Senor Parrot’s Perch

Each spring My wife fills the deck with flowers. We enjoy their beauty until the fall frosts kill them off. But we’re not the only ones. Bees are everywhere, flying about from flower to flower in the hunt for more pollen. Hundreds of bees. We’ve never been bothered by them and they’ve never seemed bothered by us. It’s a happy coexistence.

Bees, specificly Honey Bees, are the subject of Jay Hosler’s  graphic novel Clan Apis. Taking the graphic novel approach, author Jay Hosler encapsulated the life cycle of honey bees within a coming of age story and found an interesting and effective way to teach kids about the ecology of honey bees. Hosler’s approach is to imagine a hive, or clan, of honey bees endowed with human motivations, through them telling the amazing story of the Honey Bee. The illustration is excellent, lively, and entertaining. I’ve included a few panels from the book that I snagged from Hosler’s website for you to see.

It’s surprising how much actual detail and information Hosler conveys through this method, while keeping the interest in the story high. Beginning with a young larva and it’s older sister, Hosler details in clear and interesting detail the growth cycle and social lives of bees. As the young larva, Nyuki, grows into a young bee she absolutely buzzes with questions. Her older sister, Dvorah, is always there explaining to her the ways of bees and their jobs and duties.

Like a child eager to grow up, Nyuki is eager to find her own way, against the advice of her older sister, landing herself in the middle of dangerous straits. This opens the doorway to explain the environment that the bees find themselves in. Older sister Dvorah, along with a friend or two, guide Nyuki through each stage of life, passing along a trove of interesting information about the lives and ecology of honey bees along the way.

I’m not sure when this book was first published. The author’s website has different dates, ranging from 1998, 1999 and 2000, and my copy says it was printed in 2000. So it doesn’t include information about the current die-offs of the North American honey bee population, but that’s not a drawback for value of this text. In a classroom setting, the interest and sympathy for bees this book would generate would serve to motivate some interesting discussions about Colony Collapse Disorder, which is destroying large numbers of bees in the U.S.

Ascribing human-like motivation to animals and their evolutionary development is a common approach to scientific story-telling. It’s also one of my pet peeves. It’s a method scientists use to demonstrate the rationality of evolution – why nature takes the course that has led us to our current state. You might call it a Will to Evolve, and this is pure nonsense from a evolutionary science perspective. This is certainly the case with Hosler’s Clan Apis. He can be forgiven in this instance because he is in fact telling a fictional story, carefully constructed with science tossed in, and the story is meant to motivate an interest in the material. All of this he does very well.

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.

Space Scientists have located what they believe are tunnels beneath the surface of Mars. Probably formed by volcanic activity, these tunnels may harbor existing or former microbial life. This story is reported on LiveScience.com and titled Mars Caves Might Protect Microbes (or Astronauts). They may also prove suitable to protect astronauts from manned Mars missions from some of the harsher martian environmental extremes, such as radiation or dust storms.

If you’re interested in an good introduction to the science of astrobiology, or life in outer space, check out Life on Earth — and Beyond: An Astrobiologist’s Quest by Pamela S. Turner. My review of this book from a few months ago is titled Searching for Life on Other Planets.

Here we have historic must-see video footage of NASA rocket scientists planning the exciting LCROSS Moon-crash project, including the launch and return.

If you look closely, you’ll see top NASA scientist, Albus Dumbledore, convening the planning session. Can anyone identify any of the others in this video?

This, of course, is the work of cinematic genius Georges M�li�s.

Here’s a NASA photo/image of the LCROSS spacecraft after the Centaur separation, from NASA.gov:

Only a few minutes away now!

Courtesy of NASA

Space never ceases to provide us wonders. You’ve heard that there is water on Mars. Did you know about the water on the Moon? Live Science has an interesting article, Controversial New Idea Surfaces on Origin of Moon’s Water By Clara Moskowitz, Staff Writer about the source of the water recently found all over on the moon’s surface.

Some astronomers think that hydrogen ions from solar wind are reacting with oxygen in the lunar soils to produce water. Other astronomers think that the water came from meteors crashing into the Moons surface. One of the astronomers discussed in the article highlighted by Live Science believes that the water in the lunar core is slowly seeping out to the surface. Some scientists think that more than one theory explains why water is on the moon.

Photo courtesy of NASA

How did scientists discover that there was water in the lunar core? They found it trapped inside volcanic rock which reached the surface by flowing from the Moon’s core and down the side of a volcano, or maybe shooting through the air to some distant location. These rocks were brought back to earth by astronauts in the Apollo Space Program.

Friday, October 9, NASA is crashing some rockets into the Moon just to stir things up and break through the surface, hoping to generate a lot more data about what the moon is made of. I’m taking bets they find green cheese. That’s also the source of the water. I’m from Wisconsin. We believe in cheese.

All of the discussion about the source of water on the moon made me think of all the scientific knowledge that is used for learning about space and places like the Moon. There is chemistry, geology, physics and engineering. These are the tools of discovery and invention in our modern times.

Many students are scared off by the complicated appearance of science, but science and math need to be learned like a language. Once the language of science is learned a doorway into a universe of wonders is opened. And it isn’t too early to begin. In fact, the earlier our children are exposed to science, the better.