The K12 Engineering Education Podcast

Model railroading is uniquely primed for doing educational outreach today, says Stacey Walthers Naffah, President of Milwaukee-based Walthers. Walthers is a major model railroading company, distributing and manufacturing products for hobbyists around the world. Stacey discusses how the industry has a big opportunity to add to K-12 education, in history, science, technology, engineering, art, and m...

These teachers know tech. Steve Dembo and Victoria Thompson teach in K-12 and are also educational technology consultants. Steve is a middle school teacher and founder of the edtech consulting and training company Teach42, based out of Chicago, and Victoria is a math teacher in Washington and consults on edtech products for different large corporations. They guested on the show to describe how the...

The nonprofit Beyond Benign specializes in developing and disseminating educational resources in green chemistry – like how to create bioplastics, or thinking about a full product life cycle – and two guests from Beyond Benign joined the podcast to talk about it. Janie Butler is the K-12 Program Manager for the organization, and Eric Nash is a high school teacher while working as Lead Teacher for...

Rachel describes how her small Texas school district can function in the middle of COVID-19. As a school district administrator, she has to organize many major actions in this crisis, ranging from meal distribution to bolstering cybersecurity as teachers transition to online learning. Her team still must wrestle with many new questions as they come back from Spring Break. Related to this episode:...

As a biomedical engineer in orthobiologics, Neil Thompson still had to do a lot of public speaking. He was a self-professed awful public speaker, but then he worked hard to improve his skills. Now he wants to teach other STEM professionals the same public speaking strategies he learned, so they can get better like he did. Neil talks about best practices for public speaking, his father’s influence...

The South-by-Southwest education conference for 2020 is cancelled, due to emergency declarations related to COVID-19. Pius and Rachel discuss what happens next, for educators in Texas and across the country. Related to this episode: • How Coronavirus Took Down SXSW: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/03/sxsw-cancellation-coronavirus-austin-music-film-festival/607669/ • How Do You Build a Career i...

Casey Lamb and Roger Horton work with the nonprofit organization Schools That Can. Schools That Can aims to promote real-world learning in education, with particular experience fostering real-world learning for younger students. This takes many forms, including collaborating with industry, teaching design thinking, and embracing the maker movement. Casey and Roger joined the podcast to talk about...

Project manager and software engineer Rick Kennedy is running for US House Representative for District 17 in Texas, in the 2020 Democratic primary. After decades working in tech, and after Trump was elected, Rick decided to run for office to try to solve difficult social problems and help end political divisiveness in the country. He joins the podcast to talk about his vision for universal pre-K,...

How do you “develop your practice” as a teacher and administrator? Rachel and Pius discuss this question and share their thoughts on going deeper into their careers as educators, all after a dinner of Austin barbecue. Related to this episode: • Slab BBQ: http://realdopebbq.com/ • The cover art is a photo of the Slab BBQ wall, showing patches from the 10th Mountain Division: https://home.army.mil/d...

Hugo Fruehauf, one of the co-inventors of GPS, explains the nitty-gritty of what GPS is. He also details his critical engineering work on the GPS subsystem of the atomic clock. Hugo was one of four recipients of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, along with Dr. Bradford Parkinson, Professor James Spilker, and Richard Schwartz. Related to this episode: • Hugo’s website: http://hugofrue...

Like much of the world, Australian educators are increasingly embracing STEM education for younger students. Chris Perkins is one such teacher at Keithcot Farm Primary School outside Adelaide, South Australia. He talks about a range of issues on his radar as a STEM teacher, including how he stays up-to-date, Australian inventions, how New South Wales is a leader in that country for education, and...

What does a chemical engineer do? What makes a good one? What should young people know about the field? Chemical engineer Will Mullen helps us answer these questions and more. Will is a Process Engineer and Engineering Manager at a manufacturing plant for specialty chemicals in North Carolina. Before that he managed facilities and worked in chemical plants in Texas and Georgia, and he has been inv...

What should you look for in your first engineering job? How do you bridge high school, college, internships, and then finally full-time work? Is college worth it for the tech industry? Engineer and developer Omar Leyva gives advice on all this and more, speaking as an Android developer and computer engineer at Tile, a consumer electronics company in San Mateo, California. He also describes how his...

What do young people think about STEM fields today? Michigan STEM educator Danielle Boyer talks about her perspective as a recent high school graduate who teaches robotics to many young K-12 students. She talks about her lower-cost robot platform Every Kid Gets a Robot, her coloring books for STEM representation, young people’s college fears, and also her views on accessibility and diversity in en...

Distributed systems rule much of new technology today, as software programs exist across multiple computers, servers, phones, and smart devices. How can students learn to program these systems? Start with a visual programming environment, says Dr. Akos Ledeczi from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Ledeczi is an electrical and computer engineer who researches distributed systems a...

How can you teach universal design to kids and teens? Have them build accessible games and books, according to The Build a Better Book project, from The University of Colorado Boulder. Guests Dr. Stacey Forsythe and Dr. Kathryn Penzkover develop the Build a Better Book project at UC Boulder, which provides curriculum for schools and libraries to teach people to create books and games for the visua...

In this age of growing internet technology and connected computers, cybersecurity engineers and computer scientists will be more critical. Software engineer Sam Houston joins the podcast to talk about how she got into the security field, led by interests in computers and a desire to protect those in need. Sam is also a former student of Rachel, and we talk about key memories in her K-12 and colleg...

If you missed the 2019 edition of the South by Southwest Education (SXSW Edu) conference in Austin, Texas, we rehash some highlights that you may have missed. We talk about empathy, accessibility, and a few new tech tools available to educators discovered at the conference. Related to this episode: • SXSW Edu: https://sxswedu.com • UT McCombs School of Business: https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/ • Y...

Texans across the state and across the political divide agree: public school funding needs fixing. What that means exactly, however, is tricky. In Part 1, Texas State Representative Donna Howard explains the school finance conundrum and its evolution over the years, along with some potential solutions floating around the legislature. In Part 2, political consultant Kolby Monnig argues that citizen...

Problem-solving, technology, and public service all combine when you work as an engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Dr. Michael Sterling, PhD, is a lead water resource engineer at the US Army Corps of Engineers, Southwestern Division, and he oversees missions related to water supply, flood prevention, hydroelectric power, and more issues affecting large swaths of the USA. Dr. Ster...

The educational technology company Robolink is coming out with a new robotics platform for teaching kids the fundamentals of programming artificial intelligence (AI). Hansol Hong is the CEO and Founder of San Diego-based Robolink. Hansol discusses their latest AI education product Zümi, which won an award at the 2019 International Consumer Electronics Show for innovation. Hansol also talks about t...

Educator Rachel and engineer Pius introduce Season 4 and brainstorm about what interests us in K-12 engineering education today. We talk about school finance reform, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and more. Related to this episode: • Lego programming: https://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/learn-to-program • Article on Facebook security breach in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/te...

Engineers Sadhan and Pius continue an ongoing series of discussions on the fundamentals of mechanical engineering. Today they talk about what they remember about statics, forces, acceleration, moments, relativity, stars, and more. Related to this episode: • Statics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statics • Dynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_(mechanics) • Force: https://physics.info/ne...

What are the trends in educational kids’ toys today? How can programming kits be improved? How does an education business start and succeed? Entrepreneur Joseph Greer in Chicago discusses these issues as he describes his STEM education startup, MakeXchange, and its “Invention Lab” Arduino kit. The kit was designed to be more user-friendly and more organized than other Arduino kits. This is the sta...

Architectural and civil engineers are using rich digital tools to simulate constructed buildings. Similar tools are also being used in digital video games and virtual reality games that might teach future engineers. Dr. Fadi Castronovo speaks about his efforts to advance engineering education using simulations and games like these. Fadi is an engineering professor at California State University, E...