Share a Coke: STEM in Action

Thanks Larkin!

We need some STEAM!

As states and local school districts "race" to reorganize to address the latest reform efforts outlined in the Race to the Top legislation, it is critical that we maintain the opportunity for all students to discover the arts, develop individual talents and gain an appreciation for the talents of others each and every year they are in school.

Thus, STEAM! What is STEAM?

STEAM = Science & Technology interpreted through 

Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements. 

(Georgette Yakman) 

This framework is engaging, hands-on and reality-based with many extensions to draw education, industry, government and the community together for the common good of bettering public education for all while meeting national educational and STEM related goals.

   

As President Obama reminded us in last year's State of the Union Address,

“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to 

be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” 

I would like to add to his powerful statement...we also need to celebrate those students who show promise in the areas of music, art, physical fitness, creativity and innovation. After all, we want our students to be energized and motivated to pursue careers that will advance our society, while at the same time, developing healthy and creative pursuits that provide pleasure, happiness and satisfaction for a lifetime of learning.

STEAM helps to focus educators on the importance of developing in each child the imaginative, creative and critical thinking skills essential for a lifetime of learning and growing as students mature. We can't just teach short-term, basic skills that don't promote problem-solving and the process for creating original ideas and/or products.

After all, Sam Parker highlights in his 212 Degrees...The Extra Degree that:

"At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water, comes STEAM. 

And with STEAM, you can power a train." 

Just imagine what STEAM could do for our students!

WLMS Pride! Former Graduates Make a Mark!

Brothers create computer data sifter 

By Carolyn Y. Johnson 

Globe Staff 

December 15, 2011

Photo Credit: Chie Yu Lin, courtesy of Pardis Sabeti

Brothers David, right, and Yakir, left, Reshef developed the new statistical tools under the guidance of professors from Harvard University and the Broad Institute.

It is an unusual starting point for a high-profile paper in a leading science journal: Two brothers, students a year apart at universities down the Charles River from one another, decide to work together on a summer project. The research unfolds through ideas scribbled on the walls of a laboratory, insights gained during downtime working as an emergency medical technician, and brainstorms shared at a fraternity house in Boston.

Yesterday, the influential journal Science published the fruits of that labor: the creation of a powerful computer program that rapidly flags patterns and identifies correlations in huge databases, from sports statistics to online social networks to the genomes being churned out by science laboratories.

While it is rare for two brothers in their mid-20s to share credit as the lead authors of a paper, the achievement demonstrates how creativity often arises from the back-and-forth of a team, in this case, David and Yakir Reshef, who have been collaborating since childhood.

“I think, in some sense, David and I have been roping each other into things for our entire lives,’’ said Yakir, 24 and a Fulbright scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. 

The summer after his senior year at MIT, David began working with Pardis Sabeti, a biologist at the Broad Institute who had an interest in global health. David was developing an approach to sift through large, international health data sets, highlighting potential relationships between demographic information and the incidence of infectious diseases, such as cholera or HIV.

“We just wanted a simple way to figure out what was in the data sets,’’ said David, 25, who is pursuing a dual degree in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. “At first we thought we would go find some methods that existed. It turned out to be a much more complicated question to answer.’’

To read the entire article, click here: Boston Globe Article

      

As the amount of data that comes out of the lab increases, so does the time it takes to analyze it. Yakir Reshef and his brother David and have developed an algorithm that will allow researchers to comb through vast amounts of data to find results they may not have otherwise noticed.

WLMS Pride!