Hewlett-Packard Invests In STEM
Posted on June 7th, 2010 by ASEE
IT giant Hewlett-Packard is spending $1 million to support STEM learning through an international, interdisciplinary effort to join together schools, colleges and universities and nonprofit educational groups to work on specific issues. Five of these consortiums, or “sandboxes of innovation,” will tackle STEM-related challenges, from teacher training to online and collaborative learning.
Filed under: K-12 Education News | 1 Comment »
The National Academy of Engineering’s EngineerGirl! website announced on May 28 the winners of the 2010 EngineerGirl! – Survival Design Challenge Essay Contest. This year’s national contest asked students (grades 3-12) to describe how they would use the clothing or accessories they are wearing and items in the environment to survive or get the attention of a rescue party if they were lost during a field trip to a national forest. More than 800 students submitted essays. Prizes ranged from $500 for first place to certificates for honorable mentions.
A survey conducted by Public Agenda and funded by the GE Foundation has found that Americans are conflicted when it comes to mathematics and science instruction. While a big majority say that strong math and science education is key to the country’s future, most parents think that the science and math classes that their kids take are “just fine.”
Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a national, highly-regarded engineering program for high schools, was recently given a status upgrade by a suburban Chicago school district. Henceforth, all PLTW courses within Oswego’s two high schools will be given equal weight with Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Oswego schools adopted the PLTW program six years ago, but the engineering courses only had the status of any other elective.
Chuck Lostroscio, a NASA software engineer, has reconfigured the simulation software NASA used to train Space Shuttle astronauts and created a computer game-like tool to help students learn how they might one day apply their math, science and engineering lessons. It’s called the Kennedy Launch Academy Simulation System, or KLASS, and it requires students to play a mission control engineer for a simulated shuttle launch.
Augmented reality (AR) technology is being hailed as the next big thing in the wireless world. Unlike virtual reality, which lets people seemingly enter artificial worlds, AR overlays digital information on real-world images viewed through the cameras of GPS-enabled handhelds, like smartphones. And already, one developer, Digital Tech Frontier, is marketing to schools its Augmented Reality Development Lab (ARDL) technology as a learning tool.
When it comes to helping kids learn science, parents and educators agree that Mom and Dad are falling down on the job, according to a new survey of 500 science teachers and 506 parents. A whopping 98 percent of the teachers surveyed said that parental involvement is important to keeping students interested in science. And, 94 percent said they wish their students’ parents had more chances to engage in science with their children. Seventy-seven percent suspected that too many parents just don’t feel comfortable with science topics to be of much assistance.
Too many science teachers in the U.S. — especially at the elementary and middle school levels — aren’t fully qualified to teach the subject. For instance, more than 70 percent of middle school science teachers in Chicago schools do not have a degree or endorsement in science. To address that problem, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) have teamed up to offer what they say is a first of its kind program to bolster the skills of middle school science teachers.
What better way to lure visually-centric kids to science than with videos that are brief, fast-paced, and edgy? That seems to be the National Science Foundation’s thinking. “The Science of Speed” made a debut earlier this year. Now, here comes an arresting new series on green technology.
