SAINT AMBROSE LEADS THE WAY FOR INNOVATION IN THE CLASSROOM WITH STEM
This past February, Saint Ambrose STEM Faculty had the privilege of attending the Ohio Educational Technology Conference (OETC) — the premier P-20 state educational technology conference attended by over 4,000 professionals— in Columbus. The yearly OETC is the forefront of what’s happening in technology today and provides great opportunities for enriched learning in the classroom and collaboration. We were proud that our own Computer Science and STEM coding teacher, Mrs. Lori Schlueter, was selected to present. We also had eighth grade students Daniel, Serena, and Katie present the entire STREAM PBL process implemented at Saint Ambrose School.
“We were excited to have the students of St. Ambrose School and their teacher, Lori Schlueter, present at this year’s Ohio Education Technology Conference,” said Tracy Taylor, a member of the OETC planning team at the Ohio Department of Higher Education. “Their hands-on presentations showed how the instructor and students incorporated the application into classroom learning, and transferred that learning into new skills to be used in the classroom and community.”
The purpose of Mrs. Schlueter’s presentation was to educate schools on how to obtain free ArcGIS licenses from the Ohio Board of Regents, how to implement ArcGIS in the classroom, and how to collaborate with Saint Ambrose to create real world solutions for the community. Mrs. Schlueter also took the opportunity to introduce The Ohio STEM Impact Network, which is composed of community partners, educators, law enforcement, and city officials and our partner in STEM education on campus. The OSIN has partnered with Saint Ambrose School to help students find solutions to real world community issues. Students are working on various impact projects through their Impact Youth Advisory Coalition. The www.ohiostemimpact.org site is available for schools to collaborate with The Ohio STEM Impact Network and Saint Ambrose School!
Some examples of projects our students are working on this year with our STEM partners include:
- Creating an app that helps homeless mission operators manage resources for the homeless and they have created new products to help keep the homeless warm during winter weather.
- Environmental research that involves locating flooding vulnerabilities using watershed analysis through a partnership with NOAA, The National Weather Service.
- The Drug Impact Project that involved listening to stories from heroin addicts in recovery, and analyzing brain scan imagery from brain scans from those addicted to heroin.
OETC was not the only conference Mrs. Schlueter will be speaking at this year. Esri has also selected her to present The Homeless Mission Operators App in the Esri User Conference in San Diego this July. This conference is the largest GIS event in the world, making this a huge honor. God bless Mrs. Schlueter for all of the wonderful gifts she brings to our school community.
