Fluttering in Space: The Butterfly Project
Posted on November 14th, 2009 by ASEE
When NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis takes off for the International Space Station, a University of Colorado at Bolder butterfly experiment will be aboard, monitored from Earth by thousands of K-12 students.
Filed under: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, K-12 Education News, K-12 Outreach Programs | Comments Off on Fluttering in Space: The Butterfly Project
Tags: Aeronautics, Aerospace, Biology, NASA, Space
An advanced drafting class at Chico High School in California has been turned into something resembling an architectural office. Seated behind computers equipped with the latest architectural software, the teens set to work designing homes, out-buildings and even a police training center — all projects that will soon be constructed based on their own plans and designs.
Amid a surge in community college attendance, almost 40 percent of the nation’s 18- to 24-year-olds in 2008 were enrolled in college, a record number, according to the Pew Research Center. The percentage of high school dropouts, meanwhile, has been declining.
Increasingly sophisticated forensics lessons—typically focused on crime-solving techniques—have become entrenched over the past decade in many high schools and even some middle schools as electives or sections of core science classes.
A federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered academic proficiency standards in recent years. While the step helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law, it’s likely to fuel debate on whether uniform national standards are needed.
There has also been a noticeable increase in the number of elementary schools across the nation that have adopted some form of departmentalization in response to pressure for higher test scores.
Los Angeles parents will be able to initiate major reforms at low-performing individual schools, rather than waiting for the school district to make changes. This new parental power has emerged as part of a school-control resolution that allows groups inside and outside the Los Angeles Unified School District to take over campuses.
Saying “we have to improve the pipeline” of STEM professionals, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has issued a call for “more qualified teachers, more passionate teachers” in the STEM subjects.
Solid numbers of STEM students are graduating from schools, but they’re rejecting science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers for those in other fields. So says a new paper by researchers at Georgetown and Rutgers universities.
