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President George W. Bush has announced that 100 educators will receive the annual Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching for 2005. The award was established in 1983. This year, the White House recognizes the best of the Nation’s 7th - 12th grade mathematics and science teachers.
A national panel of distinguished scientists, mathematicians, and educators recommends teachers to receive the Presidential Awards which are administered by the National Science Foundation.
Awardees receive a $10,000 educational grant for their schools and a trip to Washington, D.C., to accept a certificate. The teachers will be in the Nation’s capital from May 1-6, 2006, to receive the award and participate in a variety of educational and celebratory events.
During the week the teachers will tour the White House and be honored in an awards ceremony hosted by Dr. John H. Marburger III, Science Advisor to the President and Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. They will also meet with members of Congress and the Administration to discuss the latest issues in mathematics and science teaching.
For a complete listing of the 2005 awardees visit the Presidential Awardees for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching web site.
The American Council on Education has published a study: Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology.
Key Findings:
Students who graduated in STEM fields (by spring 2001) were:
Measuring the speed of light with Chocolate Chips
With this demonstration, it is obvious that particular sections of the chips are heated more than others. In fact, these locations are located half of the wave’s length apart.
Bad Bugs, No Drugs As Antibiotic Discovery Stagnates . . . A Public Health Crisis Brews by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The site includes a 37 page white paper.
The purpose of this document, however, is to call attention to a frightening twist in the antibiotic resistance problem that has not received adequate attention from federal policymakers: The pharmaceutical pipeline for new antibiotics is drying up.
Facts About Antibiotic Resistance:
More on the overuse of antibiotics - which creates drug resistance
Previous posts on antibiotics
What’s so exciting about engineering? by Leigh M. Chowdhary:
A crew of 150 girls age 10 to 14 from four Chicago area schools were scientists for a day. Some kids used static electricity from balloons to move sticks through a racecourse. Others watched videos of female inventors–who created things such as smear-proof lipstick and Kevlar (a substance used in bullet-proof vests).
This article discusses a Wow! That’s Engineering event.
Previous post on Science for Kids - learning through action.
Women in engineering change the world around us for the better every day! Tell us in 100 words or less about a promotion that you would create to make the world a better place and you could win one of these prizes. Deadline is April 19th!
The pleasure of finding things out a video interview with Richard P Feynman
A great mind expands upon our recent post: Science for Kids. He provides some good insight into learning.
Related book: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 “Los Alamos from Below” lecture.
A Solar Prominence from SOHO - NASA photo of the day.
How can gas float above the Sun? Twisted magnetic fields arching from the solar surface can trap ionized gas, suspending it in huge looping structures. These majestic plasma arches are seen as prominences above the solar limb. In September 1999, this dramatic and detailed image was recorded by the EIT experiment on board the space-based SOHO observatory in the light emitted by ionized Helium.
It shows hot plasma escaping into space as a fiery prominence breaks free from magnetic confinement a hundred thousand kilometers above the Sun. These awesome events bear watching as they can affect communications and power systems over 100 million kilometers away on Planet Earth.
Previous post on solar storms and the affect on communications and power systems
Why is the sky blue? Facts you should know
Read answers to these questions, and others, by leading scientists. For example:
by Helle Gawrlewski, Johnson & Johnson (and the article author’s mother)
Single-Shot Chemo - Nanospheres that target cancer cells and gradually release drugs could make treatment safer and more effective
Photo - Three prostate cancer cells have taken up fluorescently labeled nanoparticles (shown in red). The cells’ nuclei and cytoskeletons are stained blue and green, respectively. By Omid Farokhzad and Robert Langer at MIT.
‘Sciencing’ with kids by Prakash Rao:
Children’s experiences need to be real, concrete and [tangible]. We should never get carried away by just contents and facts. Link experiences to children’s life. Then they will feel a desire to know.
Children are naturally inquisitive. Mainly we need to provide opportunities for them to do what they would do naturally. In previous posts we have highlighted many ways to give kids the chance to learn and figure out how things work.
US wants to replicate India’s technology education success by Bibhu Ranjan Mishra:
Press release from the US Department of Education: U.S. Science Lessons Focus More on Activities, Less on Content, Study Shows
A video study of 8th-grade science classrooms in the United States and four other countries found U.S. teachers focused on a variety of activities to engage students but not in a consistent way that developed coherent and challenging science content.
In comparison, classrooms in Australia, the Czech Republic, Japan, and the Netherlands exposed 8th graders to science lessons characterized by a core instructional approach that held students to high content standards and expectations for student learning.
The National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences today released these and other findings in a report titled Teaching Science in Five Countries: Results From the TIMSS 1999 Video Study that draws on analysis of 439 randomly selected videotaped classroom lessons in the participating countries.
The results of the newly released science study highlight variations across the countries in how science lessons are organized, how the science content is developed for the students, and how the students participate in actively doing science work.
For example, in Japan, the lessons emphasized identifying patterns in data and making connections among ideas and evidence. Australian lessons developed basic science content ideas through inquiry. Whereas in the Netherlands, independent student learning is given priority. Dutch students often kept track of a long-term set of assignments, checking their work in a class answer book as they proceeded independently.
In the Czech Republic, students were held accountable for mastering challenging and often theoretical science content in front of their peers through class discussions, work at the blackboard, and oral quizzes.
In the United States, lessons kept students busy on a variety of activities such as hands-on work, small group discussions, and other “motivational” activities such as games, role-playing, physical movement, and puzzles. The various activities, however, were not typically connected to the development of science content ideas. More than a quarter of the U.S. lessons were focused almost completely on carrying out the activity as opposed to learning a specific idea.
The science report is the second released by TIMSS 1999 Video Study. The first report, focused on 8th grade mathematics teaching, was released in 2003.
To view the reports and for more information: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
via: Study suggests U.S. science teaching falls short on content
National Conference on Service Learning in Engineering
May 24th and 25th, 2006, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC. There is no charge to attend but space is limited.
Singapore woos top scientists with new labs, research money by Paul Elias:
Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.
They weren’t the first defections, and Singapore officials at the Biotechnology Organization’s annual convention in Chicago this week promise they won’t be the last.
Other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and even China, are also here touting their burgeoning biotechnology spending to the 20,000 scientists and biotechnology executives attending the conference.
…
In all, the country has managed to recruit about 50 senior scientists — far short of what it needs, but a start for a tiny country of 4.5 million people off the tip of Malaysia.
Another 1,800 younger scientists from all corners of the world staff the Biopolis laboratories, which were built with $290 million in government funding and another $400 million in private investment by the two dozen biotechnology companies based there. Biopolis opened in 2003 and contains seven buildings spread over 10 acres and connected by sky bridges
Video of Rube Goldberg devices from Japan
Related:
Great Moonbuggy Race - Huntsville Center for Technology High School and Pittsburg State University win their divisions.
More from the NASA education site
Previous posts about science fairs, engineering challenges, science competitions, etc.
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