 |
      |
 |
 |
||
 |
|
 |
||
 |
|
 |
||
|
BACK TO SCHOOL WITH NSFThe National Science Foundation funds an array of programs to improve the quality of science and math education for all Americans and to ensure a steady supply of the world's best-educated scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Roughly 20 percent of the NSF's $3.3 billion annual budget is allocated to its education and human resources programs. NSF's investment represents one-third of all federal spending on math and science education. For more information, please call Bill Noxon at (703) 292-8070. Contents of this News Tip:
TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY EVEN THE LEARNING FIELDAs children head back to school, many will be carrying more than books in their backpacks. Some will carry speech synthesizers or computers with braille output -- technology that can enable them to communicate and participate in the classroom and in society. National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported research in areas such as speech recognition, alternative interfaces with computers and speech/braille output are having a dramatic impact on the lives of people with disabilities. "We have a number of projects around the country where technology is being used, or developed for use, by students with a variety of disabilities," said Larry Scadden, who directs education programs for persons with disabilities for the agency. No one should be left behind in the information age, said Gary Strong, an NSF program director for interactive systems. "We're talking about the information-world equivalent of a person in a wheelchair sitting in a front door that is impossible to open, or at a curb impossible to cross, without personal assistance or technological tools, such as a door open button or a curb cut." NSF-funded research in education and technology is helping to create those tools, and thus ensure the disabled can share the goal of universal access to knowledge. [Beth Gaston] PUBLIC BROADCASTING IS ADVANCING YOUNG WOMEN'S INTEREST IN SCIENCEA local Ohio program to interest middle school-aged Girl Scouts in the basics of broadcasting science and technology has caught fire nationwide. Toledo Public Broadcasting's Tech Trek science education and career-building mentoring program for adolescent women is being embraced nationwide by 50 other public broadcasting facilities. The program is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Partnering with local Girl Scout councils, the University of Toledo and the Toledo Center of Science and Industry, WGTE-TV FM in Toledo, Ohio is using its radio and television facilities to introduce young women in middle school to the characteristics of broadcasting which employ elements of mathematics, science and technology. The aim is to increase the interest and confidence among young women to enter scientific fields. Staff members at the Toledo station have developed an informal curriculum, along with a strong mentoring component, to encourage women to further their studies and to seek careers in the sciences and engineering. [Bill Noxon] TEACHERS HEAD TO THE POLESEight high school teachers will head to Antarctica and the Arctic over the next year to team up with research teams in the field. Five teachers will go south and three north under the National Science Foundation's Teachers Experiencing the Antarctic/Arctic (TEA) Program. The teachers visited the polar researchers at the research teams' home universities for training on their specific research projects. The educators have already joined or will soon join the teams in the field on a wide range of studies. One teacher will ride an icebreaker exploring the deglaciation history of Antarctica's Ross Sea, while another will monitor stream flow at a Long-Term Ecological Research Site in the Transantarctic Mountains. Another will assist in drilling ice cores in Antarctica, used to study climate change. A teacher in Alaska has already studied aquatic ecology at Toolik Lake. The teachers will keep electronic journals of their experiences and answer students' e-mail questions. This year, participating teachers come from Texas, New York, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Montana. [Lynn Simarski] For more information about TEA, see the World Wide Web site: http://www.glacier.rice.edu/chapters/tea/tea_introduction.html
|
||||
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |