Wind Map

Wind Map during Hurricane Sandy, October 30, 2012

My friend, Michael Lye, just showed me a live wind map you can access online at http://hint.fm/wind/

The above picture is a saved image of the wind map during Hurricane Sandy.

School is starting soon. This would be something to put up on the screen as students enter the room. Ask them questions like...

What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
What information are you being given?
How do you interact with the map?
How was this map created? What do you think the creators needed to know and be able to do?
When would you most like to look at this map?
If you had created the wind map, how would you have done it differently?
What other data might lend itself to being displayed in a similar way? 

How to relate, by Alan Alda

I am watching reruns of M*A*S*H right now as I reflect on seeing the one and only Alan Alda in person at UVM’s Davis Center. I love watching M*A*S*H, as I feel it has held up really well over time and is a perfect mix of funny and tragic. The character Hawkeye Pierce, played by Alda, stands out even though the other cast members are excellent.

Alan Alda was also brilliant in Woody Allen movies, like Crimes and Misdemeanors (“If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not funny.”) Then I began seeing him getting involved in science with Scientific American and other shows that ran on PBS channels. Although today was a snow day and the roads were pretty bad, I and the intrepid Nina Madore weren’t going to miss the opportunity to see him live at UVM. I figured nobody would be there, but the giant Silver Maple Ballroom was packed.

I expected Alan to talk about specific science concepts, but, instead, he talked about being an effective communicator. He got rid of the podium used by those who introduced him in order to be more accessible to the audience. Actively demonstrating the theme of his talk, Alan looked carefully out at the faces in the audience and spoke in a warm, conversational manner without reading any notes. He shared the alarming statistic that 95% of Americans are not considered “science literate”. Then he went on to make the case for scientists learning to be better at relating to laypeople and working to make their research accessible.

Alan shared several ideas that scientists can use to think about improving communication. He talked about using emotion to help lodge ideas in the minds of the audience and using suspense and drama as a hook. At one point, a courageous audience member took the stage to demonstrate by walking across the stage with a very full glass of water. Another audience member was enlisted to demonstrate “the curse of knowledge” by tapping out a song. The curse of knowledge is what happens when you know something so well that you forget what it is like not to know it. In order to be a good communicator/teacher, one must break the curse and use empathy to understand the audience.

Alan’s talk was excellent. I wish more colleagues had been able to attend and that we could participate in some of the workshops he was going to be leading at UVM. His foundation, The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science has a website worth visiting. UVM is going to begin a similar program and partner with him and his colleagues. In the meantime, elementary and middle school teachers should take a look at The Flame Challenge. Teachers of fifth and sixth graders can register here to let their students be the judges of a contest to see which scientist can best explain the answer to a science question. This year’s question is “What is sleep?”.

Alan has important messages for teachers and scientists and really anyone with a heartbeat. It’s worth visiting his website, reading more, and watching videos. Alan, thank you for coming to Vermont. I look forward to seeing UVM’s efforts in this area.

St. Louis STEM Reader

I attended the NSTA STEM Conference in St. Louis last week with several colleagues. It was a very worthwhile trip.

Top Quotes

“Engineering naturally integrates mathematics, science, social studies and language literacy.” - Tamara Moore

“Tell kids they are doing engineering. Use that word. Students, especially girls, tend to go to medical school or major in science in college if they enjoy STEM. Very few choose engineering because they don't know what that means.” - Liz Parry

“If you are not iterating, it is not engineering.” - Ann McMahon

“Is it really STEM or is it just John Dewey?” - Tara Bell

Top Takeaways

1. High-quality STEM education is more about the how than the what. We can’t teach students everything they will need to know. We can help them learn how to learn.

2. The habits of mind related to engineering can be a thread running through all content areas. Empathy, collaboration, failure, iteration, perseverance, social justice, activism, leadership.

3. STEM has the potential to make a real difference for equity and diversity. It has been shown to be an effective way to engage struggling or at risk students. Currently, success in STEM subjects in school and in careers is very skewed toward certain demographic groups, and something needs to be done to change that.

Favorite Presenters

Tara Bell, STEM coach at Washington STEM Academy in Champaign, IL

Bob Goodman (New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning: Ridgewood, NJ) Demystifying Science with the Progressive Science Initiative (PSI) Equity requires that all high school students learn physics, chemistry, and biology. PSI is a free open-source program that is helping schools achieve that goal.

Liz Parry, Coordinator, STEM Partnership Development, The Engineering Place, College of Engineering, NC State University

Ann P. McMahon Ex-Aerospace engineer. Strategies for integrating STEM with social and emotional learning. Ann recently gave a TEDx talked titled Engineering Empathy (use password tedxgladstone).

Beth Bender, Principal of Gateway STEM High School, St. Louis. A public magnet school, 85% FRL, 55% African american, increasing ELL. There is a lack of awareness about engineering, and it is mostly male. Engineering students give demonstrations for other students during lunch; recruiting for the high school is done with hands-on tasks, live puppies.

Tamara Moore, University of Minnesota. STEM Education Center. Said she would soon be running a pilot program of K-6 STEM integrated units that include a heavy children’s literature component.

Resources

Family Engineering (book and website recommended by Liz Parry)

TeachEngineering

Ideo and the Design Thinking for Educators toolkit

New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning

eGFI

Gateway STEM High School

The Deep Dive

EnLIST Entrepreneurial Leadership in STEM Teaching and Learning

University of Minnesota STEM Education Center

TryEngineering

National Center for Universal Design on Learning

Sugata Mitra: School in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra recently won the TED Prize for 2013. His wish is to build a virtual school where children learn from each other.

Well, I bumped into this whole thing completely by accident. I used to teach people how to write computer programs in New Delhi, 14 years ago. And right next to where I used to work, there was a slum. And I used to think, how on Earth are those kids ever going to learn to write computer programs? Or should they not? At the same time, we also had lots of parents, rich people, who had computers, and who used to tell me, "You know, my son, I think he's gifted, because he does wonderful things with computers. And my daughter -- oh, surely she is extra-intelligent." And so on. So I suddenly figured that, how come all the rich people are having these extraordinarily gifted children? (Laughter) What did the poor do wrong? I made a hole in the boundary wall of the slum next to my office, and stuck a computer inside it just to see what would happen if I gave a computer to children who never would have one, didn't know any English, didn't know what the Internet was. - Sugata Mitra

Learning to code

http://www.code.org/

Watch this video. I completely agree that learning to code is learning to think. I think it is getting easier to teach, too, because there are lots of resources like Scratch and the Lego Mindstorms, plus tons of other links on the code.org. We are running out of time and excuses when it comes to our kids.

Student Conferences

From The city and country builder's and workman's treasury of design, Langley, Batty (1696-1751). NYPL

Many teachers are in the practice of holding individual conferences with students during literacy blocks. Teachers sit with students to converse about the book they are reading, asking questions like “Is this a just-right book for you?”, “Have you made any connections to the book?”, “What questions came up while you were reading?”, etc. Leah Mermelstein, a literacy consultant, suggests regular, one-on-one writing conferences with students.

 
What about math conferences? Over the last year, I have used an assessment tool called the Primary Number and Operations Assessment to help me interview students about mathematics concepts. I enjoy the opportunity to sit with a single student and spend time listening as they perform various math tasks and explain their thinking. I always learn important things about the student’s strengths and I gain insight about appropriate next steps for instruction.

Here is an email from my colleague, Sally Hayes, fourth grade teacher extraordinaire, in which she shares her experience conferring with students during math class:

Karyn,

I have to tell you about something I tried recently. It came to me several years ago when I was correcting one of our Bridges unit math assessments. I asked myself, "What is the most important outcome of this assessment?" The answer, of course, is student learning.  As a teacher, I must figure out where each child is on the continuum of learning for a domain so I can help them move forward. Grading the assessments and entering scores into the database is only part of the work. For years I had gone over assessments with the entire class, but it never seemed very efficient or terribly useful for individuals. I realized I should try going over the assessment with each student individually. This would allow both me and the student to gain a clearer understanding of their strengths and areas for improvement as a mathematician.

So, last Friday, the day after correcting our Unit 2 math assessments, I decided to try conferring with each student. After lunch, I gave the class some options for independent work during the next hour, which included practicing math skills, writing in writer's notebooks, and reading. While the class was quietly working, I met with each student to discuss their math assessment. First we looked at strengths and then areas that needed work. Amazing! The conferences were so much better for the student and incredible for me; I finally felt like I was getting something really useful out of a unit assessment. I only wish I had allotted an hour and a half, which is a lot of time, but would be well worth it. I need to refine the way I spend time with the students, but I think it will get better and easier each time that I do it. I was thinking that it would be nice to create small groups of 2 or 3 students that had similar challenges with certain problems. I am glad I finally tried math assessment conferences!

Sally