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STEAM Forward 2022
November 8, 2022 @ 1:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST
From hybrid learning to augmented reality, teaching STEAM is evolving rapidly. STEAM Forward is an online conference that brings together innovative thinkers, bold creativity, and the latest trends in edtech, with virtual sessions on hybrid/remote teaching, technology integration, STEAM best practices, hands-on STEAM applications, and more.

Featured Keynote

Dr. Sian Proctor is a geoscientist, explorer, space artist, and astronaut. She is the CEO of Space2inspire and founder of The JEDI Space Foundation. She was the mission pilot for SpaceX Inspiration4, the first all-civilian orbital mission. She is the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft, the first African American commercial astronaut, and the first African American to paint in space. She is also one of The Explorer’s Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World. Her motto is called Space2inspire where she encourages people to use their unique, one-of-a-kind strengths, and passion to inspire those within their reach and beyond. She believes that we need to actively strive for a JEDI Space: a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive space as we advance human spaceflight.
She uses her afrofuturism space art to encourage conversations about women of color in the space industry. She believes that when we solve for space, we also solve issues on Earth and she promotes the adoption of space technology to issues such as food waste and climate change.
Dr. Proctor is a geoscience professor at South Mountain Community College, in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a global leader and ambassador for the Maricopa Community College District.
Featured speaker

Mr. Daniel Thompson is a graduate of Auburn University, where he received his undergraduate degree in Secondary Science/Biology Education. While at Auburn, Mr. Thompson was an undergraduate assistant to the Auburn Tiger football team during their 2010 national championship campaign. He has spent three years at the middle school and high school levels cultivating students’ skills in chemistry, physics, and biology.
Mr. Thompson attributes his success to stern discipline, heightened rigor, deep engagement, thorough inquiry, and critical questioning within the classroom. He firmly believes in developing strong relationships with students to reach the maximum potential within each child.
Additionally, Mr. Thompson utilizes a blend of whole brain teaching methods along with music and technology to push and engage his students. He also maintains a role system within his classroom to develop skills in communication, collaboration, and critical thinking amongst his students.
STEAM Forward sessions
All session times are in EDT
STEAM Forward Kick-off
Join us live from the Promethean STEAM Lab as we kick off and celebrate our fifth anniversary of STEAM Forward!
A Colorful Chemical Reaction
Presenter: Noel Tierney
Session Description: Given specific colors and general direction how can we let young children do some fun chemical reactions? Let’s infuse the scientific method and get some inquiry based questions to find out what this reaction is: CH3COOH+NaHCO3 = FUN
Science, Art, Math
Intro to Coding with your ActivPanel
Presenter: Caiti Jones
Session Description: Learn how to use Promethean tools (whiteboard, annotate, capture) with basic coding activities.
Engineering
Sketchnoting With Students
Presenter: Julie Porter
Session Description: Sketchnoting is not just for the artistic! We will explore the brain science behind sketchnoting as an effective classroom strategy, how to overcome fear of drawing in front of others, and how to get started. Promethean products that make implementing sketchnoting a breeze will be shared, as well as numerous other resources.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math
STEAM in the ELA Classroom: Project Based Learning
Presenter: Caylie Converso
Session Description: Have your students apply real world knowledge and skills through the incorporation of STEM and project based learning in their Language Arts classroom. What better way to dive into a text than through real life connections.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math
Anatomy with ActivInspire
Presenter: Xan Roberti
Session Description: Explore different tools in AI that can help you teach parts of the body. This will appeal to teachers of life science, bio, and physical education.
Science
Creating Engaging Math Lessons in the Whiteboard App
Presenter: Kristen Spruill
Session Description: This session will demonstrate how to harness the power of the whiteboard to create engaging Math centered activities for all ages. We will look at several premade activities and then explore the process for their creation.
Math
Dissections with the ActivPanel
Presenter: Charlie Locke
Session Description: Dissections in a Promethean classsroom have never been cleaner! Learn how to display a dissection using cameras, your Promethean ActivPanel, and classroom essential apps.
Science
Chemistry and Cookies
Presenter: Allie D’Amico
Session Description: Baking is basically creative chemistry so why not celebrate both! In this lesson we’ll compare and contrast different cookie recipes and discuss how the different proportions affect the outcome of the cookies. After we’ve baked up all the cookies students will have the chance to compare and contrast their chemistry cookies. To expand on this project students can do a write up on which cookie they like the best and why it’s superior to all the other options.
Science, Arts, Math
The Planetary Times – Researching Planets Activities
Presenter: Haroon Rashed
Session Description: This session will highlight ClassFlow Polling and Activities as participants will review our solar system as an interplanetary news reporter. This session will demonstrate how teachers can utilize ClassFlow Polling and ClassFlow Activities to enhance student engagement as they report facts, interesting details and newsworthy data about their assigned planets.
Science
The ART of ENGINEERING
Presenter: Sonya Gates
Session Description: Have you ever looked at a bridge, a building, or even Stonehenge as works of art? Did you ever think that an engineer could also be an artist? Both artists and engineers apply the same design principle of balance to achieve marvels that withstand the test of time. But, is balance the same as symmetry? Let’s investigate the concepts of balance and symmetry in engineering using the Promethean Classroom Essential Apps on the Promethean ActivPanel.
Engineering, Arts, Math
Was Shakespeare a Scientist? Astronomy and the Bard
Presenter: Hollee Ellis
Session Description: The session will explore the influence of the science of Astronomy on the writing of William Shakespeare. Participants will analyze the use of Astronomical references in Shakespeare’s writing and it’s affect on the context. Finally participants will explore a VR scene from Hamlet that demonstrates the Bard’s fascination with Astronomy at the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
Science, Arts
Habitats
Presenter: Bianca Liu
Session Description: The lesson will be on ActivInspireClassFlow and it will talk about the habitats animals live in. It will be an interactive lesson that all students will be able to participate in.
Science
Live from the Promethean STEAM Lab
Special Guest: Daniel Thompson with the Ron Clark Academy
Join us for a fun, engaging experience from the Promethean STEAM Lab!
Fractions with Pattern Blocks
Presenter: Amy Tice
Session Description: Sometimes students can struggle with fractions. Let’s use ActivInspire to show how using pattern blocks can create an interactive, hands on opportunity for students to get a hands on experience with fractions.
Math
Digital Escape Room
Presenter: Lindsay Drager
Session Description: Work your way through solving a digital escape room! Once you’ve escaped, you will unlock several different resources for creating your own escape room.
Technology
RAFTing in the River of VR
Presenter: Molly-Armine Holston
Session Description: Grab your life jacket and your ore as we explore the ways that virtual reality headsets can be leveraged to create a dynamic, cross curricular opportunity that the whole class can experience. This session will dive into the ways the Oculus VR headset can be leveraged and integrated in collaboration with the Promethean ActivPanel. It will incorporate Classroom Essential Apps including, Spinner, Timer, Whiteboard, Annotate, Capture, and Screen Share.
Technology
Tower Challenge
Presenter: Elizabeth Litt
Session Description: Challenge your students to collaborate, think critically, and engineer the tallest tower with limited materials. This session will review the materials needed, an optional script to challenge students further, and general outcome and follow up of the challenge.
Engineering
Bee Pollination
Presenter: Rebecca Coldwell
Session Description: ActivInspire lesson on Pollination, specifically with bees and flowers.
Science
Projects, Competitions, and Fairs, Oh My!
Presenter: Lacy Dasch
Session Description: Want to bring STEAM into your classroom but not sure where to start? In this session, you will be introduced to websites and projects that can help you with small scale ideas as well as national challenges. These are great opportunities for your students that require very little on your part because they are nationally organized and judged . Use this for a science class or for cross curricular collaboration.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math
Human Anatomy and the Promethean ActivPanel
Presenter: Megan Mayo
Session Description: Leverage some of the most current AR technology to view different systems of the human body in 3D, then use the Promethean apps to make interactive activities and games to practice this new information!
Science
Merlyn Mind
Presenter: Merlyn Mind
Session Description: TBC
Technology
Build your Neighborhood
Presenter: Leanne Akerman
Session Description: Have you ever explored and inspected a plot of empty land in your community? In this session, check out the ways web apps and tech tools can be integrated into an ActivInspire lesson or incorporated into ClassFlow as a powerful way to embed student exploration and discovery. Teachers will walk away with tips and tricks to create engagement in their own classroom lesson.
Engineering, Math
CHA-Ching! Making Money Make Cents
Presenter: Anna Tressler
Session Description: Attendees will learn the tips and tricks of how to take a basic lesson and transform it with Promethean’s applications. This session will cover how to incorporate each app on panel to enhance communication, collaboration, and creation in your classroom.
Technology, Math
Math Magic: Slow Reveal Graphs on Your ActivPanel
Presenter: Meaghan Greene
Session Description: Want to get your math students talking about data? In this session we will see an example of a Slow Reveal Graph, an engaging instructional routine that promotes discourse to help students make sense of data. The Promethean ActivPanel is the perfect tool to boost student engagement, so join this session to learn the magic of the Slow Reveal Graph and how easy it is to build the lesson on your ActivPanel!
Math
Soundwave Art
Presenter: Ryan Thornton
Session Description: Have you ever FELT sound? I bet you have. If you’ve ever put your hand in front of a speaker and felt the vibrations, you’ve felt sound! Sound is made up of soundwaves, and just like waves in the ocean, sometimes these waves are big, and sometimes they are small. But not only can you FEEL soundwaves, but you can SEE them too! And to be honest, they are super cool looking. In this session we will make sounds that create soundwaves, capture the visual of that soundwave, bring it into the Promethean whiteboard, and make it into art that you can hang on your wall (or at least email to a friend). Thus proving that music is not only beautiful to the ears, but to the eyes as well.
Science, Technology, Arts
STEAM Forward Keynote – Space2inspire: A Renaissance Roadmap to the Future of Education
Dr. Sian Proctor
Dr. Sian Proctor will share her unique space story while engaging in a thought-provoking and inspiring discussion on how we are currently writing the narrative of human spaceflight and how that has implications for the future of education. In this motivating keynote, she breaks down how Open Educational Resources and the evolving Web3 space are rapidly transforming the way we learn, live, work, and play as we extend humanity to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Tic Tac Flow
Presenter: Samantha Woodburn
Session Description: This session will demonstrate a fun review game using ClassFlow and the Spinners app to identify key terms. Using terms from the body systems as an example, the presenter will go over an easy technique to send participants Bingo or Tic Tac Toe Cards that they can personalize to play the game using ClassFlow. Then, we will use the Spinners app on the ActivPanel to play the game.
Science
AR/VR & Screenshare
Presenter: Melissa Schneider
Session Description: Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) bridge the digital and physical worlds. They allow you to take in information and content visually, in the same way you take in the world. AR dramatically expands the ways our devices can help with everyday activities like searching for information, shopping, and expressing yourself. VR lets you experience what it’s like to go anywhere — from the front row of a concert to distant planets in outer space.
Technology
Next Level Labs
Presenter: Amanda Carlson
Session Description: Learn how to harness the potential of your ActivPanel as a collaborative tool for students to share captured data and collaborate on analysis in real time. From sharing student screens and work to timing chemical reactions, learn how the Promethean Classroom Essential Apps- the Timer, Spinner, Whiteboard, Capture, Annotate and ScreenShare app can transform your Science Lab!
Science, Technology, Engineering
Subitizing with Promethean Whiteboard
Presenter: Abigail Southard
Session Description: As our students develop number sense, subitizing is one of the most important skills that they learn. Subitizing is the ability to look at a small group of objects and instantly know how many objects there are without counting individually. Help your students develop stable mental images of quantities up to 5 with these Promethean Whiteboard activities!
Math
Playing with Colors!
Presenter: Amanda Goodman
Session Description: Using ActivInspire we will teach the concept of primary vs. secondary colors and color mixing. We will use different tools such as translucency, spinners, math tools and more to choose and overlap colors and reveal new ones!
Arts
Computational Thinking Made Easy
Presenter: Beth Portree
Session Description: Computational Thinking might sound like it is only suited for a computer science class – but don’t be intimidated by it’s title. Any grade level and content area can use this important cognitive process to identify patterns, break down their parts, and repeat important processes – which is why it’s included in the ISTE standards for students (1.5). Whiteboard can make teaching this concept – and the metacognitive process in which this concept is used – so easy by increasing interaction, engagement, and modeling so students can transfer this process across grade levels, contents, and in to their adult lives.
Technology, Engineering
Art for the Science and Math Teacher (or Science and Math for the Art Teacher)
Presenter: Julie Porter
Session Description: Art and Science are natural partners! We will explore many classroom art activities that are based in science, pulling largely from a new book: Science Art and Drawing Games for Kids. Whether you want to use art to demonstrate science concepts or science to inform an art project, this session will give you loads of ideas!
Science, Arts
Huffing and Puffing with Fairytales and STEAM
Presenter: Gretchen Weiland
Session Description: Leverage the fairytales you are already reading with your little ones and your Promethean panel to create STEAM activities in your classroom. Allow everyone in the class to see designs being built and tested by using your camera on your phone and Screen Share!
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math
Travel on land or air: Virtual Field Trips
Presenter: LaKeesha Burroughs & Kelly Bishop
Session Description: Students will go on a virtual field trip to a zoo with the teacher. Students will obtain information and answer questions about different animals in the environment using a Classflow activity!
Science, Technology
Collaborate With Your Students to Create Engaging Science Visuals in the Whiteboard
Presenter: Elyse Langer
Session Description: Learn to create stunning, artistic, “crowdsourced” visual representations of abstract scientific concepts with your students utilizing Promethean ActivPanel apps such as Screen Share, Screen Capture, and the Whiteboard. We will explore sample topics commonly taught in science classes (For example: ranges of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, the structure of systems in the universe, molecular movement in various states of matter…) and create a collaborative, artistic depiction of one of these topics together!
Science, Arts
Scientific Inquiry in a Gamified Learning Environment
Presenters: Sophia Isaac, Erin Haber, Kalie Stayskal
Session Description: Are you curious about how to incorporate your ActivPanel to equip your student to be science-based thinkers? Our STEAM session will laser focus on scientific inquiry, incorporating differentiated instruction for all learns to be engaged in gamified learning environment.
Science
Design a Tiny House for Your Favorite Character
Presenter: Sheila Wolsker
Session Description: Everyone loves the concept of tiny houses, right? Why not design one based off your students favorite character? Combine language arts skills (character traits) with math skills (calculating square footage) to create a tiny house that symbolizes your students favorite character. Watch how the Whiteboard, Spinner, Timer, and Screen Share can take this activity to the next level!
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math
STEAM Forward Wrap Up
Just us as we wrap up our fifth annual STEAM Forward event from the Promethean STEAM Lab!