New Digital Tool Helps Teachers Locate STEAM-Related Materials
Common Sense Education has launched a digital
search tool designed to help teachers find science, technology,
engineering, art
and math (STEAM) resources for their science and math classes. Called
the NGSS
Explorer, the tool is designed to identify materials that are
aligned with the
Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
NGSS
Explorer is a companion tool to Common Sense
Education's Graphite digital rating platform designed to help educators
locate
resources across a wide variety of subjects and areas.
Teachers
can use NGSS Explorer to search for
materials by grade, topic and a Performance Expectation measure
determined by
Graphite editors. In addition to the tagged materials, Graphite
reviewers —
current and former math, science and engineering teachers — provide
editorial
reviews of each app, game or Web site in the collection, amounting to
more than
2,500 reviews. Editors also have curated "top picks" to help teachers
find the
best of STEAM and NGSS-identified products.
The
NGSS standards were developed in 2013 to
create benchmarks for the science- and math-based skills students
in the United States should
acquire before they finish school.
"Digital
technology is a great way to introduce
the investigative, practice-based learning the NGSS standards inspire,"
said
Danny Wagner, manager of STEM content at Common Sense Education, in a prepared statement. "As
educators,
we encourage kids to match their technique to the discipline they're
learning.
Just as scientists use technology to do their jobs, we are helping
teachers
leverage real-life engineering and scientific best practices with their
students."
NGSS
Explorer was developed with the help of a
grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.