Iridescent Gets Girls Involved in STEM with $10,000 Incentive

When Tara Chklovski immigrated to the United States from India when she was 21, she brought with her desires to be a pilot or aerospace engineer. Upon her arrival, one thing became very clear to Chklovski: women in the U.S. weren't as excited about STEM careers as women in India were. She told Ariel Schwartz of Co.EXIST, "It's more culturally accepted to have shopping as a hobby than to have tinkering as a hobby."

So in 2006, Chklovski started Iridescent, a science and engineering education non-profit that has been getting girls and young women excited about STEM careers. Just this month, the organization announced the winner of its four-year-old, $10,000 (yes, $10,000) Technovation Challenge, a twelve-week competition for middle and high school girls. This year, participants were asked to come up with an app that "solves a problem in their local community."

Applicants came from all over the world, including places like Brazil and Nigeria, but the majority of the finalists came from the U.S. There were 114 teams and 600 girls that entered.

The winning team were a group of six girls from Nightingale-Bamford School in New York City. The team came up with an Android app titled "Arrive" that enables students to "check-in" to school when they arrive. The app has potential and could be used as an option in addition to traditional check-in systems like ID cards.

Check out their pitch video:


Read Schwartz's full article on the competition, the winners and Chklovski's overall goals.

Science Apps for Elementary Classrooms

Getting students to grasp science concepts isn't always easy - especially for younger students with a limited background of more complicated ideas. Sure, you can go out to a pond or visit a museum for some hands-on experiences, but since that isn't always an option, there are now apps available that bring the hands-on experience to you and your students in the classroom!

Edudemic selected five apps that help teach a variety of science concepts to younger learners.

1. Video Science: Video Science is an app that is essentially a library of hands-on science lessons via video. The app is currently free and offers over 80 videos on topics ranging from chemical changes to aspects of engineering.
2. NASA: The free NASA app allows users to explore the aspects of the agency and includes missions, images and videos.
3. Geo Dash Wild Animal Adventure: Geo Dash Wild Animal Adventure is a free app distributed by National Geographic. The app is designed to be a game about animals. To move up in levels, you must learn interesting facts about animals.
4. A Life Cycle App: This app follows a variety of things through their life cycles to help young students understand the various stages from how life starts to adulthood. It's $1.99, but will complement your elementary curricula well.
5. Dinosaurs: The American Museum of Natural History Collections: This app offers a mosaic of over 1,000 photos from the museums archive that have been woven together to tell the story of the t-rex! Even better, this interactive app is free.

To read more about these apps, check out the full Edudemic article.