The MetroWest STEM Education Network‘s quarterly meeting will be held online on May 26, 8:30AM-10:30AM. Dr. Gil Noam will talk about his book, Ten Big Bets: Transforming Education During the Pandemic and Beyond. Register here.
Category Archives: Events
6th Annual Bowen Science Day: 1st Time Online — A Big Success
Today the Bowen Elementary School PTO held its 6th annual Science Day — held virtually on Zoom this year for the first time — and the collaboration among so many people was a big success in empowering students and making science accessible.
- The stars of the show: About 100 Bowen students presented 74 projects in 2-minute videos on FlipGrid before the event for the entire school community.
- The students also presented their results in live discussions with seven visiting scientists from the Journal of Emerging Investigators during several sets of half-hour sharing sessions in Zoom breakout rooms.
- Middle-school students from the Oak Hill Garden Club served as monitors for the breakout rooms.
- High-school students from the NNHS STEMentors club, formed to inspire elementary students in STEM, led parallel sessions with science games, experiments, and hands-on engineering projects.
- The Newton Ligerbots robotics team provided expertise in Zoom management.
- Principal Guzzi viewed each student’s FlipGrid presentation before the event and spoke in a brief keynote highlighting the students’ curiosity, engagement, and sharing.
- Bowen parents Diane Gomez, Melanie Hildebrandt, Larissa Gordon, and Betty Wang organized and managed the entire event and curated a helpful list of online resources.
The organizers encourage other Newton PTOs to host Science Days, and their advice: “Start small, keep the rules loose, and don’t formally judge it. Encourage kids to be excited and curious about science and feel empowered to share that curiosity with their community. We are so proud of every single one of these students. It takes so much courage to share your work!” For more information or advice, contact scienceday@bowenpto.org.
Cambridge Science Festival: Online Showcase Concludes #30DaysOfScience
The Cambridge Science Festival presented its #30DaysOfScience celebration throughout April, inviting everyone to spend a few minutes a day exploring, connecting, and learning about STEM. Check the Showcase to catch up on what you may have missed.
MassBay’s Virtual STEM Expo, May 3-7
MassBay Community College‘s STEM Expo will be held virtually this year, May 3-7. Visitors will be able to view students’ projects — in engineering design, robotics, game programming, cybersecurity, protein purification, biotechnology, and quantitative reasoning and statistics — and leave comments and questions for students. Held at the end of each semester, the event is designed to foster alliances with high schools, higher education, and private industry. For more information, contact Prof. Marina Bograd at mbograd@massbay.edu or 781-239-2248.
Newton Conservators Webinar: Cold Spring Park: Problems, Progress and Possibilities, May 5
The Newton Conservators will present a free webinar, Cold Spring Park: Problems, Progress and Possibilities, on May 5 at 7PM. Alan Nogee, president of the Friends of Cold Spring Park and former Clean Energy Program Director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, will speak about the environmental challenges facing the park and what is being done about them. Register before 3PM that day.
New England Aquarium Webinar: The Hidden Culture of Whales, May 13
The New England Aquarium will present a free webinar, The Hidden Culture of Whales, on May 13, 6:30PM-7:30PM. National Geographic photographer and New England Aquarium Explorer-in-Residence Brian Skerry will share insights gleaned over three years shooting the Disney+ series, Secrets of the Whales. Register here.
Wellesley’s ‘See Yourself in STEM’ Recordings Now Online
Recordings of the Wellesley Education Foundation’s recent See Yourself in STEM programs are now available online:
Agenda for (Virtual) Mass. STEM Summit, May 6
The Massachusetts STEM Summit will be held virtually on May 6, 9AM-2PM, with the theme, Inspire a STEM Start. Registration is free. For more information, email StemSummitInfo@donahue.umassp.
- 9:00 — Welcome
- 9:45 — Panel 1: Inspire are STEM Start
- 10:45 — Panel 2: Power of Mentoring
- 11:45 — Keynote
- 12:45 — Panel 3: STEM Workforce Pipeline
- 1:45 — Closing Remarks
Grades 8-12: Sign Up for Rainstorm, Online Splash!, May 15-16
Learning Unlimited and its many Splash programs are co-hosting Rainstorm on May 15-16, noon to 6PM both days, for Grades 8-12. The days are packed with free, online courses taught by undergraduates, graduate students, and experts from across the country. Sign up for the course lottery by April 30, rank your classes of interest, and receive your schedule. Graduates and undergraduates can also sign up to teach. For more information, email cloud@learningu.org. The website still shows the Fall 2020 course catalog, but these STEM-related courses seem to be in the Spring 2021 under development.
- Data Structures and Algorithms
- A Battle of Forces: The Role of Inflammation in Disease
- Understanding Dark Matter
- Medicinal Chemistry I & II
- The Seeing Blind: Understanding Vision and Technological Advances
Harvard Museums Online: What Spiders Have to Say, Apr. 28
Harvard Museums of Science and Culture will present a free, online event in its Evolution Matters series, What Spiders Have to Say on April 28, 6PM-7PM. John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow, Paul Shamble, will discuss the lives, habits, and morphologies of spiders, including sensory structures, cognition, locomotion, and behavior.