Science Co-ordinators & Consultants Association of Ontario

TWISE at SCCAO

communications — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:58:56 +0000

Several of the members of the SCCAO executive had the opportunity to be on a panel discussion about safety in the science classroom that was recorded for the weekly podcast, This Week in Science and Education. Colin, Rick, Sean and Christine had a discussion that ranged from teacher responsibilities to Ministry of Education supports for safety in the science classroom. Check out the recording below, or visit the VROC site for info about TWiSE. you can also subscribe to the weekly TWiSE podcast via iTunes.

This also marks the beginning of a partnership between SCCAO and VROC as all future episodes of TWiSE will be presented in association with SCCAO, and will have some wrapper activities that go along with the episodes.

Mini Conference November 8 – Livestream

Admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:57:55 +0000

Here’s the embedded Livestream player for viewing what we can stream during the day from our mini-conference. Check the Twitter stream for updates.

sccao on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Access to the Royal Society Achives

communications — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:43:21 +0000

Ever wanted to dig into old science? I mean, really old science. How about the first scientific paper ever published by Newton? Or the writing of a young man named Charles Darwin? Well, now you can. The Royal Society has announced that it will now allow free access on the web to all of its historical articles. There are over 60,000 science articles there waiting to be explored. What a great resource to dive into!

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Mini Conference Agenda Posted

communications — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:37:50 +0000

Agenda for the SCCAO Mini-Conference has been posted on the Mini-Conference registration page. Please click the link above on the menu to access it to register. You can also click SCCAO Mini – conf agenda to access the agenda directly. … Continue reading →

Mentors

communications — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:40:03 +0000

Here is a fascinating video about how Carl Sagan acted as a mentor to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yes, THAT Neil deGrasse Tyson. Do we model this with our students? Do we have that lasting impact?

18 Things You Should Know About Genetics

communications — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:18:34 +0000

This short video is a good introduction to many of the concepts that Ontario science students need to understand to grasp the study of genetics. It would make a good intro or review for the subject.

18 Things You Should Know About Genetics from David Murawsky on Vimeo.

Particle faster than light?

communications — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:23:17 +0000

A team of physicists working at CERN in Europe has announced a possibly revolutionary discovery. It’s being reported that they’ve found evidence that neutrino’s can travel faster than light. When you look at the data, they found that when sending a beam of neutrino’s from one site to another, they arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than they should have. While 60 nanoseconds many not seem like a lot, it’s enough to make the science community ask some pretty big questions.

The best part is that this experiement, while incredibly complex, is also wonderfully simple, and you can discuss this a science class in high school, and with a quick math example look at their data, and see for yourself what the discovery means. It’s basically a v=d/t problem.

While we don’t have faster than light starships yet, this new result may open up a whole new era in physics. Or it may be explained with some other, simpler reason. Science will help to puzzle it out. That’s why science rules.

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November 9th Meeting

communications — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:53:45 +0000

Welcome to the 2011-12 school year to past and present members of SCCAO
This year SCCAO will continue to connect and support Science Leaders from all around Ontario. Please consider forwarding this message to others within your district or organization if they have responsibility for supporting Science instruction. If you have received this message and wish to have your name removed from this mail list then please contact Rick Pardo (r.pardo@tvdsb.on.ca) to have your email removed from our list.

We are looking forward to another great year working with many veteran members of SCCAO and welcoming new SCCAO members as well! Implementation of the science curriculum, Growing Success and lab safety initiatives continue to be at the forefront and we look forward to sharing some of the exciting things going on in Science classrooms around Ontario. As boards grapple with the Growing Success document, this year SCCAO will make implications for science assessment a focus and area of priority. In addition to assessment, we will continue to work together to support our work in the areas of Inquiry, Differentiated Instruction and Safety via electronic and face to face sessions.

We will be holding our fourth annual SCCAO Conference on Wednesday, November 9, 2011. The day is included in the SCCAO membership fee and is scheduled one day before the annual STAO conference, and at the same location (DoubleTree by Hilton – Toronto Airport) . Please be sure to mark this date on your calendar. Joanie Causarano and Paul Walsh of the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum and Assessment Policy Branch will be our guest speakers for the morning session. Her topic of ”Assessment and Evaluation in the Inquiry Process “ will provide each of us a great learning opportunity so that we can best support our own teachers and students.

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Brand new year. Brand new site!

Admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:19:44 +0000

For the start of the 2011-2012 school year, the SCCAO website has been given a face lift. We’ve got a great new logo created by Karen Waite of KPRDSB and we’ve got a fresh install of our website as a new foundation for the online presence of SCCAO. Our Twitter feed is on the right, and we provide a new science magazine format everyday for you to check out.

Looking forward to a great school year and lots of science and technology goodies!

SCCAO Exec Planning Meeting June 7th

assessment — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:23:19 +0000

Planning is well underway for 2011-2012. Meetings, Mini-Conference, Mid-Year Institute, AGM….all planned! Finalizing web-site details now….