By Rodney Brown

Dean Kamen has to be given credit for trying to make his science education nonprofit FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) more hip. He even recruited Black Eyed Peas frontman and all around supernerd will.i.am to help get the word out that loving science doesn’t mean you are a loser.

To that end, FIRST just announced it will be airing a one-hour TV special on ABC called “i.am.FIRST – Science is Rock and Roll” on Sunday, Aug. 14. In addition to Kamen and will.i.am (would our last-name-only style make that i.am or just .am?) appearing will be Willow Smith and CTO of the United States Aneesh Chopra, who has connections to the Bay State as a Harvard University grad. The star power of will.i.am will also draw “special appearances” by celebrities like Justin Bieber, Jack Black, Bono, Miranda Cosgrove, Miley Cyrus, Josh Duhamel, Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Steven Tyler.

The release announcing the special, however, doesn’t say whether or not those special appearance will be live or pre-taped “science is cool!” messages. The former would have much more impact than the latter, in my opinion – any kid out there smart enough to be interested in science is also smart enough to guess that half of the celebrities are just mouthing what they were told to say. No, we don’t need any more mouthpieces, but we could use some celebrities that really are nerds and/or scientists to step up to the plate like will.i.am has.

So I am calling you out, Natalie Portman. Anyone who has a psychology degree from Harvard University (with a 4.0 GPA no less) should be up there on stage with Kamen and will.i.am, spelling out to the kids everyone hopes will be watching why studying science is fun. You too, Vin Diesel – while you don’t have a science degree (an English major at Hunter College) you are known as one of the biggest Dungeons & Dragons fans out there. If someone who is cool enough to go toe-to-toe with The Rock in his latest movie can be a D&D nerd – to the extent it is rumored he has his D&D character’s name tattooed somewhere on his body – maybe all nerds are cool.

How about some neuroscientists? Everyone that is a fan of The Big Bang Theory knows that Mayim Bialik – once the irrepressible and inescapable Blossom – is a real-life neuroscientist who took a decade off from acting to get her Ph.D. Looking for someone more in tune with the young kids these days? What about Michele Boyd, who nerds know as Riley on the web series The Guild, but who kids may know as a new recurring cast member on iCarly. Boyd has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from University of California, Davis, and before deciding on acting, worked as a researcher at Harvard Medical School.

In the musical world, let’s get on that show Queen guitarist Brian May, who has his doctorate in astrophysics. Or Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, who has a masters degree in geology from UCLA and a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University.

Of course, the real people who need to be on that stage are the scientists themselves, who can tell their real stories about what science has done for them in their lives. If any girl watching that show were to listen to Jill Becker talk about how she tried to be a great mom while launching a tech-heavy startup company based on nanotechnology – lulling her baby to sleep with the sound of drilling as she hand-assembled her company’s first machines for sale – that girl couldn’t help but get inspired.

And I defy anyone – boy or girl, young or old – to not feel real inspiration in the story of Hugh Herr, an MIT researcher who lost both of his legs to frostbite while climbing Mount Washington. He went on to develop the most advanced robotic prosthetic lower legs available, and founded the company iWalk Inc. to bring those devices to the market. Herr should be on that stage with will.i.am and Kamen showing that nerds and scientists can be active and athletic, and won’t let anything stand in their way. That’s how you really Recognize and Inspire kids about science and technology.

By Lynette Cornell

As announced on Tuesday, Massachusetts will serve as the guiding light for other states in determining and implementing STEM best practices. At the Public-Private Partnership Forum held at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray announced that he had signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the national education partnership organization Innovate + Educate.

At the event, the speakers all voiced enthusiasm for ways the state was going to lead in developing policies and figuring out what programs were most effective. The state’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science scores were declared with triumph. The NAEP report found that 83 percent of fourth-graders and 75 percent of eighth-graders attending public school in Massachusetts are scoring at basic proficiency or better in science, putting the state ahead of the nation.

But the real excitement, though, took place when the floor was opened up for company representatives and STEM organization leaders to voice their thoughts on how to move from good intentions to properly-funded, well-organized programs that will produce results.

Sitting among the exchange of STEM program ideas, two things quickly became apparent: one, technology companies really want to help with STEM education initiatives and, two, there is no shortage of STEM programs in Massachusetts. But as one speaker described them, those “random acts of STEM” are not well-connected, so there are simultaneously unnecessary redundancies and overlooked gaps. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding of how to best apply the resources, monetary or otherwise, that tech companies can provide to meet the needs of classrooms in the state.

For some companies, like Intel, who has been involved with STEM outreach for decades, a policy for STEM involvement already exists. Ann Hurd, corporate affairs manager at Intel Massachusetts Inc., noted at the event that the real need is for actionable steps and concrete tasks, not a vague call to action. Judging from the industry-wide discussions occurring regarding the term “STEM,” the problem does seem to revolve around a lack of clear translation between what the schools need and what the companies can do. Consequently, the talk regarding STEM solutions becomes a verbal contra dance with conversations continually going in circles.

In the time that these studies to analyze the STEM needs are being conducted, students across the nation are graduating with inadequate science and math educations. At some point, and this point will likely be soon, this is going to become a huge issue when the tech pipeline is missing its engineers and scientists and software developers, and additionally, our future science, technology, engineering and math teachers. So, while the state and the nation are administering tests and formulating reports to determine how bad the problem is, ill-equipped classrooms are churning out students who don’t meet basic proficiency in math and science. It’s like doing a headcount on the Titanic.

Back at the event, one thing that seemed startlingly absent from the conversation was a voice from the classrooms that all these STEM initiatives are intended to help. Given the time of day that the event was held, it was likely that any teachers who could give testimony to what classrooms actually need were busy in those  classrooms, working with the limited time and resources they have to educate the state’s future workforce. And these are classrooms that will be leading the nation in determining the best practices for STEM program selection, adoption and implementation. So, Massachusetts, the time for data analysis and committee creation is over. The time for verbal contra dancing in conference rooms has passed. It’s time to take actual action, because the nation’s eyes are on you.

By Lynette F. Cornell

It wasn’t that long ago that the top toys that snuck science and learning into playtime were the likes of K’Nex construction playsets and Alphie the Robot. The introduction of STEM education has definitely become more high tech in recent years with the arrival of products like handheld learning game devices from LeapFrog and VTech. Concord-based Isabella Products is throwing its child education hat in the ring with a new device it will be launching next year.

The company has partnered with the Boston-based publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to build a wireless tablet made specifically for children. Think educational iPad but simpler, more durable and with beefed up privacy. According to the press release, “It will allow children to read, draw, game and share content over mobile data networks.” The device, named the Fable, will have a touch screen and a customized Android operating system. While the Fable will come preloaded with educational content with the option to buy more, it’s probably only a matter of time before some little tot develops their own app for the gadget or mods the device entirely.

Like mom and dad, little tykes can tap happily away on their own mobile device and, in the process, perhaps develop a love of technology and science. While the Fable may run the risk of becoming a tech babysitter, it seems like the young mobile app developers of the future will have an advantage in having their own means of exploring the technology long before they know what a devkit is.

By being a fun way of meeting technology, this might be a good way to hook kids on science before they even meet a science teacher. Before the opportunity of participating in robotics tournaments or science fairs arrives, kids can see that science is actually fun. Granted, while not every kid who built universes out of Legos went on to become an engineer, a whole lot of children learned the basics of how constructing a sturdy structure works.

So, will interacting with technology at a younger age actually have an effect on keeping children engaged in STEM topics or is introducing tech early a lost effort? While there’s no evidence showing a concrete correlation between tinkering with tech toys and pursuing a career in science, recently published research indicates that interest in science starts really early.

In a research paper titled “Eyeballs in the Fridge: Sources of early interest in science,” academic researchers Adam Maltesea and Robert Tai published the findings of interviews they collected from 116 scientists and graduate students. According to the paper, which was published in the March 2010 issue of International Journal of Science Education, “the majority (65%) of participants reported that their interest in science began before middle school.”

But what about all the kids at schools where elementary STEM education is lacking and the pilot light of scientific interest gets snuffed out before those kids can interact with technology? In a report published in May of this year, Wheelock College’s Aspire Institute stated that the need for wholesale improvement in STEM education was urgent. But implementing these programs takes time and resources, so it might be a while before pre-K and elementary school kids can get improved technology education.

While tech toys like the Fable and the updated version of Alphie the Robot aren’t a perfect solution to this issue, they do offer an opportunity for kids to geek out and stay curious about science. And if that means the possibility of more scientists and engineers, then perhaps adding a tech angle to playtime is a good thing indeed.