Description: "The committee’s conclusions regarding the effectiveness of NASA’s K-12 education program and areas for improvement are summarized here as responses to the four purposes stated by congress. Given the charge to  ... more

Description: "The committee’s conclusions regarding the effectiveness of NASA’s K-12 education program and areas for improvement are summarized here as responses to the four purposes stated by congress. Given the charge to the committee from Congress and from NASA, the committee focused on the seven specified core programs. The committee also took a wider view of NASA’ entire portfolio in K-12 STEM education in drawing its conclusions. Effectiveness of the Elementary and Secondary Program The committee was limited in its ability to draw conclusions about the overall effectiveness of the headquarters Office of Education’s Elementary and Secondary program because of instability in the program and lack of rigorous evaluation. NASA’s education portfolio has experienced rapidly shifting priorities, fluctuations in budget, and changes in management structure that have undermined the stability of programs and made evaluation of effectiveness challenging. NASA does not have a coherent overall plan for evaluation and for how results of evaluation should inform program and project design and implementation. Few of NASA’s projects have been formally evaluated, and none has been evaluated rigorously. Consequently, there are little data across projects on which to base conclusions about effectiveness." Authors: Helen R. Quinn, Heidi A. Schweingruber, and Michael A. Feder, Editors, Committee for the Review and Evaluation of NASA's Precollege Education Program, National Research Council.   less

This Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) site focuses on the science and impacts of global warming or climate change, and on actions that help address global warming. The site is highly interactive with a wide range of resources  ... more

This Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) site focuses on the science and impacts of global warming or climate change, and on actions that help address global warming. The site is highly interactive with a wide range of resources, including games, events, and links to other relevant sites for kids and educators. The including activities on climate and weather and the greenhouse effect.   less

"Crayola brand crayons were the first kids crayons ever made, invented by cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The brand's first box of eight Crayola crayons made its debut in 1903. The crayons were sold for a nickel and th  ... more

"Crayola brand crayons were the first kids crayons ever made, invented by cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The brand's first box of eight Crayola crayons made its debut in 1903. The crayons were sold for a nickel and the colors were black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, and green. The word Crayola was created by Alice Stead Binney (wife of Edwin Binney) who took the French words for chalk (craie) and oily (oleaginous) and combined them."   less

Website in support of the artCORE program at ASU is a comprehensive foundation program in the studio arts. Organized as four integrated areas of study--2D studio, Color, 3D studio, and 4D studio--the sequence of courses, along wit  ... more

Website in support of the artCORE program at ASU is a comprehensive foundation program in the studio arts. Organized as four integrated areas of study--2D studio, Color, 3D studio, and 4D studio--the sequence of courses, along with the School of Arts program in Basic Drawing, provides a strong basis for all of the advanced studio areas as well as art history and art education. This site is organized around: # Zoetrope, # Thaumatrope, # Phenakistoscope, and # Praxinoscope.   less

"The HistoryMakers is single largest archival collection of its kind in the world. Our goal is to complete 5,000 interviews of both well-known and unsung African American HistoryMakers. In doing so, we want to include the storie  ... more

"The HistoryMakers is single largest archival collection of its kind in the world. Our goal is to complete 5,000 interviews of both well-known and unsung African American HistoryMakers. In doing so, we want to include the stories of individual African Americans along with those of African American organizations, events, movements and periods of time that are significant to the African American community. To date, our oldest HistoryMaker is 105 years old and the youngest is 29 years old. We have done interviews in over 80 cities and towns as well as in the Caribbean, Mexico and Norway. Our collection presently houses 8,000 hours of African American testimony on videotape. The only prior methodic and wide-scale attempt to capture the testimonies of African Americans occurred in the 1930s with the recording of former slaves as a project of the Works Projects Administration (WPA). From 1936-1938, teams of writers/researchers were sent throughout the South resulting in approximately 2,300 hand-recorded interviews and some audio taped interviews. The HistoryMakers is the next methodic and wide-scale collection effort since the WPA Slave Narratives Project. Historical research has focused largely on slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, music, sports and entertainment. The HistoryMakers’ focus is to capture the stories of accomplished African Americans across all walks of life and to use video and new technologies to create an accessible digital collection to serve as a resource for students, teachers, scholars, documentary producers and the media. In recording messages of leadership, achievement and perseverance embodied in the life stories, The HistoryMakers has plans to disseminate its holdings traditional and interactive media as well as through public programs, special events, an interactive website and a unique digital archive. The HistoryMakers hopes to enrich the lives of all ethnic groups, both young and old. An integral part of the American experience, The HistoryMakers' stories are stories of success against the odds, of achievement in the face of adversity, and of inspiration. They are America's Missing Stories."   less

The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, hosted by Lockheed Martin, will be the country’s first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the  ... more

The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, hosted by Lockheed Martin, will be the country’s first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States. The culmination of the Festival will be a two-day Expo in the nation’s capital that will give over 500 science & engineering organizations from all over the United States the opportunity to present themselves with a hands-on, fun science activity to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Our mission is to re-invigorate the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science gatherings in the United States. We will accomplish our mission by: * • Offering stellar, multi-faceted programs with high entertainment value and integrity of scientific content. • Appealing to a large, diverse audience of all ages and backgrounds, from professionals to novices, from science enthusiasts to the merely curious • Engaging the greatest minds in science. • Involving the most dynamic leaders in business, technology, government, education and culture. • Building a strong foundation of prestigious and impressive institutional partners resulting in increased communication between the scientific and educational communities. • Producing each program at the highest level of quality, applying professional media and theatrical standards of excellence and technical sophistication. • Spreading the message through powerful media partnerships and an effective communications strategy resulting in increased public awareness of the importance of science in their lives. • Sustaining the Festival’s impact through year-round programming and curriculum development and a content-rich, interactive website. • Creating a science festival programming template to facilitate the development of more local festivals throughout the United States.   less

"Apple today announced that customers have downloaded one billion applications from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. "The revolutionary App Store has been a phenomenal hit with iPhone an  ... more

"Apple today announced that customers have downloaded one billion applications from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. "The revolutionary App Store has been a phenomenal hit with iPhone and iPod touch users around the world, and we'd like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve the astonishing milestone of one billion apps downloaded," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "In nine months, the App Store has completely revolutionized the mobile industry and this is only the beginning."   less

Website by the AllStar Network (Aeronautics Learning Laboratory for Science, Technology and Research). It has a Teacher's Guide and provides features on search, principles, and careers. Excerpt: "Amelia Earhart gained consider  ... more

Website by the AllStar Network (Aeronautics Learning Laboratory for Science, Technology and Research). It has a Teacher's Guide and provides features on search, principles, and careers. Excerpt: "Amelia Earhart gained considerable fame June 17-18, 1928, as the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She felt this fame somewhat unjustified as she had only been a “passenger” on a Fokker trimotor piloted by Wilman Stutz and Louis Gordon from Trepassy Bay, Newfoundland, to Burry Port, Wales. In 1929 Earhart co-founded the “Ninety-Nines,” an international organization of women pilots, which continues today to promote opportunities for women in aviation, and served from 1930 to 1932 as its first president. Amelia Earhart was one of the first women in aviation to juggle a public and private life. Her 1931 marriage to publisher George Putnam did not prevent her from setting an autogyro altitude record. the following year she reaccomplished the Atlantic flight which brought her fame, this time as a solo pilot flying from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Ireland, a first for a woman. At a time when women were extremely rare in technical and scientific areas, Amelia Earhart distinguished herself by setting records which bettered men's records as well as women's."   less

This tutorial addresses strategies for using focus groups as a method of collecting information for program evaluation. "Focus groups are a method of group interviewing in which the interaction between the moderator and the gro  ... more

This tutorial addresses strategies for using focus groups as a method of collecting information for program evaluation. "Focus groups are a method of group interviewing in which the interaction between the moderator and the group, as well as the interaction between group members, serves to elicit information and insights in response to carefully designed questions. The dynamic nature of the questions asked by the moderator and the group process, produces a level of insight that is rarely derived from 'unidirectional' information collection devises such as observation, surveys and less interactional interview techniques. Methods of recording and analyzing information gathered during focus groups, and strategies for collecting unbiased information have helped focus group research to gain credibility as an accurate and useful source of information collection. Focus group methods gained popularity in marketing research. In the 1980s social scientists recognized the value of focus groups for qualitative research and adapted the techniques accordingly. In the 1990s focus group strategies have become widely researched and used in social sciences and human service organizations."   less

Mini Documentary on the Tienanmen Square. www.ShaunConnell.com  ... more

Mini Documentary on the Tienanmen Square. www.ShaunConnell.com   less