Making Chickensaurus Skeletons from Wired

Here's a great activity for budding paleontologists from the Wired Wiki. Have your students reconstruct chicken skeletons...or diversify and give them many different animals to puzzle out. On the more creative rather than investigative side, have your adventuresome students combine bones from several species to make fantastic new "scientific mistakes."

Check out the wired article for details, but prep and execution are pretty simple..

1. Boil whole chicken (easily available in Asian markets)
2. Soak the de-fleshed chicken in Liquid Draino
3. Hot-glue the bones together, using 16 gauge wire to string the vertebrae
4. Refer to chicken anatomy pages via Google search (like this one) for reference.
5. Get creative with other animal skeletons and composites
   

WISE Teacher Compensation

Ah yes. 'Tis the season for performance evaluations, everyone's favorite time of the year. So I thought I would weigh in on some of what we at WISE consider best practices in terms of motivating teachers to go the extra mile in motivating and challenging their students to excel in science, math and technology. This is also a post intended to support administrations who ask the important question, "how can we effectively support and motivate change and improvement in our science programs." One very simple supporting answer (though clearly not one that will stand alone) is, "unequivocally tie compensation to the fulfillment of your goals." So since this is the time of the year to make amendments to compensation plans, here are our suggestions.

Let me start this post by admitting that I am a BIG fan of performance-based pay despite die-hard opposition from most teachers' unions. And before you tenured folks get all excited, let me also say that what I am proposing is how merit BONUSES should be applied, and not that some portion of a teacher's regular base salary be variable based on performance (though in the long run, I do think that might also be worth considering).

As we have begun to work with a range of schools, we at WISE have observed that one of the biggest challenges in updating science education practices is that even many of the most capable teachers find themselves operating in an environment of changing goals and motivations. Clear and unambiguous direction is often rare given that school administrations are themselves also struggling with rapid changes in technology practice and what they mean for science and technology education.

So the purpose of this post is to offer some suggestions for updated criteria upon which to base merit bonuses, along with some rationale behind each area of assessment.

What I will offer here is a starting proposal with the fundamental goal of aligning teacher compensation with the WISE mission of extending and enriching science education. In effect, I am proposing that you pay teachers extra compensation for doing extra work outside of their traditional classroom lecture obligations. More work is rewarded with more pay. Pay extra for stuff they are not already doing. They seem like a simple concepts, but we find them out of reach in many schools.


Assessment Criteria:

1. How effectively does the teacher invest students with interest and joy in scientific discovery?
   
   This is probably one of the single biggest opportunities for improvement. Subject matter skills and test taking facility pale into insignificance when the students are driven out of science programs and away from life-long science literacy. The goal is to financially motivate faculty to make their classroom and lab activities engaging and compelling. (Note that many teachers will respond that they can do this if they sacrifice efforts to improve test performance, but I would counter that the first requirement doesn't go away and they are already being paid for that one. If they can also accomplish this goal, they can get extra pay.)
   
   Measures:
   
   • Student survey answers to the question "did this science class make you more or less inclined to take another science class?"
   • How many of that teacher's students actually signed up for a subsequent science class?
   • Bonus percentages should be granted both for high scores, and year-over-year improvement.
   
   
   
2. How many hours did the faculty invest in supporting extra-curricular science activities, and how many students did the teacher recruit into said activities?
   
   Science fairs and Olympiads, robotics contests, regular and long-lasting work in WISE labs, internships, or anything that involves the students in science outside the classroom are fundamental to taking textbook lessons and realizing how they are applied to and relevant in the outside world at large.
   
   Measures:
   
   • Count the number of hours invested
   • Count the number of mentored student entries in contests and fairs
   • Bonuses should be offered for both high scores and for year-on-year improvement
   
   
   
3. How many hours of professional development in improving the teacher's scientific, technical, and research skills were undertaken over the school year?
   
   The goal here is to improve teachers' scientific literacy and get them to accrue experience in participating in scientific research and technical development such that they can bring these skills and activities back to their home schools. Note that this goal is NOT intended to offer compensation for educational programs or in-services on how to TEACH something. The idea is to breed teachers who are also scientists and role models and mentors in that capacity.
   
   Measure:
   
   • Count the number and extent of research or development sabbaticals
   • Offer bonuses for both strong performance and year-over-year improvement.
   
   
4. How effectively and regularly has the teacher collaborated and communicated with other teachers in planning and coordinating classroom and lab activities.
   
   This goal is probably one of the most important and foundational goals. One of the single biggest barriers to broad improvement is isolated teachers in isolated classrooms. Anything that can get them collaborating and brainstorming to promote honest and non-threatening peer assessment and support is a good thing.
   
   Measure:
   
   • This one requires that both peers and supervisors regularly evaluate the effectiveness of each teacher's team contribution.
   
   
   
5. How effectively have your lesson plans and lab activities been updated to include:
   

• the latest computerized data sampling, analysis, and publishing practices, and
• open-ended activities which offer consistent opportunities for creativity and innovation
• opportunities for student collaboration and teamwork
  
  Measures:
  
  • This one is probably the most difficult to evaluate, and requires that a mentor-class teacher or administrator regularly observe and review class and lab practices. In a way, in order for this assessment to be practical and fair, the communications and collaboration goal needs to be fulfilled first.

=========================

How to weight the different criteria:

While all of the above criteria are important, and often new, goals for many teachers, some are more important than others. Some in particular, are foundational for others. The relative weights should also be adjusted to account for particular needs, deficiencies, and strengths of each unique science department at each unique school.

But for programs that are starting this sort of program for the first time, I can recommend a relative weighting:

Let me start by saying that if any one teacher accomplishes all these goals with panache, it should be worth a 20% bonus in salary, because it would take at LEAST 20% more time to pull it off, and in all likelihood, a lot more time than that. Moreover, the impact and benefits to the students would far exceed any expense. I'm also very much a member of the "Aim for the stars, hit the fence-post, aim for the fence-post, hit the mud" school. ASPIRE to do it all, but make it rewarding to do well in even a few of these areas.

If you start with a home-run award of 20%, I would divide the 20% max bonus across each of the above areas weighted something like:

1. Students interest, joy, ongoing science participation: 4%
   
   
2. Student extra-curricular science participation: 4%
   
   
3. Teacher's scientific professional development: 3%
   
   
4. Teacher collaboration, teamwork, communication: 6%
   
   
5. Technical lesson plans and lab updates: 3%
   

I would also recommend flexibility in giving extra awards for truly exceptional and noteworthy efforts in any one area, even if other areas come up short.

One other important point is that this proposal is not intended to be a straight-jacket, but rather a template and a starting point for what should be a living document that evolves with the trusting contribution and support of both faculty and staff. It should evolve as a school's needs evolve, and amended where and as necessary to reflect what works and what doesn't.

Finally, I realize that this scheme will raise all sorts of very reasonable questions and concerns from both faculty and administrations. Questions like, "where are we supposed to find the cash to pay science teachers 20% bonuses?" (note that an average bonus is likely to much less than 20%) Or, "how am I supposed to know where to find summer research opportunities for myself or my students," or "How can I best update my lab equipment and practices?"

Just know that WISE exists specifically to answer these questions and support these policies both in practice and financially. Ask away! Challenge us! Let's debate the best processes we can develop!

As always, comments, suggestions, challenges etc... all welcome and encouraged!

How many of you science, math and technology faculty would sign up to undertake some of these challenges with the prospect of a healthy 20% bonus?

Upcoming WISE Conference Recommendations

Hi all,

There are a couple of great science, technology, and math education conferences coming up this month and next that I want to be sure you are all aware of, the February 27-30 NCSSSMST conference in Dallas and the March 27-30 NSTA conference in Boston .

I and a few WISE folks will be attending both shows, and we could likely schedule some fun extra-curricular activities around MIT in Boston that could be good for both faculty and students (the latter get free admittance to the Boston show.) This could also be a fun chance to hook up, broaden the WISE network and get schools actually collaborating. What a concept! Who's in?

Conference details follow:
------------------------
NCSSSMST 2008 Professional Conference
February 27-30, Dallas, TX

A case study for a great organization that badly needs a better name, the acronym-challenged association for Math Science and Technology specialty schools is a largely under-appreciated convocation of the best practices in those areas of education. With their group's focus on science and technology, you will find the best and most progressive teachers and school administrators talking about what is working for them and what is not. The content quality is very high overall. If you are either looking to hire, or looking for a job at a top-notch secondary educational institution, these are on the cutting edge of future school practices. I would even put in a strong plug for those of you from more mainstream schools to attend, as many of these best practices are universally applicable regardless of overall school focus.

Check out the NCSSSMST 2008 Professional Conference schedule and the final session program.
LOTS of good stuff here. If you like what you see you can register online here.

More info on the organization
http://www.ncsssmst.org/
------------------------------



National Science Teacher's Association Conference
February 28-30, Boston, MA

http://www.nsta.org/conferences/2008bos/


The best thing about this show is actually the exhibition, where all the science education vendors hawk their wares (over 500 vendors total). Everything from text books and workbooks to lab equipment, software, and materials, kits, etc... are abundantly displayed. The only challenge is sifting through the self-interested promoters of glossy-but-otherwise-useless stuff and the true gems that can transform your science education experiences. So we're planning some WISE group walk-throughs in order to jointly brainstorm about what we might promote and use.

The second big opportunity is that through our MIT connections, we have been pointed towards a bunch of MIT programs that will be going on in support of the NSTA conference. These MIT research groups are hosting visitors from the NSTA show on the MIT campus for hands-on science and technology education workshops.

Incidentally, these are the groups that have the most active ongoing K-12 outreach programs, and would be the best candidates for summer sabbaticals for any interested WISE faculty. (several of the groups were ones that Chris, Bill, and I met with on our last Boston trip) I can personally recommend the Creating with crickets at the Media Lab, and Open-ended Mechanical Engineering Activities, as being absolute gems applicable from middle school on up.

	BLOCK 1 (1:30-2:45 PM)
Avail Space	Workshop Tag and Description	Choice
13 of 18	Creating with crickets at the Media Lab
30 of 30	"Highlights for HS" MIT OpenCourseWare ~ Super resource for AP courses
26 of 30	Tour of the Broad Institute biomedical research labs
47 of 50	Scientific breakthroughs ~ Hot topic biology lecture
23 of 25	Investigate the 3-D structure of proteins
99 of 100	MIT Museum: MIT Lemelson InvenTeams and the Cell
21 of 24	Connecting genes to organisms and populations
30 of 30	MIT OpenLabWare for HS ~ Learn in the Lab
22 of 25	Space weather, radio astronomy & cell phones

	BLOCK 2 (3:00-4:15 PM)
Avail Space	Workshop Tag and Description	Choice
17 of 18	Creating with crickets at the Media Lab
28 of 30	"Highlights for HS" MIT OpenCourseWare ~ Super resource for AP courses
25 of 30	Tour of the Broad Institute biomedical research labs
47 of 50	Scientific breakthroughs ~ Hot topic biology lecture
24 of 25	Investigate the 3-D structure of proteins
94 of 100	MIT Museum: MIT Lemelson InvenTeams and the Cell
21 of 24	Open-ended Mechanical Engineering Activities

OR

	Long BLOCKS (1:30-4:15 PM)
Avail Space	Workshop Tag and Description
13 of 16	Basic neutron experiments at the reactor
15 of 16	Magnetism, thin-film nanomagnets
7 of 10	Build magnetic induction or "shake" flashlights
23 of 24	Ocean exploration in the classroom
21 of 24	Mystery @MIT: learning through augmented reality
25 of 25	High Energy Astrophysics!

Do let me know via email, blog comment or IM (see the links to the right) if you are planning to attend either show so we can be sure to meet up and plan some joint meals and events!

cheers,
-Phillip

A very topical Op-Ed piece from Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle by Intel Chairman Craig Barrett. I liked it so much I include it in its entirety here.

Flagging Economy Needs Science Investments

Craig Barrett

Sunday, January 20, 2008

"Two years ago, the National Academies published the seminal study on U.S. competitiveness entitled "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." The study identified major shortcomings in U.S. investments in basic scientific research as well as in math and science education for our youngsters. The suggestions contained in this study were immediately picked up by the Democratic House Leadership as their competitiveness strategy and later by President Bush in his State of the Union message under his American Competitiveness Initiative. Legislation in the form of the America Competes Act was passed in the House and Senate in 2007, and it appeared the United States was finally going to move forward after years of neglect to increase investment in math, science and basic research. All parties agreed that our competitiveness in the 21st century was at stake and we needed to act.

So much for political will.

The recent budget deal between Republicans and Democrats effectively flat-funds or cuts funding for key science agencies. Excluding "earmarks," the Department of Energy funding for fiscal year 2008 is up only 2.6 percent, thus losing ground to inflation. The National Science Foundation is up 2.5 percent, with the same result. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is up 11 percent, however the labs where research happens only get 2.3 percent, again losing ground to inflation. Key national laboratories, such as the Fermilab, which focuses on high-energy particle physics research, face the likelihood of hundreds of jobs being lost and the closing of some facilities, helping to shortchange defense research. Predicting the impact of such funding cuts in basic research on future job creation is difficult. Who could have predicted a $300 billion semiconductor industry from the invention of a transistor? But our kids who are heading to college are very smart. They will make their career decisions based on where they see the priorities of our government and economy.

The funding decisions on the America Competes Act took place a few days after Congress passed a $250 billion farm bill. In the eyes of our political leaders, apparently, corn subsidies to Iowa farmers are more important for our competitiveness in the next century than investing a few billion in our major research universities. The president expressed his happiness with the budget and Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said, "The president didn't get his priorities, we got ours."

At a time when the rest of the world is increasing its emphasis on math and science education (the most recent international tests - NAEP and PISA - show U.S. kids to be below average) and increasing their budgets for basic engineering and physical science research, Congress is telling the world these areas are not important to our future. At a time when we are failing our next generation of students, politically charged topics such as steroids in Major League Baseball and the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes command instantaneous congressional hearings while the seed corn (no pun intended) of our future is ignored and placed lower in priority than billions of dollars of earmarks.

Perhaps this would all be a moot discussion if we could continue to import the best and brightest minds from around the world to start and staff our next generation of high tech startups. But Washington can't even get that strategy straight, as legal immigration - the process by which bright, highly educated workers immigrate to the United States - is being choked by our inability to control illegal immigration. While the EU has proposed a simplified and expanded program for importing highly educated talent from the rest of the world, we continue to make if more difficult for the same talent to work in the United States, even when some of these knowledge workers have received their education in the United States at partial taxpayer expense.

Where are the voices in Washington to bring reasoned debate and action to these topics? Where are the voices among the presidential candidates to propose solutions to these challenges? What do we elect our political leaders for if not to protect our long-term future?

The United States stands at a pivotal point in our history. Competition is heating up around the world with millions of industrious, highly educated workers who are willing to compete at salaries far below those paid here. The only way we can hope to compete is with brains and ideas that set us above the competition - and that only comes from investments in education and R&D. Practically everyone who has traveled outside the United States in the last decade has seen this dynamic at work. The only place where it is apparently still a deep, dark secret is in Washington, D.C.

What are they thinking? When will they wake up? It may already be too late; but I genuinely think the citizenry of this country wants the United States to compete. If only our elected leaders weren't holding us back.

Craig Barrett is the chairman of Intel."

Build your own ROV

OK, it's too late to apply for this February, but it appears an ongoing annual (?) workshop for teachers building underwater ROV's (Remotely Operated Vehicles) at the Georgia Aquarium has lots of cool WISE potential.

The robotics connection is obvious, potentially offering our robotics teams some off-season practice in a cool new venue. Also, there are some ROV competitions offered by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center.

The best part of this is the potential of a project like this to provide open-ended opportunities for student exploration and research. With mounted cameras and probes, you need not restrict yourself to ocean exploration. What about venturing into the Chattahoochee River or any of the lakes around us. ROVs are also useful to explore areas where human beings cannot or should not venture for reasons of safety, size, access, etc. It would be cool to explore scalability issues with ROVs. What other engineering possibilities are there?

So, it looks like the GA Aquarium is offering this for teachers, but I see absolutely no reason why high school students couldn't be involved with something like this immediately.

I'll post more information when I hear back from the GA Aquarium about their ROV training session schedule. For those in other areas, a quick Google search shows current or past ROV teacher training in Santa Barbara, CA, Norfolk, VA, and other areas.

Purposely Teaching Innovation and Creativity

As the US economy shifts from an industrial production base to one based on information technology and intellectual property, the importance of innovation in science, math and technology increases apace. Now, more than ever before, the economic wellbeing of the United States depends on how well our nation can invent creative new technologies and novel and original solutions to world-shaking challenges while observing ever more difficult constraints on energy and resource utilization.

The old imperatives to invent efficient manufacturing infrastructure and train people to man them is no longer the focus of our future economy. And yet almost all of our nation's technical educational systems from Kindergarten through graduate schools are still built around the "traditional" model designed to support the industrialization of America. In that sense, our current school system was designed to train a population to efficiently perform regular and repetitive tasks that required well-known skills. It's not much of a stretch to realize that such a system designed to replicate specific skills and inculcate known approaches to well-understood problems is not well-suited to foster creativity.

Unfortunately, the world's technology landscape has changed so rapidly over the last decades that today's largest prospective economic engines surrounding computing, telecommunications, network technologies, stem cells, synthetic biology, and a host of others literally did not even exist when I was in school. And so I, and hundreds of thousands of other students who matriculated from US schools during the interval learned a huge amount of subject matter that was outdated long before we were truly material to the US economy. We survived in the profession by learning how to solve new problems as they came up. We had to be creative and innovative despite the fact that nobody had ever specifically taught us how to be so.

Recent surveys of executives running the most technology-oriented of the Fortune 500 companies, universities and research laboratories were almost unanimous when asked what skills they were looking for in this century's future work force. Almost none of them asked for the traditional subject matter that is the focus of most today's standardized tests. Instead, they almost unanimously were looking for creativity, the ability to innovate and come up with novel solutions to new problems that had never been seen before.

"Critical thinking" and "thinking outside the box" are often mentioned as goals of educational approaches, and yet even those programs that tout hands-on and inquiry-based pedagogy are almost universally very structured with pre-determined "correct" outcomes. Where is the room for creativity? Where can a student actually discover something new, or create something that never existed before?

In contrast, at WISE, we help schools build environments that are specifically designed to purposely foster creativity, and offer places and times for students to regularly practice fundamental technical skills while creating their own unique solutions to progressively more complicated and extensive challenges, and better yet, discovering and pursuing original lines of inquiry of their own.

This effort turns out to cover a lot of ground from organization to logistics, to training, and even includes financial support. But just building a space and populating it isn't enough, because aside from a few exceptions, students exposed to an open environment for the first time have no idea how to exercise their own initiative and begin learning, exploring, and innovating on their own. There needs to be a concerted effort to design and support introductory activities that teach fundamental creative and innovation-oriented skills and philosophies. Some of the recent growth in robotics and rocketry type competitions has really helped in this direction.

The good news is that we now have a pretty good idea of how to build these environments all the way down to the Kindergarten level. If we manage to achieve some of the fundamental goals of our organization, children at WISE schools will be specifically challenged to begin innovating at an early age and get regular practice all the way through high school.

The key is that lab and inquiry-based assignments need to consistently have regular open-ended components where there is no specific "answer" but rather there exist unlimited avenues to approach a challenge. These sorts of activities will be a strong focus of this web log on an ongoing basis. Stay tuned to learn more about how we have set up specific labs and activities.

Rookie FLL Team Qualifies for State!!!

In our first year in the FIRST Lego League competitions, one of our junior high school teams (Robocats 3) qualified at the Clayton State University Tournament (January 12, 2008) for the Georgia state tournament to be held at GA Tech February 9, 2008.


They began the year as an all-girls team of four (three 8th graders and one 7th) and added two boys early in the fall semester 2007. Despite scheduling conflicts, declining participation, and other difficulties, two of the girls persevered, discovering that even when everything else fell apart around them, they were strong and determined enough to see it through on their commitments.

Over their four months of robot design and development, they evolved a technically complicated NXT robot with some quite sophisticated approaches to solving the many missions in the 2007 FLL Power Puzzle Challenge. While they had many operational difficulties with the performance of their robot in Saturday's tournament, the students hit home runs in the Robot Design and Teamwork categories and they won the Project Award, proving that performance on all fronts is necessary for true team success.

Concerning their only weak spot from the tournament, they know their robot could and should have performed much better. They are re-energized and more determined than ever to refine their NXT robot to fix their shortcomings before the January 9th tournament.

This has been one of the most spectacular experiences in my 18-year teaching career. I am more convinced than ever that we must put our students in open-ended situations where they use what they know to find creative, original solutions to problems and they solve them on their own with appropriate minimal assistance and guidance from those around them. These two girls found a way to conquer a litany of obstacles stacked against them and they emerged confident, energized and determined. Look out world!

(This was also posted to the Westminster Robotics Blog)