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Day 5 – Working towards a sustainable future

IMG_1630On the final day of camp, Dr. Leslie Vincent, from the College of Business, kept the students very busy investigating sustainable solutions and dreaming up big ideas. They had the opportunity to do some team building activities including another bridge building activity, which was a nice extension from what Dr. Jong did with them yesterday. The students were IMG_1583immersed in “design thinking” as they came up with their dream sustainable product.

For the final day in Robotics, the students had mini-competitions…with themselves. Instead of doing a full competition, the students worked on completing the individual challenges for Green City. We saw lots of dams IMG_1662being broken down, smoke stacks being replaced, etc. The students really seemed to enjoy robotics this week and learned a lot.

We took some video today and we’ll try to get it uploaded by Monday at the latest. We really enjoyed this group of campers and we hope that they will consider coming to the See Blue STEM Camp next year!

 

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Day 4 – What’s Math Got to do with it?

IMG_1527Today the campers got down and dirty with marshmallows, toothpicks, and paper in order to explore three-dimensional geometry. Dr. Cindy Jong, from the Dept of STEM Education challenged the students to see mathematics in everyday life through a bridge activity and then furthered the exploration with origami. The students were so excited they even worked through lunch on their origami figures!

IMG_1570In robotics, the students continued with their Green City Challenges. Today they focused on starting the windmill, placing a solar panel on a rooftop, and tearing down a dirty smoke stack and replacing it with a clean one.

The campers have really settled into their routines nicely! It’s hard to believe we only have one day left!! We did a better job of taking pictures today so click here to see the new additions!

 

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Day 3 Got flies?

Day 3 brought a very nice follow-up to Day 2’s brain activities! The students got to go over to the biology laboratory with Dr. Robin Cooper from the College of Arts and Sciences to explore animal behavior and sensory systems. They experimented with the five senses using fruit flies – looking at how they function in various conditions. The students collected data on mouth movements of the larvae and other data regarding the sense using the lab microscopes. They also completed experiments involving their own neurobiology and the five senses.

In robotics the students have started the Green City Challenge.  This started with trying to block the dam of the city. On Thursday they will continue with windmills, solar panels, etc. The kids are really excited about the challenges and have really enjoyed programming and testing their programs – it’s great to see the engineering practices at work!

Did you know that the See Blue STEM Camp not only benefits your student, but students of UK as well? We are very fortunate this year to have graduate students from STEM Education, Engineering, and Biology help out with the presentations. They are learning a lot about working with adolescents as well as sharpening their presentation skills. We also have a few preservice mathematics teachers helping us out this week and next week; they have gained invaluable hands-on experiences in working with middle school students!

Click below for updated pictures

STEM Camp pics

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Google Scholar Citations

Google Scholar has added another feature…Citations. Just go to the following link: scholar.google.com/citations and enter in the information and you can start collecting your publications on your profile. If you have written under multiple names, be sure to search for all of them as some may not automatically populate. I was able to find five of my articles right away. I believe there is a feature to add in publications and even link to them, but I haven’t done much searching yet.

You can make your citation profile public or private and even add a photo, website, etc. You can list your connections (universities for example), email address, and research interests. What a great way to connect to people! Another cool feature is linking up with your co-authors.

This seems to be more reliable than some of the other indexes some people use to record citations. I verified all of my citations by downloading the articles and reading away. It was fun to see how people cited my work and in what context!

Google does have the disclaimer: Dates and citation counts are estimated and are determined automatically by a computer program. Just double check to make sure they really are and you are good to go. What a great thing to add to a vita, dossier, or even your annual review!

 

Margaret Mohr-Schroeder – Google Scholar Citations.