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Posts about k-12 students

USA Science And Engineering Kavli Video Contest

Posted on May 29, 2010 Comments (0)

Do you think Science is cool? Do you want to share your passion for science with others? Here is your chance to inspire thousands of people to be more curious, and to care about science & engineering the way you do: create a short video that explores the question “Why is Science Cool?”

We are seeking videos that are creative, surprising, and “contagious” in terms of spreading your enthusiasm about science to others. Videos might explore a scientific concept, show us the wonders of nature, give us a glimpse into the future, show us what scientific discovery has done for us in the past or will do for us in the future, introduce us to a great scientist or engineer, tell us why you think science is so cool or simply show us why we should care about science and/or engineering.

1st prize: $1,000 (to the school or science club); plus $500 electronics gift certificate for the student (or student group); plus a travel stipend to travel to Washington DC for the Expo!

In addition, the winning videos will be screened during the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo on the National Mall in Washington DC on October 23 and 24, 2010 and at other key Festival events.

Find out how to submit a video.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: K-12, Science, Students
Tags: Awards, K-12, k-12 students, teachers

Botball 2009 Finals

Posted on July 8, 2009 Comments (6)

Webcast of the double elimination rounds of the Botball 2009 competition of the winning Alcott Middle School Botball team. Norman teens win robotics contest:

The challenge of building the robot and seeing it do what it’s programmed to do is very exciting, said Goree, 14. “I like figuring out what’s wrong with the robots, fixing them and then seeing them work after you fix them,” he said.

The team was shocked, excited and proud of their first-place finish, they said. “Almost all the teams we played against were high school teams, so that was pretty exciting for us, beating high schoolers,” Goree said.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Engineering, K-12, Robots, Students
Tags: Awards, engineering competition, Events, k-12 students, Robots, webcasts

Getting Kids to Rediscover the Great Outdoors

Posted on July 6, 2009 Comments (6)

photo of lantern tree

Back to nature: Getting kids to rediscover the great outdoors

Childhood is supposed to look like this, according to many children’s health experts and an increasing number of landscape architects and urban planners. Wading in puddles or streams, building hideouts, climbing trees or exploring a “secret” outdoor spot develops the senses, stimulates the imagination and releases pent-up energy. Studies show that “a dose of nature” can be more effective than a dose of medication in reducing the symptoms of attention deficit disorder (see sidebar). Obesity and depression are alleviated, too.

“Nature stimulates that sense of wonder,” says UW Health psychologist Katie Watermolen. “When kids are outside, they are less anxious, more creative, more relaxed. All that leads to improved mental health.”
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A 2007 report released by the American Academy of Pediatrics says free and unstructured play is healthy and, in fact, essential for helping children reach important social, emotional and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient.

Great stuff. I agree. See photos of my hikes in national parks. The 2007 report doesn’t believe in free and open science though – outdated closed science journal rules apply. When will people lean – both that science should be open and nature is good for kids? Progress isn’t helped when the scientists working for public schools restrict their research by allowing journals to hide their research from the public.

Photo by John Hunter at Forest Glen Preserve, Illinois – Creative Commons Attribution.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Engineering
Tags: backyard wildlife, K-12, k-12 students, kids, nature, Science

Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class

Posted on June 11, 2009 Comments (4)

Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t figure out the cause of Jessica’s abdominal distress. Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn’s disease.

“It’s weird I had to solve my own medical problem,” Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO in Seattle, Washington. “There were just no answers anywhere. … I was always sick.”
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Crohn’s disease is often misdiagnosed or diagnosed very late, says Dr. Corey Siegel, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. “Granulomas are oftentimes very hard to find and not always even present at all,” Siegel said. “I commend Jessica for her meticulous work.”

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Health Care, K-12, Life Science, Science
Tags: Health Care, human health, K-12, k-12 students, science education, teachers

EngineerGirl Essay: The Cure to Vitamin D Deficiency

Posted on June 2, 2009 Comments (2)

Kate Yuhas, an eighth-grader at Brighton’s Scranton Middle School, Michigan. Photo courtesy Kate Yuhas.

Brighton eighth-grader rewarded for her love for science

Thirteen-year-old Kate Yuhas, who plans to be an environmental engineer someday, has loved science since she was little.
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Yuhas received an honorable mention certificate from the National Academy of Engineering’s EngineerGirl! Web site Imagine That! Engineering Innovation Essay Contest for her essay on a tanning booth that helps people produce vitamin D. “My whole life I’ve been interested in science,” Yuhas said. “I really like helping the environment and eating organic.”

“Kate has a talent for science and math, and she’s won medals at Science Olympiad,” said her mom, Johanna, who coaches the team. “Kate has always had science-themed parties. My husband and I are both engineers, and we talk a lot about science at home.”

The essay contest asked participants to consider one of three images on the EngineerGirl! site and to discuss its potential purposes and functions using engineering creativity.
…

Read Kate’s essay: The Cure to Vitamin D Deficiency

What can help prevent MS, high blood pressure, and several autoimmune diseases? The answer to that question would be Vitamin D, which you can get in three ways: food, supplements, and the sun. 70 percent of Americans lack adequate amounts of Vitamin D. The reason is that people just don’t get enough sun. That’s why my invention would be so helpful. It is a special tanning booth that only gives out the specific amount of UVB rays, the type of UV rays that is needed to produce Vitamin D, which you need.
…

The Engineer Girl website has done a smart thing and posted all the essays online. It is a simple act but one so often other organizations fail to do in similar circumstances.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Engineering, K-12, Students
Tags: Awards, engineers, essay, girls, K-12, k-12 students, kids, usability

Intel Science and Engineering Fair 2009 Webcasts

Posted on May 17, 2009 Comments (4)

Tara Adiseshan, 14, of Charlottesville, Virginia; Li Boynton, 17, of Houston; and Olivia Schwob, 16, of Boston were selected from 1,563 young scientists from 56 countries, regions and territories for their commitment to innovation and science. Each received a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation.

(video removed, so the embed code has been removed)

In the webcast, Tara Adiseshan, talks about her project studying the evolutionary ties between nematodes (parasites) and sweat bees. She identified and classified the evolutionary relationships between sweat bees and the nematodes (microscopic worms) that live inside them. Tara was able to prove that because the two have such ecologically intimate relationships, they also have an evolutionary relationship. That is to say, if one species evolves, the other will follow.

Li Boynton developed a biosensor from bioluminescent bacteria (a living organism that gives off light) to detect the presence of contaminants in public water. Li’s biosensor is cheaper and easier to use than current biosensors, and she hopes it can be used in developing countries to reduce water toxicity. Li Boynton on What’s Great About Science:

Olivia Schwob isolated a gene that can be used to improve the intelligence of a worm. The results could help us better understand how humans learn and even prevent, treat and cure mental disabilities in the future.

In addition to the three $50,000 top winners, more than 500 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair participants received scholarships and prizes for their groundbreaking work. Intel awards included 19 “Best of Category” winners who each received a $5,000 Intel scholarship and a new laptop. In total, nearly $4 million is scholarships and awards were provided.

Posted by curiouscat
Categories: Awards, Education, Events, Fellowships, Scholarships, Funding, K-12, Life Science, Podcast, Research, Science, Students
Tags: amazing, Awards, evolution, Funding, high school students, K-12, k-12 students, Research, scholarships, science webcasts, webcasts, women

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

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, jobs, K-12, k-12 students

High School Inventor Teams @ MIT

Posted on December 11, 2008 Comments (7)

Sadly MIT deleted the video after having it live for several years.

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 used to have many more presentation by other InvenTeams – not anymore 🙁 ) 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

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

Seventh-grader’s Solar Cell Research

Posted on September 21, 2008 Comments (0)

photo of William Yuan

Seventh-grader shines with solar cell research

Yuan worked on his project for the past two years with the encouragement of his science teacher Susan Duncan; support of his parents Gang Yuan and Zhiming Mei; and counsel of professional mentors Professor Chunfei Li of Portland State University’s Center for Nanofabrication and Electron Microscopy, Fred Li of Applied Materials Inc. and Professor Shaofan Li of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of California – Berkeley.

“He is our youngest fellow in science that we’ve ever had,” Moessner said. “He is really spectacular. “His project will really make a difference in advancing the technology of solar cells. You would never know he’s 12 looking at the quality of his work.”

Beaverton boy lauded for solar cell invention

there have been many questions about the research by William Yuan. Some have even questioned whether he copied the research of others and claimed it as his own. That is far from the case. Yuan fully documented all of his sources and never tried to imply that he invented the 3D solar cell. He did create a new type of 3D solar cell that works for visible and UV light

William Yuan was awarded a 2008 Davidson Fellow award

In his project, “High Efficient 3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light,” William invented a novel solar panel that enables light absorption from visible to ultraviolet light. He designed carbon nanotubes to overcome the barriers of electron movement, doubling the light-electricity conversion efficiency. William also developed a model for solar towers and a computer program to simulate and optimize the tower parameters. His optimized design provides 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than the cutting-edge, three-dimensional solar cell.