Senor Parrot's Perch

Trish, over at Trish’s Reading Nook, is hosting the Non-Fiction Five Challenge. Read 5 non-fiction books, at least one from a different non-fiction genre than the others between May and September.

Trish has the complete rules, with guidelines to posting, etc over here.

Hmmm. What to read? I was going to say that I’d start with The Pluto Files, followed by Hot, Flat, and Crowded, but I’ll probably get to them and through them before May arrives. This calls for some planning. Maybe some books I got as gifts and never got around to reading, like The Undercover Economist, or Peter the Great… Yeah, its starting to come together. And it will be summer, time to sail. Maybe a book on sailing? I got one of those this Christmas.

Thanks to Trish and to Becky for the link.

Rexburg Geeks has a nice post on math education in schools these days.� Actually its not so nice because it’s a bit scarry if your a parent and and you’re concerned with whether your kid is going to grow up to be the head and not the tail in tomorrow’s economy.

Their post is around a video from Youtube entitled “Math Education: An Inconvient Truth”. I’ve inserted the video here, too.

ZDNet Education blogger Christopher Dawson has a related post entitled Is it too late to turn around math/science ed in the US? Dawson’s comments were precipitated upon reading The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman, which calls into question the US’ ability to compete in the future against nations like China and India which emphasize engineering and technology education much more than US school systems.

Dawson goes on to consider the usual suspects: low pay for qualified math and science educators and teaching to tests that emphasize skillsets that are a mile wide and an inch deep, keeping school kids form acheiving mastery in an area of learning.

I’m inclined to think that its more the first cause than the last, and another: we don’t track students. We teach to all levels in a classroom, slowing down the swift and leaving the slow behind. I’ve never been a fan of tracking students by ability, but it seems like we need to address it as a possible solution. Perhaps we can experiment in a school district somewhere and see what happens. I’m curious what others are thinking.

Does anyone ever outgrow Legos? Here’s a great stop motion film made with Legos:

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

I found this on Geekadelphia. I showed it to my kids and they got excited about how much fun it would be to make stop-action films for themselves. The oldest has her own digital camera and we have a tripod laying around. She’s got her own computer, so why not?

So how do I go about doing this? I did a quick search and it turns out there’s lots of sites on the internet to help us get started. So, more fun.

Say, isn’t this how Phil Vischer, of Veggie Tales fame got started? If I remember right, he and his buddies would make films and animated special effects in their basements.� I’ll have to go back to his autobiography, Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables, to make sure.

The exitement builds!

Teen Science Fair Sourcebook: Winning School Science Fairs and National Competitions

Author: Tanya Vicker

ISBN:� 978-0766027114

As kids grow up, science often becomes a tedious exercise in memorization and pointless facts. But if you talk to scientists, these “boring” facts are keys that they use to unlock mysteries. For engineers facts are like legos, snap-together pieces of knowledge that they can use to build anything they can imagine.

Where does the spark come from that transforms these facts into the magic formula of knowledge and new ideas? I think that it is innate in some kids, to be sure, but I also think that bored kids can become excited by the challenge of learning by seeking answers to their own questions and by seeing it modeled while they study their science.

I suspect it has a lot to do with how we teach science as a one size fits all endeavor, too. It appears that Tanya Vicker thinks so, too. In a newspaper article I found online in The Salt Lake Tribune about Vicker, a science fair coach at the Academy for Math, Engineering and Science (AMES) in Holladay, Utah.

Vicker’s book is entitled Teen Science Fair Sourcebook: Winning School Science Fairs and National Competitions (Prime Single Titles).

The book focuses on using science projects to get teens interested in pursuing science projects that they feel strongly about and then to develop and research for the projects themselves. Driven by their own interests, many students develop original projects that can lead to awards and enormous college scholarship offers. They also learn how to transform their own questions into research and action. I’ve put this on my library list. I suspect that it’s a missing link between introduction to science through rote learning and being a scientist for fun (and profit).

From the article:

It’s about preparing kids for life and post-secondary education. “That means learning to think critically and “celebrating their capacity to become smarter every day,” Church said.

Vickers can think of no better tool than science and says if her students succeed, it’s because of their own ideas and energy.

The “project-based” learning model inherent to science fairs simply unleashes students’ potential, she said. She’s so committed to the ideal, she teaches it at the U.’s education department, training tomorrow’s teachers to weave science into English, history and math curricula.

Kids get so invested in their projects they hardly realize how hard they’re working, Vickers said. Babb, for example, used baby-sitting money to help pay for her test kits. And Vickers recalls another girl whose physics project caught the attention of recruiters at MIT.

“She had never even taken a physics class,” Vickers said. “If you get the right kids matched with the right project, they’ll knock your socks off.”

My robotic future is our kids robotic today. One of my Google feeds delivered a blog link to this video of robots building cars at a BMW plant. It’s amazing to watch – like a mechanical ballet. It was maybe 20+ years ago I sat on a plane next to a newly minted grad who was headed to his new job at General Motors plant where he would program robots for their assembly line.

This plant is far more complex than the line he would start work on. In his day, there were still people working side by side with the robots. Look for people in the video. Maybe they’re on coffee break.

Thanks to Computer Finance and Dark Roasted Blend for the links.

When I was still teaching at the community college where I work, every semester I had a few students who were changing their careers, either because their jobs were obsolete, like many printing industry jobs, or that their former manufacturing jobs were moved overseas. I bet some lost jobs to robots like these.

The question for me is, what do we want to teach our kids, or even to learn for ourselves, that will prepare us for the increasing rate of change we’re facing. I’m falling on the side of emphasizing science and technology to my kids, though that isn’t all that the future holds. Nevertheless, I want my kids left with more than just a toe-hold on a future. I’d rather see them as the ones that carve it out.

Digging for Bird Dinosaurs: An Expedition to Madagascar by Nic Bishop. ISBN-10: 0395960568.

Dinosaurs, a great fascination to younger kids, can frequently become old news by the time they’re in middle school. Colorful monsters chasing one another, eating and being eaten, after a while, gets to be the same old same old. What can we do to keep the early joy of science alive?

Nic Bishop has the cure. In his Digging for Bird Dinosaurs: An Expedition to Madagascar (Scientists in the Field Series) he trails real paleontologist Cathy Forster from her university lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to the arid island of Madagascar, a virtual treasure island of prehistoric fossils, where she is part of a dinosaur digging expedition, and back again to New York. Her return, laden with bones and fossils that she and her teammates have found buried in the sandstone hills of Madagascar, brings more hard work and more discoveries and even more questions.

What Bishop has produced is a fine portrait of science that is accessible to kids. He captures the intensity and excitement of both the search and the methodical investigation that the scientists undertake to retrieve knowledge from their finds. He also, by following a real scientist, places the life of a scientist in real perspective as someone working with others and living a life that involves both the lab and research and life within the community, as well.

This book, illustrated with photographs taken by Bishop, is an outstanding work, depicting the life of a scientist accurately: lots of hard work, sometimes tedious and exacting, sometimes exotic and adventurous, and always driven by a thirst for insight that fuels the passion to push on for answers. Science is great fun. Learning and discovery are intensely rewarding. Creating new knowledge from pieces of facts and observations is exciting. Books such as this help kids learn this lesson early, before they let adults who’ve let themselves be intimidated by science and learning get to squelch its joys.

March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris and illustrated by London Ladd is an inspring recollection of that great day, August 28, 1963, when over 250,000 people marched into Washington, D.C. to demonstrate for equal rights for black Americans and really, for all. The author, sister of Martin Luther King, Jr., paints a vivid picture of that hot summer day on the National Mall that conveys the passion and dignity of� her brother and the fellow leaders as they led the events of that day.

The book is written for middle grade kids. In fact, it was my middle school daughter who brought it home to me, insisting that I read it. How glad I am. Focusing on small scenes leading to the day, and the book then opens to a panoramic view of the day at the National Mall where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his most famous speech.

There, Martin Luther King spoke of his dream before 250,000 men, women, and children. We’ve all heard that speech many times, and yet the power of that dream as he spoke it has never faded. Because of its goodness and purity, and because of the passion in King’s voice, and because of the memorable words he spoke so well, many of us can hear it in our minds, almost as if we had been there ourselves.

In perhaps my favorite part, Christine King Farris depicts the crafting of that speech the night before. Surely he already had most of this on his mind, but he labored along, in his hotel room, through the entire night to perfect and commit to heart the words he would convey. Then he dressed and prepared to go out. Receiving a call that an enormous crowd was marching to the National Mall, he rushed out and joined the other leaders to march arm-in-arm together with the throng.

Christine King Farris paints his character in small details, pointing out how his commitment to dignity and respect was reflected even down to his manner of dress and his behavior, and how both communicating his message, as well. These little insights into his character give a great deal of strength to his message, of his dream, when men will be judged by the content of their characters and not by the color of their skin. And men’s actions do reflect their character.

She also conveys a sense the faith in God that bound King and his fellow leaders together for their cause and to each other; a faith that I believe gave them strength, that enabled them to rise above the injustice of the racial prejudice and violence that poured down on them.

August 28, 1963 was a great day, but it never would have happened without men of character and strength who had powerful vision, who labored long to see that day. Now, 45 years later, we have elected a black American as President. Such a great change we’ve seen since that day.

Title: March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World

Author: Christine King Farris

Publisher: Scholastic Press (August 1, 2008)

ISBN: 978-0545035378

Ever been burned by some junky, cheap telescope or microscope? I have. There it was, in the store, a great price, and you could see the excitement in your kid’s face as he or she pulled it out of the box and set it up outside. Then after you brought it home, and you watched with anticipaiton as your kid tore open the box and set it up, it turned out to be so poorly made or the optics were so awful it was unusable?�

So how can I find something that isn’t junk that really does open a window into the universe? Now, help is here, at least for telescopes. Telescopes 101,��over at Spaceref.com,�is a great place to start learning about choosing a telescope. I stumbled on it in an add on a news site I was reading this morning.

The first thing they point out is that magnifaction is not the most important feature. Apparently this is where �newbies like myself are usually fooled.

So what is is important? It’s�Aperture (or objective). This is the fancy name for width of the lense. It can be measured in inches or centimeters and generally, the wider, the better.

Why is aperture so important? The wider the lense, the more light that the telescope gathers, and the more light it gathers, the clearer and more detailed the image you can see.

The article goes on to clearly show the differences between three types of telescopes, in diagrams and in their relative advantages and disadvantages. The diagrams are excellent.

So, with summer coming soon, get ready to read the skies. If your community is anything like mine (Madison, WI), then you’ll also have plenty of opportunities to connect with groups of amatuer astronomers, and maybe even a few pros, to get acquainted with our neighbors in the galaxy.

Last summer my family joined a group led by some graduate students from the University of Wisconsin. Out in a park, on the edge of town, armed with a telescope, they had us looking at passing satallites, planets and constellations. They even told us the stories and myths of these constellations from various cultures. The favorites were the from the North American Indians, which were often quite funny.

A few other good links:

• I bought my telescope. Now what?
• So you want to buy a telescope … �Advice for Beginners
  
• Telescopes for Beginners in Astronomy

My older daughter is a raving nut about Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson stories. In case you don’t know, and I know only by hearsay because I haven’t stopped to read the series yet, Percy Jackson finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, god of the sea. So of course, he’s packed of to an exclusive summer camp on Long Island where he connects up with a lot of other young demi-gods and…

These books sparked a lot of family discussions about Greek myths in the car, around the dinner table, and everywhere else we talk. My knowledge of this stuff has grown as thin as the hair on my head as I’ve aged, so I thought I’d better remedy that with a trip to the library, getting books for myself and my daughter.

My first thought was to give her Edith Hamilton’s� Mythology, a classic I read as a kid, and great source. That was way to ambitious for her at her present age. In a few years I hope I can get her to revisit that book, but I quickly nabbed a couple substitutes that she loved, finishing them off in two days.

The first book I got for my daughter was The McElderry Book of Greek Myths, retold by Eric A Kimmel and illustrated by Pep Montserrat, this was pretty good, covering many of the most popular myths.� And knowledge of the myths does have its everyday uses. Yesterday the word narcissistic came up and we were able to use her knowledge of the myth to help her understand what the common usage of the term� meant.

The second book, better than I was expecting,� was� the entertaining and informative� Mythology by Lady Hestia Evans (I bet!) and edited by Dugald A Steer (more likely the one to blame). It’s one of the ‘Ology’ series of books, along the lines of Pirateology, and the others in the series. This book covered the origins of the gods, their lineages, and several of the better known myths. This all unfolds within the story of a protege of Lady Hestia who has traveled to Greece to collect ancient articles for an antiquities dealer. Things do not go as planned.

I’d recommend both of those books to a elementary or middle schooler. I’m sure there are many other good books on the Greek myths, and I’m sure I’ll keep looking for a while until I get distracted in some other direction. And I also noticed that Rick Riordan, on his webiste, recommends Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths, by Bernard Evslin, Greek Gods and Heroes, by Robert Graves, and The Usborne Illustrated Guide to Greek Myths and Legends. I haven’t seen these before, so I may see if I can get a hold of these as well.

For books at an adult level, while looking for Hamilton’s Greek Mythology, I came across several other books by her. I checked out The Greek Way. What a marvelous book! I still have a ways to go before I’m done, but I’m already giving this one 6 stars on a scale of 1 to 5. The Greek Way focuses on the classical period of Greece, roughly 500 B.C. to 350 B.C.

Hamilton begins by comparing how differently the Greeks understood and lived in the world in comparison to the other great civilizations of their time, and how this made them utterly unique among all the ancient civilizations, and why it was that Athens became the cradle of democracy. She continues by choosing exemplary poets, philosophers and historians to further explore their unparalleled civilization. Her writing is exceptionally clear and a pleasure to read. Her passion for her subject is in every paragraph. It’s like I’m in college again, excited with learning, with a favorite professor that’s excited with sharing all he knows. I’m a smarter boy for reading this one.

My other Greek tutor is The Complete World of Greek Mythology, by R.G.A. Buxton. This is fascinating, too. It is a pleasure because of its content, but not because of its style. Its got that academic style that would do much better if it was less formal and flowed with more grace. Nevertheless, it is still worth the read.

The Complete World of Greek Mythology isn’t for kids, both for its reading level and for its contents. Its more frank in its presentation of ancient Greek lifestyle than I’m comfortable putting within reach of my kids, given their present ages. They can wait till they’re older.

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System, written by Kathleen V. Kudlinski and illustrated by John Rocco is a very fun and instructive history of scientific thinking about our solar system. Its my most recent stop to understanding the universe.

Beginning with the belief that the Earth was the center of the solar system and continuing through current scientific theories and activities, this book follows a predictable pattern:

• This is what we thought;
• Boy were we wrong!
• This is what we’re thinking now.

What I like about this book is how it presents scientific deduction from observations and evidence, testing what we think by seeing how well it aligns with what we see. For example, the ancient Greeks determined that the Earth was round because the shadow it cast upon the moon was round. Comets streaking through the sky didn’t crack the heavenly spheres of crystal, so perhaps the Earth and the planets were drifting through space. The appearance of new stars meant that the heavens were not unchanging.

Changing our ideas based upon data and testing ideas against data is the underpinning of science. This book emphasizes that. However, it is short on how these scientific principals translated into mathematical concepts that provided data of their own. Mathematical models, be it geometrical descriptions of the orbits of the planets, or the equations of gravity are fundamental to our understanding of the universe.

The models of the universe created by Copernicus and Kepler predicted the planets’ movements much better than the old theory. That is why we accepted their ideas and rejected the others. Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity improved these explanations more by helping to explain variations in the planets orbits when they were near each other, even leading to the hypothesis that there was another planet beyond Saturn. Ah, Math! the language of science.

Author Kathleen V. Kudlinski has also written Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!

Book: Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System

Author: Kathleen V. Kudlinski

Illustrator: John Rocco

ISBN: 978-0-525-46979-7