World-Shaker

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Giving Good Praise to Girls: What Messages Stick

“Of all the subjects on earth, people think math is the most fixed,” Dweck said. “It’s a gift, you either have it or you don’t. And that it’s most indicative of your intelligence.” This attitude presents an especially sticky problem to educators working to boost girls’ interest and passion for science, technology, engineering and math – STEM subjects. For many boys, believing math is a fixed ability doesn’t hamper achievement — they just assume they have it, Dweck said. But girls don’t seem to possess that same confidence, and in their efforts to achieve perfection, Dweck’s research shows they shy away from subjects where they might fail.

“We have research showing that women who believe math is an acquired set of skills, not a gift you have or don’t have, fare very well,” Dweck said. “Even when they have a period of difficulty and even when they’re in an environment that they say is full of negative stereotyping.” This research suggests parents and educators should rethink what implicit and explicit messages are being sent to young girls about achievement.

People Are Awesome: 11th-Graders Invent a Way for Blind People to Locate the Food on Their Plate

A small group of high school juniors are the first people to tackle a serious but overlooked difficulty that blind and visually impaired people face every day: locating food on their plate.

The students worked with the design and innovation consulting firm IDEO to create a working prototype of their invention, called the Dining Band.

The Dining Band is a wrist band with a location and temperature sensor that vibrates when the person’s hand hovers over the food on the plate.

Ten Good Video Sources for Science Students and Teachers →

Oooothese are all going on my OER list! Here are two:

MIT Tech TV is a collection of thousands videos produced by students and faculty at MIT. The videos are arranged into more than 600 collections covering topics in engineering, education, science, the humanities, and more. You can view the videos online and most of them are available to download. Roughly 300 of the MIT Tech TV videos are also available on a YouTube channel of the same name. There are a couple of playlists within the channel that could be of interest to high school and middle school science teachers. MIT Engineering K-12 is a set of twenty-six videos in which MIT students explain and demonstrate things like gas pressure, gravity, Boyle’s Law, and the shape of sound waves. MIT Physics Demonstrations is a playlist of 44 short demonstrations. The videos don’t have narration, just the demonstration. The explanation of the principle demonstrated is found in the description below each video. 

Bright Storm’s YouTube channel offers video lessons for biology, chemistry, and physics. The videos are nothing more than an instructor lecturing with a whiteboard for a few minutes which could be adequate if a student just needs a refresher on a science topic.

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Using iPads In Scientific Fieldwork

Traditionally, while engaging in fieldwork, students made handwritten notes and drawings. More recent classes have taken photos with cameras / phones and then, after the excursion, labelled these images in Word or something similar. The biggest drawbacks of these techniques have been illegible or poorly sequenced notes, and inaccuracies in image labels due to time delays between fieldwork and accessing a computer.

This year, each of my students took their iPad 2 into the field, using it as the main tool for collecting and organising observations.  This resulted in significant improvements.

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A Learning Science Alternative to Bloom’s Taxonomy by Brenda Sugrue

For the pedagogically obsessed STEM educators. You know who you are.

ucresearch:

Watch the full video: Blossoming into Science with actress Mayim Bialik

A fantastic video for girls interested in STEM (4:14 runtime)

"Mackenzie Wilson, age 9, has a score to settle with her older brothers. They didn’t think she could build her own video game, so she went ahead and launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $829 to make a role playing game (RPG). After just one day, Mackenzie has already raised $11,471 from 650 backers."

—

A 9-Year-Old’s Kickstarter Project

Internet, I love you.

SCIENCE NEEDS YOUR HELP!

geeklearnstorun:

Help! The Los Angeles Science Fair is being cancelled just three weeks before the event due to insufficient funding.

Over 4,000 students have been working diligently since July to compete in this science fair. They are not able to compete in any other counties and will not be able to compete regionally or nationally this year or next if the LA Science Fair is cancelled. One of my best friends is one of these students. He’s been working towards his culminating project since he was 13 and building microbial fuel cells; he’s now a high school senior and may graduate having never been able to compete with his final project.

We need help right now to make this year’s competition happen. Every dollar helps; you can donate here: http://www.lascifair.org/donorspartners/donate-now/

We’re one of the most competitive science fairs in the country; in cancelling this science fair, we’re cutting hundreds of incredible young scientists clean out of the race.

This is about kids loving science. Please don’t let them down. Please please please donate. We’re currently $70,000 short for this year and, if things don’t look up, there will be no 2013 or 2014 science fair.

 http://www.lascifair.org/donorspartners/donate-now/

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Signal Boost.

Calling All Geek Girls! Apply for the Huffington Post's STEM Mentorship Program →

jtotheizzoe:

It’s well-established that women face social pressures that push them away from pursuing science as a life passion. It’s also well-established that women who do stay in science face discrimination all the way up the ladder. Women are 50 percent of the population but hold less than a quarter of STEM jobs.

Young ladies, HuffPo has your back. Check it out:

Dear Geek Girls,

We were there once — making a decision about which career path to choose can be a source of great anxiety, especially in tough economic times like these. But having someone on your side to coach you through, and give you practical advice without judgement can make all the difference in the world.

HuffPo Science is offering young ladies 14-21 the chance to be mentored by a female scientist, to show you the ropes and keep you motivated to achieve your goals. Applications are due Jan 31st, so apply here today!

Big round of applause to them for this effort.

Signal Boost. Seems like something really positive to share with your high school students. 

Pupils hiding talents from bullies, survey suggests →

• Nearly half of UK children have played down a talent because of bullying fears, a survey of 1,042 children aged 11 to 16 suggests.
• And more than a quarter of those polled for England’s anti-bullying week said they had quit an activity they enjoy for the same reasons.
• One in 10 said they had played down their ability in science.
• And nearly one in five girls said they deliberately underachieved in maths skills to avoid being bullied.
• Fewer boys, one in 10, reported playing down their maths ability for the same reason.
• The poll also suggested many children (11%) having stopped singing because of the fears, some 8% said they had stopped doing drama and 9% dancing. Some 8% have quit a sport because of bullying fears.

Apps That Can Make Science Come Alive!

A similar app but perhaps more commonly associated with science classes focuses on frog dissection. This has been a controversial subject for many years with many pupils and teachers objecting to the practice. The use of the app removes the moral arguments over animal dissection in the classroom while providing all of the learning processes associated with the process. Frog Dissection not only brings the process to life, rewarding pupils for good work in following instructions in the cutting process, it provides added details and information about the frog’s organs. With quizzes at the end and additional information about frogs, this is an example of an app going above and beyond what would have been expected in a classroom environment.

The reduction of mess in the classroom that these apps provide will also ensure that they a winner with everyone in the educational process, including the cleaning staff!

These apps can be used by pupils on their or in pairs or small groups so there is the ability to work collaboratively. In fields like science, collaborative working and bringing different opinions together can be of great benefit so this is definitely an area of work that deserves to be examined further.

"The Wright Brothers did not have any theory of flight,” says Schank. “They simply tinkered with stuff until their plane flew. That is called engineering. Trying stuff to see what works.” So why don’t the nation’s high schools teach engineering? “Because engineering wasn’t a subject at Harvard in 1892."

— Is Every Single Subject Taught in High School a Mistake?

Something like that.

"Unfortunately, the quality of most state science standards is “mediocre to awful,” in the words of one recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank in Washington, D.C. Several states present evolution as unsettled science—“according to many scientists, biological evolution occurs through natural selection,” say New York State’s standards. Wishy-washiness is also creeping into the way schools teach climate change, as some parents pressure teachers to “balance” the conclusions of the majority of scientists against the claims of a tiny but vocal clan of skeptics. We can’t have a scientifically literate populace if schools are going to tap-dance around such fundamentals."

— U.S. Should Adopt Higher Standards for Science Education: Scientific American

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The story of how six girls (and a few adults) used Kickstarter to send a camera into space

(via The Edge and Back by Anna & David Scifres » WE DID IT!! Pictures from the Edge of Space. — Kickstarter)

Ninja Update before I even post this: Turns out Kickstarter already posted this. On their Tumblr. Which I didn’t know they had. Check it out here.