NASA Highlights Women in STEM
In light of International Women’s Day, I thought I would do a post about innovative approaches to squashing gender roles, specifically in the area of science.
I am a female, a physical education teacher, and a science teacher, who works in a country where cultural norms surrounding gender roles are very different from where I grew up. I have engaged in many ‘uncomfortable’ conversations with parents and students regarding the place of females in athletics and science and would argue that as an educator it is my job to be a leader and a role model for social change. I often use the classroom as a platform for discussing issues such as this one and believe that doing so is important for facilitating social change.
At the beginning of every semester, I start my science class off with an activity aimed at drawing out stereotypes and then engaging in an open discussion about our preconceived ideas and where they came from. The activity is simply asking my students "what is a scientist?" "What does a scientist look like?" I often get students describing Albert Einstein and using words such as male, glasses, nerd, geek, old, etc. We then discuss what framed our opinions and share our thoughts and feelings regarding these preconceived ideas. This activity was inspired by this TEDTalk:
More recently, I came across this article - NASA highlights women in STEM with a virtual field trip - NASA in collaboration with Google Expeditions developed a “series of virtual field trips highlighting the careers of seven women and their contributions to America’s space program” (, 2017, p.1p.1), serving to continue the conversation that started as a result of the film Hidden Figures. Google Expeditions is an application-based program that requires a kit containing “ Cardboard VR headsets and ASUS phones for the students alongside an app for teachers that controls the virtual trips” (Steele, 2015) through this innovative technology, students can take virtual field trips without leaving the classroom. Through the collaborative program with NASA, teachers can access a collection of resources and educational activities that include virtual tours where “viewers step into a 100,000 square-foot aircraft hangar, a simulated Martian landscape, a space flight operations facility and other locations where NASA’s women engineers, scientists and directors work” (Loff, 2016).
What an innovative way to bring experiential learning into the classroom!
References:
References:
Dalton, A. (2017, March 8). NASA highlights women in STEM with a virtual field trip. Retrieved March 10, 2017, from https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/08/nasa-google-expeditions-stem-international-womens-day/
Steele, B. (2015, September 28). Google offers its Cardboard-powered VR field trips to schools for free. Retrieved March 10, 2017, from https://www.engadget.com/2015/09/28/google-expeditions-cardboard-for-free/
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