Proteins are "magical" workers inside our body, as they accomplish most of the cellular functions. Here we report on a novel approach to teach protein folding and unfolding, using magnets and flexible 3D-printed protein structures. To illustrate this physical process, we used colored circular magnets designed for whiteboards, connected…

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful technique capable of characterizing large protein complexes that are otherwise impossible to characterize using traditional crystallography methods. Cryo-EM has played a pivotal role in our understanding of the structure--function relationship of the spike proteins on the COVID-19 viral…

Cybersecurity educational efforts are urgently needed to introduce young people to the profession and give students and teachers cybersecurity knowledge to protect themselves from increasing cybercrime. In this study, 56 elementary preservice teachers participated in a 3-hour intervention within a technology integration course that introduced them…

"Doing economics" is an important theme of undergraduate economics programs. Capstone courses increasingly include instruction in "data literacy" and the STEM-related skills of quantitative and empirical methods. Because the professional discipline has moved in this direction and because of greater employer demand for these…

Computer vision (CV) is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that trains computers to understand our visual world based on digital images. There are many successful applications of CV including face and hand gesture detection, weather recording, smart farming, and self-driving cars. Recent advances in computer vision with machine learning…

An introduction to the Quantum Chemistry Package (QCP), implemented in the computer algebra system Maple, is presented. The QCP combines sophisticated electronic structure methods and Maple's easy-to-use graphical interface to enable computation and visualization of the electronic energies and properties of molecules. Here we describe how the QCP…

This paper describes a responsive, digital periodic table that has been specifically designed as a visual aid for high school or college chemistry classrooms and lecture halls. The periodic table runs in a web browser and can therefore be used in any classroom that has a digital projector and screen. It features click-to-highlight table cells that…

How does education prepare future designers for current and future requirements of the field? An attempt to respond to this question is presented through the Design Workbook: a curricular project that has been proposed and developed over the course of three phases. In Phase One, the objectives, structure and format were defined: an online…

This article incorporates a multidisciplinary approach by reviewing the use of 3D printing and 3D printing in art. It contains a brief background about the 3D printing process and a description of how 3D printing is being used in schools. Examples of how artists are currently using this new technology are provided to encourage art education…

I first met Jim Greer at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Syntheses of Instructional Sciences and Computing Science for Effective Instructional Computing Systems in 1990 in Calgary, Canada. It was during this meeting that I came to realize that Jim was one of those rare individuals that could help "translate" computer science…

This linear algebra note offers teaching and learning ideas in the treatment of the inner product space R[superscript m x n] in a technology-supported learning environment. Classroom activities proposed in this note demonstrate creative ways of integrating MATLAB technology into various properties of Frobenius inner product as visualization tools…

Drawing equipotential and electric field lines is an activity commonly found in most second-semester introductory physics courses. Unfortunately, current commercial lab offerings are expensive and do not afford the opportunity for real-time graphical visualization of the trends in voltage in different regions. In this brief article, we describe a…

The author began thinking about 3-D printing in 2014 when she learned that the Mississippi Library Commission would loan school libraries a printer for programming. At the time, she was a brand new school librarian who had recently transitioned from being an English teacher, so she was learning about the maker movement in libraries and all the…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Metacognition is one of the four essential personal competencies emphasized by the Center on Innovations in Learning. Simply stated, metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking. It involves self-reflection: on one's current…

Simulations that combine real world components with interactive digital media provide a rich setting for students with the potential to assist knowledge building and understanding of complex physical processes. This paper addresses the problem of modeling the effects of multiple students' simultaneous interactions on the complex and exploratory…