HEM students get hands on with science

Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) High School got experimental on October 15 as the University of Wyoming Science Initiative Roadshow visited to talk to students about science.

Five University of Wyoming students were at the high school for presentations on the brain, microbiology, ecology. engineering and physiology.

Karagh Brummond, taught about the brain and how it worked with the different senses. She had students guess which brain belonged to a moose, a sheep, guinea pigs and rats. Teaching brains is not all Brummond does for the roadshow.

"Part of my job is to do our best to outreach to science teachers and school districts to let them know we love to come to schools to facilitate the science the teachers are teaching and to let the students interact with some things they might not have the chance to," Brummond said. "We strive to do our best to get across the state and get into schools or after school programs and bring some fun demonstrations of the sciences."

According to the University of Wyoming (UW), the mission of the Science Initiative Roadshow is to form an inclusive network of sustained relationships through STEM (science, technology, engineering and moth) outreach and campus visits, which facilitate interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary creative thinking and active learning. The Roashow team is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from UW, along with UW instructors, who travel throughout the state facilitating hands-on learning in K-12 STEM classrooms using active learning techniques. The teams from UW work with K-12 teachers to integrate learning experiences into existing curriculum in order to achieve assigned learning outcomes. This collaborative approach exposes Wyoming students and teachers to innovative active learning techniques and creates links between UW and schools across the state to improve STEM teaching statewide.

UW has customizable curriculum which melds their research expertise with learning outcomes. There are different modules for learning, from online, to outdoor, to in the classroom.

Justin Kinney was teaching two projects he is working on as a senior at UW.

"I am teaching about acne and how it effects the skin," Kinney said. "And then I am teaching about cyanobacteria, which is a problem we are starting to see in Wyoming."

Cyanobacteria is a classification comprised of photosynthetic bacteria which live in aquatic habitats and moist soils. Cyanobacteria are found to play a role in producing gaseous oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis.

"It killed a dog in 15 minutes in Laramie after it drank some toxic water," Kinney said. "I am telling and showing them what cyanobacteria looks like along with giving them some information and getting their minds working as they look at the slides of bacteria."

The Roadshow coming to HEM may have fostered a new scientist in the school, but it gave all the students a chance to learn science they didn't know before.