Youth Exploring Science - Learning Places

Learning Places Blog

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:16:04 +0000

This is the blog of Learning Places. The Learning Places program results from a four-year grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to the St. Louis Science Center (SLSC) in partnership with the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM.) Learning Places provides teenagers with a variety of opportunities to explore and evaluate the components necessary to create the physical spaces that will engage and excite younger children about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).

Times Beach

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:32:43 +0000

Today we read about the Times Beach flood of 1982. This was a huge tragedy because 4,000 people went homeless, and took a lot of people.s residents. The flood happened because the town begin to spray dioxin into there dirt lanes. That caused the river to change, and they later had four days of rain. The rain was ten inches per day. I feel that this is very sad and a better solution should have been done by the government.

Welcome to the world Gavon Amir Robertson

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 04:41:22 +0000

To my fellow YES Teens & Staff, I would like to welcome my newborn son Gavon Amir Robertson. He was born March 10, 2011 at 2:43p.m at Barnes Jewish Hospital in room 5482. He weighed 6lbs 5 ounces, and he was 19 inches long. Its funny how I know all this like it was yesterday or so lol. The crazy thing is, I almost missed out on his birth because I overslept at home. Yeah, things like that would happen to a becoming father. Once I saw him, I almost cried because he reminded me of myself. I also wondered what if my mom was here to see him. But yes, he's here now and I'm ready to give him all the love a man can give to his son.

Jail: How to Avoid This Situation

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:46:25 +0000

Hello YES Teens and Staff. Well over the past week, I encountered a minor situation that placed me behind bars. No, it wasn't nothing serious, just had traffic ticket violation. While I was incarcerated, I began to go into a deep thought of how life could alter just off small things. I patiently waited and waited to be released, and finally got my request approved. The reason I'm blogging about this situation, because your actions can change your entire lifestyle at the snap of a finger. I never been locked up before, and it was the worst experience I could ever imagine. I want to educate the youth about how to avoid challenges down the road similar to mines. Once I was released, I knew that I didn't have nothing to worry about anymore.

Law-enforcers are out here to do there job, and I can't blame no one but myself for that reason. If you have any problem such as traffic tickets, Missing court dates, and etc; make sure that get those problems taken care of ASAP. Drive safe and think positive every time you step out the house, because you never know what might happen in the next minute. And please, do not avoid the situation, because it only get worst. Jail isn't meant for everyone. The reason I say that, is because of the experience. Thank you for reading my blog, and I plan to keep blogging to my fellow YES Teens and Staff. Cheerio!!! Be safe.

Learning Places takes it out to Taylor

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:18:39 +0000

This week we met with three of our teen components to discuss the opportunities present for building new stations. We wanted to highlight the various science topics happening at the Taylor building after we finished building our round 1 stations. Those stations, created from ideas the teen groups had, are still in progress. In fact, look in the hallways and alcoves for signage that points to the places these new stations will be built. We welcome your input.

As the new component based stations come together we'll be focusing on: climate change and it's effect on butterflies found in and near St. Louis with the C3 group, on "chain reactions" with the Design-It! group, and on healthy decision making around our food choices with the Healthy Teens, Healthy Living group. Be sure to check out the Learning Places teens' blogs for more information!

Do you have a suggestion on a station topic to be built at the Taylor building? What kind of science interests you? Have a question you're dying to explore? Let us know!

WOW.... Been a While

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:12:48 +0000

Hello YES Teen and YES Staff, I don't know if you might remember who I am but my name is Gregory Robertson. I was a former YES Teen back in 2008. For the ones that know who I am, I just wanted to say hello and see hows everything been with you guys. Life has been going up and down for me, but I'm still happy no matter how things get challenging. I go to ITT-Tech in Earth City right now, and is working on my Associates Degree in Visual Communications. I lost my mom back in May 2010, but still is maintaining life to proceed on with. I'm having a son on the way in April,so that's a plus I guess (lol.) But I hope Staff and Teens get a chance to read this, because I'm still a YES Teen to some friend I know. So keep in touch everyone and hope to hear from you guys. Cheerio!

visit to health group

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:57:30 +0000

Today in learning places we visited other components to learn more about them. the component we visited was the HEALTHY TEENS HEALTHLY LIVING. They have groups come in and talk to them about being healthy and how to make unhealthy things healthy. Our group talked about how we can make a nutrition fact guessing game. With this game we could show and compare diet or low fact stuff to the regular snack.

Minority Scientists Showcase

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:25:09 +0000

On Saturday, January 15th Learning Places visited the annual Minority Scientists Showcase, held over Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. As we completed the scavenger hunt, we were able to meet and visit with many local scientists doing research in varied areas, including chemical analysis, environmental impacts, health, and energy production. One of my favorite stations was a group from EMD Millipore, a life sciences supply company. They had an interactive exhibit on energy found in food items. They brought a potato, a lemon, an apple, and a Twinkie and used them as batteries to power an LED clock. Which do you think produced the most energy?

Sprucing up Taylor with Learning Stations

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:30:38 +0000

This semester Learning Places is back, but redesigned. This time we're designing spaces in the Taylor building. We've spent time talking about inquiry and what makes a "good learning experience". We've also visited the main building's traveling Grossology exhibit and the permanent installations in the Life Sciences gallery to compare notes. Teens are looking at creating interactive learning spaces for other YES teens and visitors to our building. What would you like to see? Leave us a comment!

Meet Our New Building Residents!!!

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:44:56 +0000

Say hello to the three newest members of our building: Brandon, Lance, and Cindy! What? You say you've already met them? Let us take a look...

Meet Brandon...

Our new Chameleon guest. He enjoys climbing around his cage, eating wax worms, and licking water droplets off the plants leaves in his tank.

Meet Lance...

Our Albino Corn Snake. He enjoys climbing (our arboreal friend!) as well as coiling up in his tank. He likes to eat small mice and be undisturbed while he is eating. Yum yum yummy!

Meet Cindy...

Our special Box Turtle. Originally thought a female, Cindy decided to mount everything in sight once reaching puberty, so now we think she is a he...not quite sure. Cindy is a rescue from owners who thought keeping a turtle in a dark concrete basement would be fine, leading to her distinctive gait due to her crooked legs and underdeveloped shell because of lack of sunlight. She is full of energy and spunk!

Last Day

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:06:05 +0000

Saturday March 2, 2009 was the last learning lab of the spring semester. It was also the FINAL Saturday lab for seniors period. We worked very hard to get this far and I feel that it has paid off big time. It has been a great experience for me and I am sure it has been for others also. I have matured as a person due to the program and have learned many things because of it. SCANS has been a major factor in these new things that I've learned. At first I thought it wasn't that important and not very useful, but now I can see the benefits behind it. The skills learned while being taught SCANS has helped me make most of my decisions. Following these skills also helped me advance in the program and caused my role to increase. Now I am looking forward to the summer and using these same skills.

Almost Done.!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:50:25 +0000

Last week at work we had the privilege of having guest speakers come in and talk to us. The guest speakers were form the Navy! They Navy officers talked to all of us about the navy and what they do there. They explained how they rank the officers, what jobs they have done, and options for college while your training to be in the navy. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot of information about the navy that I did not know about. The navy officers were very nice and they were willing to answer any questions that we had.

After we were done talking to the people from the navy we separated into our groups and began to work on our learning places projects. Krystal and I are almost finished with ours. We're at Girls Inc. and we're working on colors and angles. We made a big angle clock and we made activities for them to work on mixing color. All we have to do is finish up on our secondary colors. I hope they enjoy our learning place!

Lonely!!!

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:46:25 +0000

Today during lab I had the "privlege" to work by myself on our project. Neither of my partners showed up so I had to bring my A+ game today. I worked very hard and got alot done, granted that i was alone. I stayed focused throughout the entire day despite all of the distractions like THE HEAT!!! I plan to keep up the good work through the rest of my days here in the program.

While working Tim gave me a "TO DO LIST" of things I needed to get accomplished. Of the ten things written on the list I completed three of them, which may not seem like alot but they werent easy. I had to clean up the containers, that will house our reptiles, with mulch and afterwards fill them with mulch. Then water the plants inside of one of the cages. After all of that was completed the worse part came..... CLEANING UP!!! It was already hot so that just added to the torture. I also plan to come in during the week to finish up my list.

4/18/09

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:59:55 +0000

Today during lab we did SCANS and College Prep as usual. During SCANS we talked about our personal enrichment hours and why we need them. We also came up with ideas as a group on different things we could do to get more excitement while getting our personal enrichment hours. While in College Prep we played Jeopardy. The different topics were things such as: Preparing for college, Applying to college, ACT, Financial aid, and different worksheets used to get ready for college.

When we broke up into our components, we continued our discussion about enrichment hours. We were told about the different things that were coming up. Then we broke up into our smaller groups that we chose to work in during the spring and maybe into the summer. I chose to be in the reptile group and today we researched general and care information about the reptiles we will be getting. The three animals we will get are a Chameleon, a Box Turtle, and an Albino Rat Snake. I look forward to working with these animals and I enjoy working in my group.

Hi

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:13:25 +0000

Hi I'm Ivi. I've been in YES for almost a year now. I had some good times and not so good times but i'm still looking toward the future.