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The Maker Movement Goes Global

December 3, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Courtesy: Exploratorium

In step with the popularity and growing momentum of Maker Faire, the “maker movement” is going global with the help of the Exploratorium museum’s Global Studios.

After 40 plus years of work in this field, the Exploratorium, which is based in San Francisco, is stepping up its involvement in hands-on, informal science and technology education by working with groups across the world to spread and grow the movement. In addition to participating in all the Maker Faire events, bringing mini Tinkering Studios™ where visitors can experiment with the activities freely, the museum has also been called on to teach these ideas in far-reaching spots like Saudi Arabia and Italy.

“Tinkering offers an opportunity to decide for yourself what it is you are interested in learning”

“Tinkering is not something we invented or anyone invented,” said Luigi Anzivino, scientific content developer for the Tinkering Studio in the museum. “I think it’s a fundamental way that human beings have of being in the world. There’s nothing that we’ve discovered about this. So, it belongs to everyone. All we are trying to do is reveal that and allow people to let that come to the surface.”

The group’s goal is to leave a lasting impression on the sites they visit — what they call a tinkering disposition. “A tinkering disposition is something that tells you that the world is knowable; you can find out something about the world by yourself and you don’t have to be an expert in any one Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, design thinking, Exploratorium, Maker Faire, maker movement, STEM, tinkering

Should Math and Science Teachers Get Special Training?

October 23, 2012 | 10:49 AM | By
By Anne Jolly

Excited and inspired about the subjects they teach, math and science educators ideally want their classrooms to dive into real-world challenges. But they’re faced with the predictable realities of the school day when designing their curriculum. Each year, students seem to lose interest as the subjects become more difficult and abstract. “And what use is this anyway?” students. Why should they learn it?

Though educators know that real-world application would help students engage more fully with the subjects and understand the vital role in solving real problems, they’re overwhelmed by how to make this happen. Just a few of their obstacles:

  • “My school system has an obsessive focus on student testing, and that’s all they want me to teach toward – test objectives, test objectives, test objectives.”
  • “Our course of study has so many objectives to teach that I don’t have the time to go deeply into any one area – at least, not in the way that STEM teaching requires.”
  • “I have no control over what I teach or when I teach it. I have to stay with the pacing guide. I even have to teach flowering plants in January!”
  • “I don’t have time to teach STEM curriculum. In fact, I don’t even have time to plan STEM lessons. And I don’t have materials and equipment for hands-on activities in all the classes I teach.”

STEM teachers need ongoing professional development to strengthen and develop the expertise Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, inquiry learning, professional development, project-based-learning, STEM

Alleyoop Releases New STEM Program

August 16, 2012 | 7:00 AM | By

Alleyoop online tutorial

By Jennie Rose

Alleyoop, the online college prep tutoring site created by Pearson, has added a group of new STEM-focused partners to its offerings. In addition to its current math programs, Alleyoop has added NASA eClips, National Geographic, Scientific Minds, Patrick JMT, Virtual Nerd, Adaptive Curriculum and Brightstorm.

Alleyoop uses the “gamification” model for its curriculum, which is targeted at middle- and high-school students. The site features real-time tutors, instructional videos, and a system described as “personalized, iterative, and adaptive,” according to an Atlantic article.

With these new additions, students who use Alleyoop will have access to NASA eClips, a video library showing STEM-related careers and applications for science and engineering concepts;  videos from National Geographic that are aligned to STEM topics, such as animal behavior and chemistry; National Science Foundation’s Science360 app, a source for science news, as well as a series of video interviews of scientists and engineers on the field.

Other partners in Alleyoop’s online curriculum offerings include Brightstorm, video lessons created by teachers covering biology, chemistry and physics; Adaptive Curriculum, featuring interactive scenarios that give students context for science lessons across the board; Patrick JMT, video activities including geometry, trigonometry to statistics and probability; Scientific Minds, quizzes Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, adaptive, Alleyoop, math, STEM

Why Stereotyping Threatens the Influence of Women in Science

July 16, 2012 | 10:10 AM | By

Flickr:Idovermani

By

Walk into any tech company or university math department, and you’ll likely see a gender disparity: Fewer women than men seem to go into fields involving science, engineering, technology and mathematics.

Over the years, educators, recruiters and government authorities have bemoaned the gender gap and warned that it can have dire consequences for American competitiveness and continued technological dominance.

It isn’t just that fewer women choose to go into these fields. Even when they go into these fields and are successful, women are more likely than men to quit.

“They tend to drop out at higher rates than their male peers,” said Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. “As women enter into careers, the levels of advancement aren’t as steep for women as for men.

Schmader and a colleague, Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona, recently came up with an innovative way to study one dimension of the gender gap in fields such as computer science and engineering.

Mehl often uses a device known as an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) in his research. It’s an audio recorder that the psychologist can attach to volunteers. The device automatically turns itself on and off.

“The teacher is the same; the textbooks are the same; and in better classrooms, these students are treated the same,” Steele wrote. “Is it possible, then, that they could still experience the classroom differently, so differently in fact as to significantly affect their performance and achievement there?”

“We program the device to record for 30 seconds every 12 minutes,” Mehl said in an interview. “That gives you about 5 soundbites per hour, or 70 soundbites per day.”

By “sampling” people’s daily lives, Mehl said his recorder often picks up on things that people don’t notice. Most of us remember only the highlights of our days — an interesting conversation or a ballgame. But much of the time, our lives run on autopilot, and we don’t notice what’s going on. Mehl said getting detailed information about what people do during the majority of their time is central to understanding them psychologically.

The sampling technique has revealed flaws in common stereotypes. Take the one about how women like to talk much more than men. When Mehl actually measured how many words men and Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Research, STEM, stereotypes

Hands-On Science Exams Reveal Students’ Skills

June 19, 2012 | 7:28 AM | By
By Lillian Mongeau

To get a better understanding of how well students can solve complex problems and apply science to real-life scenarios, the National Assessment for Education Progress recently used hands-on experiments as a way to test 4th, 8th, and 12th grade students, and found that this kind of assessment gives a much more accurate reflection of student comprehension.

Results from a 2009 round of testing called The Nation’s Report Card Science in Action: Hands-On and Interactive Computer Task, examined 6,000 students—2,000 at each grade level—from across the country. Students performed tasks like testing water samples (12th grade) and assembling electric circuits (4th grade). They also participated in interactive computer tasks that simulated longer term experiments, like observing plant growth. In both scenarios, students were evaluated on their ability to perform the tasks, observe the results and draw conclusions.

“The bottom line is, we learned so much more that we couldn’t have learned from those paper and pencil tests,” said Jack Buckley, commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, which creates the annual “Nation’s Report Card” based on the results of tests like this one administered by the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP).

But what they learned was a mixed bag.

A majority of students at all grade levels (76 percent) were able to perform the simpler experiments correctly and accurately observe the results. However, when experiments involved more Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, asessment, computer science, NAEP, STEM

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

January 12, 2012 | 5:00 AM | By

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, Teaching With Tech, Google Science Fair, STEM