Sorry I neglected to write a post with real content last week, but I have one in the works!  Stay tuned.  For now, though, here’s a note about an science festival event in DC that they’re trying to create some advance buzz on.  I’m a big fan of science festivals — bring science to the streets, and have people run across it who wouldn’t usually go out of their way to go to a science museum or science talk.   We have art festivals, music festivals, why not science festivals?  There’s a big tradition of this in Europe, apparently, and we’re trying to learn their style.  I know there were a lot of sessions on science festivals at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meetings several years back.  Apparently this festival (which is the first nationwide festival!) are inspired by those international efforts.  Interestingly enough, it’s led by an entrepreneur and venture capitalist (Larry Bock), with a science bent, rather than a scientist.  Kudos.  Sounds like someone who knows how to get things done!

Here’s the info on the event in DC:

USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo Dates: October 23 & 24, 2010; 10:00am-5:30pm; This event is free of charge – no tickets required
What is the universe made of? Why did dinosaurs go extinct? What do magic tricks and hip-hop have to with math? What can amphibians and reptiles tell us about the environment? What do engineers have to do with baseball? Find out at the first ever USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo on the National Mall! Explore science & engineering with hundreds of free, hands-on activities and over 40 science shows on three different stages. The two-day Expo is perfect for teens, children and their families, and anyone with a curious mind who is looking for a weekend of fun and discovery. Build an underwater robot, chat with a Nobel Laureate, explore the science behind the magic of Hogwarts Academy and see a car that drives itself. From bugs to birds, kitchen chemistry to computer games, environmental monitoring to electronic music – the Expo has something for everyone and is completely free of charge. The Expo is the pinnacle event of the inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival to be held in the greater Washington D.C. area October 10-24, 2010. The USA Science & Engineering Festival is a collaboration of over 500 of the nation’s leading science and engineering organizations. For more information on all Festival events and how you can get involved, visit www.usasciencefestival.org

Get involved now: join the over 400 organizations that have already signed up to host an Expo exhibit, become an official Festival Partner, organize a Satellite Event in your community, host a Festival Event, check out our cool school programs like Nifty Fifty and Lunch with a Laureate, volunteer, donate, become a sponsor, participate in one of several contests, buy a Festival T-shirt, follow our blog, and stay on top of it all by signing up for our bi-weekly e-newsletter. Will you be there when science takes over the National Mall?

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Our PhET interactive simulation project was just featured on Voice of America. It’s a nice short piece that gives information about PhET and why it’s helpful for student learning. Kudos to my boss Kathy Perkins who was succinct and clear — not always an easy task.

Below is the text from the VOA site

And here is the audio MP3

Website features interactive science experiments

You won’t need a one-gig internet connection to check out our Website of the Week.

This time it’s an educational site where principles of physics are illustrated with interactive animated experiments that you can perform on your own computer.

PERKINS: “The PhET website is a collection of 85 simulations for teaching and learning science. So our main goal is to help students better understand the science of the world around them, but instead of telling students how something works, our simulations let them discover important science concepts for themselves and really learn and engage through scientist-like exploration.”

Kathy Perkins is co-director of the Physics Education Technology, or PhET Interactive Simulations website, at phet.colorado.edu.

Despite the name, the site also includes animated simulations in biology, chemistry, and other disciplines, as well as physics. You can build your own solar system, model the hydrogen atom, or explore the properties of a gas as you change its temperature and other variables.

Another simulation allows you to design and modify a simple electrical circuit.

PERKINS: “So when you open up, you can drag out wires and batteries and bulbs. And as you connect them, as soon as you complete a circuit, you’ll see the light bulb light up and the electrons shown in the wires circulate around the circuit.”

The simulations look like entertainment, but Perkins says the design of each has been tested for its educational value and can be used in the classroom, or you can just run the sims yourself and learn by doing online at phet.colorado.edu, or get the link from our site, VOAnews.com.

MUSIC: Michel Petrucciani – “Laws Of Physics”

You’re listening to Our World, the weekly science and technology magazine from VOA News. I’m Art Chimes in Washington.

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The Exploratorium museum houses many wonderful science and perception exhibits, one of which is the anti-gravity mirror — a simple perception exhibit consisting of a big mirror with a platform hidden on the back side.  The explainers (the high school kids employed by the Exploratorium to do a lot of the demos and help visitors in the museum) just posted a really great video of a lot of the fun tricks you can do at the anti-gravity mirror.  Very fun!

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In the midst of winter’s snowfalls, it’s time to consider what you (and your students) might be doing this summer.  Here is a list of all the different summer program  opportunities for science teachers and students I’ve run across recently.
Firstly, NSTA publishes a list of professional development opportunities here. Their list includes:

• The STORM Project (June 20-25; Deadline Feb 26th for priority). Learn about air quality and meterology at the University of Northern Iowa; for middle school and high school science teachers. Expenses paid. Information here.
• Connecting Humans and Nature through Conservation Experiences. Penn State course in environmental science and conservation biology through a practicum in Costa Rica and Panama. Application by Feb 28th. Information here.
• A field course in measuring and monitoring biodiversity at El Eden Ecological preserve. August 7-14; Deadline March 15. Study tropical biodiversity near Cancun. Email Daniel_Bisaccio@Brown.edu
• Sheila Schwartz Family International Leading Science Teachers Seminar. Learn cutting edge science in Israel. July 7-15, Application deadline March 31. Information here.
• Botanical Society of America’s Summer Institute. June 21-29; Deadline April 9. Learn to develop student-centered plant investigations. Information here.
• PlantIT Teacher Institute. HS science teachers exploring investigative cases in biology. July 12-23 at Texas A&M. Deadline April 9. Information here.
• Deep Ecology and Sustainable Living Short Course. July 25-August 7 in Costa Rica, Deadline April 23. Information here.
• Physics of Atomic Nuclei. Free residential summer program at Michigan State. Learn about research at the superconducting cyclotron and conduct experiments. August 1-6 (teachers), Aug 8-13 (students). Information here.

Exploratorium Teacher Institute (June 21-July 16; Deadline April 1)

This is where I cut my eyeteeth in hands-on inquiry learning and I can’t recommend it enough.  These institutes are the best 4 weeks you’ll ever have, and you’ll become part of a vibrant and intelligent set of science and math teachers.  If you want to know more about what you might be getting into, listen to the podcasts that I made about the institute on the bottom of the page.    Information here.

Galileo Learning (Varies)

Galileo Learning is a Bay Area company looking for educators to run its summer camps:  Galileo Summer Quest (for entering 5th through 8th graders);
The Tech Summer Camps (for entering 4th through 8th graders).  More information here.

Yellowstone (Varies)

Write off your vacation by taking a class in the Yellowstone Association summer field seminars.   Information here

Astronomy Camp (Varies; March-October)

A teacher says, ” I did the teacher version of this astronomy camp a number of years ago and it remains the best PD I’ve ever done (Exploratorium notwithstanding, of course) with lots of time on very large telescopes. One of the highlights from my experience was “discovering” Pluto. [But]… the website (which has drastically improved) still doesn’t do a good job on conveying the experience.  And Don (the guy who runs the thing) is fantastic.”  Camps run March through October.  Information here.

Univ of California – COSMOS (July 11-Aug 7th, San Diego; ?? Irvine; Deadline March 1 & 15)

Deadlines for San Diego and Irvine are in March.  Each Fellow works with a team of university faculty to implement the academic portion of COSMOS. Teacher Fellows serve as the pedagogical bridge between high school student learning and university faculty teaching. They directly participate in all classroom and laboratory work as well as field trips, typically a Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. commitment.   Check here

Cornell Institute for Physics Teachers (July 5-17 and 25-30)

Get graduate credit in physics in this intensive summer institute, which was recommended by a teacher.  The CIPT graduate courses contain lectures, lab tours, and innovative, inquiry-based laboratory experiments. Lectures and lab tours are designed to update high school physics teachers on recent advances in diverse topic areas.   Information here.

Modeling Workshops (Varies)

Modeling Workshops are peer-led. Modeling Instruction is one of two K-12 science programs designated by the U.S. Department of Education as EXEMPLARY.  Modeling Workshops in high school physics, chemistry, and/or physical science will be held in summer 2010 in Arizona, Alabama, Miami FL, Iowa, New Orleans LA, Maine, Michigan, Minneapolis MN, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pittsburgh PA, northern Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Dallas TX, and Wisconsin.  Modeling Workshops will be held also in Georgia, Chicago IL, Kansas, South Dakota, and Washington, pending funding.  Modeling Workshops in 11th grade biology will be held in Pittsburgh PA and Tennessee, for teachers in Physics First/Capstone Biology sequences.  Stipends and/or free tuition at most sites, usually for in-state teachers.  Information here.

For Students

NASA programs in Mountain View, CA.  Information here.

Caltech Young Engineering and Science Scholars (YESS).  Information here.

JPL (the Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)  SpaceSHIP (Summer High School Internship Program) here.

Girls on Ice 2010 Expedition.  FREE, wilderness science education program for high school girls. Each year a
team of 9 teenage girls and 3 instructors spend 11 days exploring and learning about mountain glaciers and alpine landscapes through scientific field studies with professional glaciologists and mountaineers.  July 26 to August 5, 2010 on Mount Baker, Washington State.
Information here. (applications are due March 1, 201)

Summer Science Program (SSP).  A teacher says, “My younger sister did it and is now in a PhD program in Physics at Berkeley.  She loved it and met many other like-minded students there.”  Information here.

Astronomy Camp. A teacher says, ” I did the teacher version of this astronomy camp a number of years ago and it remains the best PD I’ve ever done (Exploratorium notwithstanding, of course) with lots of time on very large telescopes. One of the highlights from my experience was “discovering” Pluto. [But]… the website (which has drastically improved) still doesn’t do a good job on conveying the experience.  And Don (the guy who runs the thing) is fantastic.”  Camps run March through October.  Information here.

Image by freeparking

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Project Tomorrow (which does really good work) is creating a new survey of teachers, to get the lay of the land in teacher prep.  This one is the first one, I believe, in which they’re including aspiring teachers.  Here is the blurb — if you’re seeking your credentials, consider contributing your voice to the survey!  Due February 19th.

Wanted: Aspiring Teachers to join the National Dialogue about Teacher Education!

Project Tomorrow is seeking Aspiring Teachers who are currently pursuing a degree or credential to participate in its nationally recognized Speak Up project.  The Speak Up for Aspiring Teacher survey is the newest in Project Tomorrow’s suite of Speak Up surveys and provides aspiring teachers with the opportunity to contribute to the national dialogue about teacher preparation.  This online survey asks participants questions about how they use technology in and out of the classroom for personal and academic reasons, how they are learning to use technology to facilitate learning or for professional tasks, and their aspirations for your future classrooms.

The national findings will be released during a Congressional Briefing in May 2010 and used to inform national, state, and local policymakers about key issues related to teacher preparation and training.  Your voice matters!  The survey responses are 100% anonymous, so let us know what’s important to you and your future teaching career.

It’s easy to share your ideas – all you have to do is take the survey on our website!

For additional information, please contact June Pai at june@tomorrow.org or 949/609-4660 Ext. 12 or visit Project Tomorrow’s website.

Remember, the survey closes on February 19th, 2010!

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Here’s a wonderful tidbit from a book that every physics teacher should have — The Flying Circus of Physics.  My old mentor PD gave it to me with the inscription, “until I write my book of physics stories, this is the best collection of science stories in print.”  As much as I love Paul, I think even he’d have a big task to outdo the wide array of stories and strange facts in this book (though I’d love to see him try!).  Need something to spice up a lecture on sound?  How about an explanation of why we hear our upstairs neighbors more than they hear us?  Or need a story to make the idea of pressure come alive?  How about the girl who got her tongue stuck in a bottle and needed glass cutters to help her get free?

So here’s the story of how electricity helps flowers grow.  We generally think of pollination as being a sort of accidental process — the bee gets himself all covered in yellow snow at one flower, and then loses some of it at the next flower.  No, it turns out that bees get positively charged (they lose some electrons) as they fly through the air.  When the positive bee approaches the neutral flower, that induces a charge in the pollen, which jumps onto the bee.

This is the same phenomenon as when you rub a balloon on your sweater.  The balloon becomes positively charged and when you bring it to the wall, it induces a charge in the wall.  Thus, it sticks to the wall.  There’s a nice simulation of this effect here.

Anyway, the pollen sticks to the hairs on the bee.  If it stuck to the bee itself, it would lose its charge.  The hair acts as an insulator, keeping the pollen grain just far enough away to keep it charged, and thus attracted to the bee.

Now, when the bee goes to the next flower, it induces a negative charge in the stigma of that flower.  The pollen grains are more strongly affected by that concentrated negative charge (the stigma, after all, has more charge than the bee, it’s connected to the ground so has an infinite source of electrons to draw from), and the pollen grain is polarized in the opposite way and jumps to the flower.

Wow.  I wonder if pollination doesn’t work as well in moist climates, then?  Is that why Colorado wildflowers are so stunning in their concentrations?

Bee Picture from TTaylor

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Here’s a list o’ lists, a compilation of compilations, all sorts of science geek resources that you might find helpful!

First, here’s a list of blogs about women and science (mine made the list, woo-hoo!).  This is a nice little list with descriptions of each of the blogs and their perspective (from Under the Microscope, via the Feminist Press)

Top 10 viewed science videos from Biocompare. They say: From an 80’s hair metal power ballad about electrical impedance-based cell monitoring systems to a “disco hit” on PCR reagents, you can have a laugh and learn.  Who says science can’t be fun?

100 Killer iTTunes Feeds for Serious Science Geeks. If you’ve got a penchant for getting your science education via podcast, here’s a list to browse (from Online Colleges)

Top 200 Education Blogs. If there’s something you’re looking for, there must be something on that extensive of a list (from the Guide to Online Schools)

Best Open Science Courses on the web.   (From Online Colleges)  and similarly, Free Online Courses.  A collection of courses in just about every subject imaginable from MIT, Yale, Berkele, etc.  (From Guide to Online Schools)

Geek on.

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It seems to be in vogue to teach about climate change.  Thank god.  I mean, is there anything else more confusing nowadays?  Teaching students just to wade through the puddles of mud being slung across party lines is a message in media digestion in itself!

Luckily there are many resources being developed to help educators teach about climate change.  Here I’m listing a bunch that I’ve been running across.

1.  Free standards-based climate change films (polar regions)

From CIRES in Boulder comes a set of films for use in the classroom.  Sadly, they’re right now out of DVD’s, but you can see all the clips on their website. They say:  “The film contains 7 stand-alone segments appropriate for use in all kinds of science classrooms and informal settings from the middle level through college. The segments illustrate the problem of climate change and how scientists are working in Alaska and Greenland to understand it. Each segment is about 10 minutes long.  The video was developed to align strongly with the National Science Education Standards across all science subjects”

Segment 1: Introduction to Climate Change
Segment 2: Polar History
Segment 3: Studying Alaskan Permafrost
Segment 4: Ice Core Drilling
Segment 5: Studying Glaciers
Segment 6: Studying Sea Ice
Segment 7: Conclusion and Solutions

2.  Hot questions about climate change

Also here in Boulder (working for NCAR/UCAR), my fellow blogger Sharon Glassman has created a set of 30-second climate change videos, such as “What difference can a few degrees make?” (embedded below).  She says:  “The segs are fun, trustworthy, free – and designed to be spread through the atmosphere of the Web and friendship.”
©UCAR

3. Climate Discovery online courses

Also from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are a set of online courses. They are accepting registrations for winter term (starting Jan 22nd) here.   They cost $225 and there are several courses available.  They say:  “Are you seeking a K-12 professional development opportunity that will enhance your qualifications, competency, and self-confidence in integrating Earth system science, climate, and global change into your science classroom? The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) offers a series of six and seven week online courses for middle and high school teachers that combine geoscience content, information about current climate research, easy to implement hands-on activities, and group discussion. The courses run concurrently from January 22 through March 14, 2010.”

4.  How to effectively teach climate change

One teacher recommends a glacial melt activity here.  And a carbon calculator for kids.

CIRES has been working on a set of resources to help teach about controversial projects like climate change.   They have a set of helpful resources here. In particular:

• Common misconceptions about climate change (PDF)
• Climate change clicker quiz (PPT)
• Edutopia’s Taking the fear out of teaching global warming (HTML)
• Dealing with controversy (PDF)

5.  I also have a few activities and webcasts on climate change myself:

• Several hands-on activities about weather and climate here and here (such as a rice model of the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, and a model of how carbon dioxide resonates in the infrared).
• A set of webcasts – climate in the past (a synopsis of the included activities here) and in the future (a synopsis of content and activities here).

Also recommended are the following two books:

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I’ve got a new podcast posted, this one with my esteemed colleague Valerie Otero of the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She tells us why she thinks that the idea of student “misconceptions” is very dangerous — and gives us a new way to think about student ideas in the classroom, and some activities to address them.  This is in the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears episode on Keeping Warm, and targets common student ideas about heat.  Still, the general message about misconceptions is, I think, one that every teacher should hear.

Listen to Warm Blankets and Cold Breezes (10 minutes)

You can also read this month’s content article on heat (what is it?  How do people and animals keep warm?) written by moi.

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We think of taking tests as something to assess whether we learned something, but there is a fascinating set of literature that shows that it does more than that.  Tests can be learning events in their own right.  It makes sense when you think about it.  How is it that we learn things?  By making neuronal connections, or strenthening neuronal connections, in the brain.  Each time we take a test and are asked to recall information, that neuronal path gets strengthened.  That’s why flash cards are useful.  One of the seminal papers on this topic is The critical importance of retrieval for learning by Karpicke and Roediger.

• When someone recalls something from memory, they’re more likely to be able to recall it again later — much more so than when that information is just presented to the person.
• People forget information more slowly when tested on it
• Asking people questions whose answers involve numbers increase people’s retention of numbers presented in text (by directing their attention to the type of information important to learn for the test)
• Questions asked before a task can activate prior knowledge and focus students on the relevant material

Robert Bjork of UCLA, who studies learning and forgetting, has written extensively on this topic, especially given that students don’t really know how it is that they learn, and their study habits don’t make the most effective use of what we know about our cognitive function.  His “how to succeed in college” paper is a nice summary of this research.

But, you might ask, what if you take a test and get the wrong answer?  Doesn’t that then cement the wrong answer in your brain? So isn’t there a danger to testing ourselves when we might get the wrong answer stuck in our head?  Some research suggests that testing could distort knowledge in this way:  When you get the wrong answer on a multiple choice test, you’re more likely to make that same mistake on a later test.

Giving someone feedback on their performance on a test can reduce memory distortions, but this is sometimes not feasible (especially in today’s climate of standardized testing).   Luckily, new research shows that, no, making mistakes still helps us learn.  A set of two articles authored and co-authored by Nate Kornell sheds some light on these questions:

• When they tested students before they studied a text, students did better on a test after having studied the text, even though they got most of the questions wrong.  This appeared to be due to the testing itself, rather than focusing students’ attention on the important aspects of the text, because students learned better when tested than when key information in the text was bolded.  (Note the implications for students’ exuberant highlighting of texts!)
• This kind of testing also reduced forgetting after a one week delay.
• This kind of testing was also more effective than reading the same question and trying to memorize the words of the question itself (without trying to retrieve the answer).
• In another study, where students were doomed to fail (being tested on word association pairs that most people get wrong), they found the following:  Trying (and failing) to answer a question, and then studying it, produces better learning than studying it (for a longer time) without first trying to answer it.

Thus, give your students pre-tests!  The act of trying (unsuccessfully) to retrieve an answer helps you do better on a later test (and not just because the pre-test gave you a clue as to what would be on the final test).  Pre-processing is very important!

It’s crucial, however, that students be given a chance to restudy the tested material.

Scientific American article

Nate Kornell’s website with links to his publications.  (Gosh, he’s cute!)

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