Today in History – April 1, 1976 – Apple Computer Company formed and released the Apple I computer - the first with a single circuit board. There was no assembly line as each Apple I was hand-built by Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs’ parents’ home and required further assembly by the purchaser, including providing AC input voltages, wiring an ASCII keyboard to a DIP connector and wiring the video output pins to a monitor or to an RF modulator if a TV was used. Steve Wozniak showed the first one to the Homebrew Computer Club to get sales going. He had to sell his Volkswagen bus to help keep the company afloat.

Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II personal computer that was released on April 16, 1977, featuring a central processing unit (CPU), keyboard, floppy disk drive, and a $1,300 price tag. The Apple II launched the personal computer revolution. He left Apple in 1981 and went back to the University of California at Berkeley and finished his degree in electrical engineering and computer science there. Since then, he has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures, including improving computer capabilities in schools.

So how do you build the first personal computer? Wozniak says when he teaches Personal Computer 101 he asks students to go to the Apple I Owners Club, founded in 1977 by Joe Torzewski. The site contains over 120 pages detailing the Apple I computer. It shows you what it was like to actually buy and assemble one. If you’ve never seen an Apple I, check this site out and see how the personal computer revolution began. Want to know more, read Wozniak’s book: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on Apple computers and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education, computer science education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Also, today April 1, 2008, the Engineering Pathway completed a comprehensive user study of customer needs and has developed the following prioritized list of new features:

For Faculty:

• Tag educational resources guaranteed to boost teacher evaluations by at least 20%.
• Develop tool to automatically create homework and exams for each course in ABET-accredited computing and engineering curricula.
• Develop obfuscation tool that will take a simple concept and make it seem so complicated that faculty will be guaranteed to impress students and colleagues with their brilliance.
• Implement mind reading search tools (such as UC Berkeley’s brain scan or the MentalPlex developed by Google) to improve the user interface so that typing is no longer required.
• Develop chat bot for faculty to help them find good educational materials and boost their confidence in teaching.

For Students:

• Tag educational resources guaranteed to increase their grades by at least one letter grade.
• Provide a collection of homework and exam solutions for each course in ABET-accredited computing and engineering curricula.
• Develop a de-obfuscation tool that will take a complicated lecture from a “brilliant professor” and make it easy to understand.
• Tag the parts of computing and engineering courses that will be useful for a student’s first job. We plan to modify Google’s gDay tool that can search content on the internet before it’s created.
• Develop a database that allows students to enter their courses and return their “dream job” or “graduate school”.
• And the reverse. Students should be able to enter their “dream job” or “graduate school” and be told which courses to take.
• Create tool to create automatic “Cliff Notes” for any educational resources in the Engineering Pathway.

Today in History – March 31, 1889 – Eiffel Tower opens. The 300m Eiffel Tower was commissioned to commemorate the French Revolution. Amazingly, all of the elements were prepared in Gustav Eiffel’s factory located at Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris. There were 18,000 pieces used to construct the Tower. Each piece was designed and produced with an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre. The construction crew of 150 to 300 workers assembled the tower on site like a gigantic erector set. The foundation work began in January 1887 and was completed in five months. The tower was assembled twenty-one months later on March 31, 1889. Eiffel received his decoration from the Legion of Honour on the narrow platform at the top.”

Eiffel’s accomplishments over a century ago are amazing considering the technology of his time. Yet there is still a lesson for us today in the benefits of lean construction techniques, an approach that maximizes value to the customer and minimizes waste.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on the Eiffel Tower and Construction Engineering. For related educational resources, visit the Civil Engineering Education, Construction Engineering Education, or Architectural Engineering Education community sites.

Also today in 1966, the U.S.S.R. launches first lunar orbiter.

Today in History - April 6, 1938 - Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was one of the most famous women aviators in history. Earhart worked as a nurse’s aide in a military hospital in Canada during WWI and became a social worker after attending college. She took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921, and managed to save enough money to buy her first plane soon afterwards. Although not an engineer, Amelia Earhart inspired many of us to go into engineering and to appreciate cutting-edge technologies. Although Amelia Earhart lived in a time when women were rarely associated with technology, she distinguished herself by bettering both women’s and men’s aviation records.

March is Women’s History Month. Below I highlight some of the Engineering Pathway’s blogs on women’s contributions to engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship.

Patricia Galloway, first female president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), blogs on Elsie Eaves - first female engineer in ASCE to be elected as a full member on March 14, 1927.

Lucy Sanders, CEO of the Center for Women in Information Technology blogs on the unveiling of the ENIAC on February 14, 1946, the world’s first digital electronic computer, as well as on the contributions of women in computing.

Jasmina Vujic, Chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California at Berkeley, blogs on Lise Meitner and her groundbreaking publication that first introduced the world to nuclear fission on February 11, 1939.

Chad-Eric Montgommery blogs on two African American women. On March 1, 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first African American woman to receive a medical degree. Also see the blog on Sara Breedlove Walker, the first self-made millionairess hair product inventions for African American women.

Pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Helen Taussig, was one of the doctors at Johns Hopkins who performed the first open heart surgery on November 29, 1944.

I enjoyed researching for the blog on November 13, 1913 – Mary Phelps Jacobs invents modern bra. And also on Dr. Mary Walker, the first female army surgeon to be awarded the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1875.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s many educational resources on women in engineering, women in information technology, women inventors and gender equity. Also read and comment on our most commented resource - the National Academies’ Beyond Bias and Barriers report.

Columbus, Ohio-March 3, 2008 Blockbuster movies and even soft drink commercials have made our planet’s polar regions and their inhabitants popular culture superstars. At the same time many people have either been confronted with what they believe to be climate change weather events, or find themselves wondering about how melting polar ice sheets and rising ocean temperatures might affect their lives in the future. Despite this onslaught of data, scientific discovery, drama and speculation, misconceptions about the polar regions and their importance abound.

As attention continues to turn to polar environments a coalition of specialists from science, literacy and educational organizations nationwide is pleased to announce the launch of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, an online professional development magazine for elementary teachers. This issue features content-rich web sites, interactive videos, animations, articles written specifically for K-2 and 3-5 students that are available in text-only versions as well as in printable, foldable book versions, photographs that highlight polar beauty and mystery, and even a poetry lesson plan that features work contributed by elementary school students in Anchorage, Alaska. The magazine focuses on developing teacher content knowledge about the Arctic and Antarctica and enabling teaching of polar science concepts in already-crowded curricula. By integrating inquiry-based science with literacy teaching, developers aim to increase students’ science knowledge, academic language, reading comprehension, and written and oral discourse abilities.

Jessica Fries-Gaither, elementary resource specialist and project director for Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears notes, “As a former elementary teacher in Alaska, I understand the difficulty of finding time for quality science instruction. Yet in the face of issues such as global climate change and dramatically changing polar regions, it is essential that science, specifically polar science, is included. We are particularly pleased to offer this new online magazine that transfers current polar research and best practices in science and literacy instruction to classrooms nationwide.”

Science instruction in the elementary years has historically been limited or even omitted entirely. However, No Child Left Behind-mandated testing in science increases pressure on schools and teachers to devote time to quality science instruction. The intersection of mandated science testing, International Polar Year research and outreach initiatives, and a growing awareness of worldwide climate change make Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears a timely and relevant undertaking.

Twenty thematic issues of the online magazine will include standards-based science and content-rich literacy learning across five departments (In the Field: Scientists at Work, Professional Learning, Science and Literacy, Across the Curriculum, and Polar News and Notes). Engaging science activities, compelling images, rich text, and multimedia resources such as podcasts and videos and even a browseable Virtual Bookshelf that includes quality children’s literature for classroom use are designed to capture the interest of both teachers and students. Strategies for integrating technology, addressing misconceptions, and ensuring equity in the classroom are topics of emphasis.

In a time of observable and measurable climate change, it is vitally important to understand the science of the polar regions. Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears helps teachers go beyond a superficial understanding and foster deep, meaningful scientific understanding at a critical time-both in their students’ development and for the planet’s well being.

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is funded by the National Science Foundation Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL). Kimberly Lightle, Principal Investigator for the NSDL Middle School Portal developed by The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology and also Principal Investigator for the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears magazine coordinates a team of collaborators including an interdisciplinary team from Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology; the Ohio Resource Center for Mathematics, Science, and Reading; the Byrd Polar Research Center; The Columbus Center for Science and Industry; the Upper Arlington Public Library; and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). Content and education specialists are creating content as well as adapting and contextualizing existing content from NSDL. NSDL is also adapting Fedora-based tools to facilitate editorial workflow, dissemination, and promotion of the magazine. The Evaluation and Assessment Center at Miami University in Oxford, OH is conducting ongoing project evaluation including teacher focus groups and usability testing that will inform iterative design going forward.