Our CEO, Rita Ferrandino, along with our Midwest Sales Manager, Tom Pence, and our colleague and Indiana Trainer, Kate Ingemunsun caught up for some seriously good food at an Italian restaurant after a Board of Directors Meeting. The rest of us are jealous! Kate is off to do a training for I-STEM in Earth’s Changing Surface for us tomorrow. Thanks, Kate!

Find out what’s cooking at Science Companion!

Coming to the Indiana Textbook Caravan?

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Stop by our booth and try your hand at inquiry science, take away a sampler to share Science Companion with your colleagues, and check out our presentation to find out how you can get your classrooms cooking with Science Companion.
(And ask us how you can win a chance at your own Let’s Get Cooking! apron…)

Can’t make it live? Join us for a Virtual Caravan!

For those of you who are unable to join us OR for those who just can’t get enough Caravan, come one by to find photos, presentations, science teaching tips, Virtual Field trips, recipes from friends and colleagues, and chances for an apron as well, all on our website. We’ll be updating it daily, so stop by to see what’s cooking!

Click here to visit the First Ever Annual Science Companion Virtual Indiana Textbook Caravan!

Thanks for stopping by our Virtual Conference.  We hope you were entertained and informed without having to fill out travel vouchers or write reports.

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Have you identified new resources and learned something that you can take back to your classrooms? If you’re looking for something new, please keep us mind.  Science Companion offers eight free Virtual Field Trips and eight free Online Pilot modules.

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As our way of reminding you to Fall Back at 2:00 a.m. Sunday, November 7th, click here to read an article that continues the debate about daylight savings.

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HOPE

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The PSTA Annual Convention will be December 1-3 with the theme of Humans Observing & Protecting the Planet (HOPE).  This conference also offers several excellent field trips.  A tour of the Indian Echo Caverns will educate visitors about the Indian Echo Caverns geology, history, and limestone formations.   To see examples, you can check out pictures on their website photo gallery. The Indian Echo Caverns website also includes an article about the ecology of caverns and how what we do above ground affects what is below ground.

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If you’d like to take your students on a geological adventure, Science Companion offers a virtual field trip – a Virtual Rock Walk – to learn about the glaciated rock and sedimentary deposits of Indiana.  All of the virtual field trips offered on our website are free and are also posted on Scribd.  Or email us at team@sciencecompanion.com and we’ll gladly send you the PDF file through email.

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A Nod to What’s to Come

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Today, we’d like to give a nod to a few upcoming science education conferences.

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The Maine Science Teachers Association Conference will be on November 12th.  Former governor Angus King will give the keynote, addressing the importance of urgently making changes in the education system – changing how we teach rather than what we teach.

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Later today we’ll visit Pennsylvania, where the conference theme is “Humans Observing and Protecting the Planet.”

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Using Notebooks

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Connecticut’s Science Education Conference featured keynote speaker Jeff Winokur, author of Science and Literacy: A Natural Fit.  The conference sessions included: the amazing journeys of seeds, science inquiry and science notebooking, yankee ingenuity and invention, and talk and writing as tools for deepening science understanding.

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If you want to learn more about using science notebooks with your students, check out this Science Companion article or this presentation on Scribd for practical ideas for how to implement notebooking in your classroom. 1

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Good morning!

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Today we’re moving on to Connecticut and the Connecticut Science Education Conference from October 30th.  But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves before the morning coffee and pastries.

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The department stores are already promoting Black Friday, so let’s talk turkey – or rather the science of turkey.

What does it take to cook the perfect bird?  Ice cubes and a good meat thermometer. Check out this article explaining why.

And why is cranberry juice so powerful at blocking infections? Read about biofilms and adhesion here.

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We’ve been sharing with you science bits from www.sciencedaily.com If you’d like to add science news to your day, you can subscribe to their email newsletter by visiting this page.

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It’s still frosty on Mount Washington.

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The wind chill is up to 20.7°F on Mount Washington and the webcam views are spectacular!

In addition to the interesting field trips, the rest of the NHSTA 2010 Conference featured a full schedule of sessions.  Keynote Speaker Richard Byrne presented “Info Everywhere! Tools Everwhere! What’s Good and What’s Not?”  You can find links to this and other presentations on the NHSTA Facebook page.

Or, you can find this and other presentations on Richard Byrne’s site “Free Technology for Teachers.“  One section of his website is devoted to Google Tools Tutorials and features mini lessons for utilizing Google technology.  So, if you’ve every wondered how to create a quiz using Google Forms or how to manage your bookmarks, check out what he has to offer and learn something new – for free.

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The New Jersey Science Convention - co-sponsored by the New Jersey Science Teachers Association and the New Jersey Science Education Leadership Association - was October 12 & 13.  Session topics ranged from how the Galapagos provide lessons in speciation to forensics made easy.

The theme of STEM education popped up in several NJ conference lectures and discussion sessions.  Science Companion is extremely excited to be included as an ISTEM pilot curriculum in Indiana.   For more about STEM education in general and about our participation in Indiana, check out the links below.  The last one includes a great teaching tip from Science Companion’s Belinda Basca about how to use the “I Wonder” Circle as a teaching tool.

http://nstacommunities.org/stemedcoalition/

https://www.istemnetwork.org

http://indiana.sciencecompanion.com/

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Fall is the season for regional conferences and association meetings. Here are a few that are on our radar:

NJSTA October 12 – 13

MAST October 21 – 22

NHSTA October 24-25

CTSTA/CSSA October 30

MMSA November 30

PSTA December 1 – 3

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Gaining control over classroom misbehavior was the theme of one of the NJ Science Convention sessions.  We’ll be checking in to hear more from their event later today.  But first, if you’ve been struggling with classroom misbehavior in the days following Halloween, we thought you’d appreciate knowing that the candy industry sells $1 billion in Halloween candy annually.  Yikes!

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