Tech Tips: @Anjuan @BrothaTech @TatianaKing

Tech evangelist BrothaTech recently appeared in a YouTube interview with technology translator Anjuan Simmons.  Both are men of color within the technology space that I highly respect and it's great to see them collaborating on a project. While I have yet to meet Anjuan in person, we've interacted on a variety of social platforms such as Google+ about highly intellectual topics such as the power of Mountain Dew. I ran into BrothaTech at last year's Blogging While Brown convention. He's also known for having some of the most adorable kids on the planet. 

Check out Anjuan and BrothaTech in the video below! In BrothaTech's words: "Just a few of our subjects included where my tech interest came from, diversity in technology, my “BrothaTech” brand, iOS 7, my family, and the XBox One versus the PS4."

Anjuan has a series of other videos on his website with other luminaries within the tech space - here is one with Tatiana King, creator of Love At 1st Byte. Tatiana is my go-to resource for coverage via twitter during live events. Check out the interview with Anjuan and Tatiana below!

Check them out and let them know that Shareef sent you!

Make Smaller Groups? Make More Scientists

I'm a strong proponent of science and math education, and one way that this can be further achieved is by tailoring classes to the needs of students by grouping students by how well they are doing with the material. This has to be balanced with teaching an entire class of students which can vary with abilities, but it can be done. I was happy to read a recent New York Times article by Vivian Yee detailing the history of grouping kids by ability within schools, how it fell out of favor in the 80s, and its current resurgence. Grouping by ability has its issues that have to be handled gracefully, but if we want more scientists, smaller groups are key.

I grew up in the "Gifted and Talented" program in my hometown of Paterson, NJ. Our teachers did the best job that they could in challenging us, but it was implemented poorly: a 35+ student class is likely to vary wildly in terms of ability. The best moments were breaking up into small groups of 4-5 students and working on sessions individually. This is something that I've carried into my larger tutoring sessions.

What happened to many of us in the Gifted and Talented traditional class structure? We got bored. We started to screw around. I saw plenty of good students completely fall off of the wagon. The curiosity and challenge that needs to be instilled in many of our future scientists was squashed when faced with an educational situation that doesn't challenge them. I was lucky enough to have a good support system at home to reinforce lessons, but not all kids do.

Smaller groups and increased focus will take additional resources. This level of effort will take money, time, supplies, training, and additional teachers. But you know what? We need to invest properly in our future, even if it means other things suffer. What other things? I don't know ... like a sports arena?  Check out the clip below from All In With Chris Hayes which discusses "how a city closing schools at least partly due to money is willing to invest $100 million in building a basketball arena for a private university."

Grouping is also something that needs to be done very carefully. Race and class need to be considered so that the groups are not entirely homogeneous. The groups should be very fluid, allowing kids to pass between in a structured manner.  The idea is not to completely separate students of differing ability from one another, but to augment the original lessons with deeper experiences for some groups and basic building for the others. The lesson planning should be structured so that the smaller groups should interact very frequently, since most of the basic content taught should be the same. The objective should always be to move students upward, not to lock them into these groups so that they can't advance no matter what they do (a failure of many of the Gifted and Talented, Honors, and even AP courses that I've seen).  

Is this impossible? Nope. Difficult? Definitely. And it's a long term process. But it's well worth the effort. 

For additional ideas about changing education for the better, check out Sam Seidel's book Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education, along with the accompanying video below.

This article also appears at TWIB

Teachable Moments In Science: Kiera Wilmot

​Photo via WikiMedia

Science is fun! Part of the fun is failing, failing again, and pushing a hypothesis forward or rejecting it based off of evidence. This involves a ton of mistakes - some of which are more dangerous than others.  We need to learn how to turn reasonable mistakes into teachable moments.

16 year old Kiera Wilmot of Bartow High School mixed toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil on school grounds without supervision, resulting in a small non-harmful explosion. She was expelled for violating the school code of conduct, and faces felony charges of "possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device." The gory details, including the full police report, are located on the Miami New Times website.

​Kiera Wilmot, via Miami New Times

The real problem is with the school and the police. When a kid makes a mistake that's not severe, it can be easily turned into a teachable moment. How about suspension instead of expulsion, with the requirement of a lab assignment based on the very experiment that was tried by Kiera? How about requiring a presentation by her to the class and/or principal to show mastery of the subject? This solution combines a reasonable punishment with additional academic work to help Kiera learn the proper way to conduct experiments. It also gives the adults involved another way to gauge her understanding of the scientific method. The penalties should go up for repeated offenses, up to and including expulsion. 

​For more about how scientific curiosity helps us all win, check out my post Curiosity Kills the Gap.

​This post also appears on TWIB.

Motivate Yourself with a TED Science Talk!

TED (Technology, Education, Design) is a nonprofit dedicated to spreading ideas. TED is known for attracting amazing speakers to deliver short but impactful speeches on various subjects. There have been a few great ones regarding science - check them out below!  They will motivate you to be the best that you can, in 5 - 15 minutes!

Almost all new phones have touch screens instead of physical buttons - the following talk by Katherine Kuchenbecker of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) covers the technology behind these screens, and how it can be driven forward.​

This next talk by Freeman Hrabowski covers his success with a diverse STEM program a President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

​The final TED talk is by Elon Musk, who is one of the most fascinating innovators around. He developed the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that's currently running resupply trips to the International Space Station (ISS).  While he's bored with that, he's doing small things like founding PayPal or designing fully electric performance cars under his Tesla Motors company. Whew!

STEM Equality: The Fiscal Argument

Chelsea Clinton (yes, daughter of Slick WIllie) wrote a fascinating piece on STEM in the Huffington Post. She not only recognizes that others have not been able to have the resources that she grew up with, but she makes a fiscal argument for diversity in the workplace.

If women matched men's employment rates in America, GDP would rise by 5 percent, according to Booz & Company. With the U.S. Department of Commerce expecting STEM jobs to grow 17 percent between 2008 to 2018 -- compared to just 9.8 percent for non-STEM jobs -- excluding women from the pipeline hurts American companies in search of the best high-tech talent. Economic expansion hinges on both halves of the workforce receiving the tools needed to drive innovation.​.

​This is a point that is often missing from discussions of diversity, and not just limited to the sciences .  Diversity is not just a "feel good" thing,  It has realistic implications and serves as the only way for our country to keep up with the rest of the world.  Every year that the US finishes near the bottom of  the country lists for math and science, I think about stats such as this.

Check out the rest of the article here!​