Weekly Media Roundup  February 4, 2015

Imagination Soars at Library’s Science Program (Riverdale Press, New York)

At the Riverdale Library Afterschool Science Program, students learned how to fly their own planes – the paper kind, that is. Last week’s flight-centered program taught students about lift, drag and thrust, and then engineered their own paper planes for a flying competition. Students experimented with various folding techniques to make their planes fly faster and straighter. “The normal way is that you’re supposed to fold the top down all the way, but this time, I folded it less, which makes it better and more aerodynamic,” 10-year-old Matteo Cereola told the Riverdale Press. Competition winners received admission tickets to the Museum of Natural History.

Providence Tech Initiatives Inspire Middle, High School Students (Brown Daily Herald, Rhode Island)

Two new afterschool programs in Providence are connecting college and middle-school students. Girls Who Code and Intracity Geeks both launched afterschool programs last month to teach middle school students how to code.  Brown students act as assistant teachers and “heroes” to youth. Intracity Geeks founder and executive director Claude Arnell Millhouse told the Brown Daily Herald, “My vision is to combat income inequality with access.”  He wants his students to show their friends how to code and create momentum “towards a society in which coding is cool and inclusive.” 

After-School Program at Holy Name Lets Kids Fiddle, Tinker, Create ‘Whatever They Want’ (Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska)

During Maker’s Workshop day at the Holy Name afterschool program, one boy was removing wires from a computer tower, another was dismantling a cellphone and others were plugging a battery pack into globs of electricity-conducting dough to power tiny LED lights. Holy Name technology and grant coordinator Karen Smolinski said she started the weekly afterschool program to give kids a place where they could use their hands and minds to build and create without anyone telling them what to do. “When I say whatever they want, it’s whatever they want. We just let them go on whatever we have materials for,” she told the Omaha World-Herald. The workshop echoes the national “maker movement” where adults and youth are encouraged to tinker, build and make.

Lessons Continue on Challenger Explosion, Hometown Hero (Carteret County News-Times, North Carolina)

On the 29th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, students in the Beaufort Elementary School Boys & Girls Club afterschool program received a history lesson on the Challenger and the U.S. space program. The lesson was inspired by a mini-museum in the school lobby honoring the late Challenger commander Capt. Michael J. Smith, a town native. For the past week, students learned about items in the museum, did Internet research, filled out worksheets and colored pictures related to the Challenger. Second-grader Analise Kubik told the Cateret County News-Times that after learning about the Challenger, she would like the chance to meet Capt. Smith’s family. “I also think it would be really cool to go in space and see things like the moon,” she said.