What the Wind Can Do as an Energy Source

The Gooru Corner featured wind as an energy source earlier in this month and as fall approaches and there's more breezes passing through, we couldn't think of a better time to highlight all the things wind can do.

The wind has many practical uses: flying a kite, going sailing, paragliding or just cooling off on a warm day. But did you know that wind can be harnessed as a renewable energy source as well? Check out this multimedia collection brought to you by Gooru Corner to learn about the benefits and consequences of wind power.

What would you do with wind power?  

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!

STEM Schools the Topic of New Town Hall Series!

STEMconnector and Next Steps Institute are joining forces to host three Virtual Town Halls this summer on the topic of STEM schools. The online webinars will serve as pre-conference workshops in advance of the Next Steps for STEM Schools Conference in Charleston, SC on Sept. 30-Oct. 2. 

Revolving around STEM schools, each Town Hall will focus on engaging key stakeholders in supporting STEM schools and identifying resources and best practices. The three-webinar series will kick off tomorrow, July 9, at 5 p.m. ET with, "Leveraging Federal and State Resources to Support STEM Schools." 

The following speakers will offer their unique institutional perspectives on the topic:

• Danielle Carnival, Ph.D., Senior Advisor - White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
• Jim Colby, Division of Human Resource Development, Education and Human Resources Directorate - National Science Foundation
• Jeff Weld, PhD., Executive Director - Iowa's Governor's STEM Advisory Council
• Tom Peters, Ed.D., Executive Director - South Carolina Coalition for Math and Science
• April M. McCrae, Education Associate, Science Assessment/STEM Coordinator - Delaware Department of Education

You can join in on the Town Hall by registering here. You can also keep up with the action by joining in on the Twitter Chat using #NS4STEM.

The second Town Hall of the series, "Engaging Industry - Promising Models of Corporate Engagement in STEM Schools," will be held on July 30. Speakers at this webinar will discuss promising practices of industry engagement in STEM school support. "Field Report: STEM Schools in Action," will wrap up the Town Hall series on August 20 and offer perspective from STEM school supporters, administrators and teachers.

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!

Recap: Women in STEM Town Hall

Did you miss the Women in STEM Town Hall meeting last week? Good news: you can catch up on all the presentations via STEMblog. At the Women's History Month National Town Hall, several 100 Women Leaders in STEM honorees shared their stories, their challenges and what their organizations are doing to promote more women and girls in STEM career. You can download all of the presentation slides and audio from the Town Hall on STEMblog's website, but here's a video of the historical conference call.

Download the presentation slides here.

Some of the presenters included, STEMconnector CEO Edie Frasier; AAUW Executive Director Linda Hallman; Teach for America Managing Director Melissa Moritz; Girls Inc. President and CEO Judy Vredenburgh; and National Girls Collaborative Project Principal Investigator Karen Peterson!

Inaugural STEM Innovation Task Force Meet & Greet

The STEM Innovation Task Force (SITF) is made up of 15 innovation leaders in STEM from across the public and private sectors and works to share priorities in key pocket areas of innovation, drive priority interests and develop ideas and solutions related to STEM innovation topics.The Task Force also selects pockets of innovation within the STEM education ecosystem for analysis, mapping and promoting general understanding of the relationships between STEM talent development, STEM job creation and workforce career paths in STEM. For more information about the Task Force, contact Edie Fraser (Edie.Fraser@STEMconnector.org).

So let's meet some members of the Inaugural SITF, shall we?

Cindy Moss, Inaugural Member of the SITF: Dr. Moss is the Director of Global STEM Education Initiatives at Discovery Education. After teaching high school biology and chemistry for 20 years, Dr. Moss lef the district STEM education initiatives in Charlotte, NC for nine years. Cindy understands the challenges that face STEM educators and now works with school districts, companies, nonprofits and governments to provide teachers with what they need to provide high quality, engaging STEM teaching to their students. Dr. Moss is also a 100 Women Leaders in STEM honoree!   

Shelia Boyington, Inaugural Member of the SITF: Shelia Boyington, MS, PE is co-Founder and President of Thinking Media where her focus is the Learning Blade, a supplemental innovative system that includes curriculum that is focused on offering students real world learning experiences in STEM education. Boyington has also been a large part of implementing STEM programs and curricula at the state and local level.

Tim Welsh, Inaugural Member of the SITF: As Senior Vice President of National Industry Strategy Group at the University of Phoenix, Tim Welsh brings over 25 years of experience as a professional service executive. He focuses on connecting the workforce needs of our nation's economy to the curriculum, training and preparedness that students receive in school.

Learn more about other members Adriane Brown, Leland Melvin, Candy Duncan and Chair, Heidi Kleinbach-Sauter and Co-Chair, Alex Belous, on STEMblog.

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.

It's International Darwin Day!

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin! Darwin's theory of evolution and influential book On the Origin of Species shaped the biology lessons that student all over the world study today. You were an innovator, a revolutionary and an intellectual of your time and for this, we give you a day!

Don't know too much about Darwin? Well for starters, he developed the theory of evolution! Watch this short biography video on him to get a better idea.

If you want an even closer peek into Darwin's life, you're in luck. Like many people of his time, Darwin kept diaries and secret notebooks throughout his life that later helped historians and filmmakers piece together his story. Although he was worried that his theory of evolution would shock many in the Victorian society (including his wife), Darwin was driven to discover nature's laws. Take a glimpse at everything from scientific insights to personal struggles in some pieces of Darwin's diary.

Now, if you really want to have some fun, try taking this Gooru Corner quiz on Darwin's theory.

Thermo Fisher on Board with The Pittsburgh Promise

Just yesterday, PR Newswire reported that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. has made a $1 million commitment to The Pittsburgh Promise Scholarship Fund. The significant gift from the world leader in serving science also creates a designated scholarship fund called the Thermo Fisher Scientific Scholars of The Pittsburgh Promise. So, what does it all really mean? Each year, the fund will support five high performing student scholars with whom Thermo Fisher will develop and maintain a relationship with while the students complete their STEM related education. The main goal: a career in the science discipline upon graduation.

This is another victory for the science world and it's becoming more common to see gifts this large recently. In fact, Thermo Fisher is now among six corporations that have committed $1 million or more to The Promise's Executive Scholars program. The program prides itself on personalized student development that begins when a student is in high school and continues until they walk the stage with their college degree. Even better, students in the program have the chance to build professional networks and connections in the Pittsburgh region throughout college.

I know what you're thinking: how do you get selected as a Thermo Fisher Scientific Scholar of the Pittsburgh Promise? Well, the criteria is pretty straight forward there. A student must have high academic performace (3.5 GPA or higher), advanced placement achievement in STEM fields, commitment to volunteer service, demonstrated leadership skills and a reference from the high school principal. 

Read more about Thermo Fisher's involvement in the program and check out what Marc Casper, President and CEO of the company had to say in Tommy Cornelis' report.

Official Launch: STEM Students & STEM Jobs

You aren't going to want to miss this. On January 30 (that's a Wednesday, people), STEMconnector and My College Options will team up to host a live webinar, presenting the findings of their national report, Where are the STEM Students? What are their Career Interests? Where are the STEM Jobs? Even better, the webinar will be a live broadcast of the event launch in Washington, DC hosted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

What's great about this new report is that it identifies the STEM interests of more than one million U.S. high school students interested in pursuing STEM careers, and links them to increasing demand for STEM jobs - which will be over 16 million when 2018 rolls around. And if you really want to dive into the minds of students, the report does that for you too. In-depth profiles of more than one million students interested in STEM majors and careers with breakouts for all 50 states and the District of Columbia will provide educators with more insight into this generation's minds than ever before. Sounds like a win for everyone involved!

The report was designed to motivate students interested in STEM fields by providing a breakdown of "hot" and up and coming STEM jobs, salary figures and a projection of the future STEM market. 

The "Town Hall" style webinar will begin at 3:00 p.m. CT on Jan. 30 and run until 4:00 p.m. CT. At 2:45 p.m. CT on Jan. 30, you will be able to join the WebEx session by visiting STEMconnector.org/townhall and registering. You can also join in the Twitter Chat on Jan. 30. The twittersphere will begin to chat about the discussion at 2:00 p.m. CT on Jan. 30 using hashtag #WHERESTEM. @STEMconnector will be moderating the live chat.

This is an excellent opportunity to learn about today's students and generate ongoing STEM interest and excitement; let's do it!