Transforming Nanotechnology into Hands-on Learning with Science Buddies
Science Buddies is helping children from all walks of life build their literacy in science and technology so that they can become productive and engaged citizens in the 21st century. To achieve this, we address a key problem identified by the National Research Council—the deficit of inquiry-based STEM learning opportunities. We give students, teachers, and parents the tools and resources to explore whatever topics in science are most inspiring to them, especially new fields of cutting-edge research. Our project is to create science project ideas and resources related to nanotechnology and to field test these in five underserved classrooms. Through learning about breakthrough technologies, students connect with how they can solve problems of today and the future.
About You
About You
First Name
Courtney
Last Name
Corda
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Science Buddies
Organization Website
Organization Phone
925-736-2696
Organization Address
P.O. Box 5038 Carmel, CA 93921
Organization Country
United States
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Transforming Nanotechnology into Hands-on Learning with Science Buddies
What change do you want to bring to the world?
Science Buddies is helping children from all walks of life build their literacy in science and technology so that they can become productive and engaged citizens in the 21st century. To achieve this, we address a key problem identified by the National Research Council—the deficit of inquiry-based STEM learning opportunities. We give students, teachers, and parents the tools and resources to explore whatever topics in science are most inspiring to them, especially new fields of cutting-edge research. Our project is to create science project ideas and resources related to nanotechnology and to field test these in five underserved classrooms. Through learning about breakthrough technologies, students connect with how they can solve problems of today and the future.
What are the primary activities of your project?
There is an urgent need for our resources. In 2010 alone, the Science Buddies website served 10 million visitors. Although we have developed 30 Interest Areas, each representing a key field within science, that overarch 1000+ science Project Ideas, we still face key gaps in areas that have high projected job growth and appeal to students.
Our first priority for a new Interest Area is to create accessible, hands-on ideas for informal exploration of nanotechnology and nanotech science projects. Proposed projects range from exploring issues of biotoxicity to building a model of an Atomic Force Microscope. Students will explore concepts such as size, shape/structure, surface area, forces at the nano level, self-assembly, toxicity, and both imaging and manufacturing in nanotechnology. To create new content for this area, we propose to partner with the best and pilot ideas with students, as follows:
• Build partnerships between our science staff and key university researchers to co-develop Project Ideas that inspire students with breakthrough research (using our successful Academic Outreach Partnership model).
• Partner with five underserved schools or science fairs to field test this new Science Buddies content.
• Publish the content on our website, to be used by tens of thousands of students each year (an average Project Idea on our website is downloaded about 15,000 times annually).
• Leverage existing nanotech content from other organizations by promoting it to our large audience of motivated students.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
Nanotechnology will revolutionize diverse industries. Students are excited by cutting-edge fields like nanotechnology, but lack “everyday” access to it that they might have for a more tangible science. Introducing students to this field is crucial. According to the Texas Nanotechnology Report, "Nanotechnology has the potential to create an industrial revolution that will have a major impact on 21st century society… similar to [IT's] impact in the 20th century."
Science Buddies has experience in bringing research from top labs to students in an age-appropriate way. We are in the process of approaching researchers we can partner with in making nanotech concepts relevant and concrete, and we will work with underserved schools to set up real-world pilots.
While there are other organizations that offer nanotech student resources, our site provides a more intuitive platform. Since we offer practical and inspiring help for doing science projects, millions of science fair participants have reasons to visit. Other nanotech educational sites, such as nisenet.org, offer rich content, but we can reach a far higher proportion of the K-12 student body. (Traffic in January 2011 was 940 visitors for nisenet.org and 718,000 visitors for Science Buddies. Source: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nisenet.org+sciencebuddies.org/). We forecast that the new Nanotech Interest Area alone will eventually serve around 100,000 students annually. In short, Science Buddies has both the infrastructure and the established web presence to dramatically amplify the results of a local pilot.
What stage is your project in?
Idea phase
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
At Science Buddies, we know that education is the great equalizer and that the web levels the playing field for students in ways never before possible. Our website, www.sciencebuddies.org, provides free science education resources to 10 million visitors per year; >15% of whom are from underserved communities. Here are some of the demographics of registered users:
• 55% female, 45% male.
• Geographic location of U.S. visitors is roughly proportionate to state population.
• Registrants identifying as African-American, Latino, or Native American were 25% of the total.
Every year, we hear from teachers that our programs have supported participation in science fairs by students from underfunded schools. As just one example, Katherine Leatham from Crestview Elementary School in Layton, Utah, wrote,
"… [My sixth-grade] students and I all found the site very user-friendly, and full of great suggestions, tips and advice. The Topic Selection Wizard is an extremely helpful tool. Instead of wading through hundreds of science fair ideas that hold little to no interest for them, students are provided with suggestions that complement their interests and ignite their curiosity...The Project Summary detailing the time, materials and possible dollar cost involved for each project is a great reality check for students, especially in an at-risk school like mine, where parental assistance and money for materials are sometimes hard to come by. Using Science Buddies increased student interest and participation in the science fair, and contributed to greater student completion rates for projects."
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
Years ago, founder Ken Hess enjoyed mentoring his daughter when she did a science fair project. He realized the value of a science project in teaching not only science and math skills but also research, time management, and communication. He wondered how students who did not have scientists for parents could reap maximum benefit from science projects.
As a serial entrepreneur with software design experience, Ken saw an opportunity to give all students equal access to the inspiration and support to explore science. Ken started an online science fair mentoring program in 2001, called Science Buddies. When he heard that students' major challenge was picking a topic, he created an engaging project recommender tool called the Topic Selection Wizard (TSW). Since its debut in 2003, the TSW has guided hundreds of thousands of students. Far better than a static list of topics, the TSW asks easy questions about a student's age, activities, and hobbies, and then uses a sophisticated algorithm to predict which Project Ideas will best suit each student's unique interests. The tool now directs students to customized choices among our more than 1,000 Project Ideas covering 30 fields of science and engineering. Over time, the site has grown to include dozens of additional resources such as the “Ask an Expert” advice forum where students can get their science questions answered, a teacher resources area, and a step-by-step project guide. The site comprises the equivalent of about 15,000 printed pages and offers help to 10 million+ students, parents, and teachers annually.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
Science Buddies is already a proven platform for science education. As Karen Nielsen, teacher at Capri Elementary School in Campbell, CA, told us, "I can't say enough good things about Science Buddies. What a great resource for me and my students." Millions of others seem to agree. Our site traffic for 2010 increased 21.5% over 2009 to 10 million visitors and over 88 million page views.
Within this successful model, nanotechnology will be a new resource. We will track success first with the local pilot when students and teachers at our partner, underserved schools will test drive the Project Ideas. We will track:
• Clarity of instructions as judged by students and teachers
• Ease of procuring materials (which we may support with teacher grant programs)
• Applicability to science curricula and standards as judged by teachers
• Students' interest in learning more or considering a nanotech-related career
• Before and after testing of students' knowledge
Once we publish the resources nationwide, we will measure national impact through tools such as Google Analytics, as follows:
• Whether students are directed to the new projects by our Topic Selection Wizard recommender tool
• Usage of nanotechnology Project Ideas and related materials
• Ratings of nanotechnology resources by students, teachers, and education experts
• Use of bulletin boards to ask questions
• Quality of advice from "Ask an Expert" volunteer e-mentors
In summary, Science Buddies evaluates itself on an ongoing basis with quantitative measures reflecting recruiting, usage, satisfaction, and effectiveness.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
Fewer than 100
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
Over three years, pending funding from a variety of donors, we will aim for 15-20 Project Ideas, drawing a projected 100,000 visitors per year. To facilitate nanotechnology education, we will develop relevant career profiles, supplemental tutorials, and materials for teachers and parents.
We will continue to focus on how nanotechnology can revolutionize a wide range of science and engineering applications. Students studying aeronautics, for example, need projects to explore how nanotech can bolster safety, such as nano-enhanced aircraft wings that repel ice formation. Students interested in computer science should have a chance to explore nano-scale chips and semiconductors. In this way, students will begin to explore the connection between nanotech and their future careers.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Like all not-for-profits, Science Buddies may face a barrier in securing funding for the ongoing development and support of the website and its free programs and resources, including the proposed nanotechnology Interest Area. Since nanotechnology has the potential to transform so many IT, health, energy, and other applications, we have identified companies developing a diverse spectrum of uses for nanotechnology. From this pool of prospective donors, Goodrich, Samsung, and Hitachi have all invited us to submit proposals, which are currently pending. Science Buddies has established a unique corporate sponsorship program that provides the companies with a mutually beneficial partnership, including publicity and volunteer opportunities for community-minded employees. We will also seek support from other sources such as private foundations, individual donors, and perhaps government sources.
Although many corporations are beginning to utilize nanotech applications, the area remains poorly-understood by the general public. Indeed, some educators, in the trenches of day-to-day motivating their students, may not have had the chance to understand its potential. Therefore, we may need to explain the value of including nanotech in a 21st century science curriculum. We have already identified many resources that demonstrate how innovations at the nano scale can have a large and positive societal impact.
Tell us about your partnerships
We plan to employ a top-to-bottom partnership, bringing together universities, teachers, and students. Science Buddies has experience in bringing scientific advances to children in an effective hands-on format as described in the journal Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6029/550.full). In that partnership, our staff scientists worked with MIT researchers to create a project to explore new catalysts for splitting water. Within nanotech academia, Drs. Mamadou Diallo of Cal Tech, Julie Dillemuth of UCSB, Catherine Nameth of UCLA, and Miriam Rafailovich of SUNY Stony Brook have indicated they will collaborate with us to develop nanotech content. Another opportunity for partnership is the chance for students themselves to operate a Bugscope scanning electron microscope remotely at the University of Illinois Beckman Institute. Tangible experiences like these can help students realize that what had seemed inconceivable can apply to real world problems.
Ultimately, the goal of this partnership is to foster interest in STEM careers. A key way to get this right is to gather feedback from students and teachers by piloting Project Ideas in underserved schools. Science projects teach real-world skills, such as research and hypothesis-testing. Partner schools will likely include the Louis Armstrong Middle School (Queens, NY) which serves a diverse population, including special needs and ESL students, and Bayside STEM Academy (San Mateo, CA), a middle school where 60% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and one-third are English-language learners.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
More than $1 million
Explain your selections
Science Buddies enjoys a wide range of support from diverse and stable sources, from corporate giving to family foundations. Despite the worldwide economic downturn, we successfully raised our operating budget in 2010. Our president, who has decades of software development and engineering experience, donates his time and has charted a course of delivering our content online that yields a highly-leveraged return on investment. Our lean organization has consistently operated very efficiently at a much lower cost per student served than other prominent mentoring and education organizations, in part due to our web-based model. Our ability to leverage partnerships to extend the work of our in-house content development has been a key strategy to keep Science Buddies efficient.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
From a starting point of three to five nanotechnology science Project Ideas in the initial phase of the project, we plan on growing our nanotechnology offerings in breadth and depth. In terms of breadth, we seek to partner with additional underserved schools to test Project Ideas that introduce a range of nanotech applications. Nanotechnology is not an industry itself; rather it is a strategy that can be employed in a range of sectors; from healthcare to IT. Therefore, particularly for nanotech, it is critical to develop a range of product ideas that can attract students with diverse interests.
In terms of depth, a key advantage of Science Buddies' approach to STEM education is that our approach doesn't stop with a hands-on lesson in a classroom or even with a multi-week science project. Science Buddies guides students on a complete roadmap to a STEM career. With support at every step of scientific inquiry, we help students thrive throughout a challenging assignment. But we take it further by introducing students, at their moments of greatest interest, to careers that use the concepts they just learned in that Project Idea. Career profiles include job growth trends, education requirements, and even in some cases, multimedia. As part of our nanotech effort, we will add rich information regarding this growing job sector.
Partnerships and Accountability
Please tell us more about how your partnership was formed and how it functions. What specific role does each partner play? What unique resources does each partner bring to the initiative?
We have summarized our partners and their strengths below:
• Universities: Latest research and a commitment to community outreach.
• Science Buddies staff scientists: Experience in making concepts hands-on and accessible, honed from developing 1,000+ science Project Ideas.
• Teachers at partner schools: A real-world perspective on what works for science learning experiences.
• Students at partner schools: Our student pioneers will become key partners in creating an enduring online resource for 100,000+ students each year.
• Other resources: We hope to repurpose great content from other organizations for our larger audience. For example, through a partnership with the PBS' series "DragonflyTV," we may integrate clips from nanotech episodes—with video a proven technique to gain student interest.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
We will use multiple strategies to ensure accountability for students' STEM learning. For the students in the nanotech pilot project, we will gather success stories and detailed feedback regarding how to improve the new resources. As detailed earlier, we will survey students regarding their interest in learning more and whether they are considering a nanotech career after using the resources. We will ask teachers to judge the applicability of the resources to science standards and the overall quality of the materials. In addition, we will conduct pre- and post-tests of students' science knowledge.
To ensure effective partnerships with university researchers, we have already established a structure: a detailed list of responsibilities, customized for each academic partner, and a staff scientist, Dr. Sandra Slutz, who personally manages these relationships.
As we publish new content on our website, we will carefully analyze visitor response in terms of website statistics and students' rankings. We will track how the Topic Selection Wizard, an "intelligent" project recommender, sends students to nanotech ideas, solving the key difficulty students have in picking a topic. In other Interest Areas, students who use the Wizard are 95% more likely to find a project idea that satisfies them compared with students who browse possible projects. We will track whether this statistic holds true for our new nanotechnology resources.
Needs
Investment, Human Resources/Talent, Innovation/Ideas.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
We continually seek partners who are involved in creating the latest scientific and engineering advances and wish to find ways to inspire students to solve future problems. We also welcome requests from schools and out-of-school programs interested in adding and improving informal science exploration experiences and science projects and fairs. We have a long history of giving advice to these educators and connecting them with resources, tools, and mentors. Meanwhile, we need their real-world feedback and suggestions to guide our continual quest for improvement.
Offers
Marketing/Media, Collaboration/Networking, Mentorship.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
With annual website traffic of more than 10 million visitors (and still growing at a rate of 20% from 2009 to 2010), the Science Buddies website can help broadcast innovative science content to a large audience. And with our science fair focus, this audience has a reason and motivation to seek support and guidance. Furthermore, because resources on our website are arranged by topic area, we can deliver messages from partners to a perfectly targeted audience. For example, when Northrop Grumman Foundation wanted to heighten awareness about their Weightless Flights of Discovery professional development program for teachers, we put a public service announcement (PSA) about it in our Aerodynamics Interest Area. The PSA was very successful in boosting teacher applications to the program.
