Between science and STEM fairs, project reviews, and open houses, students have lots of opportunities to show off their solutions and designs. Those solutions will never be as good as they can be if students don’t love and deeply understand the problem they are trying to solve. Yes. it’s a great experience to present completed work. But at an event full of STEM professionals, educators, and advocates wouldn’t it be useful if students could talk through their ideas and get feedback on their approach while they are still trying to understand the problem?
Love the Problem
As part of this year’s sySTEMnow conference, Learn Deep is hosting a breakout session that will give teams of students the opportunity to talk with participants about the challenge they are working on, the assumptions they need to validate, and how they plan to do so. We’ll ask participants to probe your students’ understanding of the problem they want to solve, suggest how others have may have looked at it, and point them to resources or ideas that can help solidify their approach. We don’t want to see ideas for a solution or a solution in search of a problem. We want to see a love for the problem. That’s where great solutions will come from.
Do you have students working on something big that they care deeply about?
We’ll select up to 8 teams to join us for our break-out session at the conference. Students will share their thinking on the challenge they are exploring. We’ll rotate attendees around the room over the course of the session, so each team will have the chance to talk with at least three groups of STEM professionals. This is a great opportunity for your students to ask questions of ‘real’ experts as they validate the challenge they have selected to work on. Help your students with submission of their proposal using this form.
Selection Process
This year’s conference takes place on Wednesday, November 1, 2023. If you’d like your students to participate in this session please complete the proposal sign up form by October 1, 2023. We look to provide balance in the types of projects, ages of the students, variety of schools/organizations. We will review all submissions and confirm if your group was selected on or before October 9, 2023.
Participants in this session will get free admission to the conference, including an invitation to lunch!
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Session Time: 9:30 – 10:20am
Location: sySTEMnow Conference @ Italian Community Center
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