Thank you for visiting our video showcase “Noyce Master Teaching Fellows Take Charge during COVID-19.” During the summer of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, we decided to take our highly successful 33-year professional development program for K-12 mathematics teachers virtual with the help of the Rice/NSF Robert Noyce Master Teaching Fellows (Grant #1556006). 

Our video outlines the important role that our Noyce Master Teacher Fellows played and lessons learned in the move completely to remote learning. We learned so much and grew very close during this intensive summer experience. We focused on building communities of practice; we focused on developing conceptual understanding; we used a variety of technologies that could also transfer to classrooms post-pandemic times.

Our K-12 teacher participants felt better equipped, energized, and ready to tackle the challenges of online learning in the fall with their own students.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions. We would also like to learn about your own experiences with remote learning, your favorite technologies, and ways you assessed learning.

The Noyce fellows played a wonderful role in the  virtual RUSMP Summer Campus Program 2020.  

Carolyn White

The Rice University School Mathematics Project (RUSMP) and the Houston Independent School District have richly benefitted from the expertise of the Noyce Fellows. Other districts are requesting RUSMP support to develop Noyce Master Teaching Fellows.

Hi there, RUSMP team and collaborators! I'm a high school science teacher, and I love playful PD that's grounded in curriculum and community - this looks like great fun :)

I'm curious about a source/measurement of impact I don't see mentioned -- the impact on the Noyce teachers themselves and their students. Have you collected, or do you plan to collect, data on their experiences and their learning as facilitators? I facilitate a fair bit of professional development, and one of the overlooked sources of data, I feel, is how facilitators see their *own* learning grow as a result of participating in an experience like the one your presentation highlights!

Our Director of Research and External Evaluator are collecting this data (both qualitative and quantitative).

Can you tell us about some of the experiences or projects your fellows undertook in their own classrooms/districts during this past year, especially related to building their communities of practice?

Noyce Fellows worked with their teachers, parents, school communities, and the school district... modeling, encouraging, supporting, guiding... Their positive can-do spirit resulted in colleagues trying new ways to actively involve students to participate in online classes. Constant communication with families minimized the number who fell through the cracks...

I noticed in your description that you also had fellows presenting at local conferences.  This is something we have been discussing for our project as well.  Do you have any advice for us as we encourage our fellows to develop proposals and share their work at conferences?

In the school district, the curriculum department has mini-conferences throughout the year. Our Noyce fellows present at those. Local conferences, including our our own RUSMP spring and fall networking conferences, provide opportunities for our Noyce Fellows to share what they are doing. Also other universities in the area tap our Noyce Fellows as speakers. Noyce fellows have so much to share. You could encourage them to present in pairs if they have never done this before.

What an ambitious and long-running Summer Campus Program you have! I think that you integrated the Noyce MTFs as leaders in the Summer Campus Program -- is that correct? If so, I am curious how you brought them into this program. Congratulations!

This summer professional development program seems incredible. I would like to know what were your lessons learned about bringing a traditional face-to-face program online.  What made it work and what obstacles did you overcome. Also, I am interested in knowing of those teachers for whom this was their first time participating in an online program, how did it compare to other experiences. Similarly, for those who may have participated in an online prof dev program before yours, how did it compare. You may not have collected this data but it sure would be interesting to know as online or virtual teaching and trainings are here to stay, at least for the near future.

Look forward to reading your response.

Thank you for sharing your experience with pivoting your SCP to an online workshop. I'm curious to hear more about what Anne mentions above in her opening welcome post, that "we used a variety of technologies that could also transfer to classrooms post-pandemic times." Can you share a few examples of how your virtual experience might influence or enhance future in-person SCPs? 

These are some of the technologies that we used that can easily transfer to face-to-face instruction.

• document cameras served as web cams,
• laptops for modeling hands-on activities,
• Virtual Manipulatives,
• GeoGebra Geometry (used before the Pandemic)
• Pear Deck, Numberphile, and RUSMP Symbaloos (un the RUSMP website http://rusmp.rice.edu under resources)
• Teachers submitted responses and interacted using Nearpod, Kahoot!, Padlet, Flipgrid, Whiteboard.fi, and via email.

We tried whatever we could find to ensure no one was invisible!

Great video! My question builds on those above - I am wondering what specific technologies for teaching math content (e.g., GeoGebra) you felt teachers responded best to, and had the most success with, and which ones were more of a struggle. This is something I've been thinking so much about when training teachers over the past year. Thank for for all of your insights in the video and in the posts!

Since our programs were K-12, different technologies were more appropriate at the different levels. GeoGebra was used more frequently with the high school group. Padlet, Flipgrid, Whiteboard.fi were popular with all groups. Please check out our Symbaloos, as they were used extensively by all groups too.

We showcased all the technologies used during Summer 2020 at our Fall and Spring Networking Conferences this year. Our entire teacher network and others around the globe who attended these virtual conferences benefitted from these sessions and left with ideas on how to use them in post-pandemic times.

Thanks again for this description of how your program went virtual! Having a continuity of a successful professional development program is such a boon to participating teachers and developing community :)

We have an amazing teacher network at RUSMP. Everyone steps up to help and offer suggestions. We don't claim to have all the answers but we can find them in our very talented group of educators. This is our 35th Anniversary (our center was started with NSF TE funding in 1987). Our team appreciates the community's trust in our work and we are committed to live up to this.