December 2, 2008

More than 100 K-12 girls from across Alabama, along with their teachers, will gather in Birmingham this Friday for a special science fair where they will prove that girls can have fun learning about science, math and technology

The event is called Girls Engaged in Math and Science (GEMS) Exhibition and it is sponsored by the UAB School of Education. It will take place on Friday, December 5 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center, East Meeting Room M. The girls will exhibit their science experiments and demonstrate their ability to use technology such as digital cameras, podcasts and other multimedia tools. The projects are all taken from teacher lesson plans that use methods proven to boost girls' confidence in science and math. The students participating in the science fair were all selected by their teachers.

At noon, the luncheon keynote speaker will be UAB graduate and former Alabama Teacher of the Year Pamela Harman.

GEMS is an initiative of the UAB School of Education's Department of Human Studies and is supported with a $340,000 grant from the Malone Family Foundation. Through the grant, UAB School of Education professors are training Alabama teachers how to develop lessons that use methods proven to boost girls' confidence in math and science classes, says Melanie Shores, Ph.D., who is the principal investigator on the GEMS grant.

The UAB School of Education held a GEMS training workshop for teachers across Alabama earlier this summer. The lessons that the workshop participants created are now posted online on the Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) Web portal at http://alex.state.al.us/tc_tf_results.php. ALEX was created by the state Department of Education and is a resource for teachers worldwide seeking lesson plans and ideas for teaching various subjects.