Technical Education.

This session celebrates heroes of the past and considers how we can use the wisdom of indigenous people to create a more resilient future for our people and the planet. Using a rap song, turned into a beautifully illustrated book, we will take a trip through history with the author Wab Kinew, to celebrate these heroes like Tecumseh, Sacagawea, and former NASA astronaut John Herrington. We will also discuss the author, Wab Kinew, who provides insight into indigenous life and an inspirational story to help students use entrepreneurial thinking to and show the world how students of all backgrounds can make better choices for a resilient future.

During this session we will provide:

• Primary source documents and digital texts to use with students to teach about the entrepreneurial thinking of Native Americans
• Decision-making lessons that use diverse texts to help students use critical thinking
• Ideas on how to help students create their own rap songs and digital stories
• A trace-based case which uses primary sources to trace historic economic practices of Native Americans in Florida

All resources will be provided to attendees, including links to a Nearpod decision-making lesson and other multimedia texts to engage students with critical and creative thinking.