Newsletters | Newsletter Archive BLOSSOMS What's New? Summer 2020
Top MIT BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS YouTube Channel BLOSSOMS Twitter Page BLOSSOMS Facebook MIT BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS YouTube Channel BLOSSOMS Twitter Page BLOSSOMS Facebook
         
 
 
 
Planting Seeds. Growing Minds.As of August 1st, 2020, MIT BLOSSOMS will temporarily be shutting down day-to-day activities, but continuing to have its educational resources freely available on the website. We want to take this opportunity to thank all our newsletter subscribers – many who have been with us for almost the entire 12 years. We are hoping to return to active operations once a new and appropriate home can be located, one where our important work can continue and expand.
 
     
     
 

BLOSSOMS Website Introduces New Project-Based Learning Units
Project Based LearningProject-Based Learning (PBL) is an emerging teaching/learning strategy in which the teacher helps students form small teams and then challenges each team to work on a demanding problem over the course of weeks. Yet imagine the challenge for a teacher to design and operate such a PBL project while still having to prepare and give lectures for other required topics. Our new MIT BLOSSOMS PBL units are designed for just such a teacher – someone who wants to give PBL a try, but is not sure just how to get started. Each BLOSSOMS PBL unit is developed to provide a teacher with all the resources and scaffolding needed to conduct a three to five-week classroom project. The first five MIT BLOSSOMS PBL units can be found here.

New BLOSSOMS Instructional Resources to Assist Science Teachers in Aligning Lessons with NGSS
NGSS LogoMIT BLOSSOMS has created five new video lessons to support STEM teachers by demonstrating the three-dimensional instruction required in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These new standards are designed to help realize a vision for education in which students actively engage in scientific and engineering practices and apply crosscutting concepts to deepen their comprehension of the core ideas in these fields. The five BLOSSOMS NGSS-aligned lessons, along with accompanying instructional resources, are designed to give science teachers a clearer understanding of how the three dimensions can be integrated within a lesson. They also demonstrate a shift in instructional approach from teacher-focused to student-focused. The five new BLOSSOMS lessons and instructional resources can be viewed here.

 
Thank You!
A Big Thank You to All Our BLOSSOMS Video Teachers

We at MIT BLOSSOMS want to express gratitude to the more than 150 teachers from around the world who have worked hard with us to develop the videos currently in our lesson repository. This includes high school teachers, scientists, as well as both university professors and students, from ten different countries including the U.S. We are proud of the fact that many of our lessons are available in multiple languages and are well aware of how much time and energy went into their creation from people all over the globe. It has been our tremendous pleasure to work with all of these video teachers, and we wish them each the best for the future!

A Big Thank You to All Our Sponsors over the Years

At this time, we would also like to thank all the individuals and organizations that have supported BLOSSOMS since we began in 2008. A complete list of those sponsors can be viewed at the close of each of our video lessons. At this time, we would especially like to thank the Richard Lounsbery Foundation for its funding of the NGSS Teacher Professional Learning initiative and the US Open Education Resources Foundation. Inc., Lincoln H. Miller, Jr., founder and president, for its funding of our Project-Based Learning initiative.

 
MIT BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS BLOSSOMS YouTube Channel BLOSSOMS Twitter Page BLOSSOMS Facebook