Science and Us is a youth-led organization for high-school students to explore science communication, media, and policy through Makeathons to explain technical topics to the general public. In the past, it has held in-person Makeathons at Boston University, Harvard, and MIT. Science and Us is now building an online community via the online platform Discord and welcomes new members to make friends, create projects, and receive expert feedback. Students can apply here to join. Adults can email team@scienceandus.org to apply to be mentors.
Category Archives: Virtual/Online
iRobot Education Offers Free Online Coding Platform
iRobot Education has launched iRobot Coding, a free online platform for all levels of learners, from pre-readers to higher education. It offers three progressive levels of learning and coding along with lessons and activities to pursue. Try it here. This is one of several iRobot learning tools available for students, educators, professionals, and communities.
Empow Studios Expands Online STEM Classes
Empow Studios has expanded its new virtual online STEM classes to include 2D video game designing, robotics, and more coding. See a brief video here. Next classes start May 4.
LigerBots Online Mentorship Program for Elementary Students
The Newton LigerBots high-school robotics team has started its “Awesome Mentorship Project 2877” to match high-school student mentors with elementary students by common interests for online mentoring sessions. Each mentor-student pair will spend an hour each week over a video call doing science experiments, tutoring in school subjects, or simply drawing and chatting — whatever the elementary student needs. All mentors are vetted and trained by the LigerBots and are excited to get to work! Parents of elementary students are invited to fill out this interest form. High-school students (both LigerBots and others) interested in mentoring are invited to fill out this form.
Museum of Science #MOSatHome Schedule, Apr. 20-24
Boston’s Museum of Science offers these live online sessions with museum educators the week of April 20-24, as well as in future weeks:
- Science Snapshot: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; 11AM. Explore the biggest science headlines with Museum educators and get a better understanding of what’s happening in the world of science.
- Meet the Museum: Tuesday and Thursday; 11AM. Live interviews with members of the Museum’s staff to learn about their work. Topics include library science and a new Spanish edition starting next week!
- Ask a Scientist: Monday – Friday; Noon and 3PM. Question-and-answer style panels on everything you’ve ever wanted to know about a variety of different science topics, including climate change, physics of light, solar systems, dinosaurs, awesome amphibians, ocean science, and much more!
- Science in Action: Monday – Friday, 1PM. Museum educators demonstrate science activities for viewers to try at home, Activities include Virtual Birding, Fantastic Forces, Ocean Chemistry, Planting for Pollinators, and Magnets!
- STEM Beyond School: Tuesday and Thursday, 2PM; Wednesday, 10AM. The Museum’s STEM curricula division, EiE, hosts STEM webinars with at-home engineering activities to keep viewers engaged in their STEM education. Topics include Go Green! Engineering Recycled Racers, Robot Game: Programming Your Family, and Taking Care of Our Earth: Designing Trash Collectors.
BU Online Summer Computing Programs for Young Women
Boston University offers these online summer programs in computing for young women, taught by undergraduates majoring in computer science or engineering. Apply by May 15. Tuition is free, but there is a $50 non-refundable registration fee (waived in cases of financial hardship).
- CodeBreakers Online: July 6-31 (weekdays, 10AM-Noon and 1PM-3PM), for female students entering Grades 10-11 in the greater Boston area. Learn about computer security with lessons in programming, cryptography, and network security. Guest speakers will discuss careers.
- AI4ALL: July 27-August 14 (weekdays, 9:30AM-Noon and 1PM-3:30PM), for female students entering Grades 11-12 in Massachusetts. Explore robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing through lectures, team projects, and lectures by guest speakers.
- Artemis Online: July 6-31 (weekdays, 9:30AM-Noon and 1PM-3:30PM), for female students entering Grade 9 in a Boston-area school. Learn about Scratch, AppInventor, HTML, CSS, and Python, with introductions to robotics, cryptography, AI, and circuits. Guest speakers, too.
MIT: Full STEAM Ahead — Online Learning Resources
In response to the need for at-home learning, MIT has rapidly developed Full STEAM Ahead, a collection of free resources for online teaching and learning for Grades K-12 and life-long learners. Besides curricula for higher education and workforce learning, this site includes these weekly packages of materials for Grades K-12, which are available on-demand starting on the dates shown:
- March 23: Spread of Disease
- March 30: Stepping into Invention Education
- April 6: Exploring and Living in Outer Space
- April 13: Making Music and Sounds
- April 20: Earth Week
- April 27: Investigating Problem Finding and Problem Solving
…as well as these online STEM projects for Grades 4-12:
- Amplifier with Piezo Pickup
- Arduino Garden
- Arduino Particle Meter
- Copper Pipe Glockenspiel
- Kinetic Sculpture
- Light-Up Tiles
Boston Tech Mom: At-Home STEM Activities
Boston Tech Mom — a great resource for all things STEM around Boston — has adapted her monthly post about STEM Events for Kids in Boston to catalog this month a range of At-Home STEM Activities for Kids.
Mass Bay: Online Intro to STEM Programs and Careers, July 16
MassBay Community College in Wellesley has canceled its STEM Sampler Workshops and instead is offering an online interactive session for high-school students, teachers, and administrators to explore MassBay STEM programs and the careers they enable. The session will be at this Zoom link on July 16, 10AM-12:30PM. For more information, contact Valerie Kapilow at vkapilow@massbay.edu.
Free Virtual Museum Tours and Presentations: New England Aquarium, Museum of Science, EcoTarium, Audubon, Harvard, Blue Hill Observatory
For #StayAtHome families, local institutions are offering free online virtual tours and presentations.
- The New England Aquarium is offering a free virtual presentation every day on Facebook at 11AM — as well as online recordings of all previous presentations. These include lectures by National Geographic photographer and Aquarium Explorer-in Residence Brian Skerry every Friday at 11AM.
- Boston’s Museum of Science offers #MOSatHome, with daily interactive sessions, videos, podcasts, family STEM activities, virtual town halls, and more.
- The Ecotarium is offering a free virtual tour of its museum and free online resources.
- The Massachusetts Audubon Society offers free online videos and other resources.
- Harvard Museum of Natural History has online lecture videos, online exhibits about naming species and evolution on islands, as well as many other online exhibitions.
- Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments offers lecture videos, a video introduction and Waywiser to allow online visitors to explore its objects and record.
- Harvard Museums of Science and Culture offer these lecture videos.
- Blue Hill Observatory & Science Center offers online weather webinars for everyone ages 6+ (and additional webinars for younger kids will be offered if there’s sufficient interest). Click on these links to join the online meetings at the appropriate time:
- April 6, 1PM: History of Blue Hill Observatory
- April 8, 1PM: Weather Watching at Great Blue Hill
- April 10, 1PM: The 1927 Flood in Vermont and New England