Data Science Education Meetup at NSTA 2017

Thanks to all the great folks who attended our NSTA 2017 Data Science Education Meetup at BottleRock LA last night. We had a great crowd attend, complete with representatives from Magnitude.io, the education arm of the International Space Station (ISS), CASIS, the folks from MiniPCR, LAUSD, Lodi USD, the CREATE for STEM Institute, Educational Passages and more! We’re still processing the yummy food and hours of great conversation about all things data.

Happy attendees at the Data Science Education Meetup at NSTA 2017

A few highlights of the evening included:

  • Hearing about streaming atmospheric data from Magnitude.io’s successful rocket and balloon launches at Lodi schools and others all across California, and their ExoLab experiments on the ISS
  • Debating the grand challenges and barriers to data science education with teachers and district staff
  • Hearing about how using data, modeling and evidence has transformed teaching for those using the Interactions curriculum from the CREATE for STEM Institute and the Concord Consortium
  • Seeing Liam Kennedy’s amazing ISS-ABOVE device that changes your TV into a portal to the International Space Station, complete with live alerts when the ISS passes overhead
  • Learning about how MiniPCR’s Genes in Space competition is bringing high school students’ experiments to the space station and how a new USB-stick-sized gene sequencing device is speeding up microbe research on the ISS by orders of magnitude
  • Hearing stories of how data from GPS-tracked drifter boats from Educational Passages has connected students across continents

The place was packed and the evening was full of great geekery, all the more evidence that the time has come for data science education. We thank everyone who attended and we look forward to building networks, collaborations and new modes of teaching and learning together.

Missed us last night? No problem. Join us for the next one, at an upcoming conference near you! See all our meetups and RSVP at concord.org/meetup.