Interior of the old Union Station, downtown building reflections, St. Louis on a foggy morning and the Arch in springtime.

St. Louis is a city with deep connections to TUMS, A.G. Edwards, Cardinals baseball, and some might say grand architectural statements, not necessarily related or in that order. The National Science Teachers Association is holding their annual convention here From March from March 29-April 1 at this confluence of tradition, research, technology and education creating what the program called a “River of Connections.” NSDL was on hand actively engaging new and old partners, and reaching out to discover more about what teachers need to boost STEM instruction in K12 classrooms nationwide.

The new Vernier LabQuest classroom tool, and a handmade poster.

Day one was marked with an almost carney atmosphere. Teachers and people who wanted to sell things to teachers hawked everything from books to demonstrations to classroom technology gee-gaws in the exhibition hall area using everything from homemade signs to mutimedia exhibit hall classrooms.
Activities at the NSDL booth included:

11am & 1pm
NSDL Concept Maps: Maps of interrelated science or math concepts can find grade-appropriate classroom resources from NSDL to help teach the desired concept and see the associated education standard at the click of your mouse.

12 pm NSTA Web Seminars: Free professional development at your desktop! Learn about the NSDL series of NSTA web seminars. Coming up: April 10th—Teach Engineering. These seminars are interactive, fun, and a great way to receive professional development from experts on science content and online resources

11:30am&12:30 BirdSleuth: Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s new curriculum that shows you how to use bird data and observations in the classroom

2pm Teachers’ Domain: Collections include classroom-ready multimedia resources for use in lessons or independent study, and professional development courses

2:30 & 4:30pm Earth Exploration Toolbook: The Earth Exploration Toolbook is a collection of computer-based Earth science activities. Each activity, or chapter, introduces one or more data sets and an analysis tool that enables users to explore some aspect of the Earth system

3pm & 5pm Macaulay Library: Learn about the worlds largest archive of animal sounds and associated video from Cornell University

3:30 & 4pm JCE CLIC Online: JCE High School Chemed Learning Information Center (CLIC) collects resources from the Journal of Chemical Education that are of special interest to high school chemistry teachers

Next post: Selected session highlights from day one: Forensics rules; the new Yahoo! Goobler, and Teacher astronauts.