Monthly Newsletter – June 2021

The 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan changed the Gay Liberation Movement forever, and now June is Pride month, so let’s continue to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community with STEM activities and ways to show your support for a community that is continuing their fight for equality for many, many decades. We need to replace discrimination, ridicule, and hate with love, acceptance, and PRIDE!

Our Latest Blog Posts

• GEARing Up for STEM with the EV Micro-Kart!
• Celebrating Juneteenth
• Coding in Preschool
• Leading Innovation: Interview with Marla Rosenth

Free Pride Month Activities You’ll Love

There are a variety of ways to tie in Pride and the LBGTQ+ community into meaningful lessons for your students. Here are a few:

• LBGTQ+ Role Models in Science Posters
• Grades 9-12 Lesson Plan – Ben Barres: Neurobiology Pioneer and Champion for Equity in STEM
• Grades 9-12 Lesson Plan – Sally Ride: To Space and Back
• Rainbow-Themed STEM Activity Ideas

If you want to help or are interested in learning more about LGBTQ+, visit the Trevor Project, who provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ+ youth. The Trevor Project even has free resources such as curriculum and training videos. 

There are also some more STEM-focused LGBTQ+ groups such as oSTEM, Pride In STEM, and LGBT STEM. You can find more on Pride In STEM’s website.

Pride Month Children Books

• Love Makes a Family by Sophie Beer
• STEM (Pride In …) by Emilie Dufresne
• Neither by Airlie Anderson
• 10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert

The Brand New Sphero indi – Preorders Now Open!

Sphero indi is on the way! Designed specifically for young learners, this programmable easy-to-use robot can be coded to race, solve puzzles, spin, and more, all without any screens. Be the first to get yours by preordering by following the links below. Features of the kit include:

• Programming challenge cards
• On-board color sensor
• Screenless coding
• Durable silicone color tiles
• Carrying case
• Sphero Edu Jr. app compatibility

Watch this video for a quick look at the Sphero indi in action!

Upcoming Events

From June 29-30 we will be at the virtual Keep Indiana Learning Summer Conference. During this #virtuallydifferent conference sessions will demonstrate engaging, research-based strategies to strengthen schools’ focus on digital learning, social-emotional learning, and leadership and culture. This conference is designed with administrators, student service professionals, educators, and pre-service teachers in mind. Register here.

HASTI Pecha Kucha

This June, the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers, Inc. (HASTI) hosts a Pecha Kucha event. The event is a professional development opportunity with the goal of having participants share their STEM education/research expertise in the form of a slide show presentation, with the added challenge of sticking to the Pecha Kucha format. PechaKucha (Japanese for chit chat) is a storytelling format where a presenter shows 20 slides for no more than 20 seconds each (6 minutes and 40 seconds total). The idea is to be concise as possible and to make the information in the presentation as quickly digestible for the audience as possible.

View our submissions from Dr. Jake Roark and Dr. Corey Hall here!

Cool Things We’ve Been Making

Using the STEM technologies we have, like the Glowforge Pro and the Sindoh 3DWOX 1, we have been making a lot of cool and unique things. We usually post them on social media, so give us a follow! Here are a few:

Leafcutter Beehive

Red Skull

Star Wars Chess Board and Pieces

Laser-engraved Macarons

STEM Champions to Follow

• Twitter: NASA STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative – Cool, free PD. Recent sessions include Got Robots?, Explore the Importance of Soil in the Field and in the Lab, and Clouds, Rain, and Hurricanes. Did I mention it’s all FREE?
• Twitter: Angela Benton – One of the most influential women in technology. She is a pioneer of diversity in the technology industry and raising awareness around the inequalities that exist in the industry.
• Instagram: Women Transforming Science – Highlighting the amazing work women are doing in the sciences.
• Instagram: The Visiola Foundation – Mentoring and empowering black women in the STEM fields.