STEM Education identified as the KEY to Africa's innovation & growth

 A UN report outlines how STEM education is necessary and the key to more innovation and growth in Africa. STEM is going to be the key to developing and implementing numerous issues around the world, identified through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and this is especially true in Africa, where, unfortunately, too many of the world's poorest nations are located. This report calls for African governments to invest more in STEM education. 

The purpose of the SEE SAW Project has been to provide ideas for active, hands-on lessons and labs for science and math classes in Sierra Leone, and anywhere else that can make use of them. The lessons assume there is little or no lab space, little or no science lab equipment and supplies, and even a lack of training to teach science and math this way by teachers. This is to help change how teachers teach science and math, and to encourage them to use their own creativity to develop their own labs and active lessons and even research programs, and begin to form a generation of innovators, scientists, and creators, who can help solve major problems in their regions! This is the hope and goal. 

Note that, as far as research projects for high school level students, this site has hundreds of ideas for real research that does not require professional laboratories or equipment. 

Search Engines you may not be aware of...there's more than just Google!

Here are some search engines you may not be aware of, most for STEM research:

 www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Don't forget if you do use Google, it is best to use Google Scholar for academic work: https://scholar.google.com/ 

Sound Activity - Rubber band instruments, figure out what sound is and some characteristics of producing sound

 One of our physics activities is the rubber band instrument. Check out the video for it. I was reminded of this one when my daughter, who is in college and preparing to become an elementary school teacher, was trying to find ways of doing sound experiments with first graders. 

SEL in Schools Series, for all educators and schools to use

  My students know I am really into the inclusion of helping humanity into our physics classes, and also promoting the skills we ALL need and use every day of our lives, Social-Emotional Learning skills (SEL). It is to the point where ETHS, and most districts around the country, are promoting and including SEL into their district plans and goals. This is good news for everyone, and now the challenge is to all learn what SEL is (and is NOT), why we need it for our students, evidence that it works (otherwise it would be a waste of time and resources), and finally how it can be embedded within content courses. 

If interested, I have created a SEL in Schools series of slide decks and accompanying videos, as well as hundreds of examples of lesson ideas in all subject areas/departments for middle schools and high schools, in order to train teachers and staff, as well as build up 'buy in' among teachers when they see how possible and valuable it is to include SEL in lessons on a fairly regular and consistent basis. 

Note that STEM courses are often viewed as the most challenging to include SEL within, so there's a video just on the use of SEL in STEM classes. 

If you happen to view it and find it useful, please share with other teachers, administrators, schools, etc. All of it is free, and with the slides you can make a copy and then use it or modify to your needs, as you please!

For ALL of us to do- in general, it's OK to be nice to others!

 You can't be best friends with everyone, but you CAN: 

- notice everyone

- be friendly to everyone

- make room for everyone

- cheer for everyone

- listen to everyone

- have a smile for everyone

- say hello to everyone

- empathize with everyone

Oh, and you can be nice to yourself, too! 

Doing science: 'Discovering' what the period of pendulums depends on

 This shows how students can go after determining what affects the period of a pendulum. 

Doing science: 'Discovering' Ohm's law

For schools that have electricity and equipment that can be used to set up simple circuits, this outlines an experiment where students can create an empirical formula for Ohm's law (and actually 'discover' Ohm's law). It shows how experimental science is done.