We are excited to announce that the STEMcoding Data Science Initiative has been selected for the 2021 American Institute of Physics Meggers Project Award! This award is given every other year and the projects must all benefit high school teachers, especially physics and physical science teachers.
A total of $12,500 will be split between Ohio State University (lead Prof. Chris Orban) and The University of Mt Union (lead Prof. Richelle Teeling-Smith). These funds will be used to create new high school level data science activities with a physical science, earth science (including astronomy) and environmental science theme.
An earlier post describes the STEMcoding Data Science: Earth Day activity that we recently submitted to hourofcode.com. Another data science activity that we created is an astronomy activity called Night Sky Simulator that involves a mix of javascript programming and spreadsheet data analysis.
The goal of the STEMcoding Data Science Initiative is to create a year-long high school level data science course. Similar to our existing data science activities these will involve a mix of javascript programming and spreadsheet data analysis with either Google Sheets or Excel. Unlike other high school data science initiatives we will leave extra room at the end of the year to allow students to study for the industry credential exam for Excel. We think the connection to the Excel credential will be of interest to high schools serving socioeconomically underprivileged student populations.
To get updates on the STEMcoding Data Science Initiative please add yourself to the STEMcoding email list or follow us on instagram or twitter @STEMcoding Prof. Chris Orban also posts updates to facebook
We are also very happy to mention that the other 2021 Meggers Project Award winner is an initiative led by our friend Prof. Brian Lane of the Let’s Code Physics youtube channel!