UNF - College of Education & Human Services

Our Resources

NEFSTEM serves as a network of STEM professionals including scientists, administrators, STEM teaching coaches, STEM teachers, and pre-service teachers. It is uniquely positioned to provide resources for in-service and pre-service teachers in districts in urban and rural settings in Northeast Florida. UNF and NEFSTEM provide support for STEM education using a wide-array of resources including: STEM-related departments, a flagship coastal biology program, and field-based materials. These entities provide a large amount of infrastructure, resources and expertise including: the STEP Lab, on-campus field trips, pre- and in-service teacher professional development through badging, computer science labs, coastal biology labs and the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve.

STEP Lab

The UNF STEP Lab, housed in the COEHS, is a STEM learning resource for regional students and teachers, faculty, UNF students and community partners. The Lab and the College’s full-time partnership with the Northeast Florida STEM2 Hub and Code.org has enabled the College to become a major player in the Northeast Florida STEM ecosystem.

Project InTERSECT

With the addition of Project InTERSECT, we are able to offer local educators and teacher candidates STEM and computational thinking training. Project InTERSECT focuses on Inquiry to Transform Educator Readiness for STEM+C Early Childhood Teaching. This Supporting Effective Educator Development grant (SEED) will expand existing partnerships with Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) and Northeast Florida Regional STEM2Hub to provide teachers with evidence-based professional development activities that address the need of DCPS students as well as evidence-based professional enhancement which includes activities leading to advanced credentials.

Who is Project InTERSECT for?

STEM +C Teacher Leader Graduate Coursework,
STEM+C Teacher Professional Development Modules, and
STEM+C Teacher Candidate Badging

STEM and STEAM Curriculum

Using the State of the Lower St. Johns River Watershed “State of the River” Report, lesson plans have been developed for elementary and secondary teacher use. These lessons are Florida standards-aligned lesson plans and video resources. These materials provide STEM content with a Northeast Florida context. For more information about educational materials related to the River Report, contact Dr. Brian Zoellner, Associate Professor, Secondary Science Education, UNF College of Education and Human Services by email at b.p.zoellner@unf.edu to get started.

Playful Computing After-School Programming

The University of North Florida in partnership with 5C Academy, are bringing Playful Computing (PC) After School Programs to local elementary schools! Our goal is to reach students interested in coding in elementary school so that they have experiences to help them decide if they want to pursue computer science in middle school and beyond. We also want to support teachers interested in learning about computer science and its potential applications to students’ academic and extracurricular goals.

Playful Computing is held after schools, one hour per week, for a length of eight weeks.

Contact: Dr. Meghan Parkinson, Assistant Professor, Early Childhood Education, UNF College of Education and Human Services by email at m.parkinson@unf.edu or by phone at (904) 701-3677 to get started.

TECt Grant

The UNF project — Teachers Enhancing Computational Thinking (TECt): Preparing Northeast Florida's Secondary Teachers to Foster Computational Thinking in Computer Science — builds on current collaborative initiatives to prepare high school teachers to teach computer science (CS) courses through professional development (PD) and coursework leading to state certification in CS. TECt engages multiple partners from UNF, Duval County Public Schools (DCPS), and the Northeast Florida STEM2 Hub, along with CS teachers and experts in education, CS and business in addressing the gap in the availability and access to CS courses.
The ultimate goal of the TECt program is two-fold:

To improve the quality of and access to computer science instruction for high-need students; and
To develop a curriculum that provides a rich instructional basis that will prepare and support teachers to teach rigorous computer science courses to high school students.

The TECt logic model is built on the following principles:

Foster computational thinking as a means to deeper understanding of computer science (Wing, 2006).
Develop understanding of computer science content, general pedagogy, and pedagogical content knowledge (Magnusson, Krajcik, Borko, 1999).
Conduct ongoing professional development experiences that are iterative, build relationships, and foster teacher reflection and growth.

For more information about the TECt Project, contact Dr. Brian Zoellner, Associate Professor, Secondary Science Education, UNF College of Education and Human Services by email at b.p.zoellner@unf.edu.

Code.org

Code.org, in partnership with UNF and STEM2Hub provides professional learning opportunities for educators to teach computer science. This includes single- and multi-day workshops and peer networking.

Contact: Betina Malhotra Ph.D. at betina@stem2hub.org