Weekly Media Roundup - August 7, 2013

Earlier this week, afterschool students from Karns Middle School helped State Rep. Gloria Johnson focus attention on the need for more programs for budding scientists, engineers and technologists. Rep. Johnson touted the afterschool program’s success in having students compete and place in national competitions. Rep. Johnson said she’d like to raise awareness about the program so that more students can participate and be exposed to biotechnology, architecture, desktop publishing, graphics and video game design, the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports. 

 

Wake County elementary students participating in a summer camp got a visit from NASA Ambassador Marc Fusco last week about the use of technology in space. Fusco spoke with students about NASA’s use of robotics to explore Mars and answered students’ questions about whether people live in space and if there are planets in other galaxies, the North Raleigh News reports. STEM For Kids, which runs camps, afterschool programs and workshops, focuses on engineering and technology.

 

The Rochester City School District is participating in a national study looking at whether programs that blend enrichment activities with traditional academic learning can reduce summer learning loss. “The whole focus is to get enough evidence on the impact of these programs to be able to affect policy,” Caterina Leone-Mannino, who oversees the district’s summer school programs, told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Educators and researchers hope that a focus on more enrichment than remedial work may hold the key to closing the achievement gap between students from different racial and economic backgrounds.

 

Iridescent Founder and CEO Tara Chklovski writes about her experiences mentoring youth, the rewards of working with students and challenges other scientists to get involved in a blog post. In her Huffington Post piece, she writes, “There is a lot of discussion these days regarding the lack of capable, diverse, innovative STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workforce. The solution is not that hard. It just requires everyone to rally around a common goal—like we did a few decades ago with the race to space. It was cool to become an engineer or a scientist. It is time to rally again and inspire the next generation of innovators and inventors. And to do so can actually be fun and fulfilling.”