As a educator and engineer I found that one of the ways to get kids interested in science, tech, engineering, & Math (STEM) fields is to concentrate on hands on activities, that dont necessairly need calculations and the 'tedius boring' parts of experiments.
Many things like trebuchets, mouse trap cars, etc can be built via using imagination and trail & error methods. Granted, the nice thing about this approach is that you can always adjust the activities/challenges to meet the age group, as well as incorporate more traditional science elements (angles, data tables, etc). The main thing is to capture the kids with the fun hook, otherwise they'll see it as just more work.
Look into the local universities, many of them have after school programs or can offer curriculum. The STEM departments are a great place to start. Also, your schoold district and county education board will have connections as well. Personally, I belong to MESA (mathematics, engineering, science achievement), there might be one in your area http://mesa.ucop.edu/about/mesausa.html
Theres also things like Cosmos http://www.ucop.edu/cosmos/, Avid, and a variety of other programs that have people who do exactly what your looking for on a daily basis.
Then theres also the national professional societies that usually have k-12 curriculm/programs, among these are IEEE, SWE, SHPE, NSBE, ASME, ASCE.
Lastly don't under estimate local government. Most reasonably sizeable cities have programs that would fit your needs. Even your council members and other elected offcials tend to be well connected and help offer leads as well.
I'm happy to know I'm not the only one who still 'codes.' It is insane to have to pick up a site in development, and was designed using a designers point rather than a programmer. Coming from a software background, it amazes my clients how clean my stuff is to not only look at, easy to debug, and how much less space it takes up. (i'm from the same old school of every byte counts).
The biggest issue I have tho is the client and their persception of thier own users. They always want flashy state of the art stuff, when 90% of thier base usually never even has the ability or want to use it. Greatest example was a contract I had. 1) after nearly finishing a site they come to me saying the layout wasn't what was agreed to. Funny thing from my point of view as I had been working with thier own person on this and the dummy site had been availble to view on a server as we worked on it, which they had been viewing (I had a tracking cookie in it) the whole time. Of course they wanted the whole thing re-done by yesterday! 2) The intended audience was some schools from poor neighborhoods, with barely hanging by a thread infrastructure, and by that i mean 800x600 screens that were all blurry on machines that can't rival my wrist watch. Yet they wanted all the bells and whistles. I warned them, but they made me do the work anyways with the predictable results. Glad I made them sign a waiver stating they were ignoring my advice. Turns out, i made loads off them in after launch trouble shooting.
The whole server/cpu side issue i think is kind of pointless. Theres no right way of doing it, it all depends on the client's servers, the audience and goofy management thinking.:-)
it seems being avid readers/consumers of thought provocative media is instilled a young age, usually by family. I know my own encourage wonderment of the world around us, also to question everything. Now, its not just the environment, but up bringing, and innate curiosity in the child. That said, being involved in education for many years one sees a lot of poorly developed educational material. I know in school I was really bored and had no incentive to learn from the spoon fed text books. One of my favorite animations was called Eureka, a series of shorts that aired on PBS, teaching in simple terms physics. This is a awesome resource for today's tv world, even my college students find this series useful as many find picking up a book a chore.
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As a educator and engineer I found that one of the ways to get kids interested in science, tech, engineering, & Math (STEM) fields is to concentrate on hands on activities, that dont necessairly need calculations and the 'tedius boring' parts of experiments. Many things like trebuchets, mouse trap cars, etc can be built via using imagination and trail & error methods. Granted, the nice thing about this approach is that you can always adjust the activities/challenges to meet the age group, as well as incorporate more traditional science elements (angles, data tables, etc). The main thing is to capture the kids with the fun hook, otherwise they'll see it as just more work. Look into the local universities, many of them have after school programs or can offer curriculum. The STEM departments are a great place to start. Also, your schoold district and county education board will have connections as well. Personally, I belong to MESA (mathematics, engineering, science achievement), there might be one in your area http://mesa.ucop.edu/about/mesausa.html Theres also things like Cosmos http://www.ucop.edu/cosmos/, Avid, and a variety of other programs that have people who do exactly what your looking for on a daily basis. Then theres also the national professional societies that usually have k-12 curriculm/programs, among these are IEEE, SWE, SHPE, NSBE, ASME, ASCE. Lastly don't under estimate local government. Most reasonably sizeable cities have programs that would fit your needs. Even your council members and other elected offcials tend to be well connected and help offer leads as well.
I'm happy to know I'm not the only one who still 'codes.' It is insane to have to pick up a site in development, and was designed using a designers point rather than a programmer. Coming from a software background, it amazes my clients how clean my stuff is to not only look at, easy to debug, and how much less space it takes up. (i'm from the same old school of every byte counts). The biggest issue I have tho is the client and their persception of thier own users. They always want flashy state of the art stuff, when 90% of thier base usually never even has the ability or want to use it. Greatest example was a contract I had. 1) after nearly finishing a site they come to me saying the layout wasn't what was agreed to. Funny thing from my point of view as I had been working with thier own person on this and the dummy site had been availble to view on a server as we worked on it, which they had been viewing (I had a tracking cookie in it) the whole time. Of course they wanted the whole thing re-done by yesterday! 2) The intended audience was some schools from poor neighborhoods, with barely hanging by a thread infrastructure, and by that i mean 800x600 screens that were all blurry on machines that can't rival my wrist watch. Yet they wanted all the bells and whistles. I warned them, but they made me do the work anyways with the predictable results. Glad I made them sign a waiver stating they were ignoring my advice. Turns out, i made loads off them in after launch trouble shooting. The whole server/cpu side issue i think is kind of pointless. Theres no right way of doing it, it all depends on the client's servers, the audience and goofy management thinking. :-)
it seems being avid readers/consumers of thought provocative media is instilled a young age, usually by family. I know my own encourage wonderment of the world around us, also to question everything. Now, its not just the environment, but up bringing, and innate curiosity in the child. That said, being involved in education for many years one sees a lot of poorly developed educational material. I know in school I was really bored and had no incentive to learn from the spoon fed text books. One of my favorite animations was called Eureka, a series of shorts that aired on PBS, teaching in simple terms physics. This is a awesome resource for today's tv world, even my college students find this series useful as many find picking up a book a chore.