Category Archives: K-12

About or related to primary (k-12) science and engineering education. Likely of interest to teachers and administrators. Teachers may also find many of the posts we feel are of interests to students interested in science and engineering useful.

Student Loan Forgiveness for Teachers

School of Education creates $20 million loan-forgiveness program to encourage students to become teachers

This program from Standford is one of the many good ideas being applied currently. Alone it really is a pretty small step but as one small step of many it is a good one.

$10 million gift matched by Stanford will create a $20 million loan-forgiveness program at the university’s School of Education to encourage students to become K-12 teachers.
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Under the program, half of a STEP student’s loan will be “forgiven”-effectively cancelled-when the graduate has taught for two years. After four years, the loan balance will be forgiven. Research has shown that a teacher who pursues teaching for three years or more is likely to stay in the field.

Science and Engineering Internships for Summer 2007

Office of Naval Research Science & Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP)

SEAP provides competitive research internships to approximately 250 high school students each year. Participating students spend eight weeks during the summer doing research at Department of Navy laboratories.

Requirements:

* High school students who have completed at least Grade 9. A graduating senior is eligible to apply.
* Must be 16 years of age for most laboratories
* Applicants must be US citizens and participation by Permanent Resident Aliens is limited.
* The application deadline is February 17, 2006.
Continue reading →

K-12 Engineering Education

Program aims to steer students into engineering (site broke the link so I removed it – poor usability):

Throughout the year, they will use the same tools that engineers use in the field to learn concepts of mechanics and simple machines.
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Across the country, 27 universities have partnered with Project Lead the Way, a non-profit organization, to train high school and middle school educators planning to teach the program.
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Helm said one student in the program in Texas designed a thin and flexible life vest to fit more comfortably over foul-weather gear worn by shrimpers on the Gulf Coast.

“The Coast Guard liked it so much they bought the idea from her,” she said.

Learn more about Project Lead The Way and see more posts on other such projects: Middle School Engineers (another post on project lead the way which includes many related links) – Directory of Science Education Sites – Engineering Education Program for k-12 – Inspiring Students to be Engineers

RI FIRST

Ocean State to enlist all high schools in robotics challenge

tarting next year, state officials say, students at all 67 of Rhode Island’s public, charter and career and technical high schools will have a chance to participate in the FIRST Vex Challenge, a robot-building competition. The announcement last week makes the Ocean State the first to involve all its public high schools in the challenge, which involves building a robot able to complete a specific set of tasks.
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Throughout the challenge, students must maintain an engineering notebook to track their progress, successes and challenges. During the build period, teams work as a group to brainstorm solutions, design a robot to do various tasks, and build and test their designs. The projects culminate in competitions designed to be fun, high-energy, sports-like events with judges and awards.

FIRST is an exciting program we have mentioned before: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST). Dean Kaman (R&D Magazine’s 2006 Innovator of the Year) founded the program and it continues to do a great job of capturing the natural desire for people to learn and create. Learn about regional events this school year.

UK Young Engineers Competitions

Young Engineers is a organization in the United Kingdom that supports engineering events and competitions. Established in 1984, in 2005 there were 1,100 active clubs with over 18,000 club members (36% female).

The site is packed with information on events and especially photos. See the Young Engineer for Britain Galleries and Robotic Games.

Monarch Travels

Fly Away Home:

The butterfly that goes from Canada to Mexico and partway back lives six to nine months, but when it mates and lays eggs, it may have gotten only as far as Texas, and breeding butterflies live only about six weeks. So a daughter born on a Texas prairie goes on to lay an egg on a South Dakota highway divider that becomes a granddaughter. That leads to a great-granddaughter born in a Winnipeg backyard. Come autumn, how does she find her way back to the same grove in Mexico that sheltered her great-grandmother?

A great question and interesting science. Students can help track the monarchs and other migrating species (bald eagles, robins, hummingbirds, whooping cranes…).

To test their ability to reorient themselves, Dr. Taylor has moved butterflies from Kansas to Washington, D.C. If he releases them right away, he said, they take off due south, as they would have where they were. But if he keeps them for a few days in mesh cages so they can see the sun rise and set, “they reset their compass heading,” he said. “The question is: How?”

What Kids can Learn

This is a fascinating interview discussing what children can learn if given a computer and little, if any, instruction. Very Cool. Links on the progress since this interview are at the end of the post.

Q: This is your concept of minimally invasive education?

A: Yes. It started out as a joke but I’ve kept using the term … This is a system of education where you assume that children know how to put two and two together on their own. So you stand aside and intervene only if you see them going in a direction that might lead into a blind alley.

The interview explores what happened when:

Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree.

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

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Math for America

Math for America is an organization focused on improving math education in the USA. They offer Newton Fellowships for those who would like to become math teachers in New York City (for 180 individuals between 2004 and 2008). They plan to expand the program to other cities in the future. Aplications are due by 9 February, 2007.

Putting his Money Where His Math is by Joshua Roebke:

Nearly 40 percent of all public high school math teachers do not have a degree in math or a related field. Even the best curriculum in the world, the reasoning goes, isn’t going to inspire students if unqualified individuals are teaching them. (In a recent round of testing, the U.S. placed 24th out of 29 nations in math proficiency.)

The fellowships above aim to encourage those with math, and related, degrees to teach math.

Purdue Graduate Fellows Teach Middle School Science

Purdue to break ground on teaching center for improving science and engineering education.

The $10 million Discovery Learning Center, slated for completion in 2008, will focus on teaching techniques and environments conducive to learning. Also a focal point will be the way people learn best. An emphasis will be placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, also known as the STEM disciplines.
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Wilella Burgess, managing director of the Discovery Learning Center, said projects like GK12 help make science seem more reachable for students in the primary grades.

“A lot of these kids don’t know there is such a thing as graduate school and it lets them meet scientists and grad students and learn that they’re not all weird, nerdy people,” she said. “It also lets classroom teachers have the access to cutting edge research.”

The Purdue Discovery Learning Center Gk-12 program brings graduate students to middle schools. Graduate “fellows will develop lesson plans and teach interdisciplinary-focused experiments geared toward science in everyday life.”

Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology

Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology

Students may enter as individuals or as part of a team. Applications are due by 2 Oct, 2006. Up to thirty individual students and thirty teams (of 2 or 3 students) are chosen to compete at six regional competitions hosted by our partner universities MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, UT Austin and UC Berkeley.

Students who win their regional competition receive a silver medal and scholarships of $3,000 (team members receive $6,000 to be divided equally between team members) and go on to compete at the national event in New York City. The top individual and top team each receive $100,000 scholarships. Runners up receive scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.