Assignment: Choose at least one professional organization related to maker education, and decide how you may get involved. What organization will best help you and your project? Please explain in a paragraph.
The organization I have chosen is the National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA). I've been a member for a long time. I've been very happy to see them include information about Makerspaces and maker education lessons and projects in recent years. NSTA has a large archive of lesson plans, book excerpts, and articles available for members. The resources are divided into elementary school, middle school, high school, and college-appropriate materials. Most of their content is grouped into Earth & space science, life science, and physical science with more recent additions devoted to STEM and maker education. These are all easy to sort through on their website and you can download PDFs or add selections to your personal library for later reading. For my capstone, I'm focusing on the Earth & space science resources for elementary school-aged children. As part of my project, I'm developing 6 lesson plans for children ages 5-9 (grades K-4) centered on the science of the Sun. I'm using some of the resources provided through NSTA to help me develop the lesson plans using activities that were developed by educators and have been tested in the classroom. These resources will help me build content knowledge to share with participants in the program and ensure that my projects are age-appropriate and standards-based. Taken together with resources provided by NASA HEAT and NASA JPL I feel confident that the materials I prepare for my Sun Camp will hit the mark. As an added bonus, there are a variety of active forums -- including forums for Informal Science, Distance Learning, Elementary Science, and Eather & Space Science -- where I can ask questions and get feedback.