Teach for America's Joe Koglin Leaves Corporate America for the STEM Classroom

STEMblog

Joe Koglin of Teach for America's Greater New Orleans Corps class of 2011 shared his story with STEMblog and we want to share it with you! After working in finance for a multinational conglomerate for six years, Koglin made the bold decision to leave corporate America for the classroom. 

As he writes in his post on STEMblog, "While my position had it all from the outside - the title, salary, and gravitas that comes with many STEM jobs - I craved something which would allow me to use my skills to help directly empower people and communities." 

After enough consideration to drive anyone crazy, Koglin wondered if he was even qualified to step into a classroom. "The answer was a resounding yes," he writes. "The vast majority of experiences from the STEM private sector transfer into classroom leadership." 

Koglin couldn't be more right. Or could he? He goes on to say that, "these skills are so incredibly needed in our country's classrooms." Yes, he just got even more right. 

Koglin's journey from financial suit to empowering STEM teacher is a story we need to hear more often in America. As we strive to be more competitive in STEM fields, it's STEM enthusiasts like Koglin who can help make that happen.

"STEM teachers are taking the societal changes they've encountered while teaching and tackling them head on. For STEM enthusiasts who want to change the world through innovation, there couldn't be a better place to start than the classroom."

Read Koglin's entire guest post on STEMblog.

Create a Communications Satellite!

Have you ever wanted to make your own satellite? Create something that's so intricate, high-tech and helpful? Well, The Gooru Corner is giving you that chance. With their interactive resource, you can try your hand at designing a communications satellite. You'll need to figure out how to launch it, power it and make it return signals to Earth. After you make all your choices, see how well your satellite works.

Start creating with Interactive Resource!

will.i.am at the 2013 FIRST Robotics Championship

Late Friday, will.i.am was welcomed at the FIRST Robotics Championship to the roar of 30,000 attendees in St. Louis. For FIRST participants, will.i.am isn't a famous pop star, he's their biggest supporter.

will.i.am's support for STEM has led his to do everything from broadcast his songs into space with NASA to donate his time and money to The Science Museum in London. Despite all these other efforts, FIRST has clearly always inspired him most. As he was presented with the inaugural "Make It Loud" Award last week, he credited the FIRST students as his largest inspiration for going back to college to study computer science. In his address to the crowd, and later in the day at a press conference, will.i.am continued to encourage today's youth to pursue STEM careers.

For will.i.am, "Make It Loud" is important to getting the message out that STEM and events like FIRST Robotics are what's really cool. He drew on his personal experience when he explained that famous people now weren't always "cool" when they were kids, but because they dedicated themselves to their craft, they were able to create success for themselves. This message should be applied to student expressing themselves through making and inventing things.

Read Tommy Cornelis' full post on will.i.am on STEMblog and view even more pictures of will.i.am at the event.

Take a look at will.i.am accepting the "Make It Loud" Award at the FIRST Robotics Championships.

Video Games & STEM at the White House

Many don't believe it until they see it: a science fair at the White House. Yes, that's right. It's the science fairs of all science fairs and even the President partakes in the action. Now in it's third year, the White House Science Fair is an event that celebrates student achievements in science, technology, engineering and math competitions. 

In attendance this year was Gustavo Zacarias of San Antonio. Zacarias is one of the winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge, an annual competition presented by the Joan Ganz Center at Sesame Workshop and E-line Media. Zacarias' game, The Dark Labryinth, earned him top honors in the 2012 STEM Challenge Middle School Kodu category. The game challenges players to make their way through a maze while solving multiplication problems and avoiding obstacles along the way. He got the chance to present his winning game to attendees from the government, industry and education sectors, as well as other invited guests in attendance at the fair.

"I never thought I would be exhibiting my game at the White House," Zacarias told STEMblog. "I worked very hard during the making of the game and was very happy about winning a national competition, so I'm very excited and thankful for the opportunity to be part of this great event."  Zacarias says he wants to be a professional game designer when he grows up.

The National STEM Video Game Challenge was inspired by Obama's Educate to Innovate campaign and aims to motivate interest in STEM learning by tapping into students' natural passion for playing and making video games. 

For more information and to learn more about the Joan Ganz Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media, visit the STEMblog post.

And be sure to check out Zacarias' video game!

Yesterday was Earth Day!

Yesterday was Earth Day's 43rd anniversary! The very first Earth Day was on April 22, 1970. We're taking the entire week to honor the beautiful planet we live on and so is The Gooru Corner! The STEMConnector project blog will enable you to learn about the challenges our planet faces today, as well as basic steps that you can take to shrink your environmental footprint. The Gooru Corner will be bringing you these updates on Wednesday and Friday, so be sure to stay tuned!

What did you do to celebrate Earth Day yesterday?! Project Scientist made bird feeders and put them in a local park in their community. National Geographic came out with 20 incredible shots of Earth from space to celebrate the day. Check the pictures out here. And the Huffington Post even put out a spoof on what celebrities are doing to observe the day. Take a look at what they put together if you're in need of a good chuckle.

Let us know what you did to celebrate Earth Day yesterday and you'll be entered to win a free lab manual!

inSPIRE STEM USA Grows by Nine

inSPIRE STEM USA announced the addition of nine new members yesterday, including four key education organizations! This is great news as the coalition continues its efforts to strengthen the nation's education stream of students trained in STEM and computer fields.

Joining the coalition are:

• Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (@APIASF)
• Education Development Center (@EDCtweets)
• EMC2 (@EMCorp)
• The Hispanic Institute
• HR Policy Association
• The JASON Project (@JASONProject)
• National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (@NGLCC)
• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (@NCTM)
• STEMconnector (@STEMConnector)

inSPIRE STEM USA now has 31 members that include education organizations, businesses and advocacy groups!

Beneva Schulte, the coalition's Executive Director, told STEMblog that, "the diversity of inSPIRE STEM USA demonstrates the broad-base of support for establishing a stronger STEM education pipeline in the U.S." She continued, "The pipeline is crucial to helping the nation develop the talent that will drive American innovation and one of the fastest growing segments of our economy."

Schulte also explained to STEMblog that the nation's education system simply does not produce enough workers trained in STEM fields to keep up with the number of jobs in those areas. We've heard them time and time again, but the numbers really are shocking. The U.S. economy creates approximately 120,000 new American computing jobs each year, but the nation's higher education system awards just 40,000 bachelor's degrees annually in related fields. 

Take Your Technology Outdoors!

When's the last time your children or students wanted to go outside just to enjoy the great outdoors and what it has to offer? If you can't recall a time, that's okay; with these innovative ways to take the technology today's youth is attached to outdoors with them, the learning process has now gone digital! While a growing number of young people are expressing a concern and interest in their environment, those same students are feeling increasingly more disconnected from it. Cue technology. Technology can help students "plug into nature" by empowering them to observe and collect data about their local environment.

As part of Greening STEM: Taking Technology Outdoors, National Environment Education Week (EE Week, April 14-20) will highlight the growing opportunity to engage today's students in learning about the environment around them, with new technologies that enable scientific research and develop 21st century skills. Score!

Here are some ways to take technology outdoors:

• Mobile Devices: With access to a camera, the Internet and a GPS, smartphones and tablets make it easy to gather, organize and submit data from observations. Apps can be downloaded for little to no cost that make engaging students in a particular aspect of study even easier. Check out the top 10 apps for taking tech outdoors.
• GPS Units: On their own, GPS units are great tools for getting students outside and engaged in environmental field research and service-learning projects. Take a look at what other educators are doing with GPS.
• Digital Cameras: Students can use digital cameras to document their local environment, track their progress on science projects, collect evidence and present their findings to their peers in class. Not to mention, since so many digital cameras come equipped with a video recording mode these days, students can even shoot videos of what they see.
• Digital Weather Stations: Say hello to the meteorologist inside you. With a digital weather station, students can add weather conditions to their study of a certain environment. Imagine having a few minutes at the beginning of each day to take a look at the weather station in your classroom or home and discussing what the weather conditions could mean or patterns that arise.
• Water Quality Monitoring Tools: Monitoring water quality is a real-world and hands on application of STEM that also enables students to become stewards of the water resources in their area. Fancy, tech tools like electronic probes and infrared thermometers add accuracy and a level of excitement to the process.

To learn even more, visit National Environmental Eduation Week's website or STEMblog.