{"426341":{"#nid":"426341","#data":{"type":"news","title":"AE professor Julian Rimoli inspires educators and business leaders at PLTW Summit","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAerospace engineering professor Julian Rimoli shared a compelling perspective on the future of science education in early November, delivering one of the keynote addresses at\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.pltw.org\/\u0022\u003EProject Lead the Way\u0027s\u003C\/a\u003E(PLTW)\u0026nbsp; Summit, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I believe that top-level education is not just the product of great universities like Georgia Tech, but the result of a continuum of educational excellence that begins at the K-12 level,\u0022 he told the standing-room only crowd.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022For Georgia Tech to continue its legacy as the educator of tomorrow\u0027s innovators, we must aggressively connect with the nascent brilliance that is coming up through our K-12 educational system. Partnering with Project Lead the Way -- arguably the nation\u0027s leading provider of science, technology, engineering, and math programs - makes huge sense.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERimoli, who holds the Goizueta Foundation Junior Faculty professorship, was one of several notable education and business experts to address the Summit, which brought together nearly 1,500 leaders from government, industry, academia and the non-profit sectors to review strategies for encouraging success in STEM disciplines.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlso speaking at the four-day conference were Dr. William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, Jeff Charbonneau, the 2013 National Teacher of the Year, and Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn his PLTW\u0026nbsp;address, entitled \u0022Advanced Simulations and Mobile Gaming in the Classroom,\u0022 Rimoli took particular inspiration from Bennett\u0027s charge, given the first day of the four-day conference:\u0026nbsp;\u0022Ability is predicted by interest. Get them interested.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022For me, this spoke directly to my own experience, growing up in a small town in Argentina,\u0022 RImoli said. \u0022What did I want to do with computers? Play games, of course.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne problem: there were no computer stores to buy the games.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022So I tracked down a magazine that had computer codes for games, written in BASIC, and I\u0026nbsp;went to work. That\u0027s what an interest will make you do,\u0022 he continued.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022By typing the games and debugging them -- there were always typos on those codes-- I learned to program the computer and later started making my own games.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThose games developed into a love of programming, math, and, in high school, physics and engineering.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I\u0026nbsp;started developing physics-based games -- pseudo \u0027Angry Birds\u0027 -- and in college, I used simulation-based programs to understand concepts that I was struggling with. Through this process, I\u0026nbsp;discovered the field of computational physics, which led me to pursue a PhD that focused on computational mechanics.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022The bottom line?\u0026nbsp;Computer gaming was probably the single most important driver in my becoming an aerospace engineering professor. It was an interest that kept rewarding me with more curiosity for the things I didn\u0027t yet know.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EProject Lead The Way (PLTW) is a non-profit that provides K-12 STEM programs to more than 6,500 elementary, middle and high schools across the U.S. The group\u0027s curriculum is based on an activity\/project\/problem-based model that Rimoli praised.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I have seen, myself, how activity-based learning engages students more deeply in the underlying principles of engineering,\u0022 he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It helps them form a more intuitive grasp of the material.\u0022 Rimoli\u0027s comments are based, in part, on his experience with\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.ae.gatech.edu\/node\/1312\u0022\u003ETruss Me!\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/em\u003Ea game application he developed last year to teach engineering students the basics of truss behavior. Originally intended as a novel addition to his own classroom teaching, the game as quickly adopted by K-12 teachers, university educators, and gamers when it was released on iTunes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn May, the prestigious ETH Zurich formally adopted the educational app into its engineering curriculum.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Julian Rimoli shared a compelling perspective on the future of science education in early November, delivering one of the keynote addresses at Project Lead the Way\u0027s (PLTW)  Summit"}],"uid":"27456","created_gmt":"2015-07-16 16:12:03","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:12","author":"Britanny Grace","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-11-04T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-11-04T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2082","name":"aerospace engineering"},{"id":"130061","name":"Julian Rimoli"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["communications@ae.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}