Moving at the Speed of Creativity

These are my notes from Mark Clemente’s presentation, “NASA Resources for Millennial Learners” at the One to One Institute’s conference on November 9, 2009 conference in Chicago, Illinois. MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. I am recording this session and hope to share it as a podcast later.

NASA eClips is NASA’s newest program, one we’ll discuss today but we’ll address others too

Mark is with the National Institute of Aerospace
- innovative real world learning for the 21st century
- we are a research institute for NASA
- our mission: develop aerospace engineers
- consortium of 7 universities

www.youtube.com/nasaeclips

Mark is going to publish is presentation to Slideshare

We have K-12 outreach
- developing resources for STEM specifically
- one of NASA’s missions by law is education

I am personally on loan from the Virginia Beach public schools to NASA

All of these links are available via my Filamentality hotlist:
tinyurl.com/yz24fmq

Traditional NASA education products
- have 30-60 minute video clips
- philosophy was: teachers should be able to make sense of these resources

eClips are short: 5-7 minutes (7 minutes is max time)
- these are content focused, and NASA focused
- we have taken NASA missions and technology, and found the things that really tie in well to a math/science classroom
- idea is you can use these videos to engage students, answer the question: “Why do I need to know this?”

There are three people on our NASA eClips team, I am the high school person (also have an elementary and middle school educators)

4 programs under NASA eClips:

1. NASA’s Our World (K-5: compare the natural world with the designed world, illustrating the unique contributions of scientists and engineers)
2. NASA’s REAL World Mathematics
3. NASA Launchpad
4. NASA 360 degrees

big push in STEM for engineering

MARK’S DELL WINDOWS XP LAPTOP LOCKED UP WHEN HE TRIED TO PLAY THE FIRST VIDEO CLIP, SO HE IS RESTARTING. TIME TO GET A MAC, MARK!

In Middle school, we often start to lose students in math
- so we have a real push to engage students there

launchpad is a focus on technology

we are trying to model how we can effectively use video clips in the classroom
- it is more than just

Example: Real World: Farewell to the Mars Phoenix Lander

K-5 example: Our World: The Sun, A Real Star

Learn about the important relationship between Earth and the sun. Find out about the layers of the sun and how Earth’s magnetosphere acts like a giant handkerchief to protect us from all kinds of space weather.

Middle school example: Real World: Monitoring Earth’s Energy Budget with CERES

In this NASA eClips video segment learn how NASA uses CERES, a satellite in our Earth observing system, to make accurate measurements of energy leaving the Earth. Discover how NASA studies the interactions of clouds with sunlight and heat to determine how much heat is emitted back into space. Demonstrations are used to help support the segment.

High school example: Launchpad: Transits

Discover how scientists used the last Venus transit and a geometric technique called parallax to verify the distance between sun and Earth. Find out what scientists hope to learn the next time Venus makes a shadow on the face of the sun.

2 ways to access these videos:
1 – go to NASA.gov website, click for educators and on sidebar click NASA eClips
- direct link: www.nasa.gov/education/nasaeclips
2- can also access via YouTube: www.youtube.com/nasaeclips

Icons are available for topics, these are changing from “aeronautics” and “earth” to things like “algebra” and “chemistry”
- videos can be downloaded and played from the NASA website, are player independent, are all closed captioned!

YouTube channel videos have higher quality than NASA website versions, they can also be embedded (AS I HAVE ABOVE)

MY COMMENT: KUDOS TO NASA FOR MODELING THE CONSTRUCTIVE USE OF YOUTUBE IN THE CLASSROOM!

Have also started building support for these videos: The Teacher Toolbox

NASA.gov has an internal bookmarking system called “MyNASA”
- good way to deal with the dynamic nature of the NASA website, where things are changing frequently
- NASA is very conscious about having the most current information available online
- lots of the older resources that referred to Pluto as “a planet” are not available now, because those resources have been taken down until they are updated

Also: Engineering Design Guides are available for K-5 and 6-12 to help teachers introduce students to the engineering design process

Keeping a logbook to document your process is a key element for scientists

also has a rubric to help you assess what students can build

Use Google for an advanced search to find relevant NASA resources: example search syntax: “NASA” and “social studies”

There are TONS of NASA missions in addition to space shuttle and Apollo program!

NASA eClips™ Educator Guides: We are in the process of getting 24 lesson plans approved for using videos effectively in a lesson plan, how to tie content directly to the video
- 8 per grade level (8 for elementary, 8 for middle school, 8 for high school)
- right now there are just 3 eClips Educator Guides available now, more are being drafted now

Last thing we are doing: the Teacher to Teacher Blog
- just got approval for this last month
- is highly moderated
- trying to get teachers in the classroom to share their experiences, ideas, etc.
- not a lot of activity there yet, we are trying to get people to go there and share their thoughts

MY QUESTION: HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS

Answer: lots of web statistics gathered on hits
- is getting more attention/hits than

MY QUESTION: ARE YOU PROVIDING WORKSHOPS FOR SCHOOLS
- answer: they can, and they do when those are requested

Nortel Learn It, now “Teach It Learn It” is a program for using digital images and video in the classroom
- sample rubrics are available for assessing student projects

Other NASA resources
- click on FOR EDUCATORS in top bar
- you can click FIND TEACHING MATERIALS and choose from a variety of checkboxes now

content on nasa.gov is not embeddable currently

March 2008 contract was issued for eClips, so NASA’s use of YouTube in this project preceeded the Obama Administration’s use of YouTube and other social media websites

Most content now seems to be geared toward elementary and middle school students

The NASA “Ask an Astrophysicist” program is the only interactive part of the NASA website currently
- he does SpaceMap at NASA (worksheet activities, warmups for teachers)

Projects to get kids involved
- Star Count: you as a citizen get information about how to collect data, and you report your data in
- satellite information is validated using that information

-S’COOL: ground truth verification
- you are told when a satellite is going to be overhead, and you are asked to take land-based photographs showing what the clouds look like from the ground
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL
- Dr Lynn Chambers runs this project and actually uses that data

NASA World Wind
- NASA’s answer to Google Earth
- get world maps, and can overlay NASA data
- if NASA collects the data, you can overlay it onto the earth
http://worldwide.arc.nasa.gov/java
- you can download the software development kit (SDK) and develop your own
- someone just told me about this a month ago, it’s been available a LONG time though!

DiscoveryNOW is a 90 second video blurb podcast on NPR telling about something going on at NASA now
- can use this along with “Do It Yourself Podcasting” which NASA offers
- NASA Podcasts
- NASA Podcasting Help page

Sun-Earth Viewer shows different live images of the sun with different filters
- visualizations of the data
- realtime data

Landsat is part of NASA’s mission
- can do overlays, lots of imagery
- you own all of this stuff, because NASA is public

Internet Archive
- www.nasaimages.org setup by the Internet Archive
- thousands of available images

NASA Goddard Space Center has the largest collection of earth scientists in the world!
- lots of earth science done by NASA

Global Climate Change is out of NASA Langley

NASA centers are setup autonomously, so coordination between different websites is challenging

Because of STEM, our program is a great example of how NASA is now really paying attention to teacher voices and ideas
- it is a HUGE step forward

Career Bytes is a “Teach It Learn It” resource focused on careers and helping students connect with others for job/career learning

Do you have an idea of a career path you would like to follow or would like to learn about? The Career Bytes online interviews are short (~5 minute) videos exploring technology or technology-related career paths. Find (below) interviews that showcase diverse backgrounds, talents, and interest areas — from game creators to test pilots to rock stars! Career Bytes profile professionals discussing how they became successful, their challenges and interests, and how technology impacts their daily work.

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classroom, images, resources, science, technology, web, web2, nasa, stem

These are my notes from Aaron Doering’s presentation, “Designing for Learning: Engaging Students and Teachers from the Arctic to Australia” at the 21st Century Learning @ the West Lake Expo held Oct 31 – Nov 3, 2009 at Xi Hu, China, also known as West Lake. West Lake is in the center of Hangzhou, China, which is about an hour by bus southwest of Shanghai. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

Aaron’s faculty page at UM

We need to figure out what “transformation” looks like
- think, act, feel

What is technology transformation?

9.5 guidelines for technology transformation (joke)
- going to show three environments: Adventure Learning: GoNOrth!
- GeoThentic
- SecondLife

reaches about 4 million people worldwide

From the University of Minnesota website:

GoNorth! is a free adventure learning program for the K-12 classroom developed at the University of Minnesota. Our team of educators, scientists, and K-12 teacher explorers are dog sledding LIVE to 5 circumpolar Arctic locations (2006 – 2010) to educate our audience around the world.

The online education program is anchored in natural and social science curricula for K-12 classrooms. GoNorth! provides each participating classroom with a free 300+ page curriculum and activity guide, a different set for each trek. Activities on the trail are synched real-time to the curriculum.

Each spring, during the 14-16 week LIVE event, learners enter the online classroom for powerful collaborative opportunities. We present live field updates and field research findings in collaboration with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The result is a community of motivated learners on the Internet acquiring knowledge from the expedition, the Arctic peoples, subject matter experts, and from each other.

Join the team and more than 3 million learners worldwide at PolarHusky.com.

GeoThenic supported by the National Geographic Society that helps students learn geography

We are designing experiences, not products
- designing for engagement, not completion

I want my students to have valuable experiences throughout the entire learning process
Now showing a 30 second video

University of Minnesota

As a former K-12 teacher, I always wondered why we didn’t use the affordances of technology and bring them into the classroom?
- so I created “aventure learning”
- a hybrid online education approach that provides learners with opportunities to explore real-world issues through eauthentic learning experiences within collaborative…

It is not a “Where’s Waldo” program because it is focused on a theoretical foundation

1- We first identify an issue and a place

2- We next think about the narrative, the story we want to share with studetns

3- we develop the curriculum

4- we develop as many collaborative possibilities as we can

it is delivered FREE to everyone on the Internet
there are many “synced” learning opportunities with students
- as we traverse the landscape, we are collecting a variety of data on an ongoing basis which enhances learning
- we are collecting a variety of media as well as we travel, anything that can enhance learning for the students

First trip we did we went across the Canadian arctic
http://www.polarhusky.com

We deliver educational assets “from the tent” to schools worldwide every week
- we also collect snowflake data for NASA and use that within our curriculum
- we also collect and share ecological knowledge, knowledge from the elders, and share that as well

When we arrive in the communities, hundreds of students come down because they have been using our curriculum and participating in our activities
- this photo is in the middle of the arctic, where there is little more than ice and snow everyehwere

Next project was GoNorth, each year had a different focus on a region and specific topic

Here is a 2008 video of Aaron

Now discussing Geothentic
- wanted to scaffold the use of geospacial technologies with learners

- focuses on students solving problems: what areas of the world are most impacted by climate change, where is the best place to build a hospital in a specific community, etc.

Now talking about using Second Life, to design experiences
- trust is so important in an environment
- traditionally trust comes from the instructor, than from content, then design
- in online learning environments, that is flipped: trust must come first from design, then from the content, then the instructor

Learner as designers
- we try to develop opportunities for students to be designers
- in the go north project, students share their own videos with each other, from Australia, to the United States, up to the Arctic

Example from Geothemtic: student providing a justification for where they would place their hospital in the bay area, based on their analysis of the data

I also try to tap into the expertise of the students in my classroom, and thereby model “learners as experts”
- example in students’ blog, life in Kaktovik, 5th and 6th grade experts from Arctic Alaska

working together without boundaries
- designing collaboration and discourse opportunities within our learning environments
- we have both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities in GoNorth!
- showing an example of a meteorologist from a local weather station was the expert for our live chat

Here is a video about Aaron from Vimeo (OF COURSE VIMEO AS A VIDEO SHARING SITE IS BLOCKED HERE IN CHINA)

I try to always keep an eye for aesthetics

I want students to develop a self-narrative, when they are so excited about a project and learning that they go and share it with others

As an example, in the GoNorth project we always tell a story from the perspective of one of our dogs, in this case “Timber”
- students begin to follow this on a daily basis, and for many this became part of their narrative
- students really connected with this aspect of the project (showing photo of kids holding signs at the airport when Aaron came back, about Timber)
- for this reason, I try to develop narratives within my online learning envrionments

eighth principle: I try to design for TPAK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
- people like TPAK, but many are not sure how to design with it or how to assess with it

So in our project, there are three different ways teachers can assess with TPAK
- one based on reflection
- another based on where students have spent the most time in the learning environment
- another is based on an objective test

We now have developed User-Driving Adventure Learning (AL 2.0) so others can develop their own adventure learning projects
- we have had many different attempts to use technology to transform education

I always try to help my learners become designers
- the self-reflective process is very important
- it is now up to YOU!

Overview of the principles we have outlined together
1- designing experiences, not products
2- trust
3- learning as designers
4- learners as experts
5- aesthetics
6- self-narrative
7- TPAK
8- innovative pedagogy
- design as a learner!

Now Q&A:
- these iterations from these learning environments have gone through numerous changes over time
- we can’t stand still and be satisfied with doing things as we’ve done them in the past

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china, education, integration, iste, technology, #xihu09, nets

These are my notes and some links from Susan Perkins’s presentation “1:1 in a High School Science Classroom” at ACTEM 09. (I got to this session really late, unfortunately, but I had a good excuse! I met Angus King!) This was a GREAT session. Susan is doing EXACTLY what we hope teacher will do when empowered along with students to have digital expression tools (laptops) in and outside of class.

Main wiki: Laptops in the Science Classroom

Honors Chemistry wiki
- used for threaded discussion

We recommend you be consistent using a wiki platform
- if you’re using WikiSpaces, stick with it: this lets the kids just keep 1 login
- if you’re using PBworks, go with it
- this streamlines the use of wikis across the curriculum, to have a common platform

Another wiki: The Independent Science Project
- the students ARE the scientists in these projects

I am very proud of the fact that I have kids every year that get scholarships because of their science projects
- one student going on an $80K scholarship to WPI because

All your science probes connect directly to your laptop
- Vernier Lab Probes

Teacher sharing Elevator motion graphs using Venier

We’ve heard a lot today about letting students be creative
- we have students for whom writing is not their forte or cup of tea
- we’ve used the digital cameras on the laptop, to capture building of atomic structures
- this year I’m going to ask them to take those photos into iMovie
- creative things we can do with the laptop

Many kids are not good writers, but they can explain things well verbally
- we should allow kids to verbalize what they know
- use the built-in audio recorders
- laptops can be used by kids to demonstrate that they got the concepts, they are not stupid

Another teacher in our session asks students to do demonstrations
- Kids took a video of a demo, and then used iMovie to slow down the reaction, then explained what was happening

Can use a strobe light with a digital camera, can set exposure long enough to get a series of exposures

Sue was at a Google Conference
- many, many kids said they were NEVER asked to be creative during their high school years

If we give kids choices and

another creativity example: connecting a camera to the top of a microscope
- designing their own experiment
- taking pictures over time through the microscope
- then students can actually make measurements, observe contrasts, which students can measure

another creativity door to open: ask “how would you solve this problem”
- potato chips: how does a change in pressure affect it?

by opening up the laptops to LET students be creative in a way that is comfortable for them
- some kids are musicians
- some can write a rap about covalent bonding
- if we instead say: write everything you know about covalent bonding, that may not be a comfortable modality for them

we as the educators need to be flexible and say there are more ways to test learning than just paper and pencil

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actem, actem09, creative, creativity, science, classroom

This past Wednesday, my 11 year old son and I were on a three mile hike in the Arbuckle Mountains of south-central Oklahoma, heading to “three falls” about a mile from from Camp Classen. I turned to him and said, “Wow, isn’t this amazing? Just think, you could be sitting in school today, and here we are hiking in the woods… But wait a minute, you ARE in school! We laughed and continued on our hike to the falls with about 35 other classmates, parents and teachers.

Thanks to the hard work of many teachers and parents, 148 sixth graders from Classen School of Advanced Studies (a public magnet school) in Oklahoma City Public Schools spent a VERY memorable 4 days together in “outdoor school” this week learning about geology, meteorology, hydrology, fossil hunting, and much more in the best science classroom of all: The great outdoors! Here are a few highlights and reflections from our week of outdoor camp.

Water and rain played a big role in our week, but thankfully it did not impede any of our major activities. On our “three falls” hike, we had to ford or otherwise walk across streams (on rocks or logs) six different times. This was a novel experience for MANY of the students in our group, and probably some of the 28 adults who were sponsors and chaperones. It reminded me of backpacking on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where (in the summer of 1987) I spent many hours hiking up river valleys and crossing streams. No, the topography of the Arbuckles does not equal New Zealand– but few things can beat the opportunity to experience the challenges and thrills of the great outdoors firsthand, wherever you may live! Many of Alexander’s classmates at Classen may never get a chance to hike in New Zealand, but now they can all proudly say they’ve been hiking– a LOT– in Oklahoma’s Arbuckle mountains!

Our activities were organized on a “matrix” schedule designed by Mr. Ed Holtzberger, who has been taking Oklahoma City Public School students to outdoor camps for several decades. I really can’t praise “Mr. H” enough, along with all the other teachers from Classen SAS who made this week possible. While my son has had a variety of previous outdoor experiences thanks to his involvement in Boy Scouting as well as our own family camping trips, it was phenomenal for him to be able to experience “outdoor school” with his new Classen classmates and be exposed to so much contextually-rich, experiential learning in one of the most beautiful parts of our wonderful state. I wish every student could be so fortunate to have a “Mr. H” working MANY, MANY extra hours to provide an outdoor school experience for so many students and parents. It was a week I’m sure we’ll never forget.

Our first scheduled activity was boating on the waterfront, in rowboats and canoes.

For the majority of boys in our cabin (14 in all) this was their first experience paddling or rowing on a lake. No one capsized, but we did have some high stress levels when a caterpillar dropped down onto the life preserver of one of our students! From his reaction, you’d have thought a crocodile had his leg in his jaws! Lots of memorable experiences were had by all, and many of the most memorable were not expected or predicted! When you get a group of students, teachers and parents together in an environment like this with a flexible schedule for learning, amazing things are bound to happen — and of course, they did!

The archery range was definitely a favorite of many of our students this week. Again, many had never had an opportunity to shoot a bow and arrow previously. The archery range was always open for use during free time, and just required a parent to supervise and manage the range when students used it. I think our cabin group shot at the archery range at least 4 – 5 times this week, to include a final trip this morning after they finished packing and cleaning up our cabin.

A big highlight was learning about fossils and actually finding them. Most of the fossils we found were crinoids, estimated at 400 million years of age. It’s pretty amazing to find something that old yourself in the dirt, hold it in your hand, and have permission to take it home (up to four per student) so you can show your family as well as examine them further.

Snakes and other creepy/crawly animals and insects are always a sure way to get the attention of young people, and Mr. Preston did a great job sharing his knowledge and collection of snakes with our kids. Some students were able to hold snakes. Usually each one would ask as they received the snake, “It won’t bite, will it?” to which Mr. Preston would truthfully respond, “Now I didn’t say that…” (No one got bit, however.)

Mr. Preston’s presentation on “skins and skulls” was one of my personal favorites. This next photo is Alexander with Mr Preston, with Alexander holding a black bear skull (which has molars as well as carnivore teeth, since it’s an omnivore) and Mr. Preston holding a wolf skull, which just has flesh-tearing and eating incisors since it’s 100% predator.

In this next image, Mr. Preston compares a wolf skull (on the left) with a much smaller coyote skull (on the right.) What a difference!

Here are two of my favorite images from the week: This is Mr. Holzberger teaching the kids on the fossil hike about the age of our earth. This is an image of an amazing science teacher, teaching in what must be one of best science classrooms in the world for geology: the Arbuckle mountains!

In this activity, students took 1 step for every 100 million years of earth history, and Mr. Holtzberger had different parents stop and remain at different key times in geologic history. This was a great method for trying to help others visualize just how HUGE geologic time is, especially compared to our short, human history.

I really enjoyed leading some optional geocaching activities for campers and parents on both Wednesday and Thursday. These were the GPS units we used: Five Garmin eTrex units and my Garmin eTrex Legend.

Our groups found four of the five geocaches hidden by Camp Classen staff around the camp. They used small Pelican cases for their geocaches, and each was secured to the ground with a metal wire and stake to prevent it from “walking off” with a camper or an unsuspecting muggle.

One of the caches had not been properly closed by the previous finders, and the effects of water as well as bugs made a clear visual aide for making the point to our students: Be sure to securely close the geocache after you sign the find log!

I could recount more experiences and memories, but I’ll close by again noting how VERY appreciative I am to Mr. H, Mrs. Carlton, and many, many others who made this week’s outdoor school experience possible. Alexander and I are quite proud to now call ourselves Classen Comets, and we’re likely to never forget this week’s experiences in the Arbuckles with his Classen classmates in the Class of 2016!

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These are my notes from the first half of the second session session, “Thinking About Learning & Learning About Thinking: Implications for Creative Human Activity by ” by Dennis Cheek at the THE NEW RENAISSANCE: A Revolution of Creativity and Learning conference. The mobile website for this conference (which is optimized for the iPhone / iPod Touch and other mobile devices) was created using the open source program MobilAP. The bio of Dr. Bulent Atalay on our conference mobile website states:

Dennis Cheek is a Senior Fellow and former Vice President of Education at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Dennis is a member of the teaching faculty for the midcareer doctoral program in educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania and the M.Th. program at Continental Theological Seminary in Belgium. He has been a Vice President at the John Templeton Foundation, an administrator for 13 years in the state education departments of NY and RI, a senior consultant to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), an Auxiliary Protestant Chaplain for the U.S. Air Force, a middle school and high school teacher and district curriculum developer, and on various university faculties. He has authored, edited or contributed to over 770 publications and multimedia products and currently serves on the editorial or manuscript review boards of the International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Journal of Science Education and Technology, Odyssey, Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, The Science Teacher, and Philosophy of Science. He earned bachelor degrees in history, secondary education, and biology; a master’s in history, a Ph.D. in curriculum & instruction/science education from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Durham.

Dennis Cheek is now discussing “schools” versus mentorships with Peter Donaldson, who is role playing Leonardo daVinci as our MC and facilitator in the conference today.

I am from Philadelphia
- discussing the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin
- discovery of electricity and flying a kite to “catch the spark from the heavens”

Leonardo: this is foolish! not wise to do!
- What is the application of the trick?

Now prompting the audience to respond to the prompt: Type in two or three powerful words that perfectly describe what creativity means to you.

Human beings are always curious
- we’ve been studying how as humans we learn in school and outside of school
- sometimes in schools our learning there bears very little

Today we call people who apprentice others “mentors”
- thinking used to be that you have ONE mentor
- now the thinking is that you will have multiple mentors across your entire life

THIS REMINDS ME OF MARCO TORRES‘ QUESTION: WHO IS YOUR YODA?

someone can mentor you all the way around the world

In 1977 for the first time, we had a machine you could put a person into (it made a horribly loud noise, and worked with magnets)
- created the first picture inside a person’s living brain
- now we have thousands of machines that can do this (MRI)

We know some things, patterns
- human beings are programmed to look for patterns: before you are even born

Leonardo: There is a danger in patterns, if you repeat it and become comfortable so you do not break the pattern, you just repeat it

2 truths:
1- pattern seeking is fundamental in the brain
2- patterns can be habit forming, which can block imagination and creativity

Now discussing idea of cooperative learning / social learning
- you are learning from your peers and from your teacher

We also know now that learning takes place across your lifetime

Many of us will live to 100 years old
- many of us will change jobs
- interact with different people
- but we often don’t think about our life in the span of 100 years

I’M HAVING TO STEP OUT OF THIS SESSION SO WE CAN PREPARE FOR THE STUDENT PRESENTATION WHICH BEGINS AT 11 AM…

Technorati Tags:
creative, creativity, learning, oklahoma, neuroscience

Steve Jurvetson, in his ForaTV video presentation, “The User-Generated, Real-Time Web,” says (among other things) that we’re going to see Skype spin off from eBay in the next few months (his speech was in June) and create standalone, wifi-based phones which have been a part of the founding vision of Skype since the beginning but have been prevented by the pressure of telecom companies on the multinational corporation eBay. Steve also contends UCC (user created content) already is more important than content which is centrally produced by traditional mainstream media outlets.

Earlier this week, John Donahoe (CEO of eBay) stated lawsuit issues are NOT going to “…derail the $1.9 billion deal with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.” Last week in Hong Kong, some participants at the 21st Century Learning Conference were discussing the uncertain future of Skype and wondering if it would continue to be a viable videoconferencing platform for education. These predications and news items make that future look hopeful, but we’ll have to stay tuned.

The march of disruptive technologies continues. Bring on the choices. As consumers when we have more choices, we benefit. When artificial barriers to competition are imposed by law and corporate pressures, generally consumers pay higher prices and have fewer choices.

As a related aside, Steve’s 3 minute TEDtalk from March 2007 on being a rocket hobbyist is amazing. Share this with your kids and inspire them to become rocket scientists. Literally.

If you want to see more hobby rocket launch images, check out this set from Steve’s Flickr site.

Hat tip to Alan Levine for the link to Steve Jurvetson’s ForaTV preso.

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Yesterday’s 28 hours of air travel and airport waiting afforded me some time to watch a few TEDTalks I had not seen previously, and the following two were standouts focusing on topics including dark matter, the origins and size of the universe, the structure of galaxies in the universe, galactic distances, and parallel / multiple dimensions of existence.

I LOVE the fact that thanks to Internet access and sites like TED, anyone can have access to incredible scientific minds as well as ideas like these.

The TED video “George Smoot on the design of the universe” has the following official description:

At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos — with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids — got built this way.

The TED video “Neil Turok makes his TED Prize wish” is not just about the amazing schools for math and science which Neil has helped build all over Africa, it also includes tantalizing information about his work as a theoretical physicist. The video’s official description is:

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, physicist Neil Turok speaks out for talented young Africans starved of opportunity: by unlocking and nurturing the continent’s creative potential, we can create a change in Africa’s future.

If you’re a science teacher studying our solar system or physics, consider using one or both these videos as curricular supplements to catalyze conversations in and outside of your classes. Share these with a curious, inquisitive young student your know who likes to ask BIG questions about our universe. These videos are likely to expand their thinking as well as yours, and generate even more GREAT questions!

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My son, Alexander, and I are commuting now in the mornings down to Oklahoma City so he can attend Classen SAS. The drive is about 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic, and last week we discussed that we should listen to a book on tape or some podcasts on our commutes. This morning we listened to the May 2008 episode of Science Friday, “Monkey’s Thoughts Move Robot Arm.” This isn’t “new” news, it’s over a year old, but we hadn’t heard about this or seen the accompanying video. Unfortunately embed code is not provided, but the following January 2007 BBC video (“Brain control-Monkey”) is available on YouTube and gives more background on the type of experiments and breakthroughs featured in these news programs.

According to the May 2008 New York Times article, “Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own:”

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology. Scientists expect that technology will eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives.

The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

Isn’t this AMAZING? Hearing about this work makes me wish we had opportunities to learn about lego robotics, pico crickets, Scratch, and other programming / robotics related technologies in our schools and communities. We do have three organizations focused on high school robotics competitions here in Oklahoma, but I’m not aware of robotics learning opportunities for elementary or middle school aged students. Even our local Oklahoma City lego store staff were not aware of any opportunities to learn about lego robotics here. What’s up with that?!

Our learning moments about neuroscience and robotics this morning in the car on the way to school underlines the benefit of subscribing to a diverse array of compelling podcasts, so interesting content is always just a click away on an iPhone or iPod Touch when you want it! It also demonstrates how valuable it can be to have a personal, mobile, media player! I still keep all my feeds cross-loaded in PodNova as well as my local iTunes client for backup purposes. If you’re interested, my podcast subscription OMPL file is available. It doesn’t appear that the feeds are updating within Podnova, however, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that. I wish iTunes made it easier to share podcasts to which a person is subscribed and likes, similar to the way NetFlix or GoodReads does.

Do you know of a website besides PodNova which is setup to easily facilitate the sharing of favorite podcast subscriptions? I’d want something which either has ZERO advertising or a minimal amount. There are plenty of podcasting directories out there, but I’m looking for something like the NetFlix Friends portal area.

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Full solar eclipses don’t happen very often. One just did on July 22nd.

The Flickr images are coming in.

From Shenzhen, China:

From Hanoi, Vietnam (I think):

Some of my favorites are not embeddable from Flickr, like this one from Hong Kong, this one from Guam, and this one from Manila in The Philippines.

Hat tip to CNN.

Would your students enjoy doing a Google Earth project, embedding and geo-tagging these images and others? If you do a project like this or learn of someone else who has done/does one, please let me know!

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Thinking space tourism is a pipe dream for the distant future? Think again. Virgin Galactic is gearing up to deliver this service for $200,000 per ride starting in 2010. This may sound like an urban legend, but the groundbreaking of New Mexico’s spaceport last week in Upham was real. XCOR Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace are developing spacecraft that could drop the per-flight cost to $100K, and those are just initial prices. What do you think these costs will be in just ten years?

Hold on to your hat, Buck Rogers. Our blue planet beckons.

Empower the dreamers. Our day to slip the surly bonds of earth is coming.

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Thanks to both Eric Langhorst and Beth Still for tweeting the link to this amazing footage from Vortex2 of the tornado this past week in Wyoming. The most remarkable part of this video for me was this section which showed a “tornado within a tornado.”

I remember many years ago talking about tornados with my former Troop 74 Scoutmaster, Ray Hightower, and he told me about his theory that many destructive tornados actually have smaller vortexes inside them which do much of the damage we see from these storms. I’ve never forgotten him telling me about that, but until today I’d never seen video footage which supports that theory. Amazing.

It was a great blessing, as far as I’ve heard, that this tornado was out in the middle of no where and did not affect any populated areas.

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My son and I really enjoy watching NOVA specials on our home DVR. We haven’t done this in awhile, but last week we made some time to watch the episode titled, “The Last Extinction.” For some reason our DVR cut the episode off early, so we were delighted to find that the entire program is available online to watch for free! We were able to watch the rest of Chapter 5, “Where’s the Crater,” as well as the final chapter, “An Open Question,” by connecting a MacBook laptop to our home TV and stereo amplifier.

There were LOTS of new vocabulary words and concepts we learned about for the first time as a result of this program. I had never heard of nano-diamonds or hexagonal diamonds, which the program authors explained must be “completely extra-terrestrial” because of their unique atomic, crystalline structures. See the Washington Post article, “Gems Point to Comet as Answer to Ancient Riddle,” from January 2, 2009, for more on this.

Scientists have been looking for Iridium traces in the “black mat” layer of geologic history, preserved well in parts of Arizona, which appears to be a smoking gun showing when a large number of enormous, North American mammals were suddenly killed off. “The Last Extinction” theory is that instead of “overkill theory” which holds that native people were the cause of these extinctions, a massive asteroid collision similar to the one theorized to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was responsible for the North American large mammal extinction that took place only about 12,900 years ago. This extinction involved around 35 different, large North American mammals.

One of the biggest questions posed by scientists who doubt this theory is, “Where is the impact crater?” The NOVA program explains that the crater could be missing because the impact could have been distributed over parts of the northern ice sheets, and therefore have not left visible, residual evidence behind.

It’s amazing to consider that the Greenland ice sheet includes over 450,000 years of geologic history. Wow.

Imagine a “storm of comets” hitting the earth. That’s been the subject of multiple books and films, including the 1998 movie “Armageddon.” Last week I saw the movie “Knowing,” which deals with an extinction event caused by massive coronal flares rather than an asteroid collision. These events have happened in the past, and could happen in the future. It’s amazing to consider what might have caused these massive extinctions in North America such a short time ago, geologically speaking, and consider how we can best theorize their cause today given the evidence as well as the tools at our fingertips.

NOVA rocks. It’s amazing we have access to such thought provoking and inspiring scientific programs like these as part of our monthly cable TV subscription, and that (thanks to our DVR as well as the NOVA website) we can watch them in their entirety, at our leisure.

I think many of the conversations we’ve had at home following these NOVA specials have likely surpassed the potential for engagement provided by my son’s 5th grade science textbook and district approved science curriculum. It’s so much fun to learn like this together at home!

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At the February 2009 Oklahoma Technology Association’s conference, keynote speaker Will Richardson told a story about the worksheets his own students bring home from their public school each week which resonated with me. Will said he’d contemplated keeping all the papers for an entire school year in a big stack, and then photographing them to document the school-communicated learning they’d experienced all year. I then thought about doing the same thing, since our two oldest children (who are in elementary school) bring home a “Thursday folder” each week filled with the worksheets they’ve completed.

Last night, Alexander asked me to review his paperwork for the week and sign his folder. He was particularly proud of a very challenging social studies test which he’d aced, as well as a writing assignment he completed: A time-capsule letter to a future student at his school in 10 years. After reviewing all his papers and grades, we spread them all out on the floor of our living room. Several of these documents were multi-page, stapled together. This is a week’s worth of worksheets from his school, sent home this week in the “Thursday folder.”

Alexander and his sister DO attend a wonderful school, but in many ways it defines “a worksheet school.” The students DO participate in wonderful musical programs, participate in memorable class-wide events like the re-enactment of the Oklahoma land run, and participate in living history museums. They also have time each day for recess, which is more than the Texas school we left three years ago provided for students in grades three and above. (That was due to high-stakes testing pressure – The school was “exemplary” but they still didn’t have time to let 9 year olds have recess during the day.)

At our current Oklahoma elementary school, “learning evidence” from the week is communicated to parents almost exclusively via the “Thursday folder” and the worksheets it contains. Our school is very common in following this procedure in Oklahoma. This is what kids do in most schools today in 2009: worksheets. This is how most schools communicate with parents about the “learning” their children are allegedly doing in class each day: by sending home worksheets.

My problem with this situation? It’s twofold. First, many of these worksheets are stupid, irrelevant, busy work. Second, worksheets tell me VERY LITTLE about the things my child understands, perceives, knows, and wonders about. Worksheets are almost useless to me as a parent interested in the learning activities and developmental progress of my child, compared to alternative forms of assessment. It’s good to see how Alexander’s writing skills are developing, including his handwriting. But it saddens me to see worksheets like this which he’s spent HOURS in some cases completing.

There are SO many more valuable ways to spend heartbeats than completing word search puzzles. This is busy work, and I think assignments like this contribute very little, if at all, to meaningful learning experiences for my children inside and outside of school.

Included in the assortment of worksheets sent home this week in the Thursday folder were several pages about science and the unit on light they’ve been studying. I asked Alexander if he’d done any experiences during the unit on light. He said yes initially, but further questioning revealed HE had not done the experiments, he had watched the teacher demonstrate some things in front of the class. He had not formulated ANY hypotheses and tested them with experimentation and observation. How is my son supposed to learn the scientific method and become the engineer he aspires to be, if his school does not provide him with REGULAR opportunities to learn the scientific method by PRACTICING the scientific method? (David Thornburg’s message from CoSN09 burns in my mind when I ask these questions.) The answer? Like many things (including writing with social media and learning about hyperlinked writing) it’s up to us as parents to teach these things at home. What about other kids whose parents are not focused on these issues? Who is going to “turn these elementary age kids on” to science? If we really care about STEM, why are we not insisting on a hands-on approach to science in our schools which involves regular experimentation instead of endless note taking and worksheets?

Alexander recorded this short, 90 second video explaining about his Thursday folder and demonstrating what happens at the end of Thursday night after we’ve looked at the pile of worksheets: They get thrown into the trash can. (We did save his social studies test he was so proud of, however, and put it on the fridge.)

I dearly wish our school district was willing to embrace the constructive potential of social media to help students “show what they know” and more meaningfully document their journeys of learning with images, audio, and video than anyone can ever do with mere worksheets. After Alexander shared his “time capsule” letter with me last night, I asked him to quickly record it onto a short, three image VoiceThread for which he selected the photos. This took five minutes for us to do together, and I posted it to our family learning blog. His grandparents in Kansas were able to listen to him and watch this today, and told us on the phone they loved it. They hadn’t realized he’s planning to major in robotics at Kansas State in college! I hadn’t either until I read his essay. Without this technological documentation of his learning, there is little chance his Kansas grandparents would have EVER seen, read, or heard this letter. Thanks to technology sharing tools like VoiceThread, however, they did and now you can too. This is extremely important and valuable stuff to Alexander and to our family. And, it’s free to do.

We need to get digital tools into the hands of ALL our students in grades three and up as soon as possible, as well as our teachers. This morning I had a chance to briefly examine a $200 Lenovo S10 Netbook owned by James Deaton, and I marveled at the size, capabilities, and price point of this device.

Hat tip to Dawn Danker for taking the first photo in this series of me with the netbook.

When are my own children going to be able to use technologies like these IN SCHOOL here in Oklahoma? The clock is ticking. They’re learning plenty about how to use technology tools here at home, but we have much more limited opportunities to digitally create, collaborate, and communicate compared to what could be accomplished during the school day.

I have my fingers crossed that our state’s educational technology stimulus money will be used in an innovative way to empower students in a few more Oklahoma school districts (in addition to Crescent, Howe, and Lowery) to learn in 1 to 1 environments.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to watch the stream of worksheets come home each week in the Thursday folders.

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This podcast is a recording of Dr. David Thorburg’s presentation “Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective” at the 2009 CoSN Conference on March 11, 2009. The official conference program description of this session was: K-12 education science, technology, engineering and mathematics is a hot topic today, with conversations spanning from the classroom to the Oval Office.  Technology can be used in ways that help address many of the challenges facing K-12 STEM programs.  This dynamic talk explores five challenges:  Shortage of qualified teachers; Learning that science is a vibrant human activity, cutting back on hand’s- on science instruction; Science as inquiry and projects; Connecting science to other subjects.  By moving toward a more constructionist approach to science instruction, taking advantage of various cutting-edge probe-ware tools and other computer based resources, many of these challenges can be addressed in ways that greatly increase student appreciation for more analytical subjects.  Our economic recovery requires a highly educated populace, and this presentation tackles some of those challenges head-on.

 

 Podcast305: Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective by Dr. David Thornburg [01:06:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1371)

Show Notes:

1. Dr. Thornburg’s website: The Thornburg Center for Space Exploration
2. My text notes from this session
3. PhET: Free online physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math simulations (University of Colorado at Boulder)
4. Explore Learning Gizmos
5. Instructables
6. PASCO’s Spark
7. Futurework 2020

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These are my notes from David Thornburg’s presentation “Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective” at the CoSN 2009 conference in Austin, Texas. He shared this presentation on 11 March 2009.

Isn’t it amazing we’ve gone from looking for cool ballpoint pens at conferences from looking for 1 GB pen drives

Now 3M has a $300 projector using LEDs, 10 lumens, that is the size of your hand
- within 6 months I think we’ll see a 800 lumen LED projector, it will be more than $300 but not much more
- life of LEDs is said to be 10,000 hours, based on our tests it may be more like 20,000 to 30,000 hours

Let’s go back in our “wayback machine”
- my world changed on October 4, 1957 with the launch of Sputnik
- that event really enticed me to get excited about science, engineering, and all this stuff
- without having my excitement captured by Sputnik

Nov 13, 1957 President Eisenhower gave a speech encouraging US to change its schools in fundamental ways, and we DID it

Technology in the old days
- film strips, movies
- machine tools
- soldering irons
- wood lathes
- iron foundry
- printing presses
- real world tools of all kinds
- (personal computers were still many years away)

We need to broaden our minds beyond computers and the Internet when we think of technologies in schools
- many kids don’t have opportunities to go to schools with these rich tools

quotation from “Learning for the 21st Century, Partnership for 21st Century Skills”
- Participating effectively…

some challenges
- shortage of qualified teachers
- learning that science is a vibrant human activity
- cutting back on hands-on science instruction
- science as inquiry and projects
- connecting science to other subjects

need to break down the stove

Great quotation about Science by Joel Stein from Chicago Tribune

Stats on “students taught by teachers with no major or certification in the subject taught, 1999-2000″
- grades 9-12
- physical science: 63%
- chemistry: 61%
- physics 67%

Why is it OK to say you’re not good at math, when it is NOT ok culturally to say you’re not good at reading

Article from the Wichita Eagle: “Filipino teacher experiment a success”
- Feb 8, 2009

Learning that science is a vibrant activity
something to do:
- write down the name of a scientist
- in most cases, the name written down had the following 3 characteristics:
1- white
2- dead
3- male

Newton, Einstein (who was a mathematician primarily), Marie Curie, and…

Leaves out: Mayans and their calendar
- marvelous piece of scientific work done before

George Washington Carver
- eat peanut butter? Thank him!

we live in a world now where Google is a verb

[I LOVE THAT STATEMENT]

Our oldest daughter went to school in the US, and had never experienced the beauty of mathematics
- then saw a fractal model on my computer

We have been cutting back on hand’s-on science instruction
- we have got to do something about that

Look at San Francisco Bay Area Schools in 2000 (Lawrence Hall of Science study)
- schools in the heart of Silicon Valley
- minutes per week on science, K-5
20% spending 60-180 minutes
64% spending 60 minutes or less
16% no time

WOW

If this is the nexus of creativity and technology

Lots of people think 3rd grade is really the critical one for getting kids excited and interested in science
- we’ve got to do something here

When we DO get around to teaching science, we rely on printed books

Problem with science textbooks
- by the time they are published, they are out of date

How do science textbooks get adapted? By infuriating as few people as possible
- so you write the most bland stuff you can get away with

this strips out all the arguments

too often science textbooks presents science as fait accompli

As a child of the October Sky, I was Very, very fortunate
- there were MANY resources being made available in schools and to the public at large
- one was called “Things of Science” for a $5 subscription
- this was my Christmas gift in 1957 from my Dad

this was COOL stuff
- by the time I got to high school I was ready!

Today you can do many of these things are free online
- PhET
- these are downloadable gadgets or you can run them online
- either flash or java applets

you can start to make observations about the relationships between mass and springs

Other examples: Explore Learning’s Gizmos
- allows teachers to customize their practice for how they want to approach science
- very powerful tools
- these are the kinds of things that give me hope

http://www.instructables.com/
- example: Napier’s Bones: Quickly Multiply, Wooden Style

- you can download instructionables in PDF format
- kids can post their own diy instructions
- this is powerful stuff

Ohio State Univ study
- Learning Science Facts Doesnt Boost Science Reasoning

- gave science fact tests and science reasoning tests to both Chinese and US students

inquiry is a process by which students ask and answer questions which go so far beyond what our textbooks can do and support, it is phenomenal

example: why is it that the rotation of the moon is exactly synchonized with the earth? (so we just see the one side of the moon)

- photograph of the back side of the moon
- look at the differenes between the photos

in Brazil, projects where kids design and machine their own rocket engines
- these kids are not thinking about subjects in silos (content areas)

Have you ever been to the playground and heard a kid say, “I was reading my science textbook the other day, and read this fascinating thing on page 263….”

We do a staff development on inquiry-based project learning
- example: teachers built a functional wind tunnel to test different nose cone designs

The importance of connecting science to other subjects
- when things are being taught in a vacuum it doesn’t make sense
- science fiction is a lovely connecting point for many kids
- the original Star Trek

Kristina Johnson of John Hopkins Univ: “Today’s problems are more complex… require more cross-disciplinary approaches…”

lots of focus on STEM projects seem to try and strengthen existing stove pipes (content areas) rather than connecting the stove pipes

by the end of sophomore year, 50% of Purdue’s entering engineering students have changed their majors

audience discussion
- many engineering schools lose MATH students not engineering students (kids don’t have the chops for the math courses which are required)

THAT JIVES WITH MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH CALCULUS II

Great slide David is sharing on connections of Math, Science, Technology, and Engineering

they involve creativity/design, world of the ‘made’, scientific method, world of the ‘found’

somewhere kids need to see all of this at once

schools: MSCE

challenge:
- must go beyond learning ABOUT science, we must DO Science
- we must learn to see the beauty in science, not just in places like literature

it is all about authenticity
- give kids real things to do
- we’ve got authenticity here and beyond

remember the Star Trek tricorder?

PASCO’s Spark

40,000 dead satellites

give kids to play with real tools to solve real problems

any K12 can have their experiment on the ISS, costs 10K per kg

have found more than 2 dozen volcanoes on Io (moon of Jupiter)
- photo of scientist researching this

Who is going to replace here?
- her replacement is in our schools today

Story of Rip Van Winkle
- we have them every night when we go

websites like device (?) and instructables, good to see creative things happening

David’s materials: http://www.tcse-k12.org/futurework/

Futurework 2020: Futurework 2020 is a contest for students in Middle and High-school to anticipate the new kinds of jobs that will be available in the year 2020 that are not available today. In addition to defining the jobs, students will identify the skills that people will need to get one of these new jobs.

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