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About or related to (k-12) science and engineering education. Likely of interest to teachers and administrators. Teachers may also find many of the science and engineering students category posts useful.
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About or related to primary (k-12) science and engineering education. Likely of interest to teachers and administrators. Teachers may also find many of the posts we feel are of interests to students interested in science and engineering useful.

Lunacy – FIRST Robotics Challenge 2009

Posted on February 2, 2009 Comments (3)

The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotic Challenge is a great way to get high school students involved in engineering. Lunacy is the 2009 competition which mimics the low friction environment on the moon (using a slick surface and slick wheels on the robots). For more information see the competition manual and related documents.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Engineering, Events, K-12, Robots, Students, Technology
Tags: Events, FIRST, K-12, k-12 students, kids, Robots, teachers

Providing Computer to Remote Students in Nepal

Posted on January 7, 2009 Comments (6)

photo of students using computers in Nepal

Pupils conquer fear of computers

“I was really scared when I saw the computer,” he says. “I didn’t go near it. I was worried it might explode and kill me. “It was only when the teacher called me saying it was harmless that I went into the room, but I still hesitated.” Things have changed now, he adds.

“I’m feeling much better. The E-library has helped with my studies. “We can see the periodic table of science, and also maps and other geography things in a pictorial way that is easy to understand. It’s not only that – we can also play games and have fun.”

Kamal says his parents were very excited when he told them about the computer and came to watch the very next day. It was not only Kamal. His computer teacher, Shankar Prajapati, says all the pupils were afraid. “They all worried they would catch some virus and fall ill or even die. But now they are familiar with computers,” he says.

“Even we teachers are gaining knowledge from the E-library. It’s really helpful for us, too. “The students can see science experiments carried out on screen and search for whatever they want in the encyclopaedia.
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This is a free and open-source (accessible to everyone) package which connects one powerful central server in the school, using the Linux operating system, to a number of diskless low-end computers. When linked to the server, each computer receives a full Linux desktop.

Read more about the Help Nepal Network’s eLibrary program. Photos from this web site shows students in Nepal using computers.

In the face of rapidly changing technological advancement and the exorbitant cost of proprietary hardware and software solutions, which had stymied Nepal in attempting to participate in ICT for development, the use for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is emerging as a solution.
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Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) can be a low cost solution for deprived communities who cannot afford a bigger volume financial expense.
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LTSP, a system that works with only one central high end server and other diskless low-end thin client computers, allows to run Linux on a server, and then use thin clients (almost any computer will do) to connect to the server and receive a full-blown Linux desktop.

I believe strongly in the ability of kids to learn if they are just provided some tools that help them do so. See a great post on Hole in the Wall computers.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Engineering, K-12, Science, Students, Technology
Tags: appropriate technology, Asia, cool, internet, kids, linux, open source, Technology

High School Students to Intern in Engineering

Posted on December 27, 2008 Comments (1)

Pasco high school students to work as interns in engineering

Five area manufacturers announced Tuesday that they will join forces with River Ridge High’s new engineering career academy, which opens in fall 2009, to provide students work opportunities while they are still in school.
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“The idea is to start a program of internships starting in the 10th grade,” said Wahnish, who presents the idea to the Florida Engineering Society today.

By the time graduation rolls around, students will have had three six-week apprenticeships and received industry certifications in computer-assisted design and other applications. They also will be ready to go to work or enroll in a university program. Even those who go to work still would attend college at least two days a week.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Career, Engineering, K-12
Tags: Career, Engineering, engineering education, Florida, high school students, internship, job, K-12, k-12 students

Educating Future Scientists and Engineers

Posted on December 21, 2008 Comments (1)

Texas in danger of losing global race

American demand for scientists and engineers is expected to grow four times faster than all other professions over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet today, only 5 percent of U.S. college undergraduates earn degrees in science and engineering, whereas in China, 42 percent of students do.
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Not only are highly qualified Texas science and math teachers in short supply today, but we’re losing literally thousands each year. In 2007 alone, approximately 4,000 math and science teachers left Texas classrooms, costing our state an estimated $27 million to replace them.

Fortunately, there are programs already proven successful in preventing the loss of highly qualified math and science teachers, such as UTeach, a teacher training and support program launched at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997.
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The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas — made up of Texas’ Nobel Laureates and National Academies members — has proposed four practical, actionable recommendations for state leaders to adopt, putting Texas on the path to world-class math and science education for our children, and a prosperous future for our state.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Economics, Engineering, K-12, Science
Tags: K-12, science education, teachers, Texas, university

Fund Teacher’s Science Projects

Posted on December 18, 2008 Comments (3)

With donorschoose.org teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.

Such as: Budding Scientists Need Basics!!! – “My students need 9 hands-on science equipment such as graduated cylinders, magnifying glasses, and vivid photographic books about weather and life cycles so they can experience science first-hand. The cost of this proposal is $386″

Hands On Science! – “My students need a human body model, a skeleton model, a skull model, 2 microscopes, beakers and graduated cylinders. The cost of this proposal is $1,060″

Eyes On Observation! – “My students need 4 Brock Magiscopes. The cost of this proposal is $688″

Let’s Rock the Rocks – “My students needs 2 complete sets of classroom Rock, Fossil & Mineral Collections and a Rock & Soil Activity Tub for science. The cost of this proposal is $351″

You can target high poverty schools, if you wish. If you want to help make a difference in the science literacy of the USA go ahead and find a project you want to help fund and make a donation. Or if you are a teacher, add a project for others to fund.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Funding, K-12, Science
Tags: K-12, scientific literacy, teachers

High School Inventor Teams @ MIT

Posted on December 11, 2008 Comments (7)

Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams is a national grants initiative of the Lemelson-MIT Program to foster inventiveness among high school students. The webcast above shows a high school team presenting a project they completed to create a solution to provide clean water. This stuff is great. I love appropriate technology. I love seeing kids think and create effective solutions to real problems. This is how you get kids to learn – not boring classes (at least kids like me).

The students are passing on the project to students at their school to continue to work on. MIT TechTV has many more presentation by other InvenTeams. InvenTeams and MIT deserve a great deal of credit for creating such great learning opportunities and great solutions for the world.

InvenTeams composed of high school students, teachers and mentors are asked to collaboratively identify a problem that they want to solve, research the problem, and then develop a prototype invention as an in-class or extracurricular project. Grants of up to $10,000 support each team’s efforts. InvenTeams are encouraged to work with community partners, specifically the potential beneficiaries of their invention.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Engineering, K-12
Tags: appropriate technology, girls, Health Care, inventors, k-12 students, MIT, water

Poor Reporting and Unfounded Implications

Posted on December 9, 2008 Comments (0)

Correlation is not causation. And reporting of the form, “1 time this happened” and so I report it as though it is some relevant fact, is sad. Take any incident that happened and then state random traits you want to imply there is some relevant link to (blue eyes, red hair, people that watch IT Crowd, people that bought a banana yesterday, tall, overweight, did poorly in math…) and most people will know you are ignorant.

Looking at random data people will find patterns. Sound scientific experimentation is how we learn, not trying to find anything that support our opinions. Statistics don’t lie but ignorant people draw faulty conclusions from data (when they are innumerate – illiteracy with mathematical concepts).

It’s not what the papers say, it’s what they don’t by Ben Goldacre

On Tuesday the Telegraph, the Independent, the Mirror, the Express, the Mail, and the Metro all reported that a coroner was hearing the case of a toddler who died after receiving the MMR vaccine, which the parents blamed for their loss. Toddler ‘died after MMR jab’ (Metro), ‘Healthy’ baby died after MMR jab (Independent), you know the headlines by now.

On Thursday the coroner announced his verdict: the vaccine played no part in this child’s death. So far, of the papers above, only the Telegraph has had the decency to cover the outcome.
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Measles cases are rising. Middle class parents are not to blame, even if they do lack rhetorical panache when you try to have a discussion with them about it.

They have been systematically and vigorously misled by the media, the people with access to all the information, who still choose, collectively, between themselves, so robustly that it might almost be a conspiracy, to give you only half the facts.

Science education is important. Even if people do not become scientists, ignorance of scientific thinking is dangerous. The lack of scientific literacy allows scientifically illiterate leaders to make claims that are lacking scientific merit. And results in people making poor choices themselves, due to their ignorance.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Education, Health Care, K-12, Science, Students
Tags: data, Education, science education, scientific literacy, vaccine

National Girls Collaborative Project for STEM

Posted on November 22, 2008 Comments (0)

The National Girls Collaborative Project for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) collaborates with those seeking to increase the participation of girls in STEM feeder activities. The goal is to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Collaboration as a Means to Building Capacity: Results and Future Directions of the National Girls Collaborative Project:

The purpose of the NGCP is to extend the capacity, impact, and sustainability of
existing and evolving girl-serving STEM projects and programs. The NGCP is structured to bring organizations together to compare needs and resources, to share information, and to plan strategically to expand STEM–related opportunities for girls.
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Although we are still refining it, the NGCP collaborative model has shown its effectiveness through increased collaboration and minigrant projects with sustained results. As we have described, the success to date of the NGCP in developing collaborations has been demonstrated via data from the collaboration rubric, mini-grant reports, and metrics that show how collaborative activities have increased over the duration of the NGCP projects. As NGCP expands over the next few years to provide regional collaboratives across the entire United States and Puerto Rico, we will continue our assessment of its impact and hope to be able to report its influence on building capacity to attract and retain girls in STEM.

I support programs encouraging STEM activities for girls – and boys. NSF data shows for 2005 shows women outnumbered men in undergraduate degree in science and engineering. For post-graduate degrees men still outnumbering women but that gap has been reducing and seems like it will continue to. And the representations in the workplace seem poised to continue to show a reducing number of men and increasing number of women. Engineering is an example of an area with far more men than women graduating – the imbalance is equivalent to the imbalance the other way for psychology.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: K-12, Math, Science
Tags: Career, Engineering, Events, girls, k-12 students, Math, science education, women

DoE: Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program

Posted on November 20, 2008 Comments (0)

The United States Department of Education’s Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) provides funds to schools to provide awards to students. 20 new awards (average value of $139,000) were awarded this year. That brings total funding this year to 71 awards (50 continue from previous years). Institutions recieving funds include: Clark Atlanta University, Rust College, New Mexico State University, Spelman College, Virginia State University and the College of Menominee Nation.

The program is designed to effect long-range improvement in science at predominantly minority and engineering education programs to increase the participation of underrepresented ethnic minorities, particularly minority women, into scientific and technological careers.

Wiley College, one of the new recipients, aims to increase the number of science majors, especially in the fields of biology and chemistry. A key feature of this grant is the creation of a high school science competition that will allow local and regional high school students to visit the campus and compete in a variety of scientific events.

This event will bring five area high schools together to compete in ten scientific events based on biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. Individual first-place winners will be given scholarships to Wiley College. There will also be an overall grand champion awarded. This event will allow high school students to experience life at Wiley College and the possibilities of a career in science.

“This event not only gives students a financial reason to enroll at Wiley, but also allows them to become familiar with the campus and its faculty and students, said Dr. Shumate. “This grant also furthers a connection between Wiley and both the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Arkansas, allowing current Wiley students to attend these schools in the summer for biomedical research.”

Wiley hosts HS science competition Saturday

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Education, Fellowships, Scholarships, Funding, K-12, Science, Students, Universities
Tags: Awards, Events, Funding, K-12, scholarships, undergraduate students

Toyota Operates High School in India

Posted on November 8, 2008 Comments (1)

Toyota Eyes India Market, Builds School to Get Edge

Built on a rugged hillside in southern India that is populated by wildcats [see below] and monkeys, Toyota’s sprawling technical training school, which opened last year, gives about 180 junior-high-school graduates an education in everything from dismantling transmissions to Japanese group exercises.

Toyota wants to turn students like Satish Lakshman, the son of a poor farmer, into a skilled employee who can boost the auto maker’s fortunes in this key emerging market. “We are learning discipline, confidence and continuous improvement,” says Mr. Lakshman, an energetic 18-year-old.
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At the foundation of its growth plan is the Toyota Technical Training Institute. India’s auto market is growing at such a fast pace that skilled workers are in short supply. Toyota says the school will enable the company to develop the productive, skilled employees it needs.

Toyota has taken a similar approach in China, where it has helped the government run a technical training center since 1990. In India, rival auto makers are following Toyota’s lead. In September, Honda announced plans to open a technical college. Other car makers have formed partnerships with India’s technical institutes to improve training.

The school teaches students practical skills such as welding, auto assembly and maintenance. It also gives the young recruits a smattering of classes in such subjects as math, English and Japanese as well as lessons in the company’s cherished principles of consensus building, continuous improvement and eliminating waste.

Toyota is willing to invest in the long term. A much better sign than a company that is willing to pay their executives salaries that top the wealth of kings. Toyota also believes in education: Idle Workers Busy at Toyota.

Continue reading →

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Education, Funding, K-12
Tags: Career, cars, Cats, Education, India, manufacturing, secondary school

Electrifying a New Generation of Engineers

Posted on October 23, 2008 Comments (0)

Electrifying a New Generation of Engineers

Ybarra’s K-12 education efforts began informally in 1993 while he was a newly arrived professor at Duke, toting lasers and other captivating bits of engineering equipment to local schools to drum up excitement for science and engineering and an array of programs grew from there.
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Based on his growing awareness of the value of hands-on learning, Ybarra was longing for a way to help get more hands-on learning into the classroom. A few years later, in 1999, he was able to secure his first significant grant in the area. With support from the National Science Foundation Ybarra formalized his interactions with local schools by establishing a fellowship program that would put Duke engineering students in the classrooms to vastly expand the number of schools impacted.
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To date, Ybarra’s programs have impacted more than 150,000 kids, and with so many programs now in place and spreading, that number increases by about 50,000 students per year. But personal stories, rather than numbers, are what Ybarra finds most gratifying. “When students contact me years later to tell me that the experiences they had in my programs inspired them to pursue a career in engineering or one of the sciences, it gives me a very deep sense of satisfaction.”