SPECIAL EDITION
August 26, 1997
BACK TO SCHOOL WITH NSF
The 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:
As 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]
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A 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]
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Eight 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
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