The 7th Annual Georgia NASA STEM Conference planned for August 26, 2017 continues to serve as the kick-off for the 2017-2018 NASA RERC STEM Educator Workshop Series and will feature the fifth Annual STEM Teacher of the Year Awards (now the Georgia STEM Team of the Year). The primary focus of this project is to provide Georgia educators with a full day of hands-on activities, demonstrations, and presentations by NASA Education Specialists and other NASA program members to help achieve GA NASA Regional Educator Resource Center (RERC) objectives:

• Provide K-12 and University educators in Georgia easy access to STEM resources.
• Demonstrate hands-on STEM activities that support National, NGSS, Common Core and Georgia standards.
• Infuse NASA STEM education products into classroom curricula.
• Offer workshops on topics related to STEM disciplines.

Designed for PK-12 in-service, pre-service, homeschool and informal educators the Georgia NASA STEM Conference promotes NASA Education and its STEM resources to all Georgia educators. Plans this year are to maintain the increase in numbers of secondary education participants â the 2016 conference showed a 150% increase in attendance by 9th-12th educators over the 2015 conference. Workshops led by NASA program members who are currently Georgia secondary educators will be featured again. All participants will attend concurrent workshop sessions throughout the day featuring various NASA topics in Space Sciences, Physics, Life Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and On-Line NASA Education Tools. This year plans are to again group sessions by four grade levels: PK-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. This proved successful the last two years, especially for the PK-2 teachers. A proposal has been submitted to CASIS to purchase the International Space Station Virtual Tour (Mobile Display). If approved and installed by the Conference, this will provide an innovative and cultural focus as an interactive experience for the teachers. Educators will receive and discover how to integrate the free NASA materials into their classrooms and inspire their students to engage in NASA engineering challenges and competitions. Plans are to include a demonstration of the NASA Digital Learning Network, a video conference opportunity with one of NASA Field Centers, allowing all of the teachers to interact with a NASA expert.