August 17, 2007
The New England Center of the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence, COSEE-NE, is housed in Woods Hole, a village of Falmouth, Massachusetts. They do incredible work with teachers who want to learn and teach about the ocean. In NEwswave, their August 17, 2007 newsletter, there is an interview with Paul Craddock, "a PhD student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Marine Chemistry, [who] is using his research to help create an area for kids to learn about the sea floor on the educational site Whyville. His work with Whyville is funded by COSEE-NE. Recently [COSEE-NE] spoke with him about his research, the Whyville project, and what inspired him to get involved with kids and education."
Whyville "is a virtual world where tweens from all over the real world come to chat, play, learn, and have fun together. You design your face, earn clams by playing games, hang out at the beach, and go to town events at the Greek Theater. You can even start your own business, buy a car and give your friends a ride, write for the town newspaper, or run for a seat in the Whyville Senate.
Paul Craddock has a lot of interesting comments in his interview.
What is your research about?
What got you interested in doing education outreach? I have been very fortunate, have had a good education, and know that learning and knowledge is powerful. I have been afforded a lot of educational opportunities and wish to repay those opportunities. Plus I want to communicate the importance and excitement of many aspects of oceanographic research to a broad audience. I want to be able to take my science and put it in a real world context.
How did you know what steps to take?
WHOI and MIT are very proactive and engaged in holding events to highlight extracurricular activities. I went to a couple of workshops - Communicating Ocean Science [developed by COSEE-California] and Scientific Inquiry in the K-12 Classroom [a COSEE-NE sponsored program] – that inspired me to get involved with education.
What made you want to work with Whyville in particular?
The idea and philosophy of Whyville really appealed to me. I am able to put my research into a framework where kids can access it. My research is very difficult – not to mention hazardous – to take into a classroom. My samples are often toxic and are rich in harmful metals such as arsenic and cadmium; some are even radioactive. The best, and safest, way to communicate my research is via the internet.
What does your Whyville project cover?
I am working with the Whyville directors to put together a virtual world of marine hydrothermal systems that the children can actively explore. I really like the Whyville ethos where children are encouraged to learn for themselves and actively participate in educational activities, rather than just being “spoon-fed” information. My goal is to get kids actively involved in the Virtual Vent project and then have enough information and activities there to keep them occupied!
What phase is the project in now?
I’m putting together a database of all known hydrothermal vent systems around the world – where and how large they are, what kinds of deposits exist there, what are the known fluid temperatures and fluid chemistries and what are the biological distributions, from microbial to macro fauna. There are about 100 discovered vent sites thus far and about 500 known unique species of fauna at these systems. I’m about three-quarters of the way through the database. We hope to have the site up by the end of the year.
How will kids use the Whyville hydrothermal vent site?
The vision for the project is to get kids to go to the WhOI area of Whyville and enter into the Deep Sea laboratory. They will gather background information about hydrothermal vent systems and can then go out to sea on a virtual oceanographic cruise, to explore and examine hydrothermal vent systems and to document and monitor the biological and chemical aspects of these systems. We will start by putting up 20 percent of the sites and add new ones each month. We will incorporate educational games and activities, such as maintaining vent biological habitats, and actual video footage from real vent sites.
Are there future outcomes from your Whyville work? When I’m done with my PhD, having an education component will be helpful for funding. I want to feel actively involved in having a more broad-reaching impact – I know a broad-reaching component to my research work is possible. In the future I’d like to continue to have an advisory role, perhaps leading some online forums and discussions about oceanographic and environmental science.
What’s the benefit of transforming your research into something like Whyville?
It’s a way to expand the impact of ocean sciences within the public community. If this works, then there will be ample opportunity for other research projects on Whyville, similar to the Harmful Algal Bloom research site that’s already active and extremely popular with children. Kids on Whyville are keen to learn!
How will your outreach impact the future? I would love children (and adults!) to understand more about the role and importance of the ocean in many aspects of our lives. I hope my outreach can encourage other scientists to become involved in extracurricular education. Kids love to talk with scientists and it would really open people’s eyes to what we do!
My research focus is to understand the evolution and formation of mineral [metal sulfide] deposits at seafloor hydrothermal vent systems; to understand the controls and conditions of why certain metal deposits form. I have been very fortunate to go to sea for research, taking my own mineral deposit and fluid samples from active hydrothermal vents. In the laboratory I carry out geochemical and isotopic analyses of the minerals and of the fluids, and use trace element geochemical signatures and metal distributions within the deposits to infer how they formed.
August 10, 2007
A visit to David Warlick's blog, 2¢ Worth, introduced me to a National School Boards Association report on online social - and educational - networking. I read the report to say that the world is changing because new internet based applications are available for adults and students to use in mundane and creative ways. School leaders need to look beyond the fear of what might happen to a student on the internet to the potential these applications like social networking applications have to stimulate thinking and learning. The report's findings indicate that students are using these tools, often for educational purposes. We need to become more familiar with these applications by using them as another vehicle for learning in the professional communities we participate in or can create in the future.
The report's recommendations are worth considering:
-
Explore social networking sites
-
Consider using social networking for staff communications and professional development
-
Find ways to harness the educational value of social networking
-
Ensure equitable access
-
Pay attention to nonconformists
-
Reexamine social networking policies
-
Encourage social networking companies to increase educational value
August 2, 2007
I attended a presentation on Global Warming last night and took my lap top along. In the past I would have taken notes for myself to use as I saw fit. Last night I thought of the teachers I am working with on Global Climate Change and decided to share some thoughts with them through a blog: Global Climate Change. Here is the post.
Global Warming: What's Going on Here and What do I do about it?
Although I had to leave early, I attended the first hour of John Bullard's presentation at S.E.A. Education Association on August 1, 2007 and found it very informative. He is a dynamic speaker who presented the information so we would have a better understanding of how the global climate is changing. Ultimately, as Bullard pointed out, it is up to each individual to decide if we observe what Al Gore, John Bullard and thousands of other scientists observe and conclude for ourselves how the planet is changing and how we will teach students about it. The presentation was adapted from Al Gore's film and book, An inconvenient Truth, and although I have seen the film twice, own the book and listened to the update Gore gives in the special features of the DVD version, I was still intrigued by how well documented the global climate change is that Mr. Bullard explained so well.
Below I list some questions that Bullard answered for me. Thank you Mr. Bullard for helping me to understand this complicated issue.
What have we been doing to the atmosphere?
How have temperature changed over the last 150 yrs, over the last 1000 yrs?
How has CO2 changed during the same time period?
What is the relationship between temperature and CO2?
How are the changes temperature and CO2over time related?
How do we know what the temperature and CO2 levels were 600,000 years ago?
Is it important to save the earth?
What are the implications of the increased level of CO2?
What causes the urgency? Can’t we wait a hundred or more years to do something?
What is the consequence of higher temperatures for humans?
How are glaciers retreating?
Why are glaciers important?
How does temperature increase change weather events?
Are the number or intensity of hurricanes related to global warming (GW)?
What does it take for us to understand the seriousness of what is happening to the climate?
Why do some people deny the inconvenient truth of GW?
Are the duration of storms influenced by GW?
What is the significance of Katrina to the story of GW?
How will GW affect drinking water?
How will the “breadbasket” of America be affected by GW?
What ocean habitats will be affected by GW?
How much adaptation will be necessary in the future because of past emissions?
What area of the United States will be affected first and when?
How will Polar Regions be affected by GW?
How will ocean currents be affected by GW?
How is heat equalized across the globe by the ocean?
What do scientists think happened when Hudson Bay water spilled into the ocean?
How is Antarctica being affected by GW?
Why should we be worried if sections of Antarctica break off and slide into the ocean?
What does a month on the Larsen Ice Shelf teach us?
What can cause serious sea level rise?
Why should pools of water in Greenland cause us concern?
How will increased evaporation affect the climate?
In June 2006, The Climate Project (TCP) began operations based in Nashville, Tennessee, as non-profit organization with the mission of increasing public awareness of the climate crisis at a grassroots level throughout the United States and abroad. By April 2007, a diverse group of 1000 volunteers from every corner of the USA had been trained to present a version of the slide show on which the Academy Award-winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth” is based. More Nashville trainings are planned for later in 2007, focusing on specific sector groups.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I learned over the weekend from Daren Kuropatwa's July 27, 2007 blog post that innovation3 has been upgraded to a "gold" pbwiki site. At the November Learning Building Learning Communities 07 conference (BLC07) I attended a series of workshops given by Darren. At the end of his third workshop he offered a challenge to the participants that I accepted to set up a free pbwiki site. I committted to using this site to introduce Web 2.0 tools to the colleagues I work with in my school district. Thanks again, Darren!
I am facinated by the potential these tools have for assisting us with learning, and I find myself applying these new BLC07 understandings to my own learning. I took the picture below this weekend at a photography workshop I attended given by Bob Speare, a Massachusetts Audubon Society naturalist. Bob did a great job teaching us, but I could not help but applying my experience with Darren at BLC07 to the photography workshop.
No wireless internet connection at Long Pastures Wildlife Sanctuary so when Bob mentioned something I wanted to research I had no access to the web's resources.
No online repository of tools and information to access.
No slideshow to reflect on after the conference.
No challenge to scribe post my learning during the workshop to prompt reflection on the content and thus no opportunity to read feedback from others in the workshop.
No opportunity for the instructor to read our posts to assess our understanding.
No ongoing learning community I could be part of to extend my learning.
I learned a lot at Bob's workshop. He had us listening, asking questions, and taking pictures in the field for the two days of the workshop. That isn't the issue; I am not criticizing Bob or Massachusetts Audubon. I am focused as a learner on what I could have learned that I didn't have a chance to learn. The limitation is in the teaching practices that are "tried and true" that are characteristic of instruction that happens throughout the world. I think we should begin to measure those practices against the squandered potential of not using new Web 2.0 application tool capacitities. Teachers are discovering and using these new applications in creative ways to teach students to learn successfully in new ways. I need to learn more about the tools and how they are helping people learn. I invite you to learn with me.
July 20, 2007
Welcome to my new wiki!
This is a new art for me. As a superintendent of schools I plan to introduce this picture to our Administrative Council next week to tell the story of the BLC07 conference. I've learned much about the nature of Web 2.0 tools and how we can use it to fulfil our mission to educate students in a way that engages them in their learning so they develop the capacity to pursue their goals and lifelong learning.
Thank you, Darren Kuropatwa.
You are an artful soul.
What we have learned with you will live on long after this conference!
PS My wife and grandson and I talk about how we learned during the week. I plan to share this photo in the same way with them.
Number of Times this Wiki has been visited: 
creatingandconnecting.pdf
Investing Our Wisdom in Their Potential.doc
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.