High school teachers help introducing the SMAC educational toolkit into the classroom
Summer 2015. Two high school science teachers, Mark Gonyea and Justin Monetenegro, joined the STORM Lab to foster the adoption of the SMAC educational toolkit in science curricula. Mark and Justin are helping the STORM Lab members in simplifying the design of the modular robotic toolkit for education, designing experiments that can engage high school students in STEM disciplines, and writing lesson plans according to the Next Generation Science Standard. During the academic year, Mark (third from the left in the picture) is the mathematics department chair of Stewarts Creek High School in Smyrna, TN, as well as the AP Calculus and AP Computer Science Teacher, while Justin (second from the left in the picture) teaches AP Physics at the Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet School in Nashville, TN.
In the picture, we also have Dr. Eka Susilo (first from the left), coordinating the work on SMAC, Yasmin Alvarado-Rayo (first from the right), high school student enrolled in the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt program, Ashley Peck and Jianing Liu (second and thord from the right, respectively), both undergraduate students at Vanderbilt University. This work is carried on in collaboration with the Middle Tennessee STEM Innovation Hub and is supported by the National Science Foundation via Research Experience for Teachers (RET) and Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) supplements to Dr. Valdastri’s grants #1239355 and #1453129.