Category: science
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Oklahoma STEM Updates from Jeff Downs (August 2012)
These are my notes from the end of Jeff Downs’ presentation on August 3, 2012, at OSU-OKC during a meeting of the Oklahoma Governor’s Council for Workforce and Economic Development. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. I arrived to this meeting late so I just caught the end of Jeff’s comments as well…
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Scratch Camp in Edmond, Oklahoma: June 8-9, 2012
Scratch is a programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch makes it easy for children to create their own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share these creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational…
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Good Things Can Come From Science and Engineering Projects in School
This weekend, my 8th grade son and I worked on a project for his science class he’s been planning for over a month. In March I asked him to record a short podcast we posted over on our family learning blog, “Draft Design for a Complex Machine to Generate Electricity from Water Power.” This was…
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Checking Algebra and Geometry Problems with WolframAlpha
Like Khan Academy, WolframAlpha is a website everyone should know about– especially anyone taking a math class or helping someone else enrolled in a math class. This evening, I used WolframAlpha to check several different problems my son was working for an end-of-year assignment in his Geometry class. You can see the syntax I used…
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Why Every Teacher Should Become an App Creator by Chris Thompson
These are my notes from Chris Thompson‘s breakout session, “Why Every Teacher Should Become an App Creator” at the 2012 Mobile Learning Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 11, 2012. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. The official conference session description was: Until recently development of mobile learning apps/games has been limited to…
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Expand your Constellation Knowledge with Star Walk for iPhone
This evening and tomorrow night in North America, the planets Venus and Jupiter are extremely close to the crescent moon in the early evening. I snapped this photo tonight from our front yard in Oklahoma City and shared it via Instagram to Twitter, FaceBook, and Tumblr (simultaneously) for my daily 365/366 shot of the day.…
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Open Access Crimes
Academic research should be openly accessible to all. Many commercial publishers as well as professional organizations have hijacked academic publishing for corporate and organizational gain. These practices must end. These practices constitute open access crimes. The Max Planck Society offers a helpful definition of “open access” in this context: In the scientific sphere, the term…
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Free K12 Lesson Plans from K20ALT for STEM & More! (Audio Podcast with Adam Zodrow)
(cross-posted from Oklahoma EduShare) This 11 minute audio podcast is an interview with Adam Zodrow about the amazing lesson plans and free resources available from the K20ALT (Authentic Teaching and Learning) website: http://k20alt.ou.edu. Adam is currently a fulltime librarian in Yukon Public Schools, Oklahoma, but previously worked on staff at the K-20 Center at the…
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Increasing STEM Interest via College Visits & Reflections
Last Friday my 8th grade son, Alexander, had an opportunity to tour the College of Engineering at Kansas State University. This was his second “official” college visit. Last May, before I presented at TechForum Chicago, he had a chance to visit Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. On both visits, college staff have been a bit…