STEM
If at first your experiment gets blown up in a rocket, try, try again
Sitting at a lab table over the lunch hour at St. Peter’s School in Kansas City, Missouri, a group of eighth graders are loading freeze dried E.coli bacteria into plastic tubes. It’s all part of a special package destined for the International Space Station. And it’s not the first time students Holden O’Keefe, Eamon Shaw…
Paving the launch pad for female astronauts: KC woman shares her experience in the Mercury 13
When Sarah Ratley received the invitation to be part of a secret project testing women as potential astronauts in 1961, she was at the beauty parlor. While working as an engineer for AT&T, Ratley had gone to get her hair done over the lunch hour. “They traced me down to the beauty salon,” said Ratley,…
Green Works KC fuels graduation rates with environmental education
As part of the national American Graduate initiative, KCPT is highlighting several community leaders and educators who are making significant, scalable changes to prepare students for success in K–12 and beyond.These stories of local education champions will air on KCPT in the weeks leading up to American Graduate Day on Sept. 27, a live, multi-platform…
5 apps designed by Kansas City girls at no-boys-allowed camp
When you think about a typical summer camp, the great outdoors, swimming, campfire songs and s’mores come to mind. But, at this camp, girls sit quietly clicking away at computers in a classroom. They’re all developing their own apps for Android phones. And this camp is strictly no-boys-allowed. This is the second year that an…
Lenexa middle school teachers go green at Honeywell boot camp
Come fall at Mill Creek Middle School, some students will get to build something in their math and English language arts classes other than equations and essays: wind turbines. English teacher Kristan Langton and math teacher Amber Boyington were two of 70 teachers from around the world who were invited to spend a week at…
Q&A with robotics competition co-founder Dr. Woodie Flowers
Lindsey Foat – The Hale Center for Journalism Instead of seeing 58 robots competing, Dr. Woodie Flowers sees 58 solutions to a problem he created. Flowers is a Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, original host of the PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers” and the co-founder and creator of the…
Students Solve Old Problem with New Ketchup Cap
Video: John McGrath — The Hale Center for Journalism High school seniors Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson have spent a lot of time thinking about ketchup. As students in the Project Lead the Way program at North Liberty High School, Richards and Thompson have researched and developed a bottle cap that prevents that first squirt…
Block by block: LEGO robotics builds interest in STEM
Red Bridge Elementary fourth grader KayShawn Whitworth wants to be both a scientist and an inventor when he grows up. “Scientists, to me, connect to inventing things,” Whitworth said. “If I was just a scientist I would be studying things and then, out of nowhere: pop! an invention comes into my head. … Most of…
Education Q&A: Christina Chandler, student teacher
Christina Chandler is a 3rd grade student teacher at Red Bridge Elementary School. After hours, she devotes 10-20 hours a week coaching Center School District’s FIRST® LEGO® League teams. FLL gets 9 to 14-year-olds interested in engineering through robotics competitions. One of the teams Chandler works with is the Rocking Robo Roadrunners. This month they…
Ninjas of the Drill: STEM Outreach Stokes Girls' Interest in Engineering and Orthopedics
Kansas City, Mo. – When Dr. Jenni Buckley demonstrates how to fix a broken femur bone with an external fixator and power tools for a group of high school girls, she tells them that they too can be a ninja of the drill. “Sometimes girls are really at a disadvantage in terms of how much…