STEM Presentation, Jennifer Lee, February 28, 2013

Dr. Lee and Annie

Team 6-4 was excited to have a visit from Annie's Mom to talk about her work as a endocrinologist.  Dr. Lee shared her early work volunteering in hospitals and science labs and her years of study that led to her work in this challenging field.  Then, she explained that Annie had not eaten and showed the class how to test her blood sugar.  

Testing Blood Sugar

The Blood Sugar Meter

As she explained what her day to day work was like, Annie ate a breakfast loaded with sugar.  Then, she tested Annie's blood sugar again, and we saw how it went up to an unhealthy level.  Dr. Lee explained how these swings in blood sugar puts a strain on the body systems that could lead to diabetes and other health problems.  Hopefully, we all learned a great lesson about eating in a healthy way!

An Unhealthy Breakfast

STEM Presentation: February 12, Deborah Reich

Team 6-4 enjoyed a fascinating presentation on anesthesiology.  Dr. Deborah Reich of Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the mother of Maddy, explained how anesthesiology works and how she became an anesthesiologist. She described the process doctors use to reduce pain during medical procedures and demonstrated several techniques used by anesthesiologists.

Dr. Reich demonstrates how to find a vein.

Dr. Reich demonstrates how an IV works.

STEM Presentation, February 5, Neville Sonnenberg

Dr. Sonnenberg showed us eco-friendly packaging made of bullrushes, sugar and bamboo!  How cool is that!

Aly's dad, Neville Sonnenberg,  was Team 6-4's STEM speaker this week.  He shared with us what is a fairly new STEM field, Materials Engineering.   We divided up into 3 groups.  Each group had to decide which characteristics metals, ceramics and polymers have such as:  does the material conduct electricity, is it hard, is it strong, expensive? Then, he showed us how engineers use these properties to develop new products.

STEM Presentation, January 14, 2013, Ricki Sonnenberg

Our third STEM presentation brought Ricki Sonnenberg
to TEAM 6-4 to share with us what it is she does:
 Audiology.  Students learned that an audiologist is someone who diagnoses and treats people with hearing issues.  She shared several hands on demonstrations involving some of the simpler technology she uses to diagnose hearing issues such as a tuning fork and an IPhone. (See pictures below.)

STEM Presentation, January 7, 2013, Suzanne Flax

Margalit introduces her mom, Suzanne Flax.

Our second STEM presentation was by Suzanne Flax, speech pathologist. She described how her childhood interests, especially in middle school, played a major role in choosing her profession.  She also described all the different aspects of speech pathology.  One interesting thing we learned is that speech pathologists can help people reduce their accents when speaking a second language!

STEM Presentation, December 3, 2012, Dr Sheida Sharifi

We kicked off our STEM Speaker Series with an in depth explanation of pathology, the different areas of pathology and what it is that a Pathologist does.  We would like to thank Dr. Sheida Sharifi, Pathologist at Mount Auburn Hospital and Assistant Professor of Pathology at Tufts Medical School for providing us with this information. We also saw slides of healthy and unhealthy cells...one was even heart-shaped and one looked like Mickey Mouse!

  

                

DIGITS Visitor

On June 1st, last Friday, we were fortunate to have a guest speaker from the DIGITS Project.  DIGITS is a STEM education program that pairs STEM professionals--individuals who work in science, technology, engineering and math-based companies--with sixth grade classes throughout the state to increase students' interest in math and science subjects and careers.  Our speaker, Sandra Kogan, works for IBM as a software design engineer.  She used a loaf of bread, butter and a knife (roll of paper towels, container and a plastic knife) to show us the importance of being able to translate an activity into computer instructions so that an activity can be performed correctly.  Additionally, we learned what her interests were in middle school and how she ended up working at IBM.  One activity we did was to categorize different jobs into four major categories:  engineering, life sciences, computers/software/telecommunications and energy/environment.  It was an hour well spent!