National Science and Engineering Week 2010
For team members at Everything Dinosaur, this week (week commencing 15th March) is the start of our involvement in National Science and Engineering Week. Officially, this national programme of science and other related events started on the 12th, but for us, our activities in schools really get going from today onwards.
National Science and Engineering Week
Organised by the British Science Association, this annual programme of events, exhibitions, seminars and presentations encourages UK residents to learn something about science, maths and engineering. There are a number of activities planned over the next few days, all aimed at helping people discover something that they did not know.
This year’s theme is “planet Earth” in support of the International Year of Biodiversity, celebrating the diversity of fauna and flora. Everything Dinosaur staff are taking part in a number of dinosaur themed activities – carrying out experiments with artificial dinosaur stomachs, casting teeth of herbivores and carnivores, plus taking a number of classes back to the Early Jurassic to investigate some new fossilised dinosaur footprints.
For replicas of iconic fossils and for educational dinosaur themed activities: Dinosaur Learning Activities.
A Great Venue for a Dinosaur Workshop
Well resourced teaching facilities. A venue for a dinosaur workshop for National Science and Engineering Week. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur
Most of the lesson plans and schemes of work for our science week contribution are already finished, although we have a couple more to do today for the latter part of the programme, as the science week events are due to run until 22nd March.
I think this is so important an event.
Americans are falling so far behind in terms of the number of qualified engineers we are producing, every effort we can make to honor the engineers we do have is to be encouraged.
India alone produces 350,000 US qualified engineers every year, several times our number. In addition, the average professional engineer in India is happy to work for $15,000 annually. That salary represents 25 times the average Indian income.
And, we haven't even started talking about other Asian countries.
We are in trouble from an engineering standpoint, and we need to aggressively take steps to encourage these majors, especially among women.
Since women now represent over 60% of the US college population, and since up til now the per capita representation of women interested in engineering is invisible, we need to encourage more of our women to enter the engineering field.
Thanks for sharing this story with us.
Dr. Ann Voisin