Senor Parrot's Perch

It’s science fair time at my daughters’ school. Science rules. Science Rocks. Science fairs are the quintessential science education experience. When I heard this yesterday evening, I was pumped, ready to spring into action and make…whoops, I mean, guide, my third-grader in her science fair project. I had it already picked and designed in my head. We talked it over and agreed to make several demonstrations on electricity, creating our own electric dynamo and powering it in various ways. As a side project or maybe, after a bit of research, we’d do a solar power project and maybe something fun like a potato battery. In two minutes I had about twenty books held on reserve for her to read and glean from. Then the stunning news.

My wife burst both our bubbles when she told us that parents had complained about all the work they’d gone through in previous science fairs. It seemed that parents do all the work on these projects while their kids plug into TV. Can you believe that? So, now, it’s a group project where the kids get placed in groups, select a project from a pre-qualified list and then work together. Ugh! How am I supposed to engineer some high tech learning and bonding time with my girl that will dazzle the judges and get her a scholarship to UW-Madison? I got dem science fair blues.

Personally, I work in a fantastic team at my place of employment, for the present. It isn’t always that way. I’ve been on teams with total slackers and been stuck with all the work. In my classes, I’ve seen student teams nearly torpedoed by one or two slackers. Without controls and penalties, along with the rewards, I’ve never seem teams work well. Even families are failing as teams in these science fairs, unable to get their kids to do their share of the work and learning. Epic failure.

Well, our science books will be waiting for me at the library by Saturday morning. Me and my third-grader will just have to learn how to power the future by ourselves. Our science fair demo will be for just us, with maybe a video posted on youtube for the family. My daughter will be as pumped as I am about exploring the world of nature and science power, and we’ll have a really good time.

Increasing core knowledge is critical to reading comprehension and learning. Vicki Cobb has written a thought provoking post titled An Outside-The-Box Proposal.  She writes about bolstering students’ core knowledge by  including writing by award winning children’s non-fiction authors in the classroom curriculum. In her article she asks several questions:

• What would happen if teachers and authors worked together to share knowledge and skills?
• Can an author’s love of the subject infect students with the love of learning?
• What would happen to learning if non-fiction books replaced textbooks, moving from enrichment to the core knowledge component in the classroom?
• How would students be affected if they got to meet and talk with the authors?
• And (this of course appeals to the economist in me), how can we do this within a school’s budget?
• What would happen to the learning environment of your school if your teachers and award-winning children’s nonfiction authors collaborated in a large-scale project where everyone was involved in sharing knowledge and skills?

I like this idea. In the upper level college classes we start to read sources instead of textbooks and that’s when the real fun in learning takes place. It’s OK when we have them together, but reading the original and talking about it is much more stimulating and it gives everyone more confidence, ending up in more advanced and more agile learning.

My own daughters are drawn to reading science  books, probably in large part because their mother is a microbiologist and I just love the stuff, and we both enthusiastically encourage it. But if they weren’t well written, telling a rich story, I don’t think they’d have anywhere near the interest that they do. On trips to the library they will grab an armful of books about the ocean or physics to take home to read just for pleasure reading.

My kids like to learn. But something about their textbooks doesn’t grab their interest the same way a good, short, well-written science book does. One of the aspects of these kind of books is that they teach in a narrative, story-telling style, that puts the information into a more accessible context. Also, these books are usually teeming with fantastic illustrations and photographs -who doesn’t love any book by Nic Bishop? When written this way, the books hold kids’ interest so much better and they retain a lot more of what they have read. After finishing a good book they want to go back to the library to find another. When we’re in the  bookstore, they pull them from the shelves and ask to buy them.

So, go out and get smart. Get an armload of good science books today and start reading. I’m sure you would like Pelican’s Catch by Janet Halfmann. There’s many more out there that everyone in the family will enjoy.

I saw this singing robot at Wired magazine. Watch the video and read the subtitles closely, since much of it is in Japanese. This is Cool Science! A robot diva programmed to mimic a human singer’s facial movements breathing patterns.

Japanese engineers have taken a different tack in their robotic development, working to make more lifelike robots that will integrate well into human society. To do this, they’ve followed some interesting learning curves. I liked how they use maps of mouth movement and even integrating breathing patterns into the robot’s speech.

Did you catch the reference to using hidden Markov technology to train the robot when to breath? What they are referring to is (more…)

 AstroPuppies in Space is an entertaining and very educational kid’s video about space exploration. After watching it, we watched it again. In fact, I wouldn’t mind popping it into the dvd player one more time if I still had it at home. I got the copy we watched from our local library. You can go here to see some trailers of the video and you’ll see what I mean.

The AstroPuppies are two intrepid sock puppets (sock puppies?) who lead you and your kids on a great journey aboard their space shuttle, beginning at Cape Canaveral and traveling on to the Moon. After that, the next stop is the Sun and then on through our solar system. Along the way the puppies ask questions and provide answers to lots of interesting questions. Actual footage of the dramatic 1969 moon landing is included, as well as NASA footage of life and work aboard a space station. 

The makers of the dvd have a nice website over at AstroPuppiesinSpace.com. They have video clips, fun activities and space links so kids can have fun learning more about space and space travel. I highly recommend heading over to AstroPuppiesinSpace.com to give your kid a head start in making fun and exciting associations with science. 

I love valuable resources like this. They stimulate our kids’ minds and make them receptive to new ideas and the wonders of our natural world. They are great ways to have conversations about what it’s like to be a scientist or an engineer, or to travel in space.  

Here’s a sad commentary about our national teaching pool. KansasCity.com reports about the poor demand for teaching jobs in the Kansas City area. It’s common to see 100 applicants for each job. That’s an average though, and apparently there is quite a variation in the number of applicants depending upon the area of specialization.  Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) subjects,  Special Education,and Foreign Languages get 10 to 50 applicants per opening. Half of the 190 open teaching positions are in those areas.

Still, isn’t that an adequate number of applicants to fill those positions with qualified teachers? Reading between the lines, you wonder just how qualified are the applicants for those STEM, special education and foreign languages positions, that the jobs should go unfilled. Yesterday I wrote about the task Don Mugan has taken on, up in North Dakota. His goal is to train the teachers that the school districts already have in how to teach the core STEM subjects. A good STEM project for our universities would be to clone Don and put a few of his clones in every school district in the country.

Are teachers the weak link in introducing and teaching STEM careers to our kids?  STEM, you may know, refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  These broad subject areas are the key’s to successful careers in our kids’ futures.

A common approach to learning about careers is the Career Fair. In fact, career fairs in middle school are fairly common. In my own daughter’s school, it takes the form of a “Renaissance Fair”, really more of a medieval fair,  where each kid studies a trade, prepares a presentation and a booth, and then performs demonstrations of their trade for several hours before schoolmates and parents. The principal result of this is an excellent multifaceted teaching and learning experience for the students, but no real connection to modern day work and occupations.

Other schools handle career days differently. At the college  where I work we have steady streams of kids passing through and getting introductions to many career educational offerings that are available there. These include information technologies, electrical engineering, robotics, biotechnology and many other medical and technology related careers.

But what are the kids interested in? Recently a public school in North Dakota polled it’s students and found that the careers most appealing to students included hairdresser, snowboarder, or actor. Interest in careers in science or engineering hardly registered. Hmmm.

Don Mugan to the rescue. Don Mugan is Director of the Great Plains STEM Education Center at Valley City State University in North Dakota. Mugan says that survey results like this are fairly representative of kids interests nationwide.

In response, Don Mugan is busy reaching out to students and teachers to increase interest in sciences and math. As Director of the Great Plains STEM Education Center at Valley City State University in North Dakota, Mugan has his work cut out.

“Kids are thoroughly turned off by the abstract way math and science are presented,” he said. “Because America is slipping so badly in a lot of areas, we need to change the way we deliver those subjects.”

To stem this decline in American students interests and performance in STEM subjects Mugan directs a training center to educate and train teachers in ways to integrate these core subjects into the classroom in ways that spark kids’ interest.

The new way of teaching emphasizes hands-on learning and integrates the subjects around a practical theme, he said.

“If we want kids to get fired up, we have to connect with their lives, which our traditional model does not allow for,” Mugan said.

We parents need to see if similar partnerships are being forged at our schools. Some schools have brief demonstrations and visits incorporated into their school years, but there is rarely a clear integration into the curriculum and rarely are the teachers qualified or trained in how to teach these subjects.

I don’t recall exactly why I grabbed Dinosaur Scientist: Careers Digging Up the Past by Tom Holmes from the Library. I had stopped by the new books section on my way out and saw this book, looked at the cover, thought it looked cool, and took it home. It wasn’t until I read the full title, the part about careers, that I said a silent ‘Oh, no!’ I shouldn’t have said it. I was just a page or two into the first chapter before I was hooked. Now that I finished it, I’m giving it strong recommendations.

Dinosaur Scientist is one of the rare and excellent science books describing what scientists do at a level that elementary and middle-schoolers can become engaged with. Holmes approach is to present 6 top paleontologists and describe their careers through short bio pieces, each making up a chapter. Along the way he explains the cool science, adventures and discoveries that each of these scientists has made, and how they solved the problems that they encountered. He shows how multi-faceted they are in their skills and backgrounds and the paths they took to becoming paleontologists.

The author has a personal interest in the subject and, it seems, considerable experience, as well. This shows throughout the book. He isn’t just relating facts and activities, but he exposes the interesting personalities of each scientist and bits about their science that are most engaging, that is, the very things that draw a person into a scientific field.

And there is the career component of this book. Each scientist expresses in their own words how they prepared themselves and what they found most useful to know. In this day and age, it’s common for college students to have no idea what they would like to do with their lives even when they’ve reached their junior and senior years in college. They have no vision and they have no valuable guidance. Books such as Dinosaur Scientist are excellent resources to help our kids choose a career path and begin planning to achieve their dreams.

The author, Thom Holmes, has a web page and a paleo-blog. He has a short bio here. He’s written about 20 books on dinosaurs, evolution and other prehistoric life.

How to Clone a Sheep

By Hazel Richardson

Illustrated by Andy Cooke

Kids love science when it’s served up on their level and written in a lively, humorous style. That’s exactly what you get with How to Clone a Sheep by Hazel Richardson and Illustrated by Andy Cooke. This fun little book is a first-rate introduction to genetics, DNA and cloning aimed at kids in about the 4th through 8th grades. The book also has some activities that are easy and educational.

How to Clone a Sheep covers the basics. Beginning by explaining what exactly are clones, DNA and genes, the book approaches the subject from a historical perspective, explaining historical thought about the inheritance of traits and how these ideas were either confirmed or rejected. Finally, it explains the science and methodology employed to produce Dolly, the famous cloned sheep. There is quite a bit of interesting historical information provided, as well. Richardson’s description of the race among scientists to discover the secrets of DNA is especially amusing, and it gives us an inside perspective on scientific research.

I think that adults would enjoy reading this along with their kids. In fact, it was my 6th grader who found this book and passed it along to me after reading it herself. She insisted I’d love it and she was right. The explanations are simplified and accompanied by terrific cartoonish drawings that perfectly illustrate the text.

Courtesy of NASA

In some crowds science has a bad reputation. These people folks find it dull, or poorly written. It’s a reputation not at all deserved, yet sometimes the writing of science books can leave a bit to be desired. That’s why it’s great news when we learn about the best of the best science books available. So when I saw that The School Library Journal had posted the list of finalists for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Best Science Books for Children and Young Adults, I was excited.

There are three categories: Children’s Science Picture Books, Middle Grades Science Books, and Young Adult Science Books. Today I’ll highlight the nominees for the Children’s Science Picture Books.

Children’s Science Picture Books

Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life

(Blue Sky Press, 2009)

By Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm

Illustrated by Molly Bang

This might have been called “My first book of Photosynthesis”, Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life, Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm explain how plants transform sunlight into energy and life giving food for everything on the planet. The illustrations are colorful and support the simple text. It’s almost magic when an author can explain such a complex web of interaction within a children’s picture book.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

(Atheneum, 2009)

By Brian Floca

Author and illustrator Brian Floca lets us ride along with the Apollo 11 crew as they journey from earth to the moon and back. The illustrations in Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 have a fantastic sense of scale to them. The story is exiting and full of interesting details that bring this historic and inspiring journey to life.

Redwoods

(Roaring Brook, 2009)

By Jason Chin

Redwoods by Jason Chin is a bit reminiscent of Flotsam, a visual fantasy by David Weiner, as it follows a boy who finds a book about the giant redwood trees just before riding the train. As he reads the simple text of the book, the dinosaurs and other things appear in the train window behind him showing what was happening in the world during the lifespan of the spectacular trees. In one of the illustrations a young girl is seen. Later, when the boy puts down the book we see that girl finding the book and beginning to read it herself.

What Bluebirds Do

(Boyds Mills, 2009)

By Pamela F. Kirby

What Bluebirds Do by Pamela F. Kirby highlights a year in the life of bluebirds in beautiful photos. It’s simple text should be readable by many early readers. Following a pair of bluebirds who have nested in her backyard, Kirby captures their daily life, including their raising of five young bluebird chicks. School Library Journal compared this book to The Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Nic Bishop.

The New York Times reports an interesting and troubling research finding about how Hispanic children are falling behind their white, middle class peers. The article, titled Hispanic Immigrants’ Children Fall Behind Peers Early, Study Finds, discusses several things.

• Hispanic children of immigrants start out in early years equal with their peers
• By Age 3 they are already lagging middle class white children by as much as 6 months in cognitive abilities
• Hispanic immigrant households do not foster learning and cognitive development to nearly the degree that done in middle class white households
• These results may be more related to socioeconomic determinants, and be characteristic of all lower level socioeconomic groups than to race or ethnicity

They go on to emphasize the role of early learning and how its value is demonstrated by activities such as little performances of the ABCs in front of grandparents, that are missing from Hispanic immigrant homes.

The response, of course, is more money on early education. Doubtless, that would help at least a little bit. However, after reading the NYT article, I grew suspicious that either the writer chose to view only a narrow range of possible causes that may have been addressed in the research, or that the researchers had a very narrow focus and perhaps deliberately ignored other factors that influence the early childhood development from these children. My personal guess is that the researchers narrowed the discussion, which perhaps may have been outside the scope of their article.

I have a growing suspicion that we are both tolerating and cultivating a culture of poverty, which has a hallmark of racial and ethnic minorities, but by no means is confined in its association with only minorities. It is this culture of poverty that greatly influences the social and cognitive development of our children, and that it is an increasing outcome of these lifestyle choices that are in play.

The attack must be on the cultural factors and not just handing a kid a book (though I’m completely in favor of that!), nor in just integrating the child into the educational system at an younger age. For all the sniping at middle class values and culture that we often see, they result in a more nurturing and healthful environment for our children that leaves them better prepared for the own lives as adults.