Tag Archives: science education

Inspiring kids, again? High schoolers at Argonne National Laboratory

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C. P. Snow’s 1959 lecture and book, Two Cultures, spends a fair chunk of time on the issue of encouraging the next generation to study science and engineering. As Snow perceived the problem, the UK was falling behind both the US and Russia in the science race. I haven’t investigated what the perceptions were in the US and Russia at the time but I have noticed that descriptions of the race to get someone on the moon feature a great deal of anxiety in the US about Russian supremacy in science. Given human nature, I imagine the Russians were worried too. Plus ça change, n’est ce pas?

Today, everyone is worried that someone else is going to get there (wherever that might be) first and there is enormous pressure internationally to inspire the next generation to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers.

I see that the Argonne National Laboratory in the US has opened up its doors to high schoolers for a special programme. From the June 6, 2012 news item by Tona Kunz on Nanowerk,

In commencement speeches across the country, graduates have , been warned to expect rocky times breaking into the workforce. Unemployment hovers between 8 and 9 percent. Competition is tough.

Unless you studied science or engineering. Those jobs have a 2 percent unemployment rate, which has led some Fortune 500 companies to complain about offices they can’t fill.

So it’s no surprise that when the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory decided to give high school students a chance to test-drive a science career, it found students, parents and school officials from Naperville, Ill. eager to hop on board.

Kunz’s June 6, 2012 news release on the Argonne National Laboratory website mentions (Note: I have removed links from the excerpt),

…  Teachers received training in the workings of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the brightest high-energy X-ray machine in the Western Hemisphere, and the Electron Miscroscopy Center (EMC). Students from Naperville’s two high schools then competed for slots on four research teams that used X-ray beams to decipher what matter is made of, how it’s built and how it reacts.

…

More than 5,000 researchers from throughout the world use the APS and EMC annually to target society’s greatest challenges: how to make better pharmaceuticals, sustainable fuels and high-performance materials. These challenges will feed scientific jobs for decades to come.

“I think there is a huge push in our district from the community for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education,” said Tricia Noblett, a teacher and science club advisor at Neuqua Valley High School. “I think they are seizing on what has been out there in the media that STEM fields are where the jobs are and that science careers can be interesting.”

Students drew on experiences in their lives to choose research topics and explained their results to scientists at the annual meeting held in May at Argonne for users of the APS, EMC and Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM).

…

Inspired by the recent cleanup of a contaminated portion of the west branch of the DuPage River near their school, one group of students studied how to increase the efficiency of water filtration systems.

Another group worked with the Naperville wastewater facility to evaluate how corrosion affects the lifespan of water pipes.

And another group looked at how to improve the efficiency of graphene, a nanomaterial that may hold the key to building faster semiconductors for smart phones and the next-generation of research tools.

It’s exciting stuff and I’m always glad to have a chance to pass on information about these kinds of programmes. As for the history, I find it interesting to note the similarities with and the differences from the past.

Teaching physics visually

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Art/science news  is usually about a scientist using their own art or collaborating with an artist to produce pieces that engage the public. This particular May 23, 2012 news item by Andrea Estrada on the physorg.com website offers a contrast when it highlights a teaching technique integrating visual arts with physics for physics students,

Based on research she conducted for her doctoral dissertation several years ago, Jatila van der Veen, a lecturer in the College of Creative Studies at UC [University of  California] Santa Barbara and a research associate in UC Santa Barbara’s physics department, created a new approach to introductory physics, which she calls “Noether before Newton.” Noether refers to the early 20th-century German mathematician Emmy Noether, who was known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.

Using arts-based teaching strategies, van der Veen has fashioned her course into a portal through which students not otherwise inclined might take the leap into the sciences — particularly physics and mathematics. Her research appears in the current issue of the American Educational Research Journal, in a paper titled “Draw Your Physics Homework? Art as a Path to Understanding in Physics Teaching.”

The May 22, 2012 press release on the UC Santa Barbara website provides this detail about van der Veen’s course,

While traditional introductory physics courses focus on 17th-century Newtonian mechanics, van der Veen takes a contemporary approach. “I start with symmetry and contemporary physics,” she said. “Symmetry is the underlying mathematical principle of all physics, so this allows for several different branches of inclusion, of accessibility.”

Much of van der Veen’s course is based on the principles of “aesthetic education,” an approach to teaching formulated by the educational philosopher Maxine Greene. Greene founded the Lincoln Center Institute, a joint effort of Teachers College, Columbia University, and Lincoln Center. Van der Veen is quick to point out, however, that concepts of physics are at the core of her course. “It’s not simply looking at art that’s involved in physics, or looking at beautiful pictures of galaxies, or making fractal art,” she said. “It’s using the learning modes that are available in the arts and applying them to math and physics.”

Taking a visual approach to the study of physics is not all that far-fetched. “If you read some of Albert Einstein’s writings, you’ll see they’re very visual,” van der Veen said. “And in some of his writings, he talks about how visualization played an important part in the development of his theories.”

Van der Veen has taught her introductory physics course for five years, and over that time has collected data from one particular homework assignment she gives her students: She asks them to read an article by Einstein on the nature of science, and then draw their understanding of it. “I found over the years that no one ever produced the same drawing from the same article,” she said. “I also found that some students think very concretely in words, some think concretely in symbols, some think allegorically, and some think metaphorically.”

Adopting arts-based teaching strategies does not make van der Veen’s course any less rigorous than traditional introductory courses in terms of the abstract concepts students are required to master. It creates a different, more inclusive way of achieving the same end.

I went to look at van der Veen’s webpage on the UC Santa Barbara website to find a link to this latest article (open access) of hers and some of her other projects. I have taken a brief look at the Draw your physics homework? article (tir is 53 pp.) and found these images on p. 29 (PDF) illustrating her approach,

Figure 5. Abstract-representational drawings. 5a (left): female math major, first year; 5b (right): male math major, third year. Used with permission. (downloaded from the American Educational Research Journal, vol. 49, April 2012)

Van der Veen offers some context on the page preceding the image, p. 28,

Two other examples of abstract-representational drawings are shown in Figure 5. I do not have written descriptions, but in each case I determined that each student understood the article by means of verbal explanation. Figure 5a was drawn by a first-year math major, female, in 2010. She explained the meaning of her drawing as representing Einstein’s layers from sensory input (shaded ball at the bottom), to secondary layer of concepts, represented by the two open circles, and finally up to the third level, which explains everything below with a unified theory. The dashes surrounding the perimeter, she told me, represent the limit of our present knowledge. Figure 5b was drawn by a third-year male math major. He explained that the brick-like objects in the foreground are sensory perceptions, and the shaded portion in the center of the drawing, which appears behind the bricks, is the theoretical explanation which unifies all the experiences.

I find the reference to Einstein and visualization compelling in light of the increased interest (as I perceive it) in visualization currently occurring in the sciences.

Science attitude kicks in by 10 years old

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There’s a lot of talk these days about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in the field of education. It seems that every country that has produced materials about innovation, economic well being, etc.  in English and I’m guessing all the other countries too (I just can’t read their materia]s) want more children/young people studying STEM subjects.

One of the research efforts in the UK is the ASPIRES research project at King’s College London (KCL), which is examining children’s attitudes to science and future careers. Their latest report, Ten Science Facts and Fictions: the case for early education about STEM careers (PDF), is profiled in a Jan. 11, 2012 news item on physorg.com (from the news item),

Professor Archer [Louise Archer, Professor of Sociology of Education at King’s] said: “Children and their parents hold quite complex views of science and scientists and at age 10 or 11 these views are largely positive. The vast majority of children at this age enjoy science at school, have parents who are supportive of them studying science and even undertake science-related activities in their spare time. They associate scientists with important work, such as finding medical cures, and with work that is well paid.

“Nevertheless, less than 17 per cent aspire to a career in science. These positive impressions seem to lead to the perception that science offers only a very limited range of careers, for example doctor, scientist or science teacher. It appears that this positive stereotype is also problematic in that it can lead people to view science as out of reach for many, only for exceptional or clever people, and ‘not for me’.

Professor Archer says the findings indicate that engaging young people in science is not therefore simply a case of making it more interesting or more fun. She said: “There is a disconnect between interest and aspirations. Our research shows that young people’s ambitions are strongly influenced by their social backgrounds – ethnicity, social class and gender – and by family contexts. [emphases mine]

I was particularly struck by the fact that attitudes are positive but, by age 10, researchers are already observing that children are concluding ‘it’s not for me’.

Here’s a little more about the ASPIRES project,

The ASPIRES research team, led by Louise Archer, Professor of Sociology of Education at King’s, is tracking children’s science and career aspirations over five years, from ages 10 to 14. To date they have surveyed over 9000 primary school children and carried out more than 170 interviews of parents and children. After the age of 10 or 11 children’s attitudes towards science often start to decline, suggesting that there is a critical period in which schools and parents can do much to educate the next generation of the options available to them. [emphasis mine]

As for the report ‘Ten Science Facts and Fictions’, you may be in for a surprise if you’re expecting a standard academic study. It’s very colourful and illustrated with cartoons; each fact/fiction has its own page and only one; it summarizes and aggregates other research; and the whole report is 16 pp.  It’s easy reading and the reference notes mean you can follow up and read the research studies yourself.

On a note related to the conclusions made the ASPIRES researchers, I came across a Jan. 27, 2012 news item on Medical Xpress about a US study where researchers attempted an intervention designed to encourage more teens to study science,

In a different intervention study aimed at changing teen behavior in math and science, researchers did not target the students themselves but rather their parents. The goal was to increase students’ interest in taking courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). “We focus on the potential role of parents in motivating their teens to take more STEM courses, because we feel that they have been an untapped resource,” says Judith Harackiewicz of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. [emphasis mine]

The participants consisted of 188 U.S. high school students and their parents from the longitudinal Wisconsin Study of Families and Work. Harackiewicz and her colleague Janet Hyde found that a relatively simple intervention aimed at parents – two brochures mailed to parents and a website that all highlight the usefulness of STEM courses – led their children to take on average nearly one semester more of science and mathematics in the last two years of high school, compared with the control group. “Our indirect intervention,” funded by the National Science Foundation, “changed the way that parents interacted with their teens, leading to a significant and important change in their teens’ course-taking behavior,” Harackiewicz says.

Given Dr. David Kent’s panel at the 2011 Canadian Science Policy Conference (David’s interview about the panel is in my Oct. 24, 2011 posting) where he noted we have too many science graduates and not enough jobs, I’m wondering if we’re going to see a Canadian effort to encourage more study in STEM subjects. It wouldn’t surprise me; I have seen policy disconnects before. For example, there’s a big effort to get more children and teens to study science while graduate students from the universities have difficulty finding employment because the policy didn’t take the end result (the sector [e.g. universities] that needed people [science professors] when the policy was instituted had already started to shrink and 10 years later no one needs these graduates) into account.

Open Source Physics wins SPORE

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A SPORE, Science Prize for Online Resources in Education from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was awarded to the Open Source Physics (OSP) website founded by  Wolfgang Christian and colleagues, Francisco Esquembre and Lyle Barbato.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay the three scientists wrote for Science magazine (published by AAAS) about their website,

Scientists routinely use computer modeling and computation in innovative research, including predicting the nature of He4 at extremely low temperatures and the impact of human activity on climate. Why does computer-based modeling remain absent from many educational programs?

The Open Source Physics (OSP) project, www.compadre.org/osp/, seeks to enhance computational physics education by providing a central Web site containing computer modeling tools, simulations, curricular resources such as lesson plans, and a computational physics textbook that explains the pedagogic simulations’ algorithms. Our resources are based on small single-concept simulations packaged with source codes that can be examined, modified, recompiled, and freely redistributed to teach fundamental computational skills. Students at all levels will benefit from these interactive simulations by learning to question and assess the simulation’s assumptions and output.

Students who learn physics concepts via static pictures may be led to construct incomplete or incorrect mental models that hamper their understanding of physical concepts.

The website is useful for university students although there are plans to make resources suitable for K-12 students, from the Nov. 24, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

Christian is currently working toward involving K-12 students, such as his wife’s middle-school students, who as seventh graders are learning about concepts such as temperature. Christian was able to adapt a college-level molecular dynamics simulation for them to explore changes in the phases of matter.

“The students could heat and cool the system, and then we could ask them questions like, ‘At what temperature does it melt?'” Christian says. “They got visual feedback from the simulation and had to make decisions about the basic concepts.”

The SPORE award is part of an ongoing initiative by Science magazine to recognize outstanding online science education efforts. From the Nov. 24, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

Science magazine developed the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) to promote the best online materials in science education. The acronym SPORE suggests a reproductive element adapted to develop, often in adverse conditions, into something new. Similarly, these winning projects can be seen as the seeds of progress in science education, despite considerable challenges to educational innovation. Each month, Science publishes an article by a recipient of the award, which explains the winning project. The article about Open Source Physics (OSP) will be published on November 25.

“We’re trying to advance science education,” says Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science. “This competition provides much-needed recognition to innovators in the field whose efforts promise significant benefits for students and for science literacy in general. The publication in Science of an article on each Web site will help guide educators around the globe to valuable free resources that might otherwise be missed.”

I have featured two previous SPORE winners, in the Universe Awareness posting and in the Ask a Biologist posting.

Education and training of scientists panel at the 2011 Canadian Science Policy Conference

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On the heels of my last posting which featured Science magazine’s 2011 Dance Your Ph.D. contest, it seems like a good idea to follow up with another science student-themed posting.

Dr. David Kent who will be moderating the Education and training panel at the 2011 Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) being held in Ottawa, Canada from Nov. 16 – 18, 2011 has enthusiastically granted me an interview. (My Oct. 19, 2011 posting featured a description of the 2011 CSPC conference and highlighted some of the events.)

First, here’s a little bit about David (from the 2011 CSPC conference website),

Dr. David Kent is a CIHR [Canadian Institutes of Health Research] postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK. He currently sits on the executive of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars and created the website The Black Hole which provides information on and analysis of issues related to science trainees in Canada. Previously, Dr. Kent served as joint coordinator for the UBC branch of the Let’s Talk Science Partnership Program (2004-07), an award winning national science outreach program. Dr. Kent grew up in St. John’s, NL, obtained a B.Sc. in Genetics and English Literature at the University of Western Ontario and completed his Ph.D. in blood stem cell biology at the University of British Columbia. He has been awarded scholarships or fellowships from the CIHR, NSERC, the Canadian Stem Cell Network, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and the Lady Tata Memorial Trust. His current laboratory research focuses on normal blood stem cells and how changes in their regulation lead to cancers.

Here’s the description of the panel (Education and training of scientists) David will be moderating,

Over the past 15 years, there has been an enormous shift in the human resources performing scientific research. The training period has lengthened significantly and adjustments must be made to address the growing concerns of young scientists. Many individuals, who do not have permanent positions, share a unique set of experiences and challenges that need to be better addressed in order to avoid wasting the substantial resources invested in their education and training.

This panel aims to address two main themes:

  1. Are we producing too many biomedical research trainees?
  2. What careers will the large majority of highly specialized PhDs undertake and who should facilitate these transitions?

Presentations and discussion from Alan Bernstein (Founding Director of CIHR), Angela Crawley (Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars), Suzanne Fortier (President of NSERC), and Olga Stachova (COO, MITACS) will be introduced and moderated by David Kent (University of Cambridge and founder of http://scienceadvocacy.org, aka The Black Hole).

Here’s  the interview,

  • I’m intrigued by the description for this panel which asks a highly specific question (Are there too many biomedical research trainees?) and a much more general question (What careers will the majority of highly specialized PhD undertake and who should facilitate the transition?). Assuming that you proposed the panel, how did you arrive at these two questions in particular?

The first question definitely has its origins in Jeff Sharom’s piece in Hypothesis Journal (http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/pdfs/vol6num1/17.pdf) who queried whether we were producing too many biomedical trainees.  It is also a great way to capture a large issue under a simple title, but by no means would I consider it specific and I think just about anybody you ask would have the answer “it depends…” followed by discussions ranging from the demands of a knowledge-based economy to keeping young people out of the workforce for a few more years.

As for the second question, I see this one having a much more straightforward answer as it is really an attempt to assign responsibility to a sector of society to help deal with the problem – I’d like the panel and delegates to help steer future advocacy efforts to address the fundamental issues.

  • Given that you are currently working as a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, would you be asking these same questions on a UK panel and if not, why not?

The UK is a very different beast, but I think there is still overlap – in particular, the challenges facing those seeking an academic post and those debating whether or not to leave the academy.  The one thing that is very different in the UK – and I’m torn as to whether or not it’s a good thing or a bad thing – is that time-to-degree is substantially shorter with PhD programs lasting 3-4 years.  If you’re equipping people to go off into other careers, this is brilliant because they don’t get stuck in a very long PhD, but rather come out with the nuts and bolts of a PhD training.  However, this sort of system also tends to lead to what I would call “safe” projects that will yield results in the limited time frame and leave little room for exploring risky projects.  We talk about this in an old entry on the Black Hole called “The Rise of the Cookie-cutter PhD” (http://scienceadvocacy.org/Blog/2009/11/17/science-is-like-baking-the-rise-of-the-cookie-cutter-phd/)

  • Will you be acting as a moderator only or will you also speak to the questions? If you do speak to the questions, could you give a preview of your presentation?

I will introduce the panel and in doing so will try to set the stage for the audience – chart the change in demographics, highlight the issue of career stasis in academic labs, etc.  Much of my presentation will draw from entries on the Black Hole such as the Changing Human Resources in Academia, Say no to the second Postdoc, and Professionals in High Demand.  Briefly, I’ll show statistics on the longer training times and summarize the unrest in academic labs.  In the moderation of the panel discussion, I’ll include some resources on how some universities have started to tackle the issues and some innovative programs that are helping young academics make choices sooner.

  • What do you hope will be the outcome(s) of having this panel at the 2011 CSPC?

For me, the biggest mission is awareness – I want policy makers, granting councils, and industry leaders to recognize the growth in highly trained scientists and the immense number of talented people that often finds themselves “stuck”.  These are people who have trained for nearly a decade and only a fraction of them can end up on the path they have been trained for (unlike doctors, lawyers, accounts)

A complete bonus would be to get some strategies for unsticking these people and some guidance on where to broach the issue.  We’ll see how it goes!

  • Is there anything you would like to add?

The only final thing I would suggest is for young scientists who have any sort of inclination toward or interest in science policy to get out there early – two or three days at a conference like the CSPC can be career changing or it could simply allow you to better understand the machinery that ends up impacting how you will be funded, how your trainees will be trained, and how research gets (or doesn’t get) incorporated into government policy.  Take off the blinders once in a while and try something new.

Thank you for taking the time to provide some insight into your topic and your presentation. I wish you and your panel the best of luck at the conference.

ETA Nov. 9, 2011: For Twitter purposes I decided to call this panel the ‘Kill all your darlings/science grads” panel. “Kill all your darlings” is a phrase I came across that describes what writers sometimes have to do when they edit a piece and must cut a wonderful sentence or phrase because it doesn’t fit. I gather that there is a problem (not only in Canada) with fitting science grads into the larger science enterprise.

Schulich Leader Scholarship is Canada’s Rhodes scholarship?

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Touting the new Schulich Leader Scholarships as the Canadian version of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships, as you can see in some of the newspaper headlines, seems a little precipitate. Personally, I’m thrilled to see this initiative and I think it has great potential. But there are some significant differences between the Rhodes Scholarships (as per this Wikipedia essay) and the Schulich Leader Scholarships. For one thing, the Schulich scholarships are intended for undergraduates (Rhodes scholarships are for graduate work); the Schulich scholarships are to be awarded to Canadian and Israeli students  (Rhodes scholarships are offered to students in many more countries); and the Schulich scholarships can be used in any approved Canadian or Israeli university while the Rhodes scholar must study at Oxford.

Here’s a little more about the Schulich Leader Scholarships from the Oct. 14, 2011 news article by Tristin Hopper for the National Post,

With $100-million — the second-largest endowment to Canadian academia in history — mining magnate Seymour Schulich is inaugurating what he hopes will be the Canadian equivalent to the Rhodes Scholarship.

“It’s about trying to create leaders,” said Mr. Schulich, 71. “If you call people leaders and give them 60 grand, some of them are going to turn into leaders.”

Dubbed the Schulich Leader Scholarships, when fully implemented by 2014 the award will grant $60,000 over four years to students enrolling in science, technology, engineering or mathematics programs.

…

The award will work by a complex nomination process wherein each of Canada’s 1,300 high schools selects a single Schulich nominee. Of those, 25 universities will peg 75 students (60 Canadian, 15 Israeli) for the award.

I’ve been desultorily searching for the Schulich Leader Scholarship website and finally found it today. From the home page,

Canadian business leader and philanthropist Seymour Schulich has created a $100 million scholarship initiative to secure the future economic competitiveness of Canada and Israel. The scholarships are designed to ensure that future Canadian and Israeli leaders are among the next pioneers of global scientific research and innovation.

Graduating students planning to study STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at designated universities are eligible to become a Schulich Leader. The four-year Schulich Leader Scholarship is valued at $60,000. Twenty Canadian and five Israeli recipients will be chosen in 2012 to study STEM subjects in their respective countries.

You will find more about which Canadian and Israeli universities have been designated as participants in this programme and other relevant details on the Schulich Leader Scholarship website.

Space contest for teenagers

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I caught this Oct. 10, 2011 news item (Google and Hawking seek space mad teenagers) on the BBC News website,

YouTube has enlisted the help of Prof Stephen Hawking in the hunt for budding young scientists.

The site – which is owned by Google – is launching a competition for teenagers to create an experiment that could be carried out in space.

Two winning ideas will be tested by the crew of the International Space Station.

Ravi Mandalla’s Oct. 11, 2011 article for ITProPortal provides more detail,

The competition, titled YouTube Space Lab, will allow students aged between 14 to 18 years to submit a 2 minute proposal on YouTube. The entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges comprising of astronauts, NASA scientists and Stephen Hawking. The winners will see their experiment streamed live from space as the astronauts perform it on the space station.

The BBC News item offers  a more complete list of the judging panel,

Alongside Prof Hawking, the judging panel consists of former Astronauts Leland Melvin, Frank De Winne, Akihiko Hoshide and noted “space tourist” Guy Laliberté. [emphasis mine]

Guy Laliberté, space tourist, is also the Chief Executive Officer for the Cirque du Soleil (founded in Québec, Canada). Professor Hawking also has a Canadian connection, he holds the position of Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute (news release announcing Hawking’s appointment), located in Ontario, Canada.

Getting back to the contest, here’s how Google describes the contest (from the YouTube Space Lab contest webpage,

Your experiment, 250 miles above Earth, for the world to see.
What will you do?

We’re asking you to come up with a science experiment for space and upload a video explaining it to YouTube. If your idea wins, it will be performed on the International Space Station and live streamed on YouTube to the world. And we’ll throw in some out-of-this-world prizes, too.

Can plants survive beyond the Earth? Could proteins in space reveal the mysteries of life? Science in micro gravity can help unlock the answers. The countdown’s begun.

Good luck!

ETA Oct. 13, 2011: There’s an Oct. 11, 2011 article about this contest, which includes more information and a video, by Nidhi Subbaraman for Fast Company,

The lucky teenagers who win will have their experiments flown into space, carried on board an ISS-bound rocket, and could find themselves catapulted into YouTube stardom. Their winning entries will earn a joyride to the International Space Station, where astronauts will perform their experiment while being live-streamed on YouTube. It doesn’t end there. They’ll get to pick between one of two grand prizes: a trip to Japan in summer 2012 to see their experiment take off, or, when they turn 18, a chance to participate in the astronaut training program at Russia’s Star City. The four other regional finalists will be given a Zero-G ride, courtesy of Space Adventures, and laptops from Lenovo.

Universe Awareness wins prize

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The latest winner of a SPORE (Science Prize for Online Resources in Education from the American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS]) award is Universe Awareness (UNAWE). From the August 25, 2011 news item on Science Daily,

UNAWE is an international programme that uses the beauty and grandeur of the Universe to inspire children aged 4-10 years, particularly those from an underprivileged background. Through astronomy, it aims to cultivate a sense of perspective, foster global citizenship and stimulate interest in science at a crucial age in a child’s development. “In all of its activities, UNAWE pays close attention to local cultures to help engage with young children and to meet the specific educational needs of the country,” says Carolina Ödman- Govender, International Project Manager for UNAWE between 2005 and 2010.

Here’s a little more about UNAWE and its beginnings (from the UNAWE Background page),

In 2004, Leiden University professor George Miley first began exploring the idea of setting up an astronomy programme to educate and inspire young children, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds. He had been awarded an Academy Professorship by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and decided to use part of the associated funding to explore the feasibility of setting up such a programme. With considerable support and encouragement from Claus Madsen at ESO [European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere] , a successful workshop was held in Germany and it was agreed that the programme was worth pursuing. Universe Awareness (UNAWE) was born.

Shortly afterwards, Carolina Ödman was appointed as the first UNAWE International Project Manager. In 2006, thanks to a grant provided by the Netherlands Minister of Education Culture and Science, Ms. van der Hoeven, the UNAWE International Office was founded at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands. With the help of Sarah Levin as Media Coordinator, Ödman built UNAWE into a thriving global project, with a network of about 400 experts from 40 countries.

…

…  Later that year [2009], the European Union awarded a grant of 1.9 million euros to fund a 3-year project called European Universe Awareness (EU-UNAWE), which builds on the work of Universe Awareness (UNAWE). With this grant, EU-UNAWE is now being further developed in six selected countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

EU-UNAWE is endorsed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and it is now an integral part of the IAU Strategic Plan 2010–2020, which is called Astronomy for the Developing World. This is an ambitious blueprint that aims to use astronomy to foster education and provide skills and competencies in science and technology throughout the world, particularly in developing countries.

The UNAWE site offers a number of resources including a template for creating ‘star’ dice, instructions on making a reflective telescope, drawing posters from NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration), a Deadly Moons activity and  more.

The current UNAWE International Project Manager is Pedro Russo.

The last SPORE award I highlighted was the Ask a Biologist programme in my November 29, 2010 posting.

Europe’s Future and Emerging Technologies House website

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The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) House website is intended for young people as per the August 19, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) scheme of the European Commission has launched FET-House, a new website presenting some of the most advanced information and communication technology (ICT) projects in Europe and the people involved.

The FET-House wants to help young people to understand what their options are as regards the career in science and technology, and bring across some of the excitement of people who have a passion for science.

More details about the house are available on this FET page on the European Commission’s website on ICT (information and communication technology)Research,

FET House is a website and application that showcases topics typically covered by some of the most advanced research projects in Europe, such as zero-power computation and communication, robotics, quantum technology, understanding the brain, and data privacy. These themes will be linked to demos, videos and catchy write-ups of a selection of related projects, as well as to people working in the field who are able to excite others about their work.

Through their experience and career stories, these people will act as mentors to young visitors to the FET House’s, inviting them to ask questions, post contributions in the forum, and ultimately to take up the challenge of a career in future technologies themselves. Using the site’s tools and channels, it may even be possible to arrange for real-life visits, to give young people first-hand experience of a lab working on cutting-edge technology.

I went to the FET House website and checked out a couple of areas, We can rebuild you (nanomedicine) and From zero-to superpower (energy). I found the material to be engaging. In fact, I found some information about visual prosthetics that I had been looking for in the context of a story (my August 18, 2011 posting) about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a role-playing shooter game that tackles issues around human enhancement/augmentation.

Once you get past the FET House home page, you find this graphic,

FET House

When you get to the FET House website, you can navigate to We can rebuild you by clicking on the second room from the top, on the right side. The From zero- to superpower room is directly above it. Happy clicking.

 

Nano haiku and MOST summer camp

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The Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse, New York is hosting a five-day summer science camp that combines nano haiku and education about nanotechnology. From the July 28, 2011 NISE (Nanoscale Informal Science Education) Net blog posting by Vrylena Olney,

Betty Jones from the Science Education department at MOST told me that she and the other educators have been interested in figuring out how much of the nano content the kids are retaining. To get a sense of that, they’ve had the campers keep journals and created the haiku activity.

The haiku activity involved about 20 minutes of discussion. To prepare, educators printed out big copies of some of the Nano Bite haikus to post near their cafeteria. On the last day of the camp, the campers and educators visited the Nano Haiku Fence and campers were invited to find one haiku that they could explain. They removed their haiku from the fence and brought it back to the classroom where either the camper or educator read the haiku aloud. The camper then explained what the haiku referred to and, if possible, an activity that they had done that related to the haiku. According to Betty, every camper was able to interpret their haiku correctly!

There are sessions for 8 – 11 year olds and, at least one session for 10 – 14 year olds.