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Access comprehensive workshop materials, agendas, and instructional frameworks designed to equip educators with the pedagogical and technical tools needed to facilitate Incubation Design Challenges (IDCs) in urban high schools.
Summer Teacher Professional Development Workshop (July 16–17, 2026)
Summer Teacher Professional Development Workshop (July 16–17, 2026)
This two-day intensive workshop at Purdue University brings together STEM educators, researchers, and industry partners to bridge learner-centered pedagogy with physical computing and agricultural systems.
Learner-Centered Teaching (LCT) & Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Explore core frameworks for activating students' prior experiences and leveraging their unique cultural assets. Educators learn strategies to guide students in scoping local community contexts, conducting asset mapping, and framing authentic food system problems using systems-thinking approaches.
Physical Computing & IoT Sensor Integration: Hands-on training featuring micro:bit microcontrollers and FarmBeats for Students kits. Teachers practice block-based and JavaScript coding to capture real-time environmental metrics—including soil moisture, ambient light, and temperature—to build automated environmental data loggers for classroom crop production.
Urban Food Systems & Data Mining: Practical guides for helping students map urban food deserts. Educators utilize digital tools (such as Google Maps, City-Data, and local transit schedules) to quantify variables across four key dimensions: Transportation Access, Financial Resources, Proximity to Produce, and Travelability Infrastructure.
IDC Curriculum Design & Implementation: Instructional templates for structuring the 4-stage IDC process over an eight-week block. Teachers learn how to guide students from initial community assessment (IDC-1) through the design, testing, and optimization of microgreen growing prototypes and IoT precision agriculture systems (IDC-2 through IDC-4).
Implementation Logistics & Support: Comprehensive resources outlining classroom supply assistance, check-in schedules, and virtual scientist guest speaker visits designed to connect high school students directly with academic and industry partners.
Featured Workshop Documents & Curriculum Artifacts
Featured Workshop Documents & Curriculum Artifacts
IN-STEP TPD Workshop Itinerary July 16-17.2026 website.docxTPD Workshop Agenda
TPD Workshop Agenda
A detailed two-day itinerary outlining session schedules, learning objectives, and facilitator roles for the Summer Teacher Professional Development workshop held at Purdue University. This document guides educators through sessions on Learner-Centered Teaching (LCT), micro:bit IoT sensor integration, community food desert data mining, and step-by-step IDC lesson planning.
INSTEP TPD Workshop July 2026.pptxTPD Workshop Presentation Slides
TPD Workshop Presentation Slides
The core instructional presentation used during the teacher professional development sessions. It covers foundational concepts in urban food systems, student empowerment frameworks, step-by-step MakeCode and FarmBeats kit tutorials, data logging protocols, and implementation timelines for classroom rollout.
Food System Map.pdfNourish Food System Map
Nourish Food System Map
A visual learning tool that breaks down the interconnected biological, economic, social, health, and political sub-systems shaping local food access. Teachers and students utilize this map during initial community assessments to analyze inputs, outputs, supply chain dynamics, and structural factors driving urban food security.
Source: https://www.nourishlife.org/
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the IN-STEP project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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