Are you looking for inspiration on how to get involved in IEA’s upcoming peer-to-peer STEAM-A-THON fundraiser? Look no further than Academy students! 

Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math are infused in the work of Academy students, who show that learning can be both challenging and fun. Students in classes such as Math for Future Architects, Space Academy, Jurassic Life and smARTy Science turn problem-solving opportunities into innovative solutions and expressions of self. Thinking critically, trying new skills, and taking risks when collaborating with peers are lessons learned that go far beyond the classroom. What future professions do the talents seen in these projects by young bright students bring to mind? 

This fall, IEA is excited to invite Academy students and other bright minds of all ages to participate in our STEAM-A-THON fundraising event by submitting a response to one of 3 challenges designed to promote innovation, community and play. Contestants will have the opportunity to win prizes determined by a panel of uniquely qualified judges. For more information on how to participate, including details on challenges, check out our STEAM-A-THON rules page by clicking here.

What elements of STEAM would showcase YOUR interests and talents? 

If you would like to join us as a fundraiser without entering a submission for the STEAM-A-THON Challenge, please visit our Join As A Fundraiser page for how to get started.

IEA’s STEAM-A-THON 2021 is a four-week virtual event set to kick-off on Saturday, September 18 and will feature engaging opening and closing presentations, an innovator STEAM Challenge with judges panel, multiple prize opportunities, and special Keynote Speaker, Mike Brown, Professor of Planetary Astronomy at Caltech. Join us for this wonderful opportunity to inspire our young STEAM critical thinkers while raising vital funds to support IEA’s gifted programs, services and financial aid for students in need. With your help, we can reach our overall fundraising goal of $40,000!

As educators around the world explore new ways to instill students with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful innovators in an ever-evolving 21^st century, there has been a growing emphasis placed on STEAM – an educational discipline that engages students with the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics.  Many educators believe STEAM (and its forerunner STEM) is a critical component of 21^st education. “Education is under pressure to respond to a changing world,” education writer Jeevan Vasagar asserts in a Financial Times article.  As repetitive tasks are eroded by technology and outsourcing, the ability to solve novel problems has become increasingly vital.”

STEAM inspires teachers to utilize project-based learning that intersects each of the five fields and cultivates an inclusive learning environment in which all students are able to connect and contribute.  Unlike traditional methods of teaching, educators use the STEAM framework to bring the disciplines together and enable students to use both sides of their brain at the same time.  STEAM not only teaches students how to think critically, solve problems and use creativity, it prepares students to work in career areas that are predicted to experience significant growth.

Why add the “A” in STEAM?  When it comes to equipping our youth with creative critical thinking skills, STEM is not enough. The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) was one of the early champions of adding the arts to the earlier STEM education framework to create STEAM which emphasizes the important “symbiosis between the arts and sciences.”  According to RISD, ”The goal is to foster the true innovation that comes with combining the mind of a scientist or technologist with that of an artist or designer.”  Former RISD President, John Maeda, an early advocate for STEAM, has emphasized the concept that design thinking and creativity are essential ingredients for innovation.

The IEA team is excited to be planning the IEA STEAM-a-thon, a peer-to-peer fundraising event set to kick off on Saturday, September 18.  This four-week virtual event will feature opening and closing presentations, STEAM challenges/experiments for competition, a judges panel, prizes and a keynote speaker.  This is a wonderful opportunity to inspire young STEAM innovators from across the country and raise vital funding for IEA’s programs and services.   IEA needs your support!  We invite you, your family or your business to become a SPONSOR of the STEAM-a-thon.  Click here for sponsorship information. In August, be on the lookout for information on the IEA website about joining the STEAM-a-thon.

We’re kicking off Women’s History Month by sharing resources specifically for the amazing girls* in our gifted community who are already making history! What resources have been helpful for the gifted girls in your life? Share them with us!

1. Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program

Though normally a 7-week program, the signature Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program will be running virtually in 2021. The 2-week opportunity is available to rising sophomore, junior, and senior girls—trans and cis—and non-binary students. No prior computer science experience is required. The program covers projects related to computer science, such as art, storytelling, robotics, video games, web sites, and apps. Participants will also hear from guest speakers, participate in workshops, and connect with female engineers and entrepreneurs.

2. E-Girl Essay Contest

The EngineerGirl website is a service of the National Academy of Engineering that is designed to bring national attention to the exciting opportunities that engineering represents for girls and women. Every year, the EngineerGirl website sponsors a contest dealing with engineering and its impact on our world. Though submissions are closed for 2021, the next prompt will be announced in September.

3. All Girls/All Math Summer Mathematics Camp

This week-long summer mathematics camp for high school girls provides a stimulating and supportive environment for girls to develop their mathematical ability and interest. In 2021, the program will be virtual and open to all genders. Participants learn about the exciting mathematics of Codes, interact with peers who share an interest in mathematics, and work with female mathematics graduate students and professors. The campers stay in a residence hall and are chaperoned by female mathematics graduate students and undergraduate students.

4. Ellen Littman

Dr. Ellen Littman is a clinical psychologist licensed in New York State, with a focus on high IQ adults and adolescents. Dr. Littman has been recognized by the American Psychological Association as a pioneer in the identification of gender differences in ADHD, with special expertise understanding issues affecting women and girls with ADHD. She was a podcast guest on the topic of “Why ADHD is Different for Women” in December 2020 – you can listen here.

5. Smith College Pre-College Programs

Designed by Smith’s professors and staff, precollege programs offer an inspiring learning experience. The hands-on, collaborative environment lets students directly engage with world-class scholars who help them pursue their passions and develop new skills. Both remote and on-campus opportunities are available.

6. Math Prize for Girls

The Advantage Testing Foundation Math Prize for Girls is the largest math prize for girls in the world. Each fall at MIT, nearly 300 young female mathematicians compete in the challenging test of mathematical creativity and insight. Their goal is to promote gender equity in the STEM professions and to encourage young women with exceptional potential to become mathematical and scientific leaders. Their format for the Fall 2021 contest has not been announced at the time of publication.

7. The Maker Mom

Kim Moldofsky’s mission for this blog is to help parents raise STEM-loving, Maker-friendly kids. She writes about raising gifted children, girls in STEM, and the Maker Movement. Additionally, she is the founder of #STEMchat, which brings parents, educators and STEM professionals together monthly via Twitter to share resources and ideas.

* We are using “girls” to include any gender-expansive or gender nonconforming youth. Definitions may differ by organization.

Fall has arrived and, with it, more distance learning! To those who are still participating in IEA online offerings like Academy and Spyglass, it’s been great to see you. To those who we haven’t seen in a while, we hope you’re hanging in there!

There’s a lot to juggle right now, so here are some ways for kids who love to learn to expand their knowledge without adding another Zoom meeting to their busy calendars:

1. Listen to a Podcast

There’s a podcast for every interest and they’re a perfect way to learn while on walks or car rides! If you’d like to listen to a podcast about giftedness, check out our recommended list from last year.

2. Start a Garden

Whether you start with a cactus or a vegetable garden, testing out your green thumb has plenty of learning opportunities.

3. Conduct a Survey

If you’re looking to gain some number sense and analytical skills, try sending a survey to family and friends, then drawing conclusions from the results. You can even display your family’s favorite animals or ice cream flavors in a pie chart!

4. Watch a Documentary

Not only are documentaries great antidotes to stress, but you can learn something while you watch! There are engaging documentaries available about nature, space, history, musicians, and more.

5. Observe an Animal

Go outside and find an animal – a bird, insect, squirrel, or otherwise – and watch it for several minutes. What is it doing? Does it have cool adaptations? What do you think it eats?

6. Write (or Draw) a Story

We all have a story to tell! Whether you write about something that happened to you, your favorite historical figure, or something entirely fictional, flex your brain by thinking about how to tell the story in the most interesting way. Is there information you can wait to reveal to build suspense? Is there a joke that could make your readers laugh?

7. Learn a New Art Form

Now is a great time to learn how to weave, embroider, macrame, or paint. Anything can be art, and it’s so nice to take a break from screens to make something with your hands. Look online or head to a local craft store for inspiration!

8. Play a Strategy Game

IEA students love to play Connect 4, Sequence, Settlers of Catan, and Set. These and other games can help boost your logic skills even while you’re enjoying time with your family.

9. Cook or Bake

The culinary arts are full of chemistry and math! Pick out a recipe that uses ingredients you already have on-hand, then start measuring and mixing. What kind of physical and chemical reactions happen as you complete each step? How would you double the recipe?

10. Take a Virtual Museum Tour

We all miss walking around museums, but the next best thing is safely touring them from home. The British Museum, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, and many others have virtual tours online.

How else have you been learning this year? Let us know in the comments!

In this video, 2023 CDB Scholar Arul Kolla continues the series of videos about creative problem solving by talking about changing your point of view. In many problems, we often get stuck after trying for a long time. How do we get “unstuck”? And how do we change our point of view and attack the question from a different angle? In this video, we see more tips on creative problem solving in general and how to find new ways to look at a problem.

Creative Problem Solving Series 

It seems that everyone today talks about creative problem solving. Curriculum guides list problem solving skills as key objectives at all levels, and professional organisations recommend that creative problem solving becomes the focus of school mathematics. Many people believe that the ability to solve problems develops automatically from mastery of computational skills. This is not necessarily true; problem solving is itself a skill. A problem is more challenging than a typical exercise because the route to the solution is often not known beforehand, and requires some level of creativity.

It seems that everyone today talks about creative problem-solving. Curriculum guides list problem-solving skills as key objectives at all levels, and professional organizations recommend that creative problem solving becomes the focus of school mathematics. Many people believe that the ability to solve problems develops automatically from mastery of computational skills. This is not necessarily true; problem-solving is itself a skill. A problem is more challenging than a typical exercise because the route to the solution is often not known beforehand, and requires some level of creativity.

Creative Problem Solving I – Unusual Patterns

In this video, 2023 CDB Scholar Arul Kolla kicks off a series of videos centered around creative problem solving by talking about “unusual patterns” — when we see patterns that go beyond traditional skip-counting, how do we approach them? In this video, we see a variety of techniques that both help solve these problems and more general ideas for the topic of creative problem-solving.

Presented by 2023 Caroline D. Bradley Scholar Arul Kolla

Required materials: paper, a die (more sides are better!) or a coin

1. Write a poem or story about science.

Get writing! Tell a story about your favorite scientist as dramatically as you can, write poetry about a cool science fact, or describe a feat of engineering using your most vivid vocabulary.

2. Teach your family about something you love.

The best way to learn something deeply is to teach it. Turn your family members into your students and tell them all about something you’ve learned recently whether it’s how to build the best paper airplane or how a chemical reaction works.

3. Create nature art.

Make a leaf rubbing, stick sculpture, or tower of balanced pebbles to integrate both sides of your brain.

4. Invent something to solve a problem.

What’s something you wish were easier? Design something to meet a need, starting with a blueprint and working toward a prototype.

5. Test your brain with riddles.

Find challenging riddles on Ted-Ed or elsewhere, then attempt to solve them with your family.

6. Head to the library.

Ask a librarian to help you find books about STEAM at your reading level. Reading is a wonderful way to find a new interest!

7. Ask questions.

STEAM is all about asking creative questions and trying to find answers. Observe the world around you and keep a list of questions you come up with throughout the day: How do stoplights work? Why do some trees lose their leaves and not others? Then work with an adult to find the answers.

8. Build something using recycled materials.

Gather items you normally would have thrown away – packaging, receipts, dried-out pen, etc. – and see what you can build out of the items!

9. Interview a scientist.

If you were a scientist, what kind of scientist would you be? Research to find someone who has your dream job, then write them a letter or email asking them about their work and how they got to be where they are.

10. See what IEA offerings are coming up!

If you’re local to the Pasadena area, check out our upcoming LABS workshops (7^th-10^th grade), check back for the Spring schedule of Academy classes (K-8^th grade) in a couple of weeks or mark your calendars for when the EXPLORE (10^th-12^th grade) externship program application goes live!

Celebrating a different way? Comment below!

When Leonardo da Vinci is mentioned, either in an academic setting or in a casual conversation, one of several knee-jerk references usually comes to mind:

• His inventions
• The Mona Lisa
• The Vitruvian Man, his painstakingly accurate depiction of the human form
• His influence on the Renaissance as a whole

What is more fascinating about da Vinci than his singular achievements, however, is that his portfolio of accomplishments – both achieved and never fully realized – spans more disciplines and fields than any other inventor, scientist, artist or influencer either before or since. (They don’t call him The Renaissance Man for nothing!)

Not one to rest on his laurels, da Vinci is oft quoted as having said, “Learning never exhausts the mind.” Did you know he is widely considered to be the father of architecture, paleontology, ichnology and dabbled – with varying intensity – in invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history and cartography?

Whatever profession you most associate with da Vinci, here are some fun facts to get you excited about Genius Day X: Da Vinci and our upcoming Fall Academy classes.

Simply put, da Vinci loved water and anything associated with it. Though they never came to fruition in his lifetime, da Vinci developed plans for a SCUBA-like underwater breathing device, a life preserver, a diving bell and floating snowshoes.

This fall, Academy is running an NAGC award-winning curriculum course on sustainability, developed by Yunasa Fellow Shelagh Gallagher, called It’s Electrifying! Fueling the Future, which focuses on alternative forms of energy, including wave energy and tidal energy.

He also studied the erosion of rivers in Europe and figured out that the earth is older than previously believed, based on a scientific investigation of water and soil samples, maps and journals. Though discredited at the time, due to the cultural climate, da Vinci’s findings were eventually deemed accurate.

Is your child interested in learning about the universe’s origin, evolution and current structure? Check out IEA Academy instructor Tristan Murphy’s new class From Dust to Dawn: Constructing the History of the Universe, where students will gain a comprehensive understanding of our universe’s complex development into what it is today.

da Vinci was a creative writer – not in the style or vocabulary he chose, but in the physical act of writing he executed. He wrote most of his work from right to left – the opposite of traditional written print. The result of this writing was a mirror script, which was difficult for most people to read. Historians have postulated that he did so intentionally, in order to keep his writing secret, though it may be simply because he was left-handed, making this unusual writing style was easier.

Check out Academy’s Saturday class Page One: Creative Writing for an opportunity to delve into language, style, and genre – and possibly the chance to develop your own mirror script!

Flight was another big area of focus for da Vinci, who is credited as being the first person to study the flight of birds scientifically. He spent considerable time delving into the field of ornithology and used what he observed and analyzed as inspiration to try and replicate wings and flying apparatuses for humans using biomimicry. One of da Vinci’s designs that he never got off the ground (no pun intended) was the parachute. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that a South African skydiver finally tested da Vinci’s design by developing a prototype based on his sketches.

Is your child interested in similar types of STEAM constructs? Be sure to have them join the Tuesday afternoon course STEAM Building: Creative Constructs, where students will design and test things such as marble runs, catapults, parachutes, spaghetti bridges, and much more. Or, have your child try Inventioneers, a class based on genius inventors like da Vinci, where students will play the dual role of inventor and engineer and come up with their own genius invention!

da Vinci believed that sight was mankind’s most important sense, which is why he focused so heavily on art, architecture, biological studies, sketching and the written word. He is quoted as saying, “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt.”

Does your child have a knack for design and visuals? Do they enjoy creating appealing graphics and imagery? Be sure to sign them up for Web Design II: Form and Function on Monday evenings, where students will gain the skills needed to transform their own personally-designed website from functional to fabulous.

Though da Vinci’s list of accomplishments and endeavors may seem overwhelming, there’s no denying that his is truly a canon of inspiration and motivation. For more information on Genius Day X: Da Vinci: Restless Renaissance Rebel, visit the event webpage. This exciting day of learning is open to students in grades 4-8 and will take place at the breathtaking Getty Center on September 30th.

To view Academy course descriptions and register for fall courses, visit the Academy webpage. Apply by August 27^th!

What is your favorite work from da Vinci? Tell us in the comments!

Source: https://www.leonardodavinci.net/

By Vinjay Vale, 2013 CDB Scholar

Today’s education system has created a rift between STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and the humanities. It may seem counterintuitive, but studying the humanities actually makes you a better scientist. Scholars of literature, philosophy, art, and history develop an understanding and appreciation for what it means to be human. I believe it is vital for scientists to study these fields, especially in a modern world full of rapid technological advances.

Through my own research, I experienced firsthand how the humanities can help scientific research.

My Regeneron STS project was on Artificial Intelligence, specifically teaching computer programs to learn and interpret geometric structures in visual scenes. The current state-of-the-art has poor spatial and compositional understanding; for example, it classifies a leopard-print couch as a leopard despite the furniture’s lack of a head and tail. Understanding how objects are composed of their parts is critical for complex vision tasks like visual reasoning. My approach to the problem deviated from the modern paradigm of neural networks. Believe it or not, I was inspired by a 1987 psychology paper by American vision scientist Irving Biederman on the Recognition By Components theory for human vision. The theory is based on breaking down complex objects into simple spatial elements called geons.

As I worked on my project, I spent multiple weeks outside the lab where I exclusively read books and papers, on subjects ranging from art to artificial intelligence, some suggested by my mentor Kevin Ellis (who I met through the MIT PRIMES high-school research program). In philosophy class, meanwhile, I learned about Plato’s Theory of Forms, and realized that I was trying to recreate a similar understanding of the visual world in computers.

Making connections between these diverse fields helped me develop the necessary insights to make headway on my interdisciplinary problem: teaching a computer to learn and interpret visual scenes.

My work falls into an emerging category of AI research called explainable AI — that is, building artificial intelligence systems that can articulate their thought processes to humans. This is an important area of AI safety, which merges ethics and philosophy with the more technical side of computer science.

In general, the gray area where ethics and tech meet is ripe for exploration. The underlying digital buzz permeating all aspects of our lives makes human moral judgement all the more essential. Think about social media, big pharma, self-driving cars — scientists who understand ethics have the capacity to make a positive impact on the world. Studies have shown that engaging in arts, history, and literature bolsters morality, compassion, and empathy. As a pianist, composer, and avid reader, I’d certainly like to think I’ve benefited in this way.

My study of the humanities also has made me a better collaborator, by helping to sharpen my communication skills and compassion. I know that in the future I want to be part of interdisciplinary teams of scientists that tackle significant real-world problems. There’s no doubt that the interpersonal and collaborative skills that I learn from studying and discussing history, philosophy, and literature will be essential in the future.

Whether we’re talking about clinical trials (where every day human behavior can make or break a drug) or computer science (as in my experience drawn from art and psychology), understanding human nature is fundamental to doing science. When most people think about the future of humanity, they envision a universe where science has propelled our species towards a better tomorrow. But science alone is not enough to solve the world’s problems: that science needs to be done by people who understand what it means to be human.

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