“Yes! I killed it, length times width! It’s so much fun finally applying multiplication I learned in school!” — Max

No, this isn’t the latest video game or VR experience. Believe it or not, this is an 8-year-old boy confidently applying geometry to a real-life problem/situation. Along with 11 other children and their families, Max and his mom are working together to design an exhibit to add to the collection at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI).

It’s not every day that kids are given the opportunity to design and make their very own exhibits, and it’s even rarer that they do so by exploring and using the data cycle — asking questions, collecting, analyzing, organizing and finally interpreting data.

This rapid growth of “big data” has influenced all of our lives. Most U.S. children are now growing up in a world where they encounter the effects of data analytics every day. However, topics of big data and data science typically circulate around traffic patterns, stock market trends, and digital information, topics that kids just cannot relate to. There seemed to be a significant piece of the puzzle missing — When is it appropriate to start the conversation?

At NYSCI, our staff found that this gap lies with our young learners (4–8-year-olds), and developed the Big Data for Little Kids curriculum aimed at creating opportunities for families (parents, children, and siblings) to connect over the topic of data science and literacy. Given that data science is an uncharted topic for most people, our innovative curriculum was an accessible and approachable way for parents and children to become co-learners and ease into this complicated, convoluted and intricate topic together. By using our own exhibitions, the curriculum provided an opportunity for the families to take a deeper look at exhibits that are developmentally appropriate for the youngest learners. These exhibits served as a starting point for parents to talk to their children, children to talk with other children, and families to talk to each other about the inner workings of exhibit design and the important role that data plays in the design process.

The design of the curriculum followed NYSCI’s inquiry-based approach to children’s learning called Design, Make, Play. At NYSCI, children are encouraged to decide on a problem that is meaningful to them before they can start designing a solution. The Design, Make, Play approach capitalizes on the deep-seated interests of children and provides rich museum experiences that invite families to discover the wonder and joy of science learning together, through fostering materials literacy and tool use, motivating young learners to explore their world, and empowering children to apply the new concepts, processes and skills they learn — at home, at school, and in their communities. Design, Make, Play draws on a wide range of research and has demonstrated to be an effective teaching strategy for tackling difficult concepts and engaging diverse learners that are often ill-served by more traditional approaches.

To pave the way for merging complex concepts of data science and the Design, Make, Play approach, NYSCI staff compiled research from early childhood and mathematics education to construct the contents of the Big Data for Little Kids workshop and curriculum. Specifically, staff adopted the theoretical frameworks of data modeling (English, 2012; Lehrer & Schauble, 2002) that have been used successfully in the classrooms to engage young students in using data to solve everyday problems, such as deciding which soup a school cafeteria should serve. The workshop is a step forward in expanding the framework not only into informal education settings but also to a diverse, mixed-age audience of families from local communities.

The Big Data for Little Kids workshops (aptly named Museum Makers: Designing With Data) took place over the course of six to seven weeks where families investigated the overarching question: “What is missing from NYSCI’s exhibits?” Families gathered various kinds of data about NYSCI’s exhibits and used the information to help them design their own exhibits.

The curriculum was designed to lead the families through different topics of data science and literacy each week (e.g., units of measurement, a continuous spectrum, and categorical data), and to invite them to collaborate and discuss about what data they were going to collect, how they were going to collect it, and why the data was important to collect. In the first few weeks, the families went through mini versions of the data cycle — asking questions, collecting data, analyzing data, and interpreting data ¬ to help them design their own exhibits. At the end of these workshops, the families aggregated their individually collected data into one large class set that they then had to organize and interpret the story that they wanted to tell.

Before the last workshop, families had a chance to look back at all the data that they had collected over the previous weeks. Reviewing the tools and materials that they used during the earlier workshops served as a reminder of all of the different decisions that they had to make in the process of designing their exhibit. The final workshop transformed NYSCI’s Design Lab into an exhibit gallery — where NYSCI’s very own staff of exhibit developers cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the Museum Makers Exhibit Showcase, where the families presented their exhibits to visitors and staff.

After collecting and organizing data on NYSCI’s Seeing the Light exhibition, Max’s analysis sparked an idea for the exhibit he would ultimately design. Max examined all of the individual exhibits within Seeing the Light and discovered that the missing component was a mechanism and method for visitor interaction with the lights. His exhibit “Archery Contest,” described as a “bow and arrow physics exhibit,” allowed the visitor to maneuver a bow and arrow in order to activate a series of lights leading up to the larger light as part of the Lux Rota exhibit.

As a result of Max’s discovery about just how useful math is, it became evident to his mother just how accessible and approachable data science can be for little kids:

“[Max learned that] museums are places that data exists, data is important outside of school in “fun” settings (i.e. dog names, kid’s museum preferences, etc.), [and] some of the museum exhibits are based on data collection (the Charlie and Kiwi ‘foods we like best’ exhibit) where kids’ votes immediately influence the numbers in the data.”

Max and his mom are just one example of how museums can help families work together to investigate a complex topic in an extensive and meaningful way. Given the unique opportunity, young learners are in fact very capable of learning about data science, and a science museum appears to be the perfect environment for success.

View more images here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm2Cqviy

References:
English, L. D. (2012). Data modeling with first-grade students. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 81(1), 15–30.
Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2002). Investigating Real Data in the Classroom: Expanding Children’s Understanding of Math and Science. Ways of Knowing in Science and Mathematics Series. Teachers College Press: New York, NY

1.) Tell us about your work and why it’s so important.

At the end of the day, my job is about helping to keep children safe in cars.

A lot of people don’t know this, but only one out of four car seats in the U.S. are installed correctly — that’s pretty scary. And while cars and trucks are safer now more than ever, car crashes are still one of the leading causes of death for children.

The good news is that the proper use of car seats and booster seats can help prevent many child injuries and deaths. That’s why Buckle Up for Life is so important. We partner with leading children’s hospitals and community organizations to help teach parents and children about staying safe on the road.

2.) What role do STEM skills play in your work?

STEM is at the core of my work.

Actually, the national car seat safety guidelines that we share with families are based on scientific and medical research. Scientists and engineers conduct crash tests and study the mechanics of children’s bodies specifically to better understand the best ways to protect children in case of a crash.

STEM also plays an important role in making the case for these guidelines. For example, I’ll often explain why a properly installed car seat is critical with crash dynamic formulas, which is basically the math that explains how objects move during a collision. The formula for force of impact (speed x weight) explains how during a 35 mph crash, a 10 lb. baby can become a 350 lb. projectile.

We also explain how air bags deploy with 200 lbs. of force in half a second, which can cause serious injury or even death to a passenger who is not buckled in.

This scientific research and data helps people grasp the real-life consequences if they don’t follow car seat safety guidelines.

3.) What drives you?

I’m a mother of four and now a grandmother, so it’s so important to me to keep my family safe. I know what it takes to protect them and I want to make sure every caregiver knows how to take care of their own little passengers.

I’m proud to say that Buckle Up for Life has reached more than 65,000 people nationwide and has developed partnerships in 32 cities across the U.S.

4.) How did you end up in the field of injury prevention?

My father-in-law was a doctor who provided low-income families with free vaccinations and pre-natal care. I was touched by the difference he was able to make with these interventions, and I knew I wanted to have a similar impact. So, I immediately identified with Buckle Up for Life’s mission to help families by teaching them about car seat safety.

5.) Do you have a favorite experience or story from your work that made a difference, and that you think others would enjoy hearing?

Most of the time, when we do our work right, there are no stories — everyone is safe and sound!

When I do hear from parents or caregivers who have gone through Buckle Up for Life programs about how their car seat protected their child in a crash, I am deeply moved about the impact we’ve had on the lives of so many families. That really inspires me to keep expanding the program.

6.) Did you have any mentors or role models? Anyone in particular whose encouragement affected you?

I have been lucky enough to work with Dr. Victor Garcia — he’s the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital director of trauma who helped launch Buckle Up for Life. Whenever I told him about an accomplishment or a milestone, he would respond, “Well, how can you improve that?” Now, I’m constantly asking myself and the Buckle Up for Life team, how can we get better? How can we reach more people with our resources?

7.) Is there any advice or anything you would like to say to a young person who is interested in STEM work?

My mother would always say, never waste an opportunity to help someone! As a society, we need to bring positive ideas forward so we can make a difference in people’s lives — and some of the best ways to help people are based in science, research and data. Society needs people who are skilled in STEM to move these ideas forward — so go for it!

View more of NYSCI’s STEM Profiles here.

She told us about feeling different as a kid and thinking like an engineer.

My job is a lot of fun. We identify innovations needed for future uses of the internet. I work with the research and education community, which includes university CIOs (Chief Information Officers), networking experts, professors, researchers, students and government agencies, including NSF (National Science Foundation), NIH (National Institutes of Health) and networking partners in the U.S. and around the world.

What got you started? How did you catch the bug?

When I was a little girl, my big brother, who was really into space and the space race, would get me up very early in the morning when space missions, like the Apollo moon flights, would be taking off.

Nobody else wanted to get up that early — it was like six in the morning — and I remember sitting on the floor watching the TV with him, thinking it was so cool.

And then one day, I remember thinking: “How do they do that? How do they get up there safely? How do they come back safely? How do they not die? How do they breathe when they’re there? How do they do that?”

They say that when you start asking “how,” that’s when you become an engineer. Engineers like to understand how and why, and we like to create things and fix things. That’s when I really starting thinking like an engineer. I think I was around three.

What drives you? What keeps you interested?

I’ve always loved math and science, always. I love numbers — I’m always counting things — I count tiles on ceilings, I count everywhere I go, I count windows at church. I love counting.

When I was a little girl, I remember someone gave me this little Motorola transistor radio and I remember I wanted to take it apart, and they were like, “No, no, no,” and I’m like, “Why not? How does this work?”

I’ve always loved learning how things work. I love creating things. And I love fixing things — making things better. That’s the opportunity you have as an engineer, as a scientist and even as a business executive. When I was a VP and when I was a director at IBM, we worked on strategies of how to create new solutions for clients. For example, I worked on the Watson strategy for cognitive computing, and we looked at how we could help make healthcare outcomes better. How could we provide insights from data to help doctors make the best care decisions, and reduce some of the costs that they have? I loved the strategy work I did at IBM– always looking at ways that we can innovate, with what we have or what we could do to make things better.

Internet2 provides a very fast network to allow fast, secure data sharing to help all kind of researchers, and are looking at ways to better serve the cancer community.

I love the idea of helping people. I love the idea of figuring out stuff that no one’s figured out yet. But my absolute favorite thing to do is think. I always say my brain is my best part, and I love using it. I love thinking and I love helping other people think, so that we can think things we haven’t thought before.

Many young people take an early interest in STEM subjects, but then somehow get the message, intended or not, that they’re not cut out for it. What was your experience? What advice do you have for people who run into it?

I had what feels like millions of experiences with that. What’s really critical is that you have to believe in yourself. When I was at IBM, we created a podcast series called “I Believe in Me” (IBM). We had different people talk about their speed bumps in life and how they got over them.

From the beginning I was very different. My mother died when I was born, and my father didn’t want to raise me, so I was adopted by my grandparents, who were absolutely wonderful to me.

And then when I was in first grade, the teachers decided I was too smart and so they decided to skip me, and once again, I was different. I had to change schools in the middle of the year from second to third grade, and it was very traumatic. I went from being the biggest kid on the bus to the littlest kid on the bus. And so I’ve always had this challenge of being very different and not having people believe in me.

I won the Grumman scholarship [from the aerospace company], and I remember, quite clearly, my high school physics teacher telling me he was disappointed that I won the scholarship and not one of the boys. The first thing I thought was — maybe he’s right — maybe I shouldn’t have won this. Then I started thinking, well, I don’t know — those people at Grumman seem really smart, and it’s their money, and they picked me, so I guess they’re right.

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The challenge is that it’s like you have armor on — like this silver vest, and every time someone says something discouraging to you, it’s like you get a little ding in it. Like, ding, ding, ding! And they start adding up and sometimes you get to the point where you want to give up.

I think people get all these little messages that they can’t do something and they don’t know what to do with them and they let them win. One of the most important things I’ve learned, beyond believing in myself, is to believe in myself especially when other people don’t believe in me. That’s when it’s really, really important.

Is there anything you would like to say to a young person who is interested in STEM work, but isn’t sure about pursuing it?

It really helps when you find someone you think is like you, who’s doing what you want to do. Look for role models like that. You just need one. Like Sally Ride for me.

Even someone you meet who’s going to college for the program you want to do. Look for a mentor like that — someone you can look at and say: “If they can do it, so can I.”

When you have a problem believing in yourself, call one of your personal cheerleaders — someone who’ll be cheering for you and reminding you of what’s right about you — not what’s wrong about you. That’s one of the things I think we really need to do a lot better: help identify what’s right about people.

Look at what’s right about you. What’s great about you? Use that to help you fly over the speed bumps.

Check out other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Ayah Bdeir, an educator turned entrepreneur.

· Mike Nguyen, a mathematician and former football star.

Through summer programs and partnerships with industry leaders like Google and Facebook, All Star Code is helping to close the tech entrepreneurship gap in the United States.

Since Christina started All Star Code in 2013, 100 percent of All Star Code’s college-aged alumni have gone on to attend college — more than half at top-tier universities — with 84 percent intending to major in computer science-related subjects.

My journey started when I was 12 years old — an age when many kids discover a love of STEM — but my story is unusual. My father, Reginald F. Lewis, became one of the most successful African-American businessmen of the 1980s and ’90s when he engineered the $1 billion leveraged-buyout of Beatrice International Food Company, making him the CEO of the largest African-American owned company in the world. He passed away when I was not yet a teenager, which launched me on a path to finding my life’s work in the field of technology.

At the age of 12 I was named to the board of my late father’s foundation. Since then, I have dedicated myself to supporting causes that helped the Black community and other historically-oppressed peoples.

The growth in income inequality became clear to me early in my career as a business journalist. I saw how those with assets reaped seemingly ever-increasing rewards. And I realized that if my father were a young man today, he would no doubt be working in technology, the growth industry for building wealth in the 21st century. With that notion in mind, I began investigating ways to help minority talent gain access to the tech world.

While STEM organizations for girls continue to grow, there are few organizations fostering, exposing or educating young men of color for careers in the tech industry. So after conversations with over 150 professionals in the education, non-profit, philanthropic and technology spaces, All Star Code was born. In honor of my father’s legacy — and everyone else who has fought for equal rights — I created this program to help the next generation of youth catch the next wave of opportunity.

For instance, five years ago when I was looking for students to join All Star Code, I came across an email from a high school student in New York named Mamadou. He had learned some coding and was asking for someone, anyone, to let him volunteer at a startup or tech company.

After learning of All Star Code, he applied, was accepted, and he has now gone on to become the co-founder of an award-winning hackathon organization teaching students to code, empowering others by sharing his story. He was also accepted at Stanford University last year and currently holds a 3.5 GPA. Examples like this remind me of the positive influence that this organization can have on the lives of youths within the Black and Latino community.

All Star Code has provided me with a platform to share lessons and insights from my experiences at the intersection of tech and education. Sharing best practices for fostering entrepreneurialism and future leaders in technology is a privilege, and I think my father would be proud.

Check out other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Anzar Abbas, a neuroscience student studying your brain.

· Mike Nguyen, a mathematician and former football star.

I remember my Aha! moment — the day in AP Chem class that I decided upon nuclear engineering as a career. I read a radioactive decay equation and thought, “Wait, I can take something and make it into another thing on an elemental level?” and I was done. I then spent the next five years with the goal of becoming a nuclear engineer, through my last year of high school and four years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

College was challenging, but very rewarding. I graduated in 2011 and I’m currently a reactor engineer at a nuclear boiling water reactor in Pennsylvania. Reactor engineers ensure that the nuclear fuel at a power plant is burned efficiently and correctly through its cycle.

Imagine a fire. If you didn’t keep putting logs on it and moving around what is burning, would it stay lit long or burn as warmly as it should? As reactor engineers, we essentially serve the function of stoking the fire and moving the logs around to ensure a proper burn.

I love my job. We generate clean, reliable, carbon-free electricity and keep the lights on for our neighbors. There are few things more rewarding than preparing and executing a flawless power maneuver (essentially, stoking the fire) at work.

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When I first started in the industry, I was fortunate that I had a fellow engineer as a mentor. She taught me to be strong and stand up for myself when necessary. She said never to let anyone devalue you because of your gender. I am six years into my career and to this day, that remains one of the best lessons I have learned.

If you are interested in a STEM career, you should absolutely pursue it! There is no shortage of jobs, challenges, or places you can go. Not everyone who is in STEM is a 4.0 student in college or high school — in fact, most of us were not those 4.0 students. Don’t let the challenge of the major discourage you; we’ve all had difficulties but managed to get through and have a super-rewarding career.

Check out other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Anzar Abbas, a neuroscience student examining the resting brain.

· Mike Nguyen, a mathematician and former football star.

Tanja works with renowned medical, academic and industry leaders from around the world, using genomic research to fight serious diseases. Doctors hope that by sequencing, or reading, the genetic material in people’s bodies, they will be able to find treatments precisely targeted to help them.

We asked Tanja to talk about how she got into genomic research and how her job will affect millions of people in the years to come.

Tell us what you do.

My department’s mission is to provide access for researchers to cutting-edge, next-generation DNA sequencing technology to allow them to investigate human diseases and treatment options. The NYGC is looking to translate genomics to actionable results that doctors can use to provide better care to their patients.

I run the production laboratory and oversee everything that deals with the physical processing of genetic samples. The production lab is a high-throughput next-generation sequencing facility, and we sequenced around 30,000 samples for over 1,000 different projects last year. We work with collaborators around the world, and it is my responsibility to ensure that the sequencing happens in a timely manner and that we send high-quality sequencing data back to the investigators. It is a very process-oriented role, and a lot of my time is spent looking at existing processes, making improvements, and building up capacity to meet the increasing demand for sequencing, while making sure the lab staff has all necessary resources to do their work.

Give us the big picture — what is this all about?

We are hoping to advance personalized medicine. Right now, doctors may have three or four different types of treatment options for a particular disease, and they use their judgement and experience to decide what treatment is right for their patient. One day our work will make that decision simpler for them. That’s important. For a lot of diseases, such as cancer, it is vital that the patient receives the correct treatment as soon as possible. Genetic sequencing would not only be able to determine exactly what type of illness one has, but also predict what type of medicine and treatment would work the best with the least side effects for an individual.

What got you into this field?

Growing up, I had the idea of being a veterinarian or teacher, but it wasn’t until I started learning about genetics that I really knew I wanted to pursue the work I am in today. I had an amazing biology teacher in high school when I was first learning about genetics, and I fell in love with the problem solving and analytical component of it. He posed challenging questions but also had a great sense of humor and made the classes fun. You could tell how much he loved the material he was teaching, and how important it was to him that we all learned and cared about biology.

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What kinds of things did your parents say to you about your career?

They were always very supportive. They said it is important that you study and work in an industry that you’re passionate about. If you are passionate about something, it won’t feel like hard work and you will get through it. I grew up in Germany and did a year as an au pair in the U.S. as an in-between, but I ended up liking it so much that I decided to stay in Maryland and attend community college to get an associate’s degree, then I moved over to Bowie State University to get my bachelor’s degree. My parents struggled with my decision to study and work in the States, but they were proud of the fact that I received a college education, since neither of them had that opportunity.

What would you say to students today who may be interested in going into a scientific field but are not sure?

I would encourage them to pursue a career in the sciences, which will continue to be in demand and will only continue to grow in relevance and ways that we can use to make peoples’ lives better. There are lots of available jobs and many different opportunities in the various fields. In my experience, the field of genomics constantly evolves and changes and there are always new challenges to tackle and new things to learn, which keeps things interesting. Go find an internship in an area that interests you; it is a great way to find out more and get exposure.

Check out other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Anzar Abbas, a neuroscience student examining the resting brain.

· Mike Nguyen, a mathematician and former football star.

STEM Profiles: Tanja Smith’s Frontier Life was originally published in Education Program on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An Open-Ended Digital Tool

Museums that serve children are adept at creating intrinsically motivating experiences that build on curiosity, challenge and play to engage young people in activities that help them realize their own agency in learning. Educators and researchers at the Sara Lee Schupf Family Center for Play, Science, and Technology Learning (SciPlay) are working to learn more about how technology can facilitate playful child-adult engagement and learning in informal settings by drawing on a partnership with the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) and the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. This 18-month research project, which began in February 2015 and is funded by The Heising-Simons Foundation, will inform the development of instructional materials for Picture Dots, a digital tool for early learners. The initiative leverages the museums’ ability to help parents, especially those living in underrepresented communities, engage their young children in quality interactions about science, mathematics and literacy learning.

Picture Dots is an iOS app designed to assist young children and their grown-ups in having conversations about what they notice in the world. The app invites families to take a photo of something they see in their daily life. The child can then drag four different colors of dots (red, green, blue and yellow) onto the photo and assign each colored dot a sound (prerecorded musical notes, silly sounds or sounds of their own) or a word, phrase or short sentence (in English or Spanish). Dots can be all sounds or all text. When the child presses “play,” they can either read or hear their story creation, with each dot loading in the same left-to-right and top-to-bottom order in which you read a book in English.

The dots can also be used for color matching, counting or categorizing objects, making patterns, remembering an event, decorating a photo, or any other use children dream up. The app silently counts the dots as they are placed on the photo, providing a running tally of how many dots of each color are used and the total number of dots placed on the picture. Even after dots are on the photo, children can easily delete, move or reassign sounds or words to the dots, allowing children to continuously manipulate their creations. Creations made in the app can be saved to the device or emailed to the user or to others to share the child’s creation.

Picture Dots is the first early childhood app NYSCI has released, complementing its five other Noticing Tools™ apps that promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for middle schoolers. Development of these apps over the past four years is informed by NYSCI’s Design, Make, Play approach, which puts children and play at the center of learning, tackling difficult concepts that are often abstract for students, encouraging divergent solutions to problems, and engaging children as creators — not just consumers — of content. NYSCI’s Noticing Tools have become central to the institutions’ goal of reaching families, teachers and students beyond the walls of the museum and introducing a playful approach to STEM learning.

Picture Dots is different from many other educational apps for young children where they complete challenges or level-up. But its key strengths –simplicity, flexibility and open-endedness — made it difficult to design supporting instructional materials, such as storybooks or educator guides. As soon as formative testing began, the team realized that communicating the purpose and value of the app to museum visitors was going to be a major challenge. They had to find a way to help grown-ups see the endless potential uses of the app and the value it holds for helping little ones develop school readiness skills. On top of that, they had to convince parents, who often seek hands-on experiences at museums, that engaging with mobile technology could add value to their visit.

In the past year Picture Dots has been incorporated into a variety of workshops and museum events in order to inform the development of child-adult and educator guides to support use of the app. Most of this work involved child-adult pairs; workshop themes addressed a variety of topics, including plants, wheels, paint, colors, patterns and the environment. At one public event at NYSCI, the app was used to explore how to engage families in digital storytelling.

Stumbling Upon a Story

As part of formative research to better understand how families use the app, we hosted a booth at NYSCI’s annual World Maker Faire, a convention celebrating makers and design thinking, to try out the app as a storytelling tool. Storytelling, a natural activity of children and caregivers everywhere, was chosen as a yet-to-be-explored medium supported by Picture Dots that would allow children to tell stories about the products of their making activities.

To ensure that children could interact with Picture Dots even if they had not made anything at other booths, we provided three small dioramas with different backgrounds (a landscape on Mars, a tiered podium with an overhead “WINNER” banner, and a plain white background) and an assortment of smaller images (an alien, a car, a cat, Earth, Mars, a rocket ship, a hamburger, a house, etc.). Children could use these as props to construct a scene. Space theme-related images were also pre-loaded onto the iPads, allowing families to try out the app even if they did not want to use the dioramas. We then prompted children and adults to take a photo of their diorama scene using Picture Dots, and then annotate it by following prompts presented on a sign at the booth: “How does it start? What happens? Then what happens? How does it end?”

Over the course of the two-day event, we observed many children and their parents working together to construct stories with personal relevance. In one case, a 12-year-old boy created a scene using the blank background that included the planet Mars, a space ship, an astronaut, an alien and a car. After taking a photo of his creation using Picture Dots, the boy and his mother sat together on the ground to create a story about the scene using the app. The mother held the app and typed as her son dictated a story about rescuing an alien from Mars.

Children enjoyed manipulating and playing with materials in real life and then using the app to engage in the activity in a new way. The app provided an added level of participation, allowing children to memorialize their creation and the story it inspired and later email themselves a copy. Using the app, children and their parents could edit and revise stories together, calling upon crucial early literacy skills.

We noticed that children rarely chose to tell a story about one of the pre-loaded images. This led us to recognize the importance of connecting the app activity to a real-life object or experience, which provides abundant opportunities for natural conversations in which children observe, predict and talk about details which can be further explored using Picture Dots.

Extending the Story to Library Settings

After the success of Picture Dots as a storytelling tool during World Maker Faire, the team realized that the app could also be used by children to annotate and share their ideas about books as they read them. Children often get in trouble for drawing or writing in books, especially library books, so we were curious to see what they would do when given the opportunity to annotate a page in a book using Picture Dots. An eight-year-old boy and his mom helped us test this out. The boy chose ABC Word Book by Richard Scarry and picked a page to photograph using the Picture Dots camera tool. The boy added dots to the image of the page and recorded his comments on the different images on the page. He made the yellow dots, which he placed on a box of popcorn, say, “pop, pop, pop,” the red dots, placed on a pig who had fallen face first into a cake, say, “ouch, ouch, ouch,” the blue dots, placed on a crab who was catching popcorn flying through the air say, “Ahhhhhhh,” and the green dot, placed on a bird catching popcorn in its mouth say “mm, nom nom, good nom nom.”

As part of the initial grant, formative testing in workshops was planned to take place at both museums and at surrounding community organizations. Based on the success of the app’s storytelling capabilities, NYSCI formed a new partnership with the Queens Borough Public Libraries to conduct community workshops. The SciPlay team partnered with library workshops already planned to focus on helping parents and their children develop skills critical to preschool. Picture Dots was positioned as a tool to help parents develop dialogic reading skills (questioning techniques used to help children engage in conversations as they read a story). During the workshop a librarian modeled dialogic reading for the group and then parents were guided to use the app to have conversations with their kids about a page in the book. Families annotated a page by typing in the names of its characters. When the Picture Dots app read back the character’s names, the children were delighted and engaged with the book and the app.

Storybook Guides for Children and Parents

The formative research described above finally informed the development of key instructional materials: three playful, interactive storybooks for parents and children. A Day at the Park, A Day at the Museum and A Day with Dad focus on helping caregivers use the app to introduce young children to early school readiness skills through things they do in their everyday lives. They suggest ways to use the app to spark conversations about what they observe in the world around them. The storybooks help parents make connections between the uses of the app and children’s acquisition of early mathematical thinking skills, literacy practice and scientific literacy. For example, in A Day at the Park, children use the dots to count the number of clouds in a photo of the sky. Additional suggestions give adults ideas of other everyday things — toys, fruit or buttons — that could be photographed with the app and later used to help children practice skills, such as categorizing, identifying, naming, comparing and observing.

Formative research, workshops and development of guides for Picture Dots are ongoing; phase one of this project is planned to conclude in August. This completed work has allowed the team to identify value-added uses of the app, the types of supports that adults and children need, and how to best guide educators to integrate the app into child-adult workshops in informal learning environments. Phase two of the project, still in development, will investigate the impact of the app on children’s learning and make modifications based on what we have learned during phase one. For instance, we’ll use a text box instead of a single line for typing, add the ability to compare and contrast images in the same frame, and add more dot colors. These tweaks will allow the tool to be even more useful for storytelling and expand what children, adults and educators can do with it.

Amanda Jaksha earned her doctorate in teaching and teacher education from the University of Arizona. As a program designer for SciPlay at the New York Hall of Science, she uses research-based strategies to create instructional materials to help families and educators leverage children’s play for science learning across multiple settings.

This article first appeared in Hand to Hand (Winter 2015/2016,Volume 29, Number 4), a quarterly publication of the Association of Children’s Museums. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. To learn how to obtain the full publication, visit www.ChildrensMuseums.org.

To me, science is just about being curious.

I’m a Ph.D. student in neuroscience studying patterns in the brain and how they help the brain do its job.

Funnily enough, my impulse to become a scientist came about when I was a student of history. Learning about the role scientists and philosophers played in their societies inspired me to be more like them.

I realized that their work didn’t just advance technology, but it brought about progress in their cultures.

People in scientifically advanced civilizations were sharper, more interested in finding out what the human intellect was capable of. There was no Large Hadron Collider in 17th century Sicily. But the scientists were still fostering a curiosity within their societies that encouraged people to be more creative artists, more informed politicians, and fairer citizens.

Regardless of the century, the motivation for being a scientist hasn’t changed much. It doesn’t matter if it’s Copernicus spending night after night poring over the movement of the planets, or Newton locking himself in his lab not to see sunlight for days, or even a thousand physicists gathering together to listen to two black holes colliding with the help of giant sensors — the common denominator here is intellectual curiosity. They are all curious about the world around them. They know they’re on the verge of discovery, and to them, and to me, nothing could be more exhilarating.

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Science isn’t about being good at math, or getting straight A’s on your biology tests. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. and a professor’s office at a university to perform science.

To be a scientist is to be curious about the natural world around you. Kids are scientists when they turn over a rock to see what’s underneath or examine a bird’s feather. You’re a scientist when you’re skeptical about the street magician performing “magic”. And the best thing is that science doesn’t exclude anyone, because we are all naturally curious, and we should all be naturally skeptical.

Curious folk seek answers. And a scientist goes to great lengths to find those answers with paramount accuracy. That’s where the Large Hadron Collider comes in … and the magnifying glass, the microscope, telescope, beaker, pipette, the lab notebook.

We test and retest, we collaborate with peers, challenge our colleagues, demolish the fakes. And when it all comes together, the entire scientific process turns out to be this beautiful machine that churns out knowledge and advancements in human intellect. And raises more questions.

And it’s all driven by a simple curiosity.

Check out other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Keith Appleby, an architect deep into the tech world who also loves art.

· Mike Nguyen, a mathematician and former football star.

Mike is a vice president at Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm, and his office is in Los Angeles.

Mike was born in Vietnam. His parents brought the family to the United States when he was a small child.

A football star at UCLA, he was a wide receiver and caught a touchdown pass in the 1994 Rose Bowl.

What do sports and statistics have to do with each other? We asked Mike to talk about what he does and how he got there.

Mike Nguyen, Mathematician

You deal with a lot of numbers. Were you interested in that as a child?

When I was 10 years old, a big part of my life was sports. I was passionate about football, and I played basketball and baseball as well, but the biggest priority for me as a child was doing well in school. My parents always taught me to challenge myself inside and outside of the classroom, and I always enjoyed the analytical aspects of my math and economics classes.

What’s your work like?

My firm consults for law firms, corporations and government entities, typically in litigation matters. Many times the work we do deals with the assessment of damages, ranging from analyzing markets and economic and financial data to developing alternative scenarios to estimate how things would have looked if certain actions or events hadn’t taken place. Ultimately, the work we do involves working with academics and industry professionals, and often ends up as testimony in court.

For example, we advised an investment management firm that had lost a lot of its client’s money by investing in Enron stock, and was being sued for more than $1 billion. We analyzed more than 10 years of stock trades and holding records, and ultimately concluded that their investment practices were consistent with industry norms. This was a pretty big case. At the time it was one of the top 10 litigation defense wins of the year.

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What got you ready for the work you do now?

I received my undergraduate degree from UCLA, majoring in mathematics and economics, with a minor in business administration. The quantitative courses I took, such as economics and statistics, were important to understand how to analyze data and understand how markets work. I later returned to UCLA to obtain my MBA in finance and accounting, where I was able to learn more about business valuation, securities, and investment management, which help me do my job every day.

How did you end up at UCLA?

Sports and academics were always important to me. I was raised in Oregon but I chose to attend UCLA because it had the perfect balance between academics and athletics and because it felt like the right fit. I received a full scholarship to play as a starting wide receiver on the football team, where I had a very successful football career that included scoring a touchdown in the ’94 Rose Bowl. I am also proud to have been the first Vietnamese-born non-kicker to play Division I college football.

Did you have a mentor?

Yes. Don Morrison, my academic advisor and a professor of statistics at UCLA, introduced me to economic consulting, and motivated me to pursue it. He was a mentor to a lot of UCLA athletes. He knew that not many of us would turn pro, and even if we did, we would want something to do after our playing days were over. Ever since I was young, I always did my best work while on a team. Professor Morrison taught me that through economic consulting, I could continue to be part of a team by interacting with colleagues and professors every day, so I wasn’t merely crunching numbers on my own.

What would you want to say to students today?

The skills that you learn through STEM courses are going to be extremely valuable to you in your future career. It might be hard to see when you are young, but these skills are in very high demand. If you do well, it will open up a lot of opportunities for you at a lot of different types of companies. It’s going to be challenging, and you have to work hard and spend the time learning those subjects, but the benefits will come.

What gets you to the office in the morning?

We help clients solve complex business problems and every day brings a new challenge that I haven’t seen before. If the issues were easy, then we wouldn’t have been hired to solve them in the first place. My job allows me to learn new things constantly, from the work itself and also from the people I’m working with.

A lot of students say they’re intimidated working with numbers. That seems to be what you find interesting.

Yes. Challenging yourself is how you get better. In sports, if you only play against teams you’re blowing out, you’re never going to improve.

Check out the other STEM Profiles in our series:

· Ayah Bdeir, an entrepreneur who started littleBits, which makes kits for kids so they can invent their own tech devices.

· Keith Appleby, an architect deep into the tech world who also loves art.

STEM Profiles: Mike Nguyen, Mathematician and Football Star was originally published in Age of Awareness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our newest profile is of Keith Appleby, an architect and design associate at Svigals + Partners in New Haven, Connecticut. Svigals + Partners is at the intersection of art and STEM (or STEAM), designing buildings and structures that are visually appealing, while using the principals of math and engineering to make sure those same designs stay upright.

He has some things in common with Ayah Bdeir, who we profiled at the start of the series a couple weeks ago. Keith’s work is what happens when seemingly disparate disciplines, like engineering and design, come together — the resulting work products are vital, important and inspiring.

Suppose you’re a college student deeply into the STEM subjects but also fascinated by art. What major should you choose? For Keith Appleby, the obvious answer was architecture.

Appleby, a 27-year-old design associate at Svigals + Partners, a New Haven, Connecticut-based firm that designed the new Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, felt that architecture would offer the perfect overlap “between the creative brain and the analytical brain.” Appleby’s education prepared him for the realities of a modern design career — a profession that is now far removed from the drafting tables of the past and wedded to collaborative computer programs.

He earned his degree as part of a five-year program at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture (class of 2012). The program was rigorous, with required courses in calculus, structural and mechanical engineering, and a first year that Appleby suspects was designed to “put students through the ringer.”

He laid the foundation for this work during high school, when in addition to taking art classes each year — a rarity at his intense prep school — he also sought out summer courses in engineering and genetics at Johns Hopkins. Carnegie Mellon also offered its architecture students courses in cutting-edge computer programs and renowned courses in sustainable design.

Appleby praises the program’s curriculum for not creating “pigeon-holed CAD monkeys.” He says, “They knew that most people are not getting into the profession to be technical architects,” adding, “It’s clear when I think back that the education was really pushing us in these different STEM directions to make sure we would be ready for the future.”

And the future is tech.

His typical workday involves drafting and producing building plans — all on the computer, often for nine hours or more. “Drafting for us is sitting at a computer and producing in the program, and instead of drawing these sketches, we’re building a three dimensional model that contains a lot of information. We are still doing some drafting on the computer, but it’s gotten more and more complex.”

Drafting on the computers allows for greater collaboration, sometimes connecting offices around the world, as well as greater precision in design. For instance, architects and engineers draft separate 3D designs with layouts of each of the building’s systems. This allows for a process called “clash detection” in which the teams overlay the models to discover if, say, a toilet drainpipe is running through a staircase.

Computer-generated drafting allows for a level of coordination not seen before the advent of CAD.

This brave new world designing with technology has changed the way architects apply their STEM knowledge. Math is certainly still used, though his mandatory college Calculus course is not knowledge he uses regularly. It is much more important that he be able to do “loose calculations.” As for engineering, though Appleby took several courses in college, in the true world of professional architecture they often hire out for engineers. This disparity between his course work and his career does not bother him. “As an architect,” he says, “you want to know a little about everything, whereas the engineer wants to know a lot about one thing or a couple things.”

Besides, his true passion remains an artistic one. He calls the creative side of architecture his “natural inclination,” explaining, “I took engineering, I took genetics courses, these various influences in science — always being interested in it, but I just never found the same propensity for success as I did in the artistic field.”

Appleby still does a fair amount of sketching by hand. Calling it his “primary interest,” he notes that it gives him a unique advantage over those who are less comfortable sketching, and speaks of the “unique” and “symbiotic” connection between the hand and the brain. “You’re not going to be hired nowadays unless you can draft on a computer. But, sometimes we need to force ourselves to sketch it out and see what our brain is really thinking.”

STEM Profiles: “Sometimes we need to force ourselves to sketch it out” was originally published in Age of Awareness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.