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Google Colab

Colab Icon

colab.research.google.com

Google’s Colaboratory, or “Colab” for short, is a free online resource used for sharing code, documentation, and visualized data. Google Colab runs code using Jupyter Notebook, an open-source web app used to create and share documents that can run live code and visualizations. Colab itself runs on a virtual linux operating system. The programming language that can be run live in Google Colab is Python, while Markdown code can be used to format and organize the Colab documents. Google Colab is a very engaging and interactive way to run code, examine data and share ideas on the web.

What you’ll do there:  With Colab you can write and execute Python in your browser. Students in STEM+ Data Analytics course will learn to use Colab as a part of their assignments. One of Colab’s best features is its ability to run live code, which makes teaching and learning Python a lot more engaging and intuitive. In addition to learning Python, students will also learn how to format their documents by using the Markdown language. With these two tools, students will be able to use Python to visualize and analyze data in conjunction with Markdown to clearly format and organize it. 

For parents/privacy:  Students will need a Google account to use Google Colab, as Colab is an app made by Google. Google accounts are free to create and require some basic information, such as first and last name, a username and a password. Here is Google’s privacy policy.

Additional resources: There is a lot to learn about Google Colab, Markdown, and Python – most of which is not covered in the STEM+ Data Analytics course. Here are a few safe additional resources for your convenience:

 

 

 
 

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Roanoke Higher Education Center

Main Link:  www.education.edu 

STEM+ by Commonwealth Learning Systems lab is located in Suite 813

108 North Jefferson Street
Roanoke, Virginia 24016

(540) 767-6161 

DIRECTIONS & PARKING

 

The Roanoke Higher Education Center (RHEC) in historic downtown Roanoke develops partnerships and maintains a state-of-the-art facility that provides citizens of the Roanoke region access to training, certifications, and degrees. 

  • undergraduate and graduate programs from member universities
  • testing center
  • customized training
  • education fairs
  • meetings and conferences
 
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Mozilla Hubs

Main Link: hubs.mozilla.com

Mozilla Hubs is a fantastic free online service that allows anybody to meet and interact with each other in a customizable 3D virtual environment. In a Hubs virtual room, users can chat via text or microphone input, share media including images, videos, and 3D models, and interact with the virtual world around them. Mozilla Hubs can turn a stale conference call into a fun, engaging event that simulates a real life meeting. 

What you’ll do there: Mozilla Hubs is an enclosed virtual environment where anyone with an email and a web browser or phone can interact with other users and the environment. The online service works great for meetings that involve more than just speaking. Mozilla Hubs contains many life-like features, including the ability to move around the room and dynamic volume control, i.e. if somebody walks away from you, their microphone audio will get quieter. This allows for a realistic simulation of real life meetings. 

For Parents/Privacy: Mozilla Hubs is a safe environment for everyone to interact and participate in virtual activities. No accounts nor passwords are required, just a desktop or mobile browser! For specific information on Hubs’ privacy, visit the Hubs privacy notice here: https://github.com/mozilla/hubs/blob/master/PRIVACY.md

What you’ll need to access a Hubs room: Just a web browser or mobile device! What makes Hubs such an accessible online service is that all someone needs to create a Hubs room is to just head to the main Hubs website from their desktop or mobile browser and click on create room.

 

To make the room accessible to others, the room owner must share the link underlined in black or six digit code circled in black with all users who plan on joining (as seen below).

Sharing a room in Hubs

These users can then go to the main Hubs website, click on join room, and enter the code to join the same room. Every user will be prompted with the option of joining the room with a virtual reality headset!

Joining a Hubs Room

In order to perform certain features in the Hubs room, like changing the room capacity and muting or kicking users, the owner should login to Mozilla Hubs – a surprisingly easy process! All the user has to do is click the “Sign in” button and type in their email.

How to login to Hubs

An email will be sent containing a link that upon clicking will begin a login session for that user. No password or account required!

It’s absolutely free. For basic use (everything I described above). Users may pay for an additional Hubs Cloud service offering more customization and security features. These features are helpful when hosting large, organized events. There are also options to sync Mozilla Hubs with Discord chatrooms. You can find more information on these features here. 

 

 

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World Community Grid

www.worldcommunitygrid.org

From the website:  Let your computer daydream science. World Community Grid, a philanthropic initiative from IBM, enables anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health, poverty and sustainability. Through the contributions of over 650,000 individuals and 460 organizations, World Community Grid has supported 31 research projects to date, including searches for more effective treatments for cancer, HIV/AIDS and neglected tropical diseases. Other projects are looking for low-cost water filtration systems and new materials for capturing solar energy efficiently.

www.worldcommunitygrid.org/discover.action

From the website: Scientists at Scripps Research are using World Community Grid to help search for potential treatments for COVID-19, and to build open-source tools to help address future pandemics quickly and early. Learn more about OpenPandemics – COVID-19 and the organizations other projects.

IBM’s World Community Grid is a way for everyone to get directly involved in research without having to work at all! By downloading a free software toolkit called BOINC, anyone can help researchers in a wide variety of fields by letting this program run while the computer is not being used. The program performs designated calculations that are hard for people but easy for computers. The more people that participate in the World Community Grid project, the faster we can solve some of the most complicated and urgent problems in human history!

How it Works: The BOINC software, a free and safe program developed by the University of California, Berkeley, runs designated calculations in an area specified by the user while the computer is idle (the computer must be on). If you begin running an application, BOINC will minimize its performance until idle again. The user can pause (suspend) or abort the project tasks or modify the CPU usage of BOINC when active.

Parental permission and administrative access to your computer is REQUIRED to install the BOINC program. For an in depth look at the World Community Grid Privacy policy, go to https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/viewPrivacyStatement.do 

Getting Started: Head to the main World Community Grid website, a page with colorful slides, which you can view to learn more about the project. On the first blue slide, click the red “Join Volunteers” button in the middle of the page (circled in white).

 

 

 

 

A blue sign up page should appear, where you should enter your email and a password to create a World Community Grid account. This account will be used to keep track of the projects and tasks your computer will be working on.

 

 

 

 

After clicking “Next” (highlighted in white above), you will be asked to select projects you are interested in. Your computer can complete tasks from any of these areas. After selecting the projects of interest and clicking “Next” again, the installer should begin downloading. 

 

 

 

 

BOINC project manager

Installing and Usage: After downloading, open up the installer. Follow the instructions given by the installation wizard, and World Community Grid will be installed on your computer. By default, World Community Grid will begin on startup, but this can be changed in task manager by going to the “Startup” tab and disabling it on Windows.

The application itself contains two main tabs, “Tasks” and “Projects”. While the application is running, a taskbar in the “Tasks” tab will display the progress of the current project. In the “Task Commands” menu, the graphics tab will show a graphical description of the project, while the suspend and abort tabs will pause or abort your project upon clicking, respectively. The “Properties” tab of the “Task Commands” window will show statistics and extra information relating to the current project. 

The “Projects” tab shows you the current project being worked on and gives you the option to add new projects. Clicking on the “Add Project” button will open a new window with a list of projects to choose from. Clicking on “Next” will add the project to your current list of projects. The drop down menu in the projects tab allows you to select the project you’d like to work on. The “Project Commands” menu lets you update, suspend, reset and remove the selected project.  

 

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BOINC

boinc.berkeley.edu

BOINC lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or Android device. BOINC downloads scientific computing jobs to your computer and runs them invisibly in the background. It’s easy and safe.

About 30 science projects use BOINC; examples include Einstein@Home, IBM World Community Grid, and SETI@home. These projects investigate diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research.

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Annenberg Learner

Main Link: https://www.learner.org/

Annenberg Learner is an online education platform best known for its free-to-watch courses and workshops for teachers. It provides online courses and teaching instructions on many subjects – for both students and teachers. Annenberg Learner also offers supplementary material for teachers and students, including interactive activities, homework and reviews to go along with lessons. Teachers are provided instructional objectives and activity overviews.

What you can do: Courses for students provide video lectures, a written lesson overview, in-class activity worksheets (like questions to answer while following along an instructional video) and homework (exercises and review questions). They include faculty guides for class activities and exercise answers for teachers. 

Teachers are provided free workshops for their own professional development. These professional development courses help teachers learn how to better teach a class or subject. Each course displays several methods of teaching, i.e. visually, hands-on, example-based as well as multiple example problems where each may suit a particular student differently than another. They are offered by grade level. 

For parents/privacy: Annenberg Learner collects minimal data from student visitors; most of it comes from the website, including cookies, browser information and your IP address. For teachers, Annenberg Learner asks for your job title, grade(s) you teach and subject area upon signing up. Learn more here: https://www.learner.org/privacy-policy/

What it costs: Courses from Annenberg Learner are free for individual students and teachers, but instructors of institutions that charge tuition must buy a license to use them in a classroom setting. Annenberg Learner courses can be licensed from several distributors, including collegeanywhere.com, alexanderstreet.com and films.com.

An example course from films.com (Against All Odds: Inside Statistics):

    • $1,598.40
    • 3-Year Streaming License
    • 360 minutes
    • 32 video modules

Learn more here: https://www.learner.org/faq/

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World Health Organization

Main Link:  https://www.who.int/

The World Health Organization (WHO) website is incredibly useful for staying up to date on current international health crises and retrieving health information. It is especially useful today as we fight through the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale. The WHO makes it incredibly easy to access important information and guidelines in an organized and timely manner. In addition to raw information, the WHO deliberately organizes and displays data geographically, helping to manifest the bigger picture from across town to across the world. 

What you can do: By going to the WHO main website, you will gain access to tons of medical and research data. Important news alerts and articles can be found on the main page, as well as WHO guidelines to follow. Different health topics, country/regional data, and breaking headlines are all available at the click of a button. Just from the home page you have the ability to view an interactive world map with COVID-19 data. A more in depth tutorial of how to navigate the website is below. 

Privacy/for parents: The WHO is a reputable international organization that works as an agency for the United Nations. General data and usage statistics may be collected. Learn more about the WHO website’s privacy policy here: https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/privacy-policy

Navigational overview: The WHO website’s homepage contains a top menu, emergency and COVID-19 quick-links, an interactive map and news articles near the bottom of the page. 

WHO homepage

The top menu contains most of the data available on the site. The first tab, Health Topics, contains both an alphabetical assortment and a list of the most relevant health topics.

WHO menu 1

The second tab, Countries, displays the world’s main regions and countries found a-z.

WHO menu 2

Clicking on the specific letter the country begins with will redirect you to a list of countries beginning with that letter. Clicking on the country will display an overview with a map and health statistics from that country.

WHO Country

Clicking on a specific region will take you to a specialized WHO website for the region, i.e the Americas region will redirect you to -> https://www.paho.org/en

WHO Region

The third tab, News Room, displays current WHO headlines and links for all WHO news.

WHO Menu 3

The fourth tab, Emergencies, shows relevant and recent emergencies It might be helpful to visit the by country and by disease tabs.

WHO Menu 4

The fifth tab, Data, contains a link to all WHO data sets and other data and statistics links and resources.

WHO Menu 5

Back on the homepage, clicking on the red Emergency block will take you to a new emergency page.

WHO Emergency Page

On the left, you will see a question bar, where you can type in a question and relevant Q/A will appear. You will also see a press conference schedule and videos on this page. Rolling updates on disease are located below the conference videos. 

On the right, you will see a donate button, a question answering tab, travel advice, and many helpful links including a Mythbusters tab.

The Quick Links tab on the homepage gives scam alerts, advice guidance, updates and research development links. 

Clicking on the Interactive Map will give a geographical map of coronavirus, where you can click on a country to access its COVID-19 data. Upon hovering over a country, confirmed cases/deaths will be shown. You can use the left menu/guide to represent countries by infections/deaths. There is a “Download Map Data” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the map, in addition to info below the map.

WHO Interactive Map

This should be a good starting point for getting familiar with the WHO website. Don’t forget, all these resources are available to you for free!

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Khan Academy

Khan Academy

www.khanacademy.org

Khan Academy is one of the most used online educational resources for K-12 students in the world. Led by Sal Khan, founder and COO of Khan Academy, the nonprofit educational organization has more than 6,500 video lessons and 90+ courses available for free on its website. Khan Academy courses are generally focused on STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math), but Sal also provides courses in business, economics, history, art and reading. 

How to use: Khan academy is a free online educational resource targeting K-12 students. To access, just visit khanacademy.org, click on the courses dropdown menu, and select the course of interest. AP courses are also “taught,” though not for credit. Clicking on the desired course will redirect you to the course overview screen. From here, you may view the units and topics covered, but you will start the course by clicking “Get started”. You will begin the first unit of the course, and each unit “chapter” will contain videos, written lectures and followup questions to complete.

One key feature found in Khan Academy is the comment section. Each lesson video has a comment section where anyone with a Khan Academy account can ask or answer questions. Popular questions appear at the top of the comment section. Comments can be up-voted, down-voted and flagged based on their relevance to the topic. This feature is a great resource to clarify any confusion a learner may have. 

Login/Privacy/For parents: Khan Academy is a reputable, well known web organization. In order to take full advantage of what Khan Academy has to offer, users can create a free account by either logging in with their Google or Facebook accounts, or they can create a new one (which will require an email and password). Common data, such as first and last names, emails, and passwords are kept confidential by Khan Academy to improve their services and and for security. To learn more about Khan Academy’s policies with data, visit their privacy policy webpage: https://www.khanacademy.org/about/privacy-policy

 

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Big Think

Big Think Logo

www.bigthink.com

Interested in science and have a spare 15 minutes? Head over to BigThink.com and check out some really neat science articles and videos. You’ll find a plethora of science news, articles and fun facts waiting for you.

Big Think examines topics that span all over the STEM fields, from logical fallacies to computer science ideologies, to quantum mechanics. In addition to articles and videos, Big Think also hosts a weekly podcast with special guests that are leaders of the STEM industries. daily and weekly newsletters, and live sessions hosted by Big Think where special guests discuss current work in their field.  Big Think provides premium courses that can be accessed with a paid monthly subscription (you can start with a 7-day free trial), entitled “Big Think Edge”.

For parents/privacy: Big Think is free to use/access on all platforms. Some of Big Think’s topical newsletters may be better suited for mature audiences. The Big Think website uses some cookies and browser information to improve the website experience. For more information, visit the Big Think privacy policy here.

Keywords: Magazine, top rated website, website, science, video, podcast, newsletter, teachers and schools, students and parents, organizations, science, grades 9-12, science, technology, innovation, mind, research

 

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STEM Skills in Gaming and Esports 

by Nick Butts and Chris Shell
North American Scholastic Esports Federation Blog  

STEM is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — but it’s more than the individual disciplines, or even the combination of those. It also incorporates collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills and mindsets that are necessary in today’s world.