PDTCA 2020

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at The Calgary Zoo, address: 210 St. George's Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7V6. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
How does an animal’s adaptations affect their survival? What effect will this have on their ability to pass on their genetics and so affect their species biodiversity? How does the environment impact these adaptations? Come explore the Canadian Wilds and learn all about the footprints animals leave on the environment and the footprints the environment leaves on the animals. This program takes place completely outside so please dress for the February weather.

Experiments that work don’t always agree with our predictions. The models we use to figure out physics live in the perfect world of mathematics but the real world is messy. In this session we will explore the messiness. What measurements, assumptions, equipment errors are there? When is it appropriate to find a percent error? (When isn’t it appropriate to do that?)
Remember – no one learned anything about cars from a good car!

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at iFLY Calgary 811 64 Avenue Northeast, Calgary, AB T2E 3Z8. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
• There is a participant fee of $49.95 per person plus GST. Please pay before February 9th at: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/pdtca-convention-elementary-stem-experience-tickets-87834692931

Experience STEM learning through the thrill of body flight!

Learn and understand the technology, physics and math that creates the airflow and allows for body flight to be accomplished. Education session, lab activity, physics demo and 2 flights per person in Western Canada's very first vertical wind tunnel.

In this session I will show demos of static electricity. They are designed to be inexpensive, easy to perform and, hopefully, entertaining. Most importantly, the demos are designed to illustrate static electric phenomena and help students develop a working model that successfully explains the observations of the demos. The session will include a number of suggestions for static electricity labs as well and participants will have a chance to try the experiments.

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at 2050 Agriculture Trail (The Nutrien Western Events Centre on Stampede Park.
A Shuttle bus will be arranged by the Calgary Stampede Foundation. The Stampede Trolley will pick up session registrants at the Marriott Hotel on 9th Ave at 12:45 PM on Thursday, Feb 20 and shuttle them over to the Journey 2050 Classroom located in the Nutrien Western Event Centre at Stampede Park..  The trolley will return to the Marriott at the end of the session.


Move sustainability from concept to action for you and your students! Hop on the Stampede Trolley and relocate to Stampede Park’s Journey 2050 classroom for this exploration of food sustainability. Come learn about all the incredible programs, tools and resources available to bring the topic of food sustainability to life. Be inspired by the multitude of sustainable action projects that youth, schools and communities have undertaken in recent months. Enjoy a sustainable snack prepared by the Calgary Stampede culinary team. Explore the resources within the Journey 2050 program and the extensive list of community resources available to spark new projects to bring back to your class.

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at The Calgary Zoo, address: 210 St. George's Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7V6. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
Want to guide your students to take action for a more sustainable planet? Explore ways for your students to join the zoo in its mission to sustain wildlife and wild places. Through case studies and student-led conservation action project examples, learn how you can use the zoo to inspire your students' compassion for nature and confidence in their ability to play a role in making sure their future is wild.

William Herschel, in 1800, performed an experiment that revealed something beyond the red end of the solar spectrum (infrared) that was producing heat. Johann Ritter, in 1801, performed an experiment that revealed something beyond the violet end of the spectrum (ultraviolet) that caused chemicals to darken. Come and perform a STEM and STEAM version of these experiments that by junior high and high school students can do.

Session will ultilize teacher resources from the Perimeter Institute to study a selection of topics in modern physics. Topics may include but are not limited to bubble chambers, and the detection of neutrinos and dark matter.

Astronomy is the world’s oldest science and it is fundamental to the traditional conscious of the Indigenous
peoples of Canada. The material evidence of medicine wheels and other manipulated landforms provide
an insight into traditional ways of understanding indigenous views of the universe. The patterns of motion
of celestial objects were used as a calendar, clock and for wayfinding. Engaging students in these complex
concepts of sky science is challenging. Employing Indigenous traditional cosmology along with
contemporary discovery helps students to comprehend practical applications of sky science. Jennifer
Howse is an education specialist who has offered astronomy programming at the Rothney Astrophysical
Observatory for the past thirteen years. She will share her insights and resources related to Astronomy
education through an Indigenous lens.

Dive into this exciting workshop that will demonstrate how to engage students in meaningful environmental education. From Kindergarten to Grade 12, the Alberta Program of Studies is full of ways to connect to water topics in your classroom. Learn how to use water and your local watershed as a launch point for student inquiry, citizen science, wetlands education, critical thinking, environmental action projects and more! _x000D_
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Inside Education will guide you through how to build your own aquatic sampling kit, demonstrate and share a successful framework implementing water-based environmental action projects, and give you tons of ideas and resources you can use to make waves on Monday morning!

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at iFLY Calgary 811 64 Avenue Northeast, Calgary, AB T2E 3Z8. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
• There is a participant fee of $49.95 per person plus GST. Please pay before February 9th at: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/pdtca-convention-high-school-stem-experience-tickets-87837770135

Experience STEM learning through the thrill of body flight!

Learn and understand the technology, physics and math that creates the airflow and allows for body flight to be accomplished. Education session, lab activity, physics demo and 2 flights per person in Western Canada's very first vertical wind tunnel.

• Pre-Registration is required.
Grade 7 – Grade 12 educators
In this hands-on, interactive workshop, participants will explore how to facilitate a student-led, design thinking challenge rooted in empathy.

Through participation in this workshop, educators will:
• Engage in the design thinking process – beginning with empathy where participants will explore how the UN Sustainable Development goals can be used to help students develop a deep understanding of problems that need to be solved
• Discover strategies that strengthen the development of students’ computational thinking and digital citizenship skills; and,
• Recognize how to incorporate open source data to expand the possibilities for inquiry across disciplines.

• Participants are encouraged to bring their mobile devices with the micro:bit app pre-downloaded.
• Alternatively - participants can use personal laptops (please ensure you can use your usb port and are not fire-walled or blocked from doing this if you have a district-issued computer).

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at The Calgary Zoo, address: 210 St. George's Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7V6. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
In this unique access experience, visit the Calgary Zoo’s Animal Health Centre and explore ways that our veterinary team supports and maintains the health and welfare of our 1000 animal colleagues, including a variety of diets, practices and treatments.

Wonder, testing, questioning, and experimenting are key components of scientific inquiry. Sometimes it’s the investigations that get a bit ‘messy’ that really stimulate students to embrace their learning. Join us for a hand-on session and dig, figuratively and literally, into a mulch of curriculum-based activities and experiences to inspire your students. (Handy wipes included.)

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at The Calgary Zoo, address: 210 St. George's Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7V6. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
Join BirdSleuth Ambassador, Sarah M. Smith, to discover an exciting set of resources for outdoor exploration and curriculum science! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers some of the most engaging and exciting citizen science opportunities out there today, including wonderfully accessible and free resources such as eBird. By participating in citizen science and investigations, students become scientists. They gain real science practice, developing process skills – all by practicing observations of the birds around them and following their own inquiries deeper.
No birding expertise is required of the participant. BirdSleuth, the K-12 education program out of Cornell, is designed to help both students and educators develop a basic birding knowledge and offers fantastic support and resources for further inquiry and for expanding that knowledge. During this workshop, participants will be provided with an introduction to the BirdSleuth program, including Alberta curriculum links and applications, as well as an introduction to the excellent free resources that will help them scaffold student inquiry and participate in citizen science. Part of the workshop will include birding sessions outside at the Calgary Zoo, so please dress for the weather. In addition, a smartphone, while not mandatory, will allow individual exploration of eBird and several other useful apps in the field.

From resisting earthquakes with engineering to designing a faster propulsion system for submarines, this session will provide design challenge opportunities aligned with Science 10, Physics 20, and Physics 30 using inexpensive materials. Participants will be actively engaging with a number of design challenges from the Perimeter Institute's educational resources that highlight effective teaching practices. These design challenges provide opportunities for students to apply their understanding to authentic problems while promoting problem solving within challenging constraints.

• Pre-Registration is required.
• This OFF Site program is offered at The Calgary Zoo, address: 210 St. George's Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 7V6. Delegates are responsible for their own, round-trip transportation.
In this unique access experience, tour the state of the art filtration facilities of our Penguin Plunge Building. Meet some of our amazing penguin colleagues and explore the various strategies and technologies we use to keep their habitat clean, healthy, and cold. Please ensure you wear close-toed shoes for this experience.

What does play have in common with scientific inquiry? Experimentation, not to mention fun. Using play is an essential ingredient to engage children in scientific inquiry. Join us for a hands-on session and leave armed with science activities for your classroom tomorrow. Participants will experience interactive play-based activities to support and extend student thinking and doing in the primary grades. We’ll use different picture books, tools, and materials to spark innovation and allow your students to Discover, Inquire, and Create!