October 12, 2011
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New York’s World Maker Faire helped spur a fantastic discussion on innovation in STEM education, highlighting the importance of partnerships that include educational institutions, communities, and private entities to ensure the broadest impact possible. I’m delighted to share that Cognizant’s Making the Future has been in touch with Teach2Learn in Boston and I’m hopeful that a beneficial partnership can be formed.
Following Maker Faire, I had a chance to chat with Tania Tiburcio, Director of External Affairs at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI—also @nysci) to learn a bit more about NYSCI Neighbors, a program they piloted earlier this summer to increase local interest and participation in science and counter learning loss that can occur when kids are home from school.
Tiburcio, a Corona native herself, visited ten local schools and spoke during PTA meetings to help foster interest. At a time when schools and parents are feeling the effects of tightened budgets, NYSCI Neighbors presented a low-cost fun and educational opportunity that doesn’t leave anyone out. Tiburcio reports that 116 families participated in the pilot, which offered access to NYSCI and 300 other museums, the NYSCI science playground, and bilingual live science demos for a $50.00 membership.
Other local businesses and organizations have gotten involved as well: a Junior Scientist Award is given to outstanding participants in the program, and prizes have been sponsored by the Ice King of Corona and the Queens Zoo. This demonstrates a great investment in the residents of the community and it’s fantastic to learn about such broad support for science.
Tiburcio indicates that NYSCI is definitely interested in continuing the program and hopes that they will be able to forge a deeper connection with the educational programs in local schools to help support and reinforce what children are learning in a practical, hands-on way. She also hopes that NYSCI can offer professional development to teachers as another means of supplementing educational efforts.
NYSCI Neighbors provides an excellent framework for understanding how different elements of a community can work together to enhance science learning and encourage participatory science experiences for kids who might not otherwise have these sorts of opportunities. I’m particularly excited by the ways the whole family is encouraged to participate, which sends a very important message about the importance of learning and STEM activities to possible future researchers. Hopefully NYSCI will continue to be a success, and can be expanded to additional communities.
About the Author: Krystal D'Costa is an anthropologist working in digital media in New York City. You can follow AiP on Facebook. Follow on Twitter @krystaldcosta.
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Great post, Krystal.
We hope that the NYSCI Maker Space, opening up early in 2012, will be another opportunity for kids in the Corona neighborhood to come in and take advantage of all that NYSCI has to offer. Kids will be able to come to the Maker Space and make a variety of cool projects, or just tinker, with help from the NYSCI staff. Our hope is that this type of hands-on learning will inspire kids, in both the STEM disciplines and the arts (STEAM).
And, I also wanted to share with you a little about my visit to see Learn2Teach, Teach2Learn (L2TT2L) at the South End Technology Center at Tent City in Boston. As you wrote, I was connected to them via a response posted to your article on Maker Faire NY, where you mentioned Cognizant’s Making the Future program. I had an amazing 3 hour visit yesterday with the L2TT2L staff – Susan Klimczak, Ed Baafi, and Amon Millner. I also had the wonderful opportunity to meet Mel King, a Boston legend who has done so much for the community in the South End of Boston as an educator, community organizer, political activist, and representative to the MA State Legislature. He also is the founder of the South End Technology Center, which provides free or low-cost access and training in most aspects of computer-related technology for the residents of the South End.
I learned that L2TT2L is already doing many of the things we hope to do in our Making The Future Afterschool and Summer Program. In the L2TT2L program, Boston city high school students spend about 4 hours each weekend during the spring in the program – 2 hours at their small Fablab in the South End, and the other 2 over at the Fablab across the river at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (who is a partner for this great program). They do a number of small projects, learn about the design process, and build skills that will help them on their summer projects. Then in the summer, they spend several weeks in the Fablab, working in small teams to design and build a wide range of projects. The projects must have a theme that helps address an important social issues (such gun violence, or health and obesity). The lab has a laser cutter, 3d printer, PCB etcher, electronic router, computer controlled sewing machine, drill press, and many other smaller tools and many computers. Later in the summer, these kids then teach younger kids about some of the things they’ve learned – the teaching process reinforces what the learned earlier (and is also a way to “pay it forward”). Ed Baafi also showed me his very cool ModKit software, that has a graphical programming environment (like Scratch) that allows kids (and adults) to program Arduino boards. Right there in the Lab, Ed and I hooked an Arduino up to his software, and we implemented a simple project that let me turn a control knob to vary the speed of a servo motor…all done by using a drag and drop approach to building the program. He believes this will make Open Source Hardware and Software much more accessible to children, further lighting the spark for a future generation of technologists.
L2TT2L is a wonderfully successful program and a great model for other urban, hands-on STEM programs. Over 90% of the youth teachers and participants are youth of color. Susan, Ed, and Amon have committed a tremendous amount of their time to building this program. My hope is that we can leverage their experiences to bring similar programs to communities all over the US. We hope to do this with our Making the Future program. And at the same time, I’d like find ways to bring recognition to L2TT2L that might result in continued funding and support, enabling the program to be sustainable. If you are ever in Boston, I encourage you to visit the South End Technology Center and check out Learn2Teach, Teach2Learn.
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