March, 2008. As promised on this page last month, we have launched the Thornburg Center for Space Exploration (click on the logo below to see our site).  This project is designed to help today's learners develop and expand their interest in the STEM subjects.  While our initial efforts will focus on high school and middle school students, we envision expansion into lower grades as well!


February, 2008,  One of the more challenging areas of STEM education is engineering; probably because so few engineers choose K-12 teaching as a profession.  For this reason, I'm on the lookout for really neat resources that can help young people develop and maintain an interest in designing and building things.  One new set of gadgets that falls nicely into this category is the Bug from BugLabs.  This kit contains a variety of modules that can snap together to create powerful devices.  For example, if you wanted to build a digital camera that puts the latitude and longitude on each picture, you would snap in a digital camera module, a GPS module, and a LCD display (for the viewfinder).  All these modules would connect to the main unit.  Because the Bug design is all open source, outsiders are encouraged to develop their own modules and software for this device.  The Bug will be formally introduced at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2008!

To see a nice video on the thinking behind this product (from MIT's Technology Review website), click here.