As you know, we at Cemetech are passionate about the importance of inspiring students to pursue STEM careers, and we feel that the earlier students are exposed to the fascinating aspects of science, technology, engineering, and math, the more time they'll have to become interested in the subjects. It's clear that while these are among the highest-paying fields available today, they also have a dearth of students getting interested in them at an early age. There has long been an endemic problem of females being pushed away from technical fields, but a lack of exposure to the fields across the board (arguably aided by a historical lack of focus or rigor in math and science education in the US) has impacted all students. TI has also shown a great deal of interest in battling this trend, and our friends at Texas Instruments are introducing a new program called "STEM Behind Hollywood".

A series of free classroom activities, "STEM Behind Hollywood" shows how TV and movie producers realistically include science and math in shows and movies. It represents a collaboration between TI, their spokesperson Mayim Bialik (whom we met at T^3 2013), and The Science & Entertainment Exchange. The program will discuss such popular topics as zombies, superheroes, space, and forensics; you can get more information from stemhollywood.com. Of course, it ties into the TI-Nspire calculators, so we look forward to more students getting a chance to use their calculators in a more intriguing context than regular classroom instruction.

Oh and by the way, the activity features simulation(s) made in Lua Smile

You can see some videos here :

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEfggCPyK03bhiGNdBrkKsrSZJs4W1Z42
adriweb wrote:
Oh and by the way, the activity features simulation(s) made in Lua Smile
Do you know if the program makes a point about that to students, and lets them know that they could learn to program Lua for their calculators themselves? If not, I think it would be good to add that.
I have actually suggested that once the "event" is over (well, even before, ASAP, in fact !), they should add some "behind the scenes" pages in which the Lua codes behind the simulations would be explained, kind of step by step, or something "educational".
Indeed, showing teachers (and students!) what Lua can do with these direct science applications is definitely a good way to get them interested into Lua programming Smile
*bump* TI has kindly shared the fact that they've released a new TI-Nspire activity connected to the STEM Behind Hollywood program. This activity explores forensic anthropology, used to identify victims of crimes. The full scoop from TI:
Quote:
Dr. Diane France, Ph.D., D-ABFA, director of the Human Identification Laboratory of Colorado, worked with TI to develop the Body of Evidence activity from a simulated death investigation to engage students in STEM concepts investigators use to establish victims’ identities and the time elapsed since their deaths. Once detectives know these parameters, they can more easily develop a list of suspects for the “Whodunit” phase of the investigation.

Body of Evidence provides climate data, spans of time and the condition of the body and challenges students to identify the John Doe from among four missing persons — whose names and approximate date of disappearance are known — by matching interactive, graphical plots of the data with the dead man’s state of decomposition.

Teacher notes (attached), student worksheets and assessments are included with this activity to promote classroom discussion and encourage inquiry-based learning about a variety of related STEM subjects, including biology, chemistry, anatomy, climatology and entomology.
  
Register to Join the Conversation
Have your own thoughts to add to this or any other topic? Want to ask a question, offer a suggestion, share your own programs and projects, upload a file to the file archives, get help with calculator and computer programming, or simply chat with like-minded coders and tech and calculator enthusiasts via the site-wide AJAX SAX widget? Registration for a free Cemetech account only takes a minute.

» Go to Registration page
Page 1 of 1
» All times are UTC - 5 Hours
 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 

Advertisement