STEAM Newsletter – Celebrating Women’s History Month!
March 2024
As Women’s History Month draws to a close, let’s take a moment to honor the remarkable contributions of women in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). Throughout history, women have played pivotal roles in shaping the landscape of scientific discovery, innovation, and technological advancement. Today, we honor women making waves in STEAM, from ground-breaking research to fostering diversity. Their success emphasizes the importance of breaking gender barriers in pursuing our passions and shaping a brighter future.
With our partnership with Million Girls Moonshot, we are helping create the next generation of women in STEAM with opportunities such as the Flight Crew, which features remarkable youth from across the country. Inspired by their influential STEM experiences outside traditional classroom settings, these emerging leaders are actively engaged in community efforts to dismantle stereotypes and ignite their peers’ interest in STEM.
Let’s continue to support, empower, and uplift women in STEAM, ensuring that their voices are heard and their contributions are recognized and celebrated every month of the year. Happy Women’s History Month!
In This Newsletter:
Is It Live or Is It AI In The Arts?
CA STEAM Learning
CA STEAM Learnings’s most recent podcast, Is It Live or Is It AI In The Arts, is a discussion about how the California Arts Standards can support the use of AI in the classroom with guests Ms. Jeannine Flores Arts & STEAM Coordinator with the LA County Office of Ed, and Mark Schwanz who is the Coordinator II with Instructional Technology Outreach.
Apply for a $7,500 High School InvenTeam Grant
Application Deadline: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Do you know high school students who are ready for a real challenge? The InvenTeam Grants Initiative, created by the Lemelson-MIT Program, offers an opportunity for students to cultivate their creativity and solve real-world problems through experiencing invention.
- InvenTeams are teams of high school students, educators, and mentors which receive grants of $7,500 to invent working technological solutions to real-world problems.
- High school educators and their teams may apply for the InvenTeams grant.
- Each InvenTeam chooses its own problem to solve.
- Up to 10 schools will be awarded the InvenTeam grant.
SciGirls Strategies: How to Engage Girls in STEM
Equity and Inclusion
SciGirls Strategies: How to Engage Girls in STEM: SciGirls empowers you to create a more gender equitable and culturally responsive learning environment that inspires, engages, and helps girls thrive in STEM. This book outlines our educational approach, rooted in what research has revealed engages girls in STEM. These strategies have also been proven to work with all learners. Everyone benefits from a gender equitable approach to STEM!
Engineering Mindsets
Activities & Resources
EdWeek Webinar: Close the Gender Gap: Getting Girls Excited about STEM – In this webinar recording, learn from women leaders from Logitech and Girls Who Code as they discuss the importance of early cheerleaders, real-life role models, and women support networks.
Service Learning in STEM: A collection of articles, links, and other resources on why Service Learning is important, resources to support Service Learning, and Service Learning to give STEM learning a real life context.
How can Students’ Everyday Experiences Support Science Learning Through Engineering Design?: Article provides best practices for educators to design and introduce engineering design challenges that are relevant to students’ lived experiences. It provides a list of recommended actions to take and how to attend to equity throughout the process.
Role Models, Mentors, and Families
Activities & Resources
Role models, mentors, and family engagement in a young person’s STEM education leads to increased interest, greater self-confidence, and ultimately a stronger STEM identity. Developing a science-related identity increases the likelihood that students will work toward developing science literacy, or even pursue a career in a science or STEM-related field.
- Role Models and Mentors: Contains an extensive list of places to find a variety of role models, speaker bureaus, and mentoring resources. The site includes FabFems, MentorNet, and Women@NASA.
- Which role models are effective for which students?: Four concrete recommendations for ensuring that STEM role models are motivating for students of all backgrounds and demographics—an important step toward diversifying STEM.
- How to be an effective STEM role model: Advice to share with potential role models, and staff who are role models, on how to communicate the message in the most effective way.
- STEM Family Engagement Planning Tool: A planning tool to support programs in uplifting and empowering all youth and families in STEM.
Activities for March 2024
- Mathematics & Probability Science Activity: Asked to get an estimate for the famed mathematical constant, Pi, you might do what the ancient Greeks did: Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter. Or you can estimate Pi by a less conventional method: the random tossing of toothpicks!
- Cutting Pi: Mathematics & Measurement Science Activity: Cutting string diameters from a string circumference is a physical (kinesthetic) way to divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter. No matter what circle you use, you’ll be able to cut three complete diameters and have a small piece of string left over.
Check Out CAN’s Other Newsletters!
Access the CAN newsletter archives to view past newsletters today! You may be interested in some of our other newsletters as well: