From honorable mention to first place
News17-year-old John Arnault's project, “Sunscreen’s Entrance into the Nano World,” placed first in the Medicine/Health category at the Carver Science Fair. Arnault is a Frankford High School junior--and a participant in ITEST-Nano, a collaboration among Penn GSE, Penn’s Nano/Bio Interface Center, and the School District of Philadelphia.
Teen girls discover digital technology as ‘COMPUGIRLS’
NewsDr. Kimberly Scott is the principal investigator and creator of a National Science Foundation-funded ITEST project COMPUGIRLS, an innovative technology program designed to teach girls of color how to use technology to bring about social change. She was concerned with the low participation of young women from higher needs school districts in STEM, so Scott developed COMPUGIRLS from a program she initiated at Hofstra University in New York.
Computer scientists bring digital world to Bronx kids
NewsJonathan Santiago, co-founder and managing director of STEM2GETHER, describes his experience working with ITEST project GreenFab and teaching advanced technical concepts to students in the Bronx.This article was also published on Live Science.
Seen in NY: Bridging the Gap at the Central Park Zoo
NewsITEST project Bridging the Gap was profiled in this video article by the New Learning Times (Columbia University).
Evaluation in the Context of ITEST Projects
HighlightA key component of the technical support offered by STELAR (and by the LRC from 2003-2012) has been in helping projects to develop rigorous and relevant project evaluations that can provide formative and summative feedback to project leaders to improve their project and determine impact. The resources collected here include a guide on evaluation, targeted to project directors, that helps build common understanding between project implementers and
NetSci High: Network Science for the Next Generation
BlogThis summer, twenty four students had an opportunity to meet Dr. Alex “Sandy” Pentland from MIT’s Media Lab, Dr. Gene Stanley from Boston University’s Center for Polymer Studies, and other researchers to learn about current applications in network science.
The science of learning
NewsThe ITEST Research Study, Predicting STEM Career Choice from Computational Indicators of Student Engagement within Middle School Mathematics Classes, is featured in August 2014 Scientific American article, "The Science of Learning." The article details efforts to bring more rigorous science to classrooms and research that is showing that our intuitions about education may be wrong.
July 2014 Newsletter
NewsletterProject Spotlight: Fueling the Ocean STEM Workforce Pipeline
BlogSTELAR recently had the opportunity to interview Jill Zande from the MATE ROV Competitions: Providing Pathways to the Ocean STEM Workforce project to learn more about the project’s current work. The MATE ROV project just held its annual international competition at the end of June.
Professional Development in ITEST
HighlightThis STELAR Monthly Highlight showcases existing resources on the STELAR website focused on professional development. ITEST projects work in both informal and formal education, and in both settings a critical component of that work is engaging adults, whether teachers or informal educators, in the content and pedagogy of each ITEST project. ITEST projects have worked with more than 8,000 teachers across the country and provided them with