October 9, 2014

Welcome!

Here's this week's edition of the STEM Ed Update.

Top Article:

Teachers' Views on the Common Core State Standards One Year Later

Scholastic, Inc.

Implementation of the Common Core State Standards has progressed in classrooms throughout the country, with two-thirds of teachers (65%) saying implementation is mostly (39%) or fully (25%) complete. A majority of teachers (68%) who say implementation has started in their school agree it is going well, up six points from 2013. As one teacher

noted, "I feel that within my district, efforts are being made to help teachers understand and implement the Common Core State Standards, and I feel comfortable and enjoy learning about new ways to do things."

Read more here.

Stay in the Know:

Latest STEM Education Policy News Across the U.S.

No. 2 U.S. Education Official Heads for Exit

Washington Post

Jim Shelton, the deputy secretary and second in command at the U.S. Department of Education, will resign his government job by the end of the year, department officials said Wednesday. Shelton, 47, has held several posts at the department since joining the agency in 2009 and has had a significant influence over the agency's policies. Shelton ran the department's innovations program and was a force behind its Promise Neighborhoods, a grant program that gives "cradle to career" help to students in selected poor communities.

Read more here.

Overhauling STEM Education for the 21st Century

Industry Week

It is time to do a collective gut check so America breaks

the rut that is keeping many young people from thriving in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Read more here.

Female NASCAR Engineer Makes Science Cool

CNN

STEM's Newest Darling: Robotics

Boston Globe

Primary and secondary

schools across the United States, and certainly in the Boston area, are looking at packed school days and limited budgets and deciding it's worth the investment to add course work in robotics. Over the past 18 years, the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach has instructed thousands of teachers in how to teach robotics to kids. And today thousands of high schools and, increasingly, junior highs and middle schools send teams to compete in FIRST Robotics and VEX Robotics events - a 21st-century version of debate club, basically an extracurricular academic sport.

Read more here.

How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math

Nautilus

I was a wayward kid who grew up on the literary side of life, treating math and science as if they were pustules from the plague. So it's a little strange how I've ended up now-someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and that crown jewel of mathematics, Euler's equation. It's hard to believe I've flipped from a virtually congenital math-phobe to a professor of engineering. In fact, I didn't start studying remedial math until I left the Army at age 26. If there were a textbook example of the potential for adult neural plasticity, I'd be Exhibit A.

Read more here.

From Around the Community

Think Big. Win Big. Big Hero 6 XPrize Challenge

Project Dragonfly at the Miami University (Ohio) Announces Global Field Program Master's Degrees

Earth Expeditions graduate courses and the Global Field Program (GFP) master's degree bring together graduate students, scientists, educators and community leaders at critical conservation sites worldwide. Sites for 2015 include the Amazon, Australia, Baja, Belize, Borneo, Costa Rica, Guyana, Hawai'i, India, Kenya, Mongolia, Namibia and Thailand.

Find out more here.

Put Our Children 1st: Common Core for Common Goals