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.

STEM Career Spotlight: Astrophysicist

Marc Kuchner is a "planet hunter" at NASA's Godard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Also dubbed an astrophysicist, Kuchner uses the law of physics to better understand celestial objects such as stars and planets. As an astrophysicist, he is highlighted as The Science Teacher's career of the month!

Kuchner told Luba Vangelova that "being an astrophysicist is like standing behind a colossal carnival ride observing the gears and giant motors." He also likes to help all types of scientists explain their work and its value to society. He relayed to Vangelova, "The recent economic downturn hit many scientists hard. I sometimes travel to give marketing workshops to help all types of scientists stay employed."

From a young age, Kuchner wanted to be a scientist and musician, though he wasn't sure what kind of scientist. After meeting some astronomers in college, he knew that that was what he wanted to do. Kuchner's advice for students is simple: "Don't pick a study topic that someone else recommends; pick something that you think is cool, because you will devote many years to it." He adds, "Science has many niches; there's a science career for everyone who's motivated to have one."

Check out the April/May 2013 issue of The Science Teacher to learn more!

Building a STEM Nation with "MissionSTEM"

While we all know that STEM fields need to be the focus of education reform these days, the statistics never get easier to take in. In 2009, more than 1.5 million U.S.citizens earned bachelor's degrees, but only a mere 4.4 percent were in engineering and just a small 1.1 percent were in the physical sciences.  Further, only 2.4 percent of the undergraduate degrees earned were in computer science and mathematics represented just 1.0 percent of degrees.

Not surprisingly, the National Science Foundation 's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics reported that a very small 0.8 percent of all bachelor's degrees earned in 2009 were by women in engineering and 0.2 percent of those earned were by African Americans.

For a country that wants to maintain status as a world leader in STEM, these numbers aren't just startling, they're unacceptable. Just recently, NASA took these statistics to heart and set out to change them. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that NASA wants "the nation's STEM degree programs to be more welcoming, supportive and accessible to all students."

With that in mind, NASA launched MissionSTEM.nasa.gov, a Web site created by NASA'a Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, to assist colleges and universities in strengthening their STEM programs.  The site connects NASA with its grantees, professional STEM organizations and other interested stakeholders in order to creatively address issues like recruitment and retention of diverse students.

Way to go, NASA! Emerging programs like this one and Change the Equation's iONFuture are steps in the right direction for the nation's STEM future. Combined with NGSS efforts and political legislation, the United States should be starting to move up the competitive STEM ladder.

So, where will we find the future of STEM? As Bolden says, "We will find it in every community, in every university and college and in students of every socio-economic background. The talent is out there. It always has been."

Creating programs like MissionSTEM is just the start. The rest of the battle involves making the commitment to encourage and support American students to pursue their STEM dreams.