1. Getting Started With PLTW Launch
Presented by
Stephanie Valli
Ritenour School District - St. Louis, MO
Quickly introduce myself and do a value line of familiarity with Launch
Give postits at beginning to write questions to answer at end of session

2. Goals of PLTW Launch
•A curriculum that challenges, inspires, and offers schools variety and flexibility.
•Students get rigorous and relevant experiences through activity-, project-, and problem-based learning applying engineering, science, math and technology.
•Students use industry-leading technology to solve problems while gaining skills in communication, collaboration, critical-thinking, and creativity

3. Implementation Considerations
Consider whole district, select buildings, select teachers? - for us afterschool, then move to during the day
Consider what modules best meet your needs - for us RA, Stability and Motion, and Light and Sound
Calendar and structure for training - talk about later on
Teacher Characteristics
•Teaching or industry experience in math, science, engineering, or medical field
•Not intimidated by new technology
•Comfortable in an unconventional classroom
•Ability to connect with other teachers
•Ability to connect with students and scaffold to meet needs of all learners
•A program advocate
•Ability to create experiences outside of the classroom

4. Professional Development
Three Phase Model:
Readiness Training
Core Training
Ongoing Training
Overview
•The three phases within the PD model are identified as Readiness Training, Core Training and Ongoing Training.
•By actively participating in all three phases of professional development, educators have the opportunity to increase their depth of content knowledge, skills and pedagogy related to specific PLTW course instruction.
Readiness Training is focused on ensuring that participants have basic technical and content knowledge prior to participating in pedagogy, skill and knowledge-enhancement training experiences.
Core Training is an intensive and immersive, in-person training experience. As outlined in PLTW school district agreements, educators must successfully pass Core Training for every PLTW course they wish to implement and instruct. During Core Training, educators are immersed in course-specific curriculum and assume the role of the student to directly inform their expertise in content instruction.
Ongoing Training consists of self-paced e-Learning resources designed to provide remediation and enhancement opportunities to educators.

5. Materials Kit Specifications/Guidelines
Kit Management/Organization - show pics
Launch Logs - pdf

6. Community Partners Talk about connection to real-world application
Connection to the modules
Describe our work in this area

7. Experience PLTW Launch
K - Structure and Function “Build a Beanstalk”
5 - Robotics and Automation

8. Q and A
Refer back to Questions from the post-its