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Saturday, 28 February 2015

STEM- Where do I Go For for Help?

For teachers who are new to STEM, or even for the STEM veterans who get stuck from time to time, the question becomes: Where can I go for help?

Maybe you work in a district that has a STEM Director (Don't laugh.  Some actually do...SO jealous!) Or, maybe you are fortunate to work with a colleague who knows their way around and is willing to share.

For everyone else, it sometimes can be difficult to find help when all of your colleagues have a full plate and are struggling to keep their own heads above a sea of papers to grade.

 So where do you go for help?  In this age of everything digital, Google is actually an excellent resource. By carefully selecting your keywords, you should be able to hunt down the information you are looking for.  If you're still having trouble, try Google's Advanced Search.  You can choose the keywords to include as well as exclude and even filter by filetype or region.

Another great search engine to try is NowRelevant.  NowRelevant is a automatically filters the results to things that were posted in the last two weeks.  So, no more reading old articles or research on a current topic.

What to explore a little differently?  If you'd rather watch a video than read an article, try a ClipBlast.  ClipBlast is a video search engine that searches professional video clips from top credible sources like CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC and others.

Trying other sites such as Scribd or Slideshare are a good bet too and usually yield some useable files like Word documents and PowerPoint presentations that you can easily reuse or rework (with attributions, or course). As always, be aware that these sites are not exclusive to education, so inappropriate content may exist.

When all else fails, you can always send me an email :) but these resources should be able to help answer your STEM questions and provide you with additional supplemental resources for your STEM lessons.