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January 12, 2012 | 5:00 AM | By

Ready, Set, Invent! The Google Science Fair is Launched

The Smithsonian Institution

Taking the traditional science fair out of the school gymnasium and placing it on the Web, Google launched its 2012 Global Science Fair yesterday, a follow-up to last year’s inaugural event.

The fair is open to any student (age 13 to 18) from anywhere who has access to the Internet and to a Web browser.

This year, Google is taking the “global” aspect of the contest seriously, allowing submissions in 13 different languages (last year’s were only accepted in English). The company will also select 90 regional finalists — 30 from the Americas, 30 from the Asia-Pacific region, and 30 from Europe and Africa. It’s about “guaranteeing more global coverage,” says Maggie Johnson, Google Director of Education and a Google Science Fair judge.

As with last year’s event, Google has assembled a prestigious judging panel that includes Google Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf and particle physicist and Nobel Prize winner. And the prizes for the winners are not insignificant: the grand prize is a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos lead by a National Geographic Explorer, a hands-on internship at Google, CERN or LEGO, access to the Scientific American archives for their school and a personalized LEGO trophy. Two other finalists will each receive $25,000 scholarships, access to the Scientific American archives, and a LEGO trophy.

In response to last year’s criticism from the New York Times questioning whether the event was simply a marketing ploy to expose students to Google products (you can read the MindShift take on it here), Johnson addressed the company’s the motivation behind the fair.

Johnson pointed out that the science fair does not require that students use Google products for anything more than the submission process (they must use a Google Sites template for that part). Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Tech Tools, Google Science Fair, STEM
January 10, 2012 | 11:47 AM | By

Girls and Math: Busting the Stereotype

Flickr: A.A.

Do girls need special attention when it comes to science, math, and technology topics? In response to last week’s article about Techbridge, the after-school science program specifically geared to girls, some readers strongly refuted the notion that girls need the extra nudge.

“‘Steering’ something suggests directing it in a path it would not normally, of its own inclination, go!” wrote reader Julian Penrod. “The very title connotes a program to give an impression of female overall interest in the hard sciences, even though it wouldn’t necessarily, on its own, exist. In other words, a fraud.”

The reader raises a subtle but important issue — but it goes much deeper than that. According to Claude Steele, author of Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, it’s not that girls aren’t necessarily interested in science and math, it’s whether they’re discouraged from following their interests because of the persistent stereotype that girls aren’t good at that sort of thing.

“The idea of the ‘gift-that-girls-don’t-have’ is likely to be a key part of what’s keeping them from pursuing those careers.”

Steele has examined this very phenomenon closely for years and has identified it as a stereotype threat. The issue is much more complex than the very basic tendencies of what naturally interests either gender. Steele pinpoints the problem to what happens after girls follow their interests in science and math studies, when inevitable obstacles come up.

“When you perform in science and math… in the larger society you’re stereotyped as not being good at it,” Steele says of girls. “You experience a little frustration, you say, ‘Am I confirming that stereotype and am I going to be seen to confirm that stereotype? Am I going to have to live under this pressure for the rest of my life if I choose this as a career?’ So there’s a pressure coming just from those stereotypes that discourages women from engaging in those fields and, and staying in those fields even when their skills and abilities are A-plus. So that’s an extra burden.”

Steele says it’s a subtle but crucial mindset that can make the difference between a girl choosing to go into a STEM field — or trying harder on a math or science test — and choosing not to. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, Carol Dweck, differentiated learning, STEM
January 6, 2012 | 12:10 PM | By

Steering Girls to Science and Tech Careers

TB

Middle-school students learn how to solder in an after-school science program.

For Ebony Green, a career as a scientist might have seemed unlikely just last year.

The stereotypical outcome for girls like Ebony, an eighth-grader at Frick Middle School in a rough part of East Oakland, isn’t necessarily a high-paying job in science, math, engineering or technology. In fact, 40 percent of Oakland Unified School District students drop out.

Still, despite her surroundings and the legacy of her race, gender, family background, and income bracket, Ebony sees a different future for herself. She wants to be a pediatrician, or maybe a vet, and she’s starting to take steps to get there.

Last fall, without her mother knowing, Ebony enrolled herself in Techbridge, an after-school science and math program geared specifically to girls. She signed up for math tutoring at school because she’s struggling in the subject. And her science teacher, Ken Eastman, says she even came to his science class twice a day for a while.

“Once these girls get that satisfaction from knowing they can do something that most adults don’t know how to do, that knowledge in itself is so empowering.”

Ebony’s interest in science stands in contrast to the reality of women working in STEM fields. Although women make up half the country’s work force, they comprise less than 25 percent ofSTEM-related jobs, according to a Department of Commerce report from last year.

Apart from the overall problem of cutting out hands-on science projects and tinkering in schools, the issue is even more pointed when it comes to girls. A recent study called “Why So Few” shows Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, PBS American Graduate, STEM, Techbridge
December 8, 2011 | 8:00 AM | By

Wiring Insects for Hands-On Science Experiments

While there’s technology that removes science students from their physical specimens, like the applications that offer alternatives to frog dissection, another company is using tech to connect them to dismembered bugs.

Far from the virtual world, It’s all hands-on work with Backyard Brains. Insects lose their legs and their antenna. And for budding young researchers and scientists, the touch and feel is just part of the process.

Backyard Brains sells several affordable, entry-level brain recording kits that let students (of all ages) learn about and experiment with the nervous system. The SpikerBox ($99), for example, lets you connect neural probes to a cockroach’s leg and send electrical impulses in order to record its neural activity. Another product just released this week, the RoboRoach ($99), lets you stimulate a cockroach’s antenna nerves electronically, allowing the student to steer the insect left or right.

The kit demands students think about what constitutes appropriate care and experimentation.

Okay, perhaps even without the advent of virtual app alternatives to experimentation, the idea of removing legs and antenna from insects and connecting neural stimulators to them gives you Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Tech Tools, Backyard Brains, STEM
November 2, 2011 | 3:46 PM | By

Technology Adds Spark to Science Education

The word “cyberlearning” evokes a lot of different images.

It can mean using an augmented reality app on a mobile phone to learn about a city’s history. It can mean working with a remote science lab clear across the world to conduct scientific research about measuring cell phone radiation. For some students, it’s a way to teach other kids about things like astronomy through video games.

In this video, produced by KQED Education in conjunction with Northwestern University’s iLab, which helped organize the Conference on Cyberlearning Tools for STEM Education, we see how technology adds the fuel and fire to science and math education.

Check out the different stories.

[Produced by Kelly Whalen.]

 

Read more about innovative science education:

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Tech Tools, cytse, STEM
October 10, 2011 | 10:03 AM | By

YouTube SpaceLab Launches Student Experiments Into Space

SpaceLab

YouTube and NASA are challenging students to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. Students from 14 to 18 years old can upload videos of their experiments onto YouTube’s Space Lab website.

A panel of scientists, astronauts, and educators, including Stephen Hawking, will judge the entries, and the two winning experiments will be conducted on the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth and live streamed on YouTube.

“The idea of seeing something you conceive and build in your ordinary classroom being actually flown on a rocket, being actually sent to the International Space Station, being actually carried out by a national, is the stuff of fiction. We think that is going to be the thing that gets kids excited,” said YouTube’s Zahaan Bharmal, who conceived of the challenge.

“The idea of seeing something you conceive and build in your ordinary classroom sent to the International Space Station is the stuff of fiction.”

NASA’s counterparts in Europe and Japan are also participating in the worldwide initiative, as are Lenovo and Space Adventures.

More details: Students in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to SpaceLab. From the entries, six regional finalists will be brought to Washington, D.C. in March 2012 to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive other prizes. And from that group, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed on the ISS.

The two global winners will get to choose either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they’re 18, a one-of-a-kind astronaut Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, NASA, SpaceLab, STEM, YouTube, YouTube.com/Education