The president and CEO of EdVestors, a Boston-based school improvement organization, offered an op-ed in Commonwealth Magazine: It’s time to zero in on mathematics education.
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Leventhal Map & Education Center: Online resources for STEM learning
The Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center in Boston has online Teach It Yourself resources, programs, and activities for teachers to use in helping students explore various aspects of maps and mapping — such as art, history, politics, and STEM. The curricula and materials are also suitable for use at home. Here are some STEM-related resources, arranged by grade:
- Solving Problems with Maps (Early)
- Measuring Distances on a Map( Early, Elementary)
- House Floor Plan Activity (Elementary)
- Introduction to the Coordinate Plane (Elementary, Middle)
- STEAM Maps (Elementary, Middle, High)
- Mapping 17th Century New England: Proportional Reasoning and European Priorities (Middle)
- Mapping Climate Change in Boston (Middle)
- Same Data, Different Stories (Middle, High)
- Area and Geometry (Middle, High)
- Boston: A City of Immigrants (Middle, High)
- Scale and Unit Conversion (High)
- Introduction to Functions (High)
- Similarity and Dilation (High)
Newton Free Library: Little Lab Coats, ages 6-9, Dec. 19
Little Lab Coats: Monday, December 19, 4PM-4:45PM, ages 6-9. Each month Little Lab Coats explores a different scientific topic with hands on activities — in December: Circuits. Space is limited. Registration is required.
Applications open for Tufts Pre-College Summer STEM Programs
Tufts University offers these pre-college summer STEM programs for high-school students on-campus (except as noted):
- Engineering Design Lab: July 9-12 or July 23-August 4
- Engineering Investigations: July 9-12 or July 23-August 4
- Coding Academy: July 9-21
- Mini-Med School: Careers in Medicine: July 9-21, Clinical Experience: July 23-28, Advanced Topics in Medicine (virtual): July 10-22
- Tufts Summer Research Experience: July 3-August 11 (on campus or virtual)
For more information, register for the webinar on January 31 at 6PM, or email precollege@tufts.edu, or call 617-627-2926, or chat online with the program administrators.
Carriage House at Lee’s Farm seeks STEM presentations
Carriage House at Lee’s Farm, a senior living community in Wayland, would like to have monthly hour-long presentations — informational and hands-on — for its residents on science and technology. If you are interested in providing such presentations, either once or in a series, contact Eden McDonough at emcdonough@carriagehousewayland.com.
MIT Edgerton Center: “Do-It-Yourself” STEM Project Guides
A reminder… MIT’s Edgerton Center offers “do-it-yourself” STEM instructional guides for teachers and parents to use for STEM projects, available for free use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Projects are available in these areas:
- Amplifier with Piezo Pickup
- Arduino Garden
- Arduino Particle Meter
- Copper Pipe Glockenspiel
- Kinetic Sculpture
- Light-Up Tiles
A very successful M Snake — friendly math competition for Grades 6-8
On Saturday, November 12, 80 students — from Oak Hill, Brown, F.A. Day, Bigelow, Bowen, Zervas, Memorial-Spaulding, and some private schools — gathered at Newton South HS for M Snake, a new, friendly mathematics competition created and run by NSHS students. For most participants, this was their first experience with math competitions, and there was a lot of excitement.
The event included lunch and prizes and was free for all participants, thanks to the generous sponsorship of The Village Bank, the Daily Challenge with Po-Shen Loh, the AoPS Academy Lexington, and Wolfram.
The morning was focused on two individual rounds: 30 questions in 60 minutes, then 7 harder questions in 30 minutes. After lunch, the highlight of the competition consisted of students in teams of four collaborating to answer questions in sets of three against the clock. Many teams were assigned randomly with students from different schools.
NSHS students were entirely responsible for organizing and running the event, including live grading, engaging with competitors and their parents, hosting the guest speaker, and awarding prizes. For three months beforehand, their preparation work involved writing problems, designing the competition website, doing community outreach, finding sponsors, communicating with parents, and much more.
The event went very smoothly, with a lot of positive feedback from parents. Prof. Po-Shen Loh, the coach of Team USA for the international Math Olympiad, attended the event and gave a talk for students and their parents about the use of math in real life. He also spoke highly of the event and praised its organizers. From the positive reactions of students and parents, it’s clear that there’s an appetite for an annual event like this in Newton.
The event ended with a statement from the founder of M Snake, NSHS junior Elena Baskakova, and the awards ceremony. Top scorers in the individual rounds were Stephen (Brown), Joshua (Oak Hill), Ryder (Oak Hill), Jason (Brown), Pia (F.A. Day) and Ranbeer (F.A. Day). In the collaborative team sprint round, the top teams were Brown Pi-thon, Math Maestros, and Mathketeers.
Newton Free Library lends STEAM-to-Go Kits and STEM tools
The Newton Free Library’s Library of Things has a several STEAM-themed educational kits to loan:
- All About Magnets
- Construction & Building
- Electronics, Coding & Bots
- Everyday Science
- Explore Circuits
- Gadgets, Gizmos & Gears
- Green Energy
- Machines & Contraptions
- Robotics & Coding (Grades PK-3)
- Rocks & Fossils (Grades 4+)
- Sounds, Music & Band (Grades PK-3)
- Trucks & Tools (Grades PK-3)
..as well as these STEM tools:
- Arduino Kit (Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit)
- Electronics Toolkit (Ifixit Essential ToolKit)
- Graphing Calculator (Texas Instruments TI-84 or TI-83 Plus)
HMSC: Bird & Bloom at Harvard Museum of Natural History, Dec. 3
Harvard Museums of Science and Culture will host an in-person event, Birds & Blooms, on December 3, 11AM-1PM at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (26 Oxford Street, Cambridge). Learn how many of the birds in the northeastern United States spend the winter in Latin America socializing and eating among tropical trees and flowers. Admission is included with museum admission.
MITES Saturdays: Fall Symposium at MIT, Dec. 3
MITES (MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering and Science) is a rebranding of the MIT Office of Engineering Outreach Programs. Each year, MITES Saturdays (formerly SEED Academy) engages about 100 students in Grades 8-12 in Boston, Cambridge, and Lawrence in a series of STEM-related activities. On December 3, 10AM-3PM, these students will present their final projects in the MITES Saturdays Fall Symposium in the Stratton Student Center at MIT. Students’ projects focus on Computational Neurobiology, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Data Visualization, and Engineering Design. Attendance at the symposium– in-person or online — is free. Register here.