2023 NYSCATE Brandon DelCorvo Classroom Grant Winners

 

Congratulations to the following NYSCATE members that were awarded a NYSCATE Brandon DelCorvo Classroom learning grant for 2023! This year's grant winners will conduct poster sessions at the 2023 Annual Conference and share out more information on their winning grant! Thank you to all that submitted a grant proposal this year!

Dionne Barratt

Wayland-Cohocton Central School District

Coding their Future with Bots for Littles

The Wayland-Cohocton Central School District will utilize Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots to introduce coding, programming, and the associated critical thinking and problem solving skills to our youngest students in Prekindergarten through 2nd grade. Our school district is currently doing work to offer multiple pathways to better prepare students to graduate high school, career, college, and civic ready. One of our six pathways currently being built is Computer Science and Information Technology. While students in grades K-12 have 1:1 Chromebook devices, we do not have any Computer Science curriculum or resources for our PreK students. Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots are tools that we will easily incorporate in our existing Early Education curriculum in order to support teaching core content concepts while still engaging students in age-appropriate play-like learning. With this technology, students will be able to create and execute simple algorithms to reinforce skills such as color identification, spelling of names, posing questions, classification of geometric shapes, and making predictions and testing hypotheses. Teachers will continue to offer opportunities to build socioemotional capacity with students as they work collaboratively to design programs. Students will continue to build proficiency in core areas, but integrating Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots into our early childhood resources will serve to boost literacy skills like letter recognition, phonemic awareness, storytelling, and identifying cause and effect, or math skills like sequencing, estimation, and problem-solving.

 

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Travis Owens

Westmoreland CSD

 

Improving SEL Through After-School Robotics PBL

The purpose of the grant is to improve the overall student social & emotional well being, connection to school, and empower student learners in STEM through the creation of a school robotics team. The robotics team will help build student self-awareness and confidence, as well as interpersonal decision making skills through added after school team social interactions and shared problem solving. Students will apply the engineering design process to collaboratively select tools, resources, and materials to actively build and manage technological systems to design and build a robot for competitions. The grant will launch the new school club sport by providing the funds for the components to build the robot.   According to a student survey conducted, about 10% of the students in 7-12 have a high interest in a robotics club, while another 20% stated they may be interested. That same survey revealed that the students were interested in advancing their college and career readiness skills with more mechanical engineering learning using more hands-on technology such as 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC, and robotics. The grant  will help the district's technology and computer science teacher reach older kids that don't normally get these types of extended applied STEM experiences in an after school setting, while addressing social-emotional standards, and provide data on the students SEL progress.

 

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Gina Varacchi

Three Village Central School District

 

Think Inside the Box and Outside the Screen: Using Board Games to Build Computer Science & Digital Skills

Strategic games and board games can offer fun and engaging ways to teach Computer Science and Digital Fluency Skills.  This grant is to make students aware of and help them  develop Computer Science & Digital Fluency skills through algorithmic thinking, computational thinking, programming, data analysis and game design by developing complex skills associated with strategic games and board games.  Additionally, the time in which students spend with strategic games and board games will foster the development of social emotional learning through collaboration, communication, problem solving, resilience and empathy.   Students will play many of these games in a traditional board game setting. They will also be given time to play online versions. We will discuss the difference between the versions.  Together, teacher and students will clearly identify the skills within the games and apply them to curriculum and everyday life situations.

Yeidy Levels

NYC Public School 376K (District 32)

 

LEGO Makerspace

Purposeful play using LEGOs in the classroom can be one of the most innovative ways to transform our teaching and our students' learning. For this reason, we are using LEGOs with a storage system for our STEAM Lab to create a LEGO Makerspace.  One project we will complete with these materials is the Tiny House Project in the third grade. The students will design and create prototypes of custom tiny houses for their clients. Students will explore concepts such as computational thinking and reasoning and logic while going through the design process to plan and build the tiny houses.  On the whole, using this grant to create a functional LEGO Makerspace for students to use in the STEAM Lab will allow us to reach various classes spanning multiple grades in our school! The LEGO Makerspace would be available to the students during class times and enrichment club times to nurture their creativity and set them up for success in the 21st century!

Ashley Kilby

Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School

 

 

Podcaster Video Production-Grade 4

We will purchase a podcaster starter kit and a green screen for recording video content. Students will record digital content demonstrating their learning of topics throughout the school year. In addition, students will record daily morning announcements for the elementary school. This will give students an opportunity to learn various recording platforms, editing, public speaking and for them to reflect on their content learning through video demonstrations. Students will use the microphone for improved sound quality and volume. The ipad/laptop cart will allow for them to use the video recorded feature on their ipads/laptops by having it properly aligned and without the camera shaking. Furthermore, students would be able to use another device as a teleprompter to help them with their dialogue. The green screen allows for students to create any background they would like. For example, if they are recording a video on Native American cultures within New York State (grade 4 social studies curriculum), they might have an image of a village as the background. This will enhance their demonstration by allowing viewers to visualize what they are describing throughout the presentation.

Madeline Craig

Molloy University

STEAMing Ahead Using LEGO Education and the Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards

The purpose of the grant project is to demonstrate the importance of using active, hands-on STEAM learning with both teacher candidates and future teacher candidates. To increase the pool of high school students entering the teaching profession, we are offering a week-long summer Teacher Academy for rising juniors and seniors considering education as a major. During this week, we plan to introduce these high school students to hands-on STEAM learning using LEGO Education SPIKE kits. In addition, with the initial implementation beginning September 2023 and full implementation in September 2024, we are working to familiarize our pre-service teachers with the new Computer Science and Digital Fluency Learning Standards. LEGO Education products serve as effective tools to address many of these new standards, as well as content standards. Through the purchase and use of LEGO SPIKE kits, we can introduce the standards to our teacher candidates in monthly workshops, and in our methods courses for both elementary and secondary majors. Therefore, this grant project would benefit both potential future teacher candidates and current teacher candidates through the use of active learning in STEAM.

Aaron Burke

South Avenue Elementary School - Beacon City SD

Taking the School News Show to the Next Level

Our Morning News Show is a big part of our school and we are looking to make it an even more effective tool for teaching and engaging students. As of now, our 5th grade students do the research, film, and anchor the morning news show, but due to time constraints and other factors, students are not doing the editing. This project includes the equipment that will allow students to do editing and green screen effects as they film, rather than having it done later. The equipment will also create more learning opportunities for students by expanding the roles involved in making the news show. All fifth graders get to work on the news show for at least a couple of weeks during the year and the news goes out to the entire school each day, so this equipment would serve the whole school for years to come.

Paul Wiech

Trumansburg Central Schools

The Maple Syrup Project

The Maple Syrup Project offers an educational model for filtering curricula from all content areas through the lens of STEAM. Learners of all ages (K-12) - child, youth, and adult - embrace our woods as an educational space, collaborating in powerful learning experiences that combine knowing that with knowing how. Guided by our adult learners, our youth learners take the lead in producing maple syrup, contributing to our common knowledge about maple syrup and our woods, and guiding our youngest learners as they follow the sap of their trees from tap to table.

Prior Grant Winners

2022

Allison Bacon       Ossining Free Union SD  Mobile 3D Printer Maker Space

Jessi Donner       Tonawanda City SD STEAM Meets Light & Sound

Tim Needles & Cathy Masrour       Smithtown SD Smithtown Interdisciplinary STEAM collaboration project

Julie Parsons       Greece CSD    Prekindergarten Sphero Indi Opportunity

Anna Langlois       Northeastern Clinton CSD Bee Bots for Critical Thinking & More!

Chris Regini       Half Hollow Hills CSD Light Spectrum Research for Indoor Agriculture

Michele DiMarco  Wappingers CSD     Math, Science and Robotics

Alyssa Arroyo Yorktown CSD      Supporting CS & DF in K-1 with Kibo Robots

Nicholas Kiser      Newfane CSD      STEAM Resource Room

Dawn Sullin      Utica Academy of Science Elementary      Empowering Student Learning through Digital Presentations

2021

Christina O'Malley Akron Middle School Physical Computing:  Foundations to Robotics

Aaron Straus Salamanca City SD Drone Inspections & Agricultural Land Management

Sarah Robinson Mount Markham CSD Using Technology to Understand the Universe

Janet Matthews & Mary Knopp Mount Pleasant CSD Empowering Girls:  Females Face the Future 

Amy Balling Lancaster CSD Rubik's Cubes to Build Community for Remote and Hybrid Students

Heather Bermingham Lockport City SD Stop Motion Storytellers

Barbara Procario Wappingers CSD Cultivating Curiosity Through Digital Design

2020

Chris Regini  Half Hollow Hills CSD  Innovating Agriculture Through Food Computers

Thomas Cork  Susan E. Wagner High School  Accelerated Biology: Turning a challenge into an opportunity

Anne Mlod & Victoria Calarco Auburn Enlarged City SD  Engineering Brightness-Empowering Students to Make a Difference 

Heather Bermingham  REACH Academy Charter School  Harnessing the Wind

2019

Aaron Burke  Beacon City SD  Coding Drones

Mary Howard  Grand Island CSD  Cardboard Creations with Hummingbird Circuits

Karen Monaco  Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda SD  Autographical Portfolios-Beyond the Word Processor

Margaux Delgiudice-Calemmo  Garden City High School  3D Printer to Support the Creation of a Collaborative "Maker Club"

Walter Fishon & Laura Moakley Bay Shore High School  Humanities:  Cross-Curricular Exploration using VR 

Jennifer Hatfield & Khrista Tabak Depew High School  Engraving our Path to Innovation

Tammy Cummings  Center for Instruction Technology & Innovation  Can you fit in a box?

Shannon Sauder  Southwestern Central SD  Rethinking the Elementary Sandbox with AR

Shawn Christman  Cheektowaga Central SD  Unfathomable Field Trip

2018

Jessica Kearns Pearl River Middle School Make Storytelling a Cinch with a Robotic Finch!

Sheri McNair Highland Falls/Ft. Montgomery CSD Can We Fix it?  Yes We Can!

Todd Shuskey Perry High School Using DNA barcoding to identify the fish of Silver Lake

Cassandra Horton Wappingers CSD Coding with Robotics

Amy Balling Lancaster CSD Everyone Can Code

Dominick Dimperio Oneonta CSD Rap Composition

Joseph D'Amato Depew UFSD Student investigations in Thermal energy and Force through STEAM integration

Marybeth Diggins Hamburg CSD STEAM in the Primary Classroom

Caitlin McCabe Wappingers CSD Build Class: Teachers and Students Build a 3D Printer and a Learning Community

2017

Timothy Dawkins South Glens Falls SD Mini Projectors for Multiple points of projection

Bryan Van Vliet Saugerties CSD Programming Autonomous Robotic Control

Scott Reichert Anna S. Kuhl School Lights! Camera! Stop!

Marc Hunt Erie 1 BOCES VR Digital Storytelling

Benjamin Rudd Hilton CSD It Takes a Village-3D Printing

Claudia Abate Mt. Pleasant CSD 3D Printing Cuts Across the Curriculum

Stefani Trapani Highland High School Creative Technologies in the Classroom

Ryan Bane Hamilton Central SD Creating Connections:  Cultural Exploration to Digital Development

2016

Mary Anne Milano Voorheesville CSD Elementary Robotics, Coding and Playing with Sphero SPRK

Tammy Cummings Center for Instructional Technology Monkey Bot Sparks Ideas

Jennifer Hessletine Malone CSD Going Green with a Food Computer-A Project with MIT OpenAg Initiative

Corey Flynn Potsdam CSD Supporting STEAM with 3D Scanning and Printing

Andrew Nikola Wappingers CSD Working Collaboratively to Create, Invent, Tinker and Share

Julia Hannibal William Floyd CSD Computers:  Learn What They Can do From the Inside Out

Jeff Wekar & Macy Fountain Indian River SD Explore IOT with Pi:  Using Raspberry Pi and GrovePi Kits to Invent for the Internet of Things

2015

Jeff Wekar & Macy Fountain Indian River SD Take a Bite Out of Pi: Using Raspberry Pi Kits to Teach Students Computer Coding

Maria Mullbauer Yorkshire Computer Coding and World Launguage

Ellen Harp Brighton CSD Young Global Citizens use STEM Rockets to Aid Nations in Crisis

Cassandra Horton Wappingers CSD Empowering At-Risk Students in a Blended Learning Lab

Amanda Pacanowski Fredonia CSD Enhancing Student Learning with iPads

2014

Joanne Lotter Fredonia CSD Hands-on Healthy Learning Using iPads and Apple TV

Megan Cernaro Palermo Elementary Connecting DIY and Literacy

Jeff Salerno Lakeshore CSD Physics with Video Analysis

Aaron Pascucci Urban Choice Charter School 3rd Grade Chromebook Pilot

Jesse Fitzgerald Niskayuna CSD The Portable Math and Science Lab-Chromebooks and Vernier Labquest 2

Jennifer Kibler Parkdale Elementary iPad Partner Power

2013

Lucia Guarnieri Gustavus Adolphus Learning Center Using iPads with struggling readers to improve reading fluency and comprehension

Jeffrey Clark Cheektowaga Sloan UFSD Game-Based Learning in the Classroom

Laurel Chiesa Fayetteville-Manlius CSD Movin' Your Bod with the iPod

Nedra Isenberg Holland Patent CSD Growing Readers with a Healthy Mix of Daily 5, Cafe and iPads

Ronald Kotlik Clarence CSD Google Chromebook Flipped Classroom Becomes a History Lab

2012

Padraic McCarthy Port Jervis CSD "RED" Hot Technology in the Science Classroom

Kristen Howlett & Julianne Chamberlin Clarence CSD Authentic Scientific Experiences in the Middle School Classroom

Laura Graceffa Poughkeepsie Day School Enhancing Student Collaboration and Communication with Mobile Projection Technology Using Apple TV  & iPads

Nicholas Lawrence East Bronx Academy for the Future Intercontinental Arguments-The Just War Ning