Grades bring out anxiety in teachers, parents and students. Is there too much pressure and competition related to grades? What is the best system for grading? Grade inflation? Questions abound, I am not going to try to address those questions in the KBLOG, but I wanted to bring a smile and some humor to the issue in this KBLOG.

Children are born with curiosity that when nurtured can lead to creativity which can stir innovation.. If you want your child to grow towards and maintain a lifelong fascination with the world around them through curiosity it will take planned effort. KBLOG 53 gives some advice and resources.

In this KBLOG I point out great opportunities for educators and parents to incorporate data tools into their teaching. There are free webinars and a summer program on evolution for teachers. Check it out!

In this KBLOG I point out great opportunities for educators and parents to incorporate data tools into their teaching. There are free webinars and a summer program on evolution for teachers. Check it out!

A central part of STEM education is learning about, collecting, understanding, visualizing and manipulating data. It is important for our students to get experience with data throughout all grades. I just saw that Dataspire has just launched a YouTube channel to help teachers help students learn about data.

I wanted my students to feel that our classroom was special and unique. Many of things that I had available to my students were beyond the school budget. What happens when you want to upgrade your makerspace with grand equipment and technology? The bottom-line teachers, parents and administrators is that there are a lot of funding sources through grants. KBLOG 49 reveals sources for grants.

A makerspace is a special place where young people can express their STEM curiosity, creativity and inventive spirit. It can be in a space as big as a classroom or bedroom, or as small as a corner of a room or a small box. If you want to have a makerspace at your school or in your home and you want to start small and you have limited funding or experience directing a maker space. KBLOG 48 has some advice!

KBLOG 47: My Continuing Journey to Educate Myself About Little Known Great Scientists: Who was Granville T. Woods?

I am searching for scientists who are not well known, many of them have been ignored in the past due to prejudice and/or ignorance. It is time to acknowledge, celebrate and recognize, for the sake of all students, those scientists, engineers and inventors who remain unknown but have had major impacts on our world. He invented the third rail for streetcars and built the first hybrid vehicle. You may not have heard of Granville T. Woods who was an African American engineer (1856-1910). He was one of the most prolific inventors of the 19th century (had over 50 patents). Read and watch some videos about this amazing inventor, someone you may not have hear of before.

For homeschoolers, parents and teachers Where can one find (without searching the web for hours) vetted, age-appropriate activities, experiments, science projects ideas and science videos? Check out KBLOG 46 for ONE great resource!

Most children have a space-curiosity phase; that is a time when they are intrigued by stars, planets, the moon and space travel. Parents and teachers can feed that interest through the many online resouces of NASA . Their space curiosity can become a lifelong area of interest and even evolve into a career.

One African American scientist, in particular, can serve as a role model to both science teachers and students is Charles Henry Turner (1867-1923). Dr. Turner authored articles advocating for education and discussing social issues especially with respect to African Americans. His experimental logic and designs were elegant and insightful, even his high school students participated in his work.

In this KBLOG I have included links to books about African Americans who have had major impacts in the STEM fields. This KBLOG will be of interest to those who want to broaden exposure and introduce new role models for students.

Our students need to realize and internalize that failure is the spark of creatively and success. The question is how can we make failure resiliency part of our teaching? Here are some tips.

KBLOG 41: Virtual Field Trips for Students

Field trips should be an integral part of a student’s experience. Nowadays students have few opportunities to physically visit wonderful places. The Internet offer virtual field trips to anywhere in the world. This KBLOG has some suggestions.