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What do you get when you put Emporia State University education majors in a room with physics students from a Wichita middle school, and turn them loose with remote-controlled robots in a quest to capture pool balls? Under the direction of Dr. Matt Seimears, ESU assistant professor of early childhood and elementary teacher education, you have the Mission to Mars Science Olympiad 2009 . It took place in ESU's Visser Hall atrium Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Education is one of the principle funding objectives of government, private, and corporate granting agencies. The desire to create a more informed and productive citizen is paramount on the agendas of both government and private sectors. In a global environment, the more educationally astute will assume technological and economic leadership roles. Attendant with this concern is the strong push to enlarge the base of scientific and mathematical skills in schools to satisfy the No Child Left Behind...

TETRIX has quickly become the standard for robot construction, providing the rugged framework to carry the micro processing power of the Lego NXT, sensors, motors, servos, end effectors – all those components we think about when we hear the term ‘robotics’. However, TETRIX is about far more than robots. TETRIX is a building system. To constrict TETRIX to just robotics would be like calling the iPhone a cell phone. While it is top-notch at that function, there is far more capacity...

Engineering is defined at Wikipedia.com as “the discipline, art, and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or inventions.” In other words, engineering is responsible for almost everything we use. Pitsco understands the importance of engineering and the demand for engineers. That’s why we created the Engineering...

In the October newsletter of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, a message from the NCTM president was included. His statement is an important one and this message does not just apply to Mathematics. He explains that having students make connections, by either applying what they’ve already learned to understand something new, including situations from daily life or other areas of interest, or using hands-on approaches and activities, makes a significant impact in the student’s...

The buzz this week in education has been about shorter summers and longer school days. The main question that I have is: what would schools do with a longer day? The extra time could be utilized several different ways. For students who need more time in a certain topic, it would be beneficial to either add more minutes to each class or provide a free class at the end of the day to allow each student more time in a certain area. Maybe the extra time could be used to beef up classes that currently...