Science is Cool with Dave Bakker of Pocketlab

In today’s episode of My Disney Class Podcast, Ryan and Howie welcome Dave Bakker, co-founder, and COO of Pocketlab. Pocketlab by Myriad Sensors is a group of sensors created to collect data wirelessly. When you use them in your classroom with your students you can create lab reports, analyze data, and watch your students view and collaborate about the data in real-time. Currently, there are three options of sensors. There is the Voyager which can be used to collect data like motion, altitude, light, magnetic fields, and more. The Air that can measure carbon dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and light. Last but not least is the Pocketlab Weather which temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, altitude, heat index, and dew point.

Dave talks us through each of these sensors and why his company was driven to create them for the classroom. He also shares with us several different examples of how they can be used with students to spark engagement and help them understand the data that we as teachers are expecting them to analyze and draw conclusions from.

Dave also discusses with us the birth and upcoming opportunities for a very special conference called Science is Cool (ScIC). Back in March when people were first staying at home with the start of the pandemic, Dave and some of his colleagues were looking for a way to provide professional development in STEM to teachers while COVID-19 kept many of them at home. The result was a virtual conference called ScIC (Science is Cool) that has attracted tens of thousands of science teachers and education professionals from around the world. They have even hosted big-name Science celebrities like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson and others that have come on to help inspire and share with the science education community. Dave shares with us some of the latest info and guests lined up for the next ScIC conference that is coming up on April 1st, and that’s no joke!

Don’t forget to check out the links in the show notes to get more details on the conference and the sensors available from Pocketlab. Also, don’t forget to join our community of incredible educators over on Facebook in the Educators Who Love Disney group.