Logan Elm students are taking the day to learn about career opportunities and personal career journeys from local professionals. Pickaway County professionals are helping students plan and prepare for their future careers!
OSU Extension will highlight local drone programs as well as igniting career paths such as becoming a drone pilot or technician and the transferable skill sets that apply to this growing market sector. Learn more by visiting the Federal Aviation Administration. Presentation link: go.osu.edu/dronecareers.
Remote Pilot Certification Program
Pickaway Pathways to Success has recently partnered with OSU Extension to develop a Remote Pilot Certification Program using the Unmanned Safety Institute curriculum modules which pair its course work with the OSU Center for Aviation Studies. The program prepares students to obtain their Remote Pilot Certificate from the FAA (for commercial flight purposes.) This certificate demonstrates that the student understands the regulations, operating requirements, and procedures for safely flying drones.
Drone Careers Impacting All Business and Industry Sectors
Drone growth will occur across five main segments of the enterprise industry: Agriculture, construction and mining, insurance, media and telecommunications, and law enforcement, but will be increasing their presents in all business and industry sectors. Drone applications are everywhere.
The Popular Annual Financial Report provides a concise summary of the financial condition and activities of Pickaway County. The report is designed to promote transparency in government while educating the public by providing a summary of the county’s finances, taxes, services, and useful reference materials in a readable and understandable format.
Youth STEM Career Development Programming
Our programs strive to expose youth to STEM fields and careers through engaging hands-on activities that link to career exploration opportunities.
Rethinking how we program by proactively using technology in our hands-on programming, but also how we deliver programming. Keeping the Growth Mind approach for both youth and educators! Offering in-person, virtual, and hybrid programming – programming through COVID-19.
Newton’s first law: An object at rest remains at rest, or if in motion, remains in motion at a constant velocity unless acted on by a net external force. As long as we are living, we are in motion, so let’s extend that energy and force to learning and maintaining a growth mindset.
Meghan Thoreau, Extension Educator, Community Development, Ohio State University Extension, Pickaway County
Figure 1. The pandemic has had disproportionate impacts on working women’s careers. Photo by Adobe Spark.
COVID-19 has altered the lives of most Americans, but changes at home and work have affected working women significantly, particularly working women of color.
Even before COVID, women earned less, saved less, had less access to financial services and products, and had non-linear career trajectories. Furthermore, women lived longer than men. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women’s life expectancy is to reach 87.3 years by 2060, compared with 83.9 years for men (Medina, Sabo, and Vespa 2020). Since COVID-19, women face additional disproportional impacts from the pandemic-induced recession. The pandemic’s effect on women has been termed a “she-cession,” by C. Nicole Mason, a women’s policy researcher and economist, to describe the disproportionate impacts the pandemic has had on working women’s careers (Andrews 2020).
Our country has undergone an initial mass exodus of more than 20 million women from the workforce at the beginning of the pandemic (Chiappa 2021). While many women eventually returned to work, a huge number left their careers to fill ongoing gaps in childcare and to help with their children’s remote learning. January’s 2021 jobs reports showed that 2.5 million women ultimately exited the workforce compared to 1.8 million men (Rogers 2021). This imbalance raises several questions:
Whose professional time do we value most?
Who is dispensable?
How can employers support and retain women in the workplace?
This fact sheet explores answers to these questions by highlighting some of the growing inequities of working women, especially after the onset of COVID-19. It also presents actionable solutions where employers can start designing their working environments and adjusting employee policies to support women proactively and tangibly in the workplace. “Equality for women is progress for all” (Unicef 2014). Click below to read the full fact sheet.
Medina, Lauren, Shannon Sabo, and Johathan Vespa. 2020. Living Longer: Historical and Projected Life Expectancy in the United States, 1960 to 2060. Washington D.C., U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau. PDF. census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1145.pdf.
Engaging K-12 Teachers with Kürzi’s interactive media device paired with a hands-on curriculum encourages healthy decisions making in our youth! A collaboration project between OSU Extension, Tiny Circuits, Education Projects, and COSI! The Teacher and Student Curriculum Guidebook links are included below.
About Kürzi
Kürzi is a small STEM/STEAM device with a built-in game that a player, or student, interacts with and may carry around with them during the day. Kürzi is designed to help students learn how to make healthy decisions in relation to diet, physical activity, and mental health through fun gameplay on the device, while they tend to their Kürzi creature.
Kürzi will also help students learn more about healthcare positions through in-game doctor visits for their creatures. During these in-game doctor visits, students will be able to measure their own basic vital signs, like heart rate, using sensors built into the device.
Our curriculum partners, led by nationally known STEM/STEAM curriculum designer Dr. Robert Horton, have designed lesson plans based on the CDC Healthy Schools National Health Education Standards around Kürzi that will fit into your existing 7-8th grade health classes.
Health Content
The Kürzi health lessons are broken down into four sections: 1) Healthy Decision Making, 2) A Healthy Plate, 3) Tracking Physical Activity, and 4) Modd and Mental Health. Each lesson provides learning outcomes for teachers, a brief introduction on the pertaining topics, along with hands-on activities designed both for in the classroom or at home with Kürzi. The lessons provide colorful images, diagrams, and worksheets for students to learn and participate in instruction.
A Kürzi website was created as a resource to support teachers implementing the curriculum in their health classes. The site includes videos, tech support, guidebook links, and other activity resources.
Kürzi Tech and Curriculum Teacher Training Included, October 2021
Ohio Christian University and Pickaway ESC Summit on November 6, 2021
Session 1: Learn about OSU Extension’s local hands-on informal STEM learning opportunities and youth career exploration programming in Pickaway County, Hands-on STEM Learning & Career Exploration Programming:
The goal of the Community Development STEM programs is to promote student engagement and interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. participants are engaging in hands-on STEM acNviNes and career exploration with visiting professionals and educators from the community and The Ohio State University. Select programs also involve high school mentor students that assist with program acNviNes while themselves gaining both soX and technical skills, leadership, community service, and college/career exploration opportunities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also forced educators to reevaluate their programming formats and plan and create more virtual learning and teaching lessons for the current 2020/21 school year forward. The study is led by me, Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator 3, M.R.P. at OSU Extension, Community Development & STEM, College of Food, Agricultural, & Environmental Sciences. The purpose of the study is to measure the experiences of K-12 teachers and 6-12th grade students in virtual and/or hybrid learning environments, to measure teacher perceptions and attitudes of virtual and hybrid learning strategies, and to identify challenges and opportunities of virtual and hybrid learning environments compared to in-person instruction. This session will share out preliminary results of the action research study currently under analysis.
MEGHAN THOREAU, OSU Extension Educator with a unique mix of skills and experience in construction management, planning, and educational outreach and programming. Meghan focuses on preparing Pickaway County youth for STEM careers. She works collaboratively with a team of Extension professionals, volunteers, campus collaborators, and community partners to provide leadership for the development, production, and evaluation of educational programs and applied research to foster STEM educational opportunities that increase career a\ainment in STEM fields. Email: thoreau.1@osu.edu.
Code is everywhere: agriculture, sports, education, art/design, pharmaceutics, robotics, health, entertainment, travel, law, politics, engineering, transportation, meteorology, tourism – you get the point. No youth or 21st-century workforce development program should be absent of code.
Computer Programming with Sphero Summer Camp Program with OSU Extension. Music credit: song,18 anni, by ARIETE from Anzio, in the province of Rome.
The highlight video above documents a middle school summer camp program where students learned about geometry, coding terminology, and how a program is written from a series of simple commands or algorithms for a computer to run through and follow. The students also explored computer science careers and had an opportunity to work together on a Sphero Quadrilateral Coding Challenge to explore firsthand how accessible and fun coding can be for anyone that is willing to try and have fun with coding.
This post was published to support an immersive hands-on Environmental Summer Camp Program gears toward middle school students. The lessons focus on frog science.
Frogs are important in research. They belong to the Animal Kingdom and are used to understand biological phenomena in a variety of other animals, including how birds, mammals, and reptiles reproduce, grow and develop.
Frogs are Indicator Species
Frogs have skin that is permeable, which means things can pass through it. This allows them to both breathe and drink through their skin. It also means that anything in the environment is really easy for them to absorb. If an environment is contaminated with things like pollutants their health will really be affected. They also live on both land and in the water, which exposes them to two different environments.
Thanks to their permeable skin and duel life on and off land frogs are the go-to species to figure out how an ecosystem is doing. Scientists often look at frog populations in order to figure out how healthy, or unhealthy an environment is.
Meet the Gastric-Brooding Frog
These frogs barfed up their babies—and now scientists are trying to bring them back from the dead.
Frogs are Important to the Food Chain
Throughout the lifecycle of a frog, they play an important role in the food chain as both predators and prey. This means that taking them out of the mix has a really big impact on lots of other animals.
As tadpoles, they feed on algae, which helps to keep the water clean. Once full-grown frogs feed on lots of insects, which helps to control bug populations.
When frogs aren’t busy eating things they are being eaten, serving as a tasty meal for tons of animals like fish, snakes, and birds. (1)
Food Chain vs. Food Web
A food chain is a linear representation or description whereas a food web is not linear and therefore includes more connections within the organisms. The two are often used interchangeably, although they are not technically the same. A food web contains multiple food chains. (2)
Career Paths
A herpetologist is a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians such as frogs and salamanders. Many herpetologists focus on the conservation of these species. Others use them to assess overall environmental conditions in a particular area. Read more about, How to become a Herpetrologist and consider a career in environmental science.
Students use iPads to access Froggipedia. Froggipedia is an engaging, interactive, powerful constructive learning Apple AR that helps students explore and discover the unique life cycle and intricate anatomical details of a frog. The app provides an immersive and engaging experience that elaborates on each phase of the life cycle of a little amphibian called the Anura. (Anura is the scientific name of the frog.)
Froggipedia helps us to observe the life cycle of a frog, such as how it turns from a single-celled egg in water to a tadpole which in turn metamorphoses into a froglet and eventually a full-grown frog. We can further dissect and observe the complex structure of its various organ systems right on our iOS devices using an Apple pencil or your finger. Thus we get the best of both worlds as we get to successfully observe and learn about the structure of a frog and yet cause no harm to life. A fun quiz, in the end, helps in absorbing the knowledge gained through this innovative app.
Wordwall Challenges
Let’s start off with some lifecycle art. Study the frog’s lifecycle below and then students can draw their own frog lifecycle in the first Wordwall challenge.
Challenge 1: Sketch the Frog Lifecycle
Challenge 2: Label the Missing Frog’s Anatomy
This challenge is best done after students engage in Froggipedia’s immersive AR dissection activity, which allows students to become familiar with the frog’s basic anatomy.
This poster presentation, ‘The Pandemic is forcing Women from the Workforce and Can Extension’s Workforce Development Programs Respond?’ was presented at the 2021 Virtual National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) National Conference on May 18, 2021. There were three versions created and provided below: 1) a video image-based poster presentation, 2) an online word-based poster presentation, and 3) a PDF word-based poster presentation.
Join Pickaway County Library’s Youth Services and OSU Extension as we create a Rube Goldberg’s Simple Machine together in our all ages virtual hands-on science program, Thursday, May 6, 2021, @ 6:00 p.m.Registration is required for this free educational virtual one-hour event, click here to register.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing personalized meeting details and a passcode to joining Zoom. We’ll also send a reminder email prior to the event. Participants will need a smartphone or laptop.
We will be making our machines out of simple household items and toys. Get creative and take a look around your house and see what supplies you can find to build your machine with us. Here the supplies list we’ll be using:
We very much hope you can join in. This learning event is great for young learners or the entire family to participate in!
Professional leadership positions highlighted in the program.
Discover how leaders and events shape the community. Today we celebrated #Nationalbusinesswomensday, half a dozen local Pickaway County businesswomen joined a special roundtable discussion on career exploration to inspire the next generation of businesswomen. The recorded webinar lets us share and explore their career pathways, life lessons, reflections, and provides a networking opportunity in the follow-up. Please click to register, go.osu.edu/businesswomen, and watch the free Pickaway Businesswomen Roundtable Program. (Session transcripts are provided within recording.)
Zoom Webinar Program Team Screen Shot
Women in business are typically very active community leaders as well, such as supporting local opportunities of engagement. The women involved in this panel are examples of working professionals, but also community leaders and mentors for young professionals to follow.
In the coming weeks, we’ll provide featured blog posts highlighting each professional’s career path more in depth. So please say tune, and of course, special thanks to our wonderful business partners:
For more information or resource support please reach out to OSU Extension and Pickaway WORKS!
The Popular Annual Financial Report provides a concise summary of the financial condition and activities of Pickaway County. The report is designed to promote transparency in government while educating the public by providing a summary of the county’s finances, taxes, services, and useful reference materials in a readable and understandable format.
