The K12 Engineering Education Podcast

Among the various STEM education organizations that have developed throughout the last several years, there is ChickTech. The local Austin chapter of the nonprofit began just a few years ago, and Dana DeFebbo, its Assistant Director, discusses how ChickTech Austin reaches out to high school girls who might not have had opportunities in tech. Dana talks about the challenges and rewards of running a...

What skills does a professional architect bring to high school education? Guest Kelly Foster explains, as he shares his experience as both a practicing architect and a STEM teacher. He discusses his methods in teaching creativity and problem-solving in multiple areas of design, including civil and architectural engineering, architecture, and graphic design. He also analyzes the design of the new C...

Engineer Ian Bernstein talks about his startup’s newest consumer robot released by Misty Robotics: Misty II. Based on what he learned developing his previous educational robot Sphero, Ian and his team created Misty II to be widely customizable, programmable, and full of potential functionality. The robot may be on the pricier side, and Ian says that it’s worth it. He also discusses why he thinks r...

Author Roxanna Elden discusses her new satirical novel Adequate Yearly Progress, which tells the story of the teachers’ lives across one year in the fictional Texas high school of Brae Hill Valley. Roxanna’s book draws on her own experience as a K-12 public school teacher and her conversations with other teachers around the country. Roxanna says that past portrayals of teachers in popular media ca...

Former teacher and current tech worker Sophia talks about why she left the classroom, how people perceive teachers, how to bring STEM to four-year-olds, and the value of communication skills in software development. Related to this episode: • AISD (Austin Independent School District): https://www.austinisd.org/ • General Assembly Web Development courses: https://generalassemb.ly/coding/full-stack-...

What’s so great about the human eye? Can we build something just like it? When would we need to design something better? Sadhan joins the podcast again as we give our engineers’ perspectives on these questions and more. Related to this episode: • Curriculum for Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University: http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/biomedical/undergraduate/bachelor-of-science/curr...

Now that states have written engineering into K-12 science and technology learning standards, more institutions are thinking about how to run standardized tests in the subject. The educational assessments organization ETS is one institution interested in an in-depth, fair, and large-scale assessment for engineering learning. Deb Brockway, Senior Research Associate at ETS, talks about some of her w...

Science education occurs in juvenile detention centers, as part of the schooling available to young people there so that they can receive their high school equivalency certification. Guests Rachel and Kasina talk about their experiences teaching science and other subjects to boys and young men in these institutions. They describe the constraints and opportunities in these classrooms and how they c...

Vivian Shen and Ruby Lee want to teach kids how to program one-on-one over the internet. Vivian and Ruby are Cofounders of Juni Learning, their new educational startup that provides programming lessons to kids like how others provide private piano lessons. Although they both studied computer science at Stanford, they got to computer science at an older age than the kids they are now serving. They...

What is mechanical engineering? Engineer Sadhan Sathyaseelan joins the show again from The University of Texas to wonder out loud about all the important aspects of this classic engineering field. This is a continuing series of conversations introducing the fundamentals of different engineering disciplines. In this episode on mechanical engineering, we talk about thermodynamics, motion, manufactur...

Recorded in the middle of South-by-Southwest (SXSW) EDU 2018, this episode features educator Rachel and engineer Pius. They discuss their immediate reactions to hosting two SXSW events this year, including insights on how to use podcasting for education and how to design lessons using empathic lead user analysis. Look out for future episodes from after the conference! Related to this episode: • SX...

Marshall Escamilla is part of a team of podcasters who create Tumble, a science podcast for kids and their families. With a background in music and K-12 education, Marshall shares the purpose of Tumble and how his show tries to tell science stories. Hear his thoughts on how to bring podcasting into the classroom, how to combine listening with other learning activities, and how science education is...

We recap the South by Southwest Education conference (SXSW EDU) in 2018 after it ends, talking about the reactions of attendees, educational technology, PBS, escape rooms, political visitors, the educational pipeline from industry on down to K-12, ideas for future SXSW events, and more. Related to this episode: • Scandinavian Airlines direct flight between Austin and Stockholm: http://kut.org/post...

Neuroscience research needs help from many fields, including engineering. Dr. Talia Lerner describes some of the engineering tools that she uses to study neural circuits in animal models, especially involving dopamine. She is a professor and basic science researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago, and she studies these circuits in the hopes of improving mental health diagnoses and treatment...

What is engineering? What are the important aspects of engineering that anybody should know? Can we talk about all this without getting too deep into math? Engineer and researcher Sadhan Sathyaseelan joins the podcast to kick off a series of episodes meant to introduce engineering concepts to anyone, not just the people studying it in college. Related to this episode: • Article on Elon Musk on sen...

Society is headed toward more driverless cars, self-driving cars, shared cars, connected fleets, and all kinds of autonomous vehicles (AVs). How will engineers of tomorrow deal with this technology? Dr. Kara Kockelman, Professor of Civil Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, talks about her research in this area and current advances in the field. She discusses driver psychology, effect...

Anxiety in engineering education sometimes comes from doing math. What does math anxiety feel like? What are its causes and effects? How do you deal with it, as a student and as a teacher? Guest cohost Rachel joins again to talk about these questions and possible answers. Related to this episode: • “Math anxiety” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_anxiety • Article on anxiety...

We close out Season 2 with another visit from Rachel, an educator with experience in school improvement strategies. First Pius and Rachel discuss future plans to present sessions at the upcoming South by Southwest EDU conference in 2018, followed by an homage to Austin, Texas. Then the main discussion starts, as Rachel defines what “underperforming” or “failing” schools are and how STEM and engine...

Teachers at all-girls schools might have insights on how to engage more young people – especially girls – into engineering. Several teachers at The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin shared their thoughts in this two-part episode. In Part 1 (01:15) we hear from Shamaa and Shireen, two high school engineering teachers, and then in Part 2 (28:50) we hear from Patience, Simon, and...

How can you bridge the gap between teaching simpler visual programming tools and teaching more complicated textual programming tools? Julia Lamorelle’s answer is Python. Julia cofounded Kiwi Compute, a new education business that focuses on teaching middle school kids how to code in Python, a language widely used in academia and industry today. She talks about why Kiwi Compute has this education s...

How can teachers expose their students to more engineering role models? What do they do if they don’t have time to arrange visits and field trips? That’s where Sarah McAnulty comes in. Sarah is a biology PhD student who also recently started Skype a Scientist, which is a free program to match scientists and engineers with K-12 classrooms. Sarah spoke with us about how the program helps more studen...

How do you use the power of digital pop culture today to engage kids in engineering? Guest engineer Nehemiah Mabry, Ph. D., talks about this and more. Nehemiah is a practicing engineer in North Carolina and founder of his business STEMedia. STEMedia creates digital content to promote science, technology, engineering, and math. Mentioned in this episode: • STEMedia website: http://stemedia.org/ • E...

What is engineering education like in Mexico compared to the USA? This episode is an introduction to that topic as we talk to Hernando Garrido, a mechatronics and manufacturing engineer with the medical device company Fresenius Medical Care. He talks about his experience growing up in the Mexican school system near the US-Mexico border in Reynosa. He also compares it to his experience studying and...

The Boy Scouts of America are growing a new youth educational program called STEM Scouts, open to boys and girls. Guests Davis Fox and Deborah (Debbie) Vasquez talk about the mission of the program, which goes beyond teaching content knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math. It includes teaching curiosity, teamwork, parental involvement, and other values that align with Scouting pro...

Guest engineer and consultant Pat Sweet, P.Eng., talks about two of his favorite words in engineering: verification and validation. They describe concepts whose importance cuts across all the engineering disciplines, and so engineering educators could also teach these fundamental concepts to kids and teens. This episode is a rebroadcast of two short episodes of Engineering Word Of The Day, a podca...