Website for independent science research for high school students

 For the educators out there - if you have students who have an interest and passion for wanting to try actual science research, but they do NOT have access to professional laboratories and universities (which is the VAST majority of high schools in the country, and globally), perhaps the CABS site can be useful and help find novel research questions students and teachers can pursue WITHOUT professional labs and equipment! There really are countless legitimate, discovery level projects students can take on by using equipment most high schools have, and can build the experiments in school or even in their own house! 

If you have students who are into coding, there are endless options for developing computational studies on just about any phenomena in any discipline. There are also online databases and datasets, as well as citizen science options, students can make use of! All these types of resources can be found with the CABS sites. For examples of actual student papers from their research studies, check these from former students. 

Two new resources for elementary teachers and students

 I am breaking out two new animated resources that are most useful for elementary teachers. 

The first is a STEM story I wrote some years ago, but just had the text. It is entitled Little Sue and the Rock, and is a story for children in grades 1-3. The goal is to introduce to younger children the concept of atoms, and what atoms are made of. It goes through electrons, and a nucleus, and then that a nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. But then it introduces the fact that protons and neutrons are made of still smaller pieces called up and down quarks! Quarks are typically unknown even to high school science classes, and therefore high school students, which seems silly to me since I think it is fundamental we present the most basic ideas of what the world is made of in simple, and accurate, terms. By the way, it is fun to encourage and challenge students to write stories that try to explain a science or math topic! 

The second resource has to do with Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL. Most schools in the country have made it a goal, at some level, to bring in more SEL to deal with some of the issues we've been dealing with with children and teenagers since the Covid pandemic, specifically mental health issues. But SEL has become politicized and is under attack in many regions of the country, and has begun to be frowned upon by many educators. The trouble is, the skills described and contained in traditional CASEL SEL are actually essential life skills any parent would want their children to be strong in, in order to have a healthy and successful life! I am proposing and pushing for a re-branding of SEL to EELS - Everyday Essential Life Skills needed for success! This is a short booklet with animated pages that introduce and define what the EELS are, and I ask all who are parents to decide if the skills shown are part of "left wing indoctrination", or if they are skills you yourself use every day of your life, and are skills any parent would want their kids to know and be strong in. I have yet to find anyone who does not want kids to be strong in the listed skills!