TEEAP News

PA House Bill 2460 (pdf Format)

The MESA Initiative has been presented to in the PA State House in order to increase exposure, educational motivation and achievement of students in science, engineering and mathematics and build individual and regional capacity to compete for STEM-based jobs in the global market with a particular emphasis on students, parents, educators and employers from urban and rural groups who have historically had the lowest levels of high school diploma attainment and participation in college and graduate education.

For more information, click on the PDF link above to read the entire house bill. Contact your local politician to encourage them to support this bill.

The International Technology and Engineering Educators Association’s STEM*Center for Teaching and Learning (STEM*CTL) announces collaboration at the Technology Student Association’s Annual National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

The STEM*CTL will provide ½ day EbDLabs™ at the National Conference to highlight middle and high school Engineering byDesign™ course offerings.  These ½ day EbDLabs™ will be hands-on workshops that will provide an orientation for teachers on the Courses. The session will be hands-on, minds-on, preparing teachers with the fundamentals necessary to understand the basics for implementing a standards-based course. Teachers will receive an overview of the course as well as experience how to use EbD™ lesson plans at the high school level to engage students of all ability levels. Participants will get a certificate for 5 professional development hours.

The EbDLabsâ„¢ will be facilitated by Dan Caron, EbD Professional Development Associate/Specialist from New Hampshire.

Cost for each EbDLabâ„¢

-ITEEA Members = $50

-Non-ITEEA Members = $75
(Non-members can join ITEEA for $65 and receive special Members Only pricing – go to the URL below and register as a non-member to get this SPECIAL OFFER)

REGISTER HERE:  https://www.regonline.com/tsa_iteea_ebdlabs

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  http://www.tsaweb.org/2010-National-Conference

Engineering byDesignâ„¢
Developing the next generation of technologists, innovators, designers, & engineers

Barry N. Burke, Director
STEM*Center for Teaching & Learning â„¢
International Technology  & Engineering Educators Association
8133 Seneca View Drive | Gaithersburg, MD  20882-3622
Phone:  301-482-1929 | FAX:  301-482-1978
www.engineeringbydesign.org

The Name Change Investigation Committee (NCI) was formed on November 7, 2009, at the Saturday TEAP Executive Board meeting.  The committee was formed by myself, 2010 TEAP President Brandt Hutzel, to address the C-2010-5 (Investigation of Association Name Change) resolution.  The resolution reads as follows:

WHEREAS, in 1986 the Technology Education Association of Pennsylvania assumed its current association name to reflect a changing curricular focus, be it therefore

RESOLVED, that the Technology Education Association of Pennsylvania will investigate a name change for our association that would better reflect our curricular focus as the T&E in STEM education.

Joanne Trombley was appointed NCI Committee Chair and the following TEAP members volunteered to serve on the committee:  Tanner Huffman, Len Litowitz, Peter Wright, Bill Bertrand, Dan Vavreck, Dan Engstrom, Jared Bitting, Stan Komacek, and Brandt Hutzel.  The committee conversed via email during November and December and participated in a Skype video conference on December 12, 2009.  Several committee members were charged with writing a series of short articles to express varying positions on the subject of an association name change.  These articles will serve to facilitate discussions by all TEAP members using the NCI blog section of the TEAP website.  The NCI blog will remain open January 6 – February 1, 2010.  The NCI committee will meet again via Skype on Saturday, February 06, 2010 to review the blogs and to develop a survey.  The survey will be made available to all TEAP members from February 8- February 24, 2010.  The NCI Committee will meet in Bedford on February 26, 2010 to review survey results and formulate a recommendation or report to give to the board on 2/27/10.

UPDATE 02/27/2010: Comments have been closed for this thread, please feel free to continue the discussion on the Survey Results thread above.

“Kids in Micro-g!” is a student experiment design challenge geared toward grades 5-8. Its purpose is to give students a hands-on opportunity to design an experiment or simple demonstration that could be performed both in the classroom and aboard the International Space Station.

The winning experiments will have observably different results when the experiments are performed in the “1-gravity” or “1-g” environment of the classroom, compared to when the experiments are performed by astronauts in the “Micro-g” (one-millionth of 1-g) environment of the space station. The apparatus for the demonstration must be constructed using materials from a materials tool kit provided to the astronauts on board the space station. The tool kit consists of materials commonly found in the classroom and used for science demonstrations.

The experiment demonstration must take no more than 30 minutes to set up, run and take down. Experiment challenge winners and runners-up will be selected regionally and nationally by the Education offices of the ten NASA centers. The ten regional winners, one national winner and one national runner-up winner will have their experiments conducted by the astronauts on board the space station in the April-May 2010 timeframe. The experiments will be recorded in HD video and the winners supplied with copies of their video before the end of their school year.

Experiment proposals may be submitted by educators on behalf of their student groups. Proposals may be submitted via e-mail or postal mail during the period from Jan. 4, 2010, through Feb. 19, 2010.

The winning experiment proposals will be announced on April 2, 2010.

For more information about the challenge, including a scoring rubric, proposal requirements and a list of materials available to the astronauts, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/nlab/experimentchallenge.html.

Questions about this challenge should be directed to jsc-iss-payloads-helpline@mail.nasa.gov

Now is the time to take action.  This is the biggest thing that will have the most impact on our field.  We will be a nationally tested area.  We need to make sure we are ready!  If we do not deliver who knows what will be coming next.  Everyone needs to give input to the survey!!  We need to encourage our people to be involved for if we are not we will be stuck with what the people who do get involved have to say.

NAEP Technological Literacy Framework for the 2012 test is open for public comment through January 15, 2010 (http://www.edgateway.net/cs/naepsci/view/naep_nav/9).  The framework is still in the development phase. Comments and suggestions are being accepted through January 15, 2010, using the online feedback survey. The National Assessment Governing Board is scheduled to take action on the recommended framework in March 2010. In addition to feedback on the framework as a whole, the project would like specific input on a title for the assessment. It has been suggested that “Technological Literacy” may not appropriately represent the contents of this framework. The Governing Board will be considering a title change and welcomes any alternative suggestions.

Do you have the student who has an amazing idea… one that could be patented and possibly be taken to the commercial marketplace?  The Spirit of Innovation Awards is looking for great ideas, amazing innovations, and entrepreneurial projects that solve real world challenges. Win a trip to California and an opportunity to meet industry leaders and venture capitalists who are also looking for great ideas.
 
To learn more visit www.conradawards.org  The deadline is December 15th!

The TEAP Annual Scholarship is named in honor of William J. Wilkinson, a founding father of the TEAP organization and the second person to serve as President of the Association. Not only did Wilkinson help to create the Association, but he remained active in the Association from the formative years prior to charter in 1952 until his passing in 1997. Wilkinson set a standard for professional service that literally spanned more than 50 years.

The Technology Education Association of Pennsylvania (TEAP) awards a scholarship annually to assist outstanding technology education students in their preparation as technology education teachers. The purpose of the scholarship is to promote the growth and leadership of prospective technology education teachers. It is to be used for paying undergraduate tuition and fees at a Pennsylvania university preparing technology education teachers. The total amount of the scholarship is $1,000.

An interest bearing endowment account has been established to fund the annual scholarships. Every person who joins or renews membership with TEAP will be donating one dollar ($1.00) for each year of membership dues paid. Larger volunteer cash donations are also being sought. These donations may be mailed to the Scholarship Committee Chairperson.

Applications for the scholarship are distributed during the annual TEAP conferences and appear in the Spring issue of the TEAP Journal. They are also available from the TEAP Scholarship Committee Chairperson. Applications are also available in both Adobe and Word format versions. These applications can be found on the TEAP Scholarship page which contains much of the information above in addition to a list of some of the recipients from past year.

Click HERE for a flyer concerning the scholarship. If you are interested in applying for the scholarship you can access the application form on our website at http://www.teap-online.org/awards/Scholarship.pdf. The deadline for application is October 10th every year.

We are thrilled that John Martincic of Forest Scientific has volunteered to donate a full router to the school of one of this year’s attendees of the TEAP Conference.  John stated that he was making this donation to help out TEAP and its members during this downturn in economy as well as to give all of you an incentive to register for the conference. Click here to view the poster concerning this opportunity.

For spacecraft, power is everything. Without electrical power, satellites and robotic probes might as well be chunks of cold rock tumbling through space. Hundreds to millions of miles from the nearest power outlet, these spacecraft must somehow eke enough power from ambient sunlight to stay alive.

That’s no problem for large satellites that can carry immense solar panels and heavy batteries. But in recent years, NASA has been developing technologies for much smaller microsatellites, which are lighter and far less expensive to launch. Often less than 10 feet across, these small spacecraft have little room to spare for solar panels or batteries, yet must still somehow power their onboard computers, scientific instruments, and navigation and communication systems.

Space Technology 5 was a mission that proved, among other technologies, new concepts of power generation and storage for spacecraft.

“We tested high efficiency solar cells on ST-5 that produce almost 60 percent more power than typical solar cells. We also tested batteries that hold three times the energy of  standard spacecraft batteries of the same size,” says Christopher Stevens, manager of NASA’s New Millennium Program. This program flight tests cutting-edge spacecraft technologies so that they can be used safely on mission-critical satellites and probes.

“This more efficient power supply allows you to build a science-grade spacecraft on a miniature scale,” Stevens says.

Solar cells typically used on satellites can convert only about 18 percent of the available energy in sunlight into electrical current. ST-5 tested experimental cells that capture up to 29 percent of this solar energy. These new solar cells, developed in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio, performed flawlessly on ST-5, and they’ve already been swooped up and used on NASA’s svelte MESSENGER probe, which will make a flyby of Mercury later this year.

Like modern laptop batteries, the high-capacity batteries on ST-5 use lithium-ion technology. As a string of exploding laptop batteries in recent years shows, fire safety can be an issue with this battery type.
 
“The challenge was to take these batteries and put in a power management circuit that protects against internal overcharge,” Stevens explains. So NASA contracted with ABSL Power Solutions to develop spacecraft batteries with design control circuits to prevent power spikes that can lead to fires.  “It worked like a charm.”

Now that ST-5 has demonstrated the safety of this battery design, it is flying on NASA’s THEMIS mission (for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) and is slated to fly aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, both of which are scheduled to launch later this year.

Thanks to ST-5, a little sunlight can go a really long way.

Find out about other advanced technologies validated in space and now being used on new missions of exploration at http://nmp.nasa.gov/TECHNOLOGY/scorecard.  Kids can calculate out how old they would be before having to replace lithium-ion batteries in a handheld game at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/st5_bats.shtml.
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This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.