"I can feel it making my brain bigger": from a Year 8 student at Pinjarra Senior High School (SHS) halfway through the two-year Thinking Science Program. Pinjarra was a pilot school for the program in 2009/10 and a growing number of schools in Western Australia (WA) are implementing this program in Years Seven to Nine as part of the…

Following on from taking part in the successful "Getting Practical: improving practical work in science across the primary-secondary transition" CPD project, Uplands Community College with Wadhurst and Ticehurst Primary Schools in East Sussex worked together on developing the CPD--focusing on effective practical work across the…

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), ITEEA members will contribute to the development of a hybrid professional development program designed to facilitate the scale-up of an innovative underwater robotics curriculum. WaterBotics[TM] is an underwater robotics curriculum that targets students in middle and high school classrooms…

The Engineering Leaders of Tomorrow Program (LOT) is a comprehensive curricular, co-curricular, extra-curricular leadership development initiative for engineering students. LOT envisions: "an engineering education that is a life-long foundation for transformational leaders and outstanding citizens." Academic courses, co-curricular certificate…

In the 20 years since the inauguraion of "Jugend forscht" (Young Researchers) over 26,000 boys and girls have taken part in this annual Olympiad of young innovators. This brochure gives an insight into the diversity of themes dealt with by the "Jufos" (young researchers) and into their ability to achieve astonishing…

Describes the implementation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration SEEDS Project in a sixth-grade class in Turlock, California. Describes student activities and media coverage surrounding the project. (MDH)

Provides a brief overview of interdisciplinary projects at the California Academy of Mathematics and Science, a public high school on a college campus. Discusses project creation, collaboration, and assessment. (SR)

Building a human-powered flying craft can be much more complicated than one would first imagine. There are no "premade" plans available for this type of craft. In addition, the crafts needed to be built with some "style," or in other words, they should represent something other than a flying machine. The concept of launching a…

Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars at research universities will shape the future of undergraduate education in the natural and social sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM disciplines) in the United States. In 2009 alone, more than 41,000 doctorates were awarded in STEM fields, and if employment trends hold,…

More emphasis should be placed on what can be done to help encourage and prepare students choosing STEM-based majors to enter college, be successful, and graduate. Summer bridge programs can provide pre-college experiences to help attract and retain future STEM majors by exposing them to experiences they would encounter in college math and science…

Oranges, flying disks, pool noodles, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe may seem like items discarded after a Rube Goldberg experiment, but in fact, these objects were used in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This article describes a project in which The Center of Ocean Sciences Education Excellence SouthEast (COSEE SE)…

Within the school library community, there have been persuasive calls for school librarians to contribute to science learning. We present a conceptual framework that links national standards of science education ("Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas," referred to as…

This article describes an after-school program at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf (HMS), the oldest public day school for deaf students in the United States, where almost half of the student body imagined and created bridge and robotic machines. The Deaf Robotics Engineering and Math Team, or the DREAM Team club, included HMS students in…

This narrative description of a special program for third-grade students to raise funds for and to construct, launch, and fly their own rockets illustrates benefits of heightened confidence and self-perception among participants, hands-on experience in a highly technical area, and increased community support and involvement. (MM)

Describes an interdisciplinary environmental program, instigated at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, that is designed to utilize the community as a learning resource and to stimulate university/community interaction. The Kewaunee River watershed project involves university and high school students, faculty, and the community. (JR)