This year, Newton North is one of 16 high schools nationwide to be selected as an InvenTeam.  InvenTeam, funded by the Lemelson Foundation and administered by MIT’s School of Engineering, celebrates outstanding innovators and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention.

Challenged to apply its STEM skills to solve a real-world problem, the Newton North team developed a proposal to invent a Pedestrian Alert System.  The World Health Organization, naming 2011-2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety, notes that road traffic injuries are one of the top 3 leading causes of death for ages 5-44.  In 2004, road traffic injuries resulted in more than 1.27 million deaths—almost equal to the number of deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.  The Newton North team found that Ethiopia has among the highest road traffic fatalities per vehicle.

In October, the Newton North team won an InvenTeam grant of $10,000 for its proposal to invent a Pedestrian Alert System to warn drivers of crossing pedestrians, with the ultimate aim to help pedestrians in developing countries safely cross dangerous roads.  The grant can be used only to purchase materials for experimenting and prototyping.  The actual fabrication must be funded by the team.  (You can donate online to help the team meet its goal.)  In June, the team will present a working prototype at the MIT EurekaFest.  See this brief video of the team presenting to its project mentors.

The Newton North InvenTeam is nearing the final phase of the project — building a working prototype.  Updates of the team’s recent activities and milestones can be found at nnhsinventeam.com.

The DIGITS Project for opening middle-school minds to STEM released its 2012 annual report covering the last school year, highlighting these accomplishments:

• Reached 14,004 students — 20% of the state’s Sixth graders
• Involved 154 volunteers from 51 companies/organizations
• Achieved significant increases in interest in math, knowledge of STEM careers, and retention of a key message about math (as measured 3-4 months later)
• Expanded statewide, with pilots in Berkshire County and Springfield Public Schools
• Increased recognition and partnerships due to endorsement by the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council’s @Scale program

In Newton, four volunteers from IBM, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals presented to about 380 students at two middle schools, Oak Hill and Bigelow.  After the first of the year, DIGITS will begin signing up middle schools for the coming spring sessions.

The Governor’s STEM Advisory Council has endorsed six STEM initiatives for education and workforce development:

• Quinsigamond Community College’s Advanced Robotics Program to build a pipeline for K-12 STEM education in Worcester Public Schools and Worcester County Schools to college and ultimately the local STEM workforce
• Mass Insight Education’s Mass Math + Science Initiative (MMSI), a performance partnership demonstrating the number of Massachusetts students entering college prepared for and interested in pursuing STEM careers, particularly among under-served populations, dramatically increases when schools expand access to and encourage participation in Advanced Placement (AP) and other rigorous courses in grades 6-12
• DIGITS, a STEM education program that pairs STEM professionals with sixth-grade classes throughout the state (including all four Newton middle schools) to increase students’ interest in math and science subjects and careers
• WPI’s Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a STEM curriculum for grades 6-12 that is project-based and uses real-world problem-solving as a framework
• MassBioEd Foundation’s BioTeach, a program that features teacher professional development, equipment supply grants, and student experiential learning
• Massasoit Community College’s Science Transfer Initiative helps to build the pipeline of STEM professionals in Massachusetts by focusing on increasing post-secondary enrollment, retention, diversity, and access in the sciences.

Newton’s Sam Rosenstein is a student at Gann Academy and a member of the school’s FIRST team, Robots and Brain Bots Inc. (R.A.B.B.I.), which competed among 127 other teams from 29 countries in the 2011 FIRST Championship in St. Louis April 28-30. The R.A.B.B.I.s won the FIRST Tech Challenge Inspire Award and will receive an invitation to the White House! Formed just this year, the R.A.B.B.I.s also won the Inspire award at the New York State FIRST Tech Challenge — the second competition they entered.

The Inspire Award is the “most prestigious FIRST Tech Challenge award, given to the team that truly embodies the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The winning team is judged as having best represented a role model FTC Team and is a top contender for all other judging categories and a strong competitor on the field.” Congratulations to Sam and his R.A.B.B.I. teammates!

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.

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 →