My daughter and I are planning on getting a lego robot and experimenting with it. Here is a video some teacher put together of her students working with them. This video is from TeacherTube, and I wish I knew more about it, other than this looks fun.
Just as the teacher/narrator says, there are lots of principles of math involved, most of which are not that advanced, even for young kids. This strikes me as a great way to increase interest in math, programming and engineering in school kids.
If you’ve read The Mysterious Benedict Society then you’ll remember that Mr. Curtain, the bad guy in the story, had developed his own power system using wave and tidal power. Here is a YouTube video of the AP news story with a brief report and description of actual work to harness the power of waves to produce electricity. Its a neat video showing some actual devices and deployments in the lab.
This is an exciting new direction, especially in light of the renewed interest in alternative sources of energy. Think of all the engineering challenges. What sort of materials will withstand the ocean environment for long periods of time and still maintain their functionality? What about barnacles and other ocean flora and fauna? Will they glom onto the apparatuses and bog them down or stop them dead in their tracks?
There are political challenges, as well. Where will these be placed? Will they interfere with fishing and recreation to a great enough extent that political barriers will be raised against their use? Doubtless, there are many challenges to satisfying our never ending needs for new sources of energy.
Here are two other interesting lines of questions I’m interested in here. What ecological effect would wave-energy farms have on ocean habitats and what economic conditions will need to exist for us to really break free of our dependence on oil and coal as our major sources of energy?
Bees, or really, Honey Bees, are the subject of Jay Hosler's graphic text Clan Apis. Taking the graphic text approach, author Jay Hosler encapsulating the life cycle of honey bees within a coming of age story. […]
Doppelganger is the third of the Bloodwater Mysteries series written by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue. And of the three, Doppelganger is my favorite. Like the previous two books in the Bloodwater Mysteries series, the chemistry between Roni and her sluething friend Brian is as fun as ever. However, in this story, Roni’s unbridled drive […]
Reading between the lines, you wonder just how qualified are the applicants for those STEM, special education and foreign languages, that the jobs go unfilled. Yesterday I wrote about the task Don Mugan has taken on, up in North Dakota. His goal is to train the teachers that the school districts already have in how to teach the core STEM subjects. A good STE […]
Are teachers the weak link in introducing and teaching STEM careers to our kids? STEM, you may know, refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. These broad subject areas are the key's to successful careers in our kids' futures. […]
