Monthly Archives: April 2011

MIT Open House, Apr. 30 starts Cambridge Science Festival

Under the Dome: Come Explore MIT is a day-long (11AM-4PM), campus-wide open house on Saturday, April 30 that kicks off the Cambridge Science Festival, which runs from April 30–May 8. Families, students, groups, and curious folks of all ages are welcome! Witness the landing of a Blackhawk helicopter, hear talks by Nobel laureates, learn about MIT inventions, see micro-aerial vehicles controlled by iPhone, and hang out with robots.

Massachusetts State Science & Engineering Fair, May 7

The Massachusetts State Science & Engineering Fair will be held Saturday, May 7, 12:30 to 3PM at the MIT Johnson Athletics Center, Rockwell Cage, in Cambridge (see map). It’s open to the public, as it has been since 1949. See 300 of the “best of the best” science fair research and design projects by high school students — from cities and towns across Massachusetts. Who will be the winners among these 400 young scientists and engineers? Stay for the awards ceremony at 3:30PM for $500,000 worth of scholarships & prizes. Emcee: Matt Noyes, NECN Meteorologist. Some of the 2011 projects: Diversity in M&Ms, Nova Mycobacteriophage Now, and The Omnibrella.

Science Club for Girls

Science Club for Girls (SCFG) is a nonprofit organization focusing on girls-specific programming in underserved communities. It provides free, hands-on science and engineering programs to over 1,000 girls in five cities in eastern Massachusetts (Cambridge, Lawrence, Boston, Newton and Fitchburg), and in Pokuase, Ghana. The Newton chapter was founded in 2004 and meets in the Myrtle Street Baptist Church on Saturday afternoons in October, November, February, and March. In addition, it holds Leadership Forums, Winter Science Parties, and Museum Overnights.

  • All girls grades K-7 are invited to join, and girls in grades 7-8 and high school serve as Junior Mentors. Mentor-scientists model and foster leadership, affirm college as an expectation, and promote careers in science and technology as goals and options.
  • STEM professionals, graduate students, and undergraduate students interested in becoming a mentor-scientist can send an email to volunteer@scienceclubforgirls.org.
  • Donations to support the program are gratefully appreciated.

[Ligerbots] Meet the Robots! May 15

MEET THE ROBOTS! Join the Newton High School LigerBots for an afternoon of fun science and technology activities on Sunday May 15 from 2PM to 5PM in the Hyde Community Center at 90 Lincoln Street in Newton Highlands. See science and technology in action. Learn about FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), and their robotics programs for students aged 6 – high school. Take a turn driving the LigerBots’ robot. Build and program Lego Mindstorms robots. Get information about joining a team or starting a new team. Join the excitement! Check out the LigerBots website (www.ligerbots.com) or the FIRST website (www.usfirst.org). For more information call Evan Nitkin at 617-332-3808.

National Robotics Week: Robot Block Party at MOS

On Saturday, April 16, the Museum of Science capped National Robotics Week with a Robot Block Party and panel discussion.  Pictured below are Dr. Cynthia Breazel (MIT Media Lab),  Colin Angle (CEO, iRobot), John Dudas (President of FIRST), and Newton’s Catharine Pierce (Oak Hill 7th grader and member of FIRST Lego team, “The Giant Sticky Notes”).  They discussed how they got involved in robotics, FIRST and what it’s like, the future of robotics, the skills you need to be successful in robotics, and the social aspects of robots.  The Giant Sticky Notes demonstrated their robot to the thousands of attendees, and Paige Grody represented the Ligerbots.

Cambridge Science Festival, Apr 30-May 8

The Cambridge Science Festival is nine days of making science accessible, interactive, and fun — in lectures, debates, exhibitions, concerts, plays, workshops, etc. — in a variety of locations in and around Cambridge.  Check out the full calendar of events.  Class field trips are welcome (group reservations may be required for some events).  These videos from last year provide a preview for 2011.

There’s a free science carnival, April 30, Noon-4PM, at the Cambridge Public Library:  Over 70 amazing exhibits, presentations, activities.

iCreate & SAM: Learning STEM by doing stop-motion animation

iCreate to Educate is a startup dedicated to helping teachers use low-cost tools and SAM Animation software from the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach to enable students to make their own stop-motion animations.  Tufts developed SAM Animation to give K-12 students an easy, intuitive medium for developing their understandings of science and math (see examples and white paper).

iCreate to Educate introduces and supports the use of SAM Animation in classrooms by:

  • Offering hands-on workshops to train teachers, who can then train other teachers,
  • Developing lessons that are flexible enough to fit into existing curricula, and
  • Providing simple, low-cost, effective tools:  SAM Animation software, webcams to work with schools’ existing computers, and prop kits.

The cost for outfitting a classroom with webcams, stands, and a SAM Animation site license is under $2000.  iCreate to Educate lists potential sources of grants for funding such innovation in the classroom.  See also iCreate’s flyer for teachers (PDF).

Lego Engineering Symposium at Tufts, May 24-26

The LEGO Engineering Symposium at Tufts University is an annual gathering of educators, researchers, curriculum developers, and other educational stakeholders aiming to advance the state of K-16 STEM education using hands-on tools. It combines presentations by educational researchers, practicing teachers, and representatives from LEGO with development labs that are not training sessions but a chance for participants to explore different areas in depth with support from experts:

  • Seeing the Science/Engineering in Children’s Thinking
  • Integrating Engineering & Literacy
  • SAM (Stop Action Movie Making)- Tools for Children to Create Representation of their Ideas
  • LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS- The Next Generation of Programming
  • Supporting the Development of Engineering Design Skills K-12
  • Physics Glasses: Augmented Reality and Other Fun Things with Image Analysis

The symposium runs 8:30AM – 4:30 PM on May 24-25 and from 8:30-12:30 on May 26. The cost is $250 and includes breakfast and lunch each day. Limited to 100 participants. Registration deadline May 16.

Newton Ligerbots 2011 Update

The Newton Ligerbots had a great 2011 FIRST Robotics season. In March they competed at the WPI Regional and won the Website award for excellence in student-designed, -built, and -managed FIRST team websites. Newton North Junior and Ligerbots CEO, Paige Grody, was recognized as a finalist for the “Dean’s List” award honoring outstanding student leaders for exemplary passion for and effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals.

Ligerbots at Boston FIRST Regional, 4/2/11

At the Boston Regional this weekend, the Ligerbots were on the 4th-ranked alliance. They competed strongly in the quarter finals, but, alas, were eliminated. Superintendent David Fleishman spent a couple of hours with the Ligerbots at this event on Saturday morning and was very impressed with the team and its program. This last week, the Ligerbots also graciously hosted a team from Canada, the Cyber Gnomes, welcoming the team members into their homes, hosting evening events, entertaining them, and developing long-lasting friendships as a result. Continue reading Newton Ligerbots 2011 Update

Cabot’s After-School Math Puzzle Club

Will Brockman is a software engineer at Google Cambridge, a math Ph.D., and a parent of two boys at Cabot Elementary School in Newtonville. With three other parents, he leads an after-school “math puzzle club” for 4th and 5th graders, where kids do math contest puzzles for practice and in contest settings. This year, the kids have taken the 5 Elementary Math Olympiad contests and the Math League contest.  Here’s how it works… Continue reading Cabot’s After-School Math Puzzle Club