President Obama Hosts White House Science Fair

Today, President Obama hosted the White House Science Fair, bringing students from all across the country to demonstrate a wide variety of science interests and knowledge in our national schools.

Team Rocket (All-girl) from Maryland

Innovative students representing 30 states will display their ideas and inventions for the President and the wider viewing public. If you'd like a complete list of presenters, here you go.

President Obama also released significant details outlining several new education initiatives today. Not all of them will be presented here, and I will refer readers to the full White House press release.

The initiatives present continued funding, enhanced funding, or new plans to augment science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Some of the new STEM goals include:

• STEM Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants.
• Nationwide effort to engage Hispanic youth in STEM.
• Global initiative to connect STEM students from around the world.
• Expansion of STEM-based AmeriCorps.
• Partnership with NASA and Khan Academy to provide free, online STEM education.
• ESRI to provide ArcGIS Online for Education accounts to every K-12 school in the United States.

The President has also issued a "Call To Action" to all existing business partners, including Time/Warner, the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), and the newly established White House Maker Corps.

For more details, please check the White House press release here.

Joshua Hutson Conducts STLP Workshop

On March 17th, Joshua Hutson demonstrated his PrintrBot Simple as part of the Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) at Murray Elementary School. Joshua also led the students through a Code.org programming tutorial.

The teacher-advisor for STLP informed Joshua there is a desire for more workshops like the one he has scheduled. The advisor also expressed interest in more projects similar to Joshua's and may need more Murray State faculty, staff, or students to present their efforts to STLP.

The Printrbot Simple is an affordable, entry-level 3D printer available from Printrbot. Printrbot Simple can be ordered as a kit or pre-assembled and includes only what is needed to get started in the world of 3D printing. (Source: printrbot.com/)

Code.org is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding participation in computer science technology by women and students of color, but believes every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming. (Source: Code.org/about)

Update

"We had fun until the internet went down. Kandi Dawson the STLP teacher sponsor and parent volunteers were a great help." (J. Hutson)