As Colorado marked the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting last month, Shannon Owens considered herself grateful that her two sons attend a school she thought was the last place likely to see such violence. “I was like, ‘I don’t even worry about that stuff with this school,’” said Owens, mom of a […]
STEM
Posted inCrime and Courts, Education, News, Politics and Government
This is not Parkland: Douglas County, divided on guns but eager to prevent another school shooting, tries to find its voice
HIGHLANDS RANCH — For Kelly Murphy, the meeting was three years in the making, since a relative with mental illness got a gun and murdered a neighbor. Her resolve to stand up against gun violence solidified after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, when Murphy told herself that if teenagers could speak out on […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Education, News, Technology
St. Vrain, with a decade of momentum, is on a “high-tech high” that’s gaining national attention for its students and teachers
Eric Berngen realized just how different a learning environment he had signed up for when he almost stepped on a small robot zooming down a hallway at Skyline High School in Longmont during his first week on the job. “It was surreal,” Berngen recently said of the near collision with the robot a student was […]
Posted inBusiness, Education, News, Technology
Computer science isn’t required in Colorado schools. But enough people think it should be that the state is training teachers for free.
Which is heavier — a parrot or a barrel full of rum? How about a pirate flag, or a compass or a pirate’s spyglass? Now, sort it all out by thinking like a computer. That was the query asked of five elementary school teachers holding up cards of pirate-themed images and posing as third and […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Hurricane Michael’s first lesson? We need more STEM.
It will likely be many months before the full damage caused by Hurricane Michael is known, but this recent Axios article caught our attention: “Hurricane Michael underwent a period of explosive intensification that was not explicitly forecast by any computer models or human forecasters.” In other words, because what we’re seeing is unprecedented, we need […]
Posted inBusiness, Culture, Education, Growth, News
Why Maker Faire Denver — a celebration of the city’s curiosity and ingenuity — got a makeover
Not long after last year’s Maker Faire Denver, Dan Griner got a call from Elise VanDyne, the seemingly indefatigable leader of the annual creative event for the past five years. Griner, an industrial designer, had just moved back to Denver after living in India. He was happy to connect with his old friend. “She cold-called […]