The Year of Science in British Columbia (Canada) is almost over and in its final days the provincial government’s initiative is gracing Science World in Vancouver and the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences, also in Vancouver, with $1M and $100K respectively for outreach projects. From the Year of Science July 4, 2011 news release,
The Province is wrapping up the Year of Science with a $1.1-million investment to create a legacy of science education for British Columbia youth helping prepare them for jobs in the knowledge-based economy of the future.
Science World will receive $1.0 million to support outreach programs such as the Program for Awareness and Learning of Science, [emphasis mine] focussed on improving interest in science for students in grades kindergarten through eight. Additionally, the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences will receive $100,000 to support targeted programs, including math camps and mentorship programs, focussed on improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students in math.
I’m glad to see this money is going to outreach programmes. In my search for more details about them, I was surprised to find that Science World does not have a news release of their own about these funds; I was less surprised about the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences but given the time frames for these sorts of announcements which can run over weeks and months, it seems odd.
I also searched for Science World’s Program for Awareness and Learning of Science and couldn’t find it on their website. They do have many programmes that could fit under that title but their website search engine (it doesn’t seem like a very good one) did not produce any results.
I find the choice of fund recipients interesting and wonder what the criteria were and which other informal science education institutions/groups in the province were being considered for these fund.
In any event, I hope we hear more about these outreach projects from Science World and the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences as they progress.
I like to mention imaginative science education projects from time to time and this one caught my attention. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are offering students the opportunity to have one of their experiments tested under live conditions in outer space. From the Kit Eaton June 20, 2011 article (How NASA, DARPA Are Keeping Kids Interested In Space),
To keep folks interested [now that the Space Shuttle era is over], NASA and DARPA are pushing (a little) money into a program that’s directly aimed at students themselves.
Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) are an existing experiment that uses tiny ball-shaped robots that fly inside the International Space Station. They test techniques for keeping real satellites maneuvering in sync so that they can rendezvous and work as part of a swarm–a task that’s useful for autonomous satellite servicing, and even the building of future spacecraft.
The offer that NASA’s making is that if you design an interesting experiment, and it wins their approval, it’ll be used to fly the SPHERES robots for real. In space.
There are more details about the 2011 SPHERES Challenge tournament at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Zero Robotics website. Here’s a little of the information available on that site,
“Zero Robotics” is a robotics programming competition that opens the world-class research facilities on the International Space Station (ISS) to high-school students. Students will actually write programs at their High School that may control a satellite in space! The goal is to build critical engineering skills for students, such as problem solving, design thought process, operations training, and team work. Ultimately we hope to inspire future scientists and engineers so that they will view working in space as “normal”, and will grow up pushing the limits of engineering and space exploration.
They’ve had annual challenges since 2009 and this year’s is the SPHERES challenge. There are six stages to this year’s competition,
The 2011 SPHERES Challenge tournament has 6 stages:
Learn to program / tutorials / initial programming
2D Simulation: the game will be played in 2-dimensions. All teams will submit a player and will compete, in a full round robin simulation, against all other teams. Their score will count towards elimination later on, but no teams will be eliminated in this round.
2D Ground Competition: the top scorers from the 2D simulation will see their players compete against each other on the SPHERES ground satellites, learning directly some of the important differences between simulation and real hardware. Scores in this round will not count towards elimination, as not all teams will compete. All teams will be able to watch the competition at MIT via webcast.
3D Simulation: all participating teams will extend their game to 3 dimensions and submit their final individual player. MIT will run a full round robin simulation. The score of this round will be combined with the score of the 2D simulation to seed all teams.
3D Semi-Finals: the top 48 teams will be required to form alliances of 3 teams per player, creating a total of 16 players. Preference will be given to the choices of higher seeds. These alliances will compete in a full round-robin simulation. The top scoring players/alliances will be invited to submit an entry for the ISS finals.
ISS Finals: the top 9 players of the semi-finals will be invited to participate in the ISS finals (a total of 27 teams, as there will be 3 teams per player). Teams may visit MIT to see the live feed, or watch via the webcast. Players will compete in a bracketed round-robin aboard the ISS and a champion will be declared. (note: date depends on astronaut time availability)
This is a competition for US high school students from grades 9 – 12. The application deadline is Sept. 5, 2011.
Vanished sounds like a game where you won’t even notice that you’re being educated. (Having looked at a few ‘education’ games, that’s a major kudo from me.)
April 4, 2011 is the date that the Smithsonian Institute and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) launched an eight-week online game for middle school children that was two years in the making. From the Feb. 22, 2011 MIT news release,
The Smithsonian Institution and MIT announced the April 4 launch of VANISHED, an 8-week online/offline environmental disaster mystery game for middle-school children, meant to inspire engagement and problem solving through science.
Developed and curated by MIT’s Education Arcade (a research group of Comparative Media Studies) and the Smithsonian Institution, VANISHED is a first-of-its-kind experience where participants become investigators racing to solve puzzles and other online challenges, visit museums and collect samples from their neighborhoods to help unlock the secrets of the game. Players can only discover the truth about the environmental disaster by using real scientific methods and knowledge to unravel the game’s secrets.
To navigate through the mystery game’s challenges, participants will gain access to Smithsonian scientists from such diverse disciplines as paleobiology, volcanology, forensic anthropology and entomology.
This project is a consequence of a conclusion reached by researchers at the US National Science Foundation that people learn most of their science informally, i.e., outside the classroom. David Zax’s April 19, 2011 article on the Fast Company website notes,
Over many years, after conducting many surveys, the NSF made an intriguing conclusion: A good deal of the public’s understanding of science derives from outside of the classroom. NSF developed a program in “Informal Science Education,” and Osterweil’s team–jointly housed by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and its Scheller Teacher Education Program–nabbed an NSF grant to work on a game, back in 2009. Two years later, more than 5,000 students are playing the game, Vanished, and leaving about 4,000 posts a day on the sites forums.
There’s more about Vanished here (including Frequently Asked Questions) and you can register here. The game ends on or about May 31, 2011. It is still possible to sign up. Players must be 10 1/2 to 14 years old. People of other ages may sign up as observers.
Sadly, I’m still having problems with the latest WordPress installation but I am hopeful that it will be resolved at some point.
I just received my NISE (Nanoscale Informal Science Education) Net newsletter for April and noticed that NISE Net is linking to some nano talks that were given at one or more TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conferences. There are five talks in all. Two were given by Paul Rothemund about DNA origami (folding); two talks were given by George Whitesides on self-assembly and low-cost medical diagnostic tools, and there’s one talk by Michael Pritchard about a nanotech water filter. You can find links to the talks on this page.
Ever fantasized about leading a country for a few hours? NanoVenture, a board game for 15 years and up, let’s you do precisely that. From the NISE Net NanoVenture catalog page,
“NanoVenture: The Nanotechnology Board Game” explores the connections between science, specifically nanotechnology, and society. In this game, players become leaders of a new country. The leaders are challenged to make decisions regarding their country’s use of nanomaterials and nanotechnology for industrial expansion, military applications, economic security and basic scientific research, while maintaining a high approval rating from the citizens of the country. These decisions require players to carefully analyze the interplay of technological advances, regulations, public perception and risk, while also learning about the emerging field of nanotechnology.
The game was developed (this is a mouthful) by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Interdisciplinary Education Group. You can get more information about the game here.
The last item I’m highlighting is a call for proposals for a Congress on Teaching the Social and Ethical Implications of Research (deadline: June 1, 2011). The congress is being held at Arizona State University. From the congress About page,
There is an increasing push to offer scientists and engineers new forms of education in the social and ethical implications of research. Because this trend is relatively new, there are no cohesive curricula or recognized sets of best practices. But SEI education is happening in a wide variety of spaces including: laboratory training sessions, science museums, online modules, study abroad experiences, and the classroom. A number of research groups and individuals across the country are currently developing their own approaches to delivering this material to scientists and engineers. This Congress will bring together a wide array of these educators to share the programs, materials, assessment methods, and experience they’ve already developed as well as serve as an opportunity to collaborate on new strategies to help scientists and engineers understand the social and ethical implications of research. The Congress will be held a few blocks away from and immediately after the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) (See: http://www.cns.ucsb.edu/snet2011). There is no registration fee for the Congress. For additional information, please e-mail: SEICongress@asu.edu.
Humphrey Jones and Jeremy Stone, science teachers at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, Ireland created and maintain The Frog Blog. And, in one of those crazy ways that the web and social media connect us all, on March 31, 2011 they posted about Wonderville (http://www.frogblog.ie/2011/03/wonderville.html?spref=tw).
Shockingly, Wonderville is a science education online website designed by the folks at the Alberta Science Council and I’d never heard about it even though I live in the province next door. It took a pair of blogging science teachers from Ireland to point me in that direction. From the March 31, 2011 posting on The Frog Blog,
Wonderville is a brilliant website containing some amazing interactive resources to support science teaching. This award-winning site aims to encourage exploration and curiosity, while helping kids discover how much fun science can be. There are over 30 interactive games covering many different science themes including “thing created using science”, “things in our world and beyond”, “things you just can’t see” and “things and how they work”. … (There is a great feature too – as you explore the site you pick up puzzle pieces along the way and a counter on top of the page records your progress – brilliant for young kids!)
As you might expect, there’s a lot of information about nanotechnology at Wonderville. I have looked at the material briefly and it seems they are trying to communicate to a range of ages. I saw one video which was encouraging kids to embark on a ‘nanotechnology’ career and an animation (highlighted by the folks at The Frog Blog) suitable for grade school.
From the Wonderville website About page (http://www.wonderville.ca/information/about-wonderville/),
Wonderville is a fun, interactive destination for kids to discover the exciting world of science. This award-winning site encourages exploration and curiosity, while helping kids discover how much fun science can be.
Who provides wonderville.ca?
Wonderville is brought to you by the Science Alberta Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to increasing science literacy and awareness. SAF develops engaging resources that bring math and science to life and foster an enthusiasm for science and technology.
Games
Adventure through the wide selection of more than 30 games at wonderville. Building science knowledge has never been so much fun! These exciting games, designed with leading learning techniques, will have kids learning challenging concepts without even knowing it.
Activities
Need a way to bring more science into your kid’s life? Look to our activities section. We have a wide selection of science crosswords, word search puzzles and printable activity sheets that will turn science into a fun adventure at home!
Videos
For kids wondering how they will ever use science, there are videos that explore real-life applications of science concepts. Many videos provide an exciting behind the scenes look at science-based careers for those kids exploring a world full of fascinating careers.
Comics
Laughing at our comics is a great way to learn engaging science facts. Kids will be able to not only better understand a topic but also see how science is present into their everyday lives.
The Science Content
While having fun with wonderville’s games, activities, videos and comics, kids will be presented with interesting science facts. Of course, all of these facts are vetted by experts to ensure accuracy.
What is the cost to use wonderville.ca?
Free! There is no cost to use all of the amazing resources available on wonderville.ca. This site is made possible by grants from SAF sponsors and donors.
As for The Frog Blog itself, they have adopted an eclectic and fun approach to science education and, if you should go there, you may want to peruse a number of the postings. To whet your appetite, here’s the Nano animation mentioned earlier,
I got curious about the name of the school, St. Columba, so I went looking for some information about that saint. From the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04136a.htm),
He was not only a great missionary saint who won a whole kingdom to Christ, but he was a statesman, a scholar, a poet, and the founder of numerous churches and monasteries. His name is dear to Scotsmen and Irishmen alike. And because of his great and noble work even non-Catholics hold his memory in veneration.
Taking a leaf out of Pasco Phronesis’s (David Bruggeman) book, I am announcing an upcoming TV science program on Weds., Dec. 8, 2010. From the Matt Roush Dec. 5 2010 article on the TV Guide website,
Mythbusters (Wednesday, 9/8c, Discovery)
In this installment, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are serving at the pleasure of the president: Barack Obama, who has recruited the Mythbusters for the White House campaign to involve more kids in science. President Obama appears in this episode to challenge the guys to replicate a myth they’ve tried and failed at several times before: proving if Greek mathematician Archimedes could really have set fire to a Roman fleet using only mirrors and sunlight. This time, though, they’ll have 500 students helping in the experiment.
I think this sounds like a great experiment and I imagine this programme will appear on the Canadian version of the Discovery Channel at some time in the future but, sadly, not this week.
In the last month there have been three nano education announcements. Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast featured a project with NanoProfessor (a division of NanoInk) in Colombia. From Dexter’s May 26, 2010 post,
According to Tom Levesque, General Manager of NanoInk in the Americas, he visited a school in Bogota, Colombia where about 350 teenagers in conjunction with the NanoProfessor curriculum work with atomic force microscopes [AFM] and end up with better training than many receive at private universities in the country.
…
While making available an AFM for 350 kids seems almost as incredible as the idea that these kids have a better education than those at the best private schools, one has to wonder why this program has taken off in foreign countries and has not fared as well in the United States.
I too find the idea of an AFM for 350 kids extraordinary and his point about the initiative (or something else like it) not being widely adopted in the US, as I understand it, holds true for Canada.
Meanwhile, the Russians held an international conference on nanoeducation, May 18 – 20, 2010. From the news item on Nanowerk,
On May 18-20th the nanotechnology equipment manufacturer in Russia NT-MDT Co. and one of the main Russian scientific nanocenters the Kurchatov Institute held an international conference “Nanoeducation: the main approaches and perspectives”. The meeting had a unique format – the first educational international conference with trainings on working with nanoeducational equipment for teachers. 185 participants took part in the event, including representatives from Russia, the USA, Europe and CIS. The conference has become an essential part of Russian Government Federal Program.
The main goal of the conference was to overcome the gap between impetuous development of the modern nanoscience and the conservative system of education, especially in schools, where the teachers suffer serious problems in working with new equipment.
I find their direct approach to describing some of the issues quite refreshing. The topics covered were,
… controversial areas as contemporary approaches to nanoeducation, educational process organizing and leading, the newest educational technologies, international university cooperation all over the world concerning personnel trainings for teachers and professors and etc. The discussion has touched all the educational levels at schools as well as in universities.
In Iran, they’re launching a student competition (from the Fars News Agency item),
Iran’s Nanoclub (a club for students that works under the supervision of Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council) plans to hold the first stage of Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students in a number of provincial capitals on June 25.
All students familiar with nanotechnology will compete scientifically in two stages in this scientific competition entitled ‘Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students’ throughout the country. The Olympiad will be held in two stages on June 25 and August 9, 2010.
The test for the first stage will be held in 2010-2011 educational year in 10 capitals of Iranian provinces that are more active in the field of nanotechnology and enjoy more students familiar with nanotechnology, according to statistics.
The Promotion and Public Education Workgroup of Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council will give three 1000-dollar awards to the top three winners of the first Nanotechnology Olympiad for Students.
Very exciting news and if you know of any comparable programmes for children in Canada, please do let me know.
Scientix is Europe’s new science education portal. From the news item on Nanowerk,
The European Commission has launched Scientix, a new web portal targeted towards teachers, researchers, policy makers, local actors, parents and anyone interested in science education. Scientix gives access to teaching materials, research results and policy documents from European science education projects financed by the European Union and by various national initiatives.
The new platform will facilitate regular dissemination and sharing of news, know-how, and best practices in science education across the European Union.
It’s hard to tell from reading the Evidence document what precisely the hearing before Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Health was intended to address. The title for the hearing is general, Potential Risks and Benefits of Nanotechnology and it’s impossible to gauge how well informed the committee members in attendance are.
None of the advisors (for a list see yesterday’s posting) speaking to the committee gave a description or explained nanotechnology or used stories/examples to illustrate their points. Not offering an explanation was unusual. There seems to have been an assumption that all the committee members knew about it. If the committee members do understand nanotechnology, at least somewhat, they belong to a very small category of outsiders (not directly involved in nano research or nano product development or nano business effort or nano policy). My suspicion is that Canadian MPs don’t have easy access to much science information so this scenario is unlikely.
All this reminded me of Preston Manning’s (founder of the Reform Party and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance Party [now absorbed by the Conservative Party] in Canada and opposition science critic) comments about scientists needing to learn how to communicate better with politicians (Nov. 2, 2009 posting on this blog).
I suspect part of the difficulty is that speakers were given five minutes and they all had overriding issues they wanted to cover. The document has numerous instances where the Chair warns the speaker that their allotted speaking time is coming to an end and they will have to conclude their comments.
As for not offering examples or stories about the use of nanomaterials in nanotechnology-enabled products to illustrate their points, that’s a pretty simple and effective technique. Based on my reading of the document for the hearing, I better appreciate Preston Manning’s suggestion that Canadian scientists get better training to communicate with MPs.
The Black Hole, Devils of Details: Getting Scientists to Understand How Policy Making Works, June 16, 2010 is a posting where blogger Dave (a Canadian scientist currently doing postdoctoral work at Cambridge University, UK) details his experience at a recent meeting ,
Yesterday I attended a panel discussion at Cambridge run by a group called the Centre for Science and Policy. It is part of a series of events designed to engage and unite those at the University who have an interest in the role of scientific information in government policy. This particular session was entitled Working on the inside and highlighted the roles of Cambridge academics that have pursued these sorts of roles in Government.
The panelists all had some role in bringing a scientific perspective to the parliamentarians at Whitehall. These roles, however, were distinct and spanned multiple career stages, areas of focus, and included different sets of responsibilities.
These Cambridge academics weren’t being parachuted into a hearing for a five minute presentation with questions afterwards; they were folded into various agencies for the purpose of offering scientific advice to UK MPs.
Coincidentally I found this June 9, 2010 article (Dave Willets plugs science lessons for MPs) by Mark Henderson for The Times on the Canadian Science Policy website this morning. This is another approach they’re taking in the UK that could prove valuable here too,
One of *Afriyie’s best moves in opposition was to commit the Tories to giving new MPs some rudimentary training in science as part of their parliamentary induction. The Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology agreed to do this training, so long as it was open to MPs of other parties as well. And the first such training day will take place next Tuesday [June 15, 2010].
* Prior to the 2010 UK elections, Adam Afrifie was Tory opposition Science spokesperson. Now the Tories are part of a coalition government, Dave Willets is the Minister in charge of science.
If anyone has comments that point to confirming or debunking my suspicions regarding Canadian MPs and their access to science information, please do let me know.
It’s a little outside my usual topic range but I’m extending the category since I’ve done it before just because I felt like it and because one of the moving forces behind this project (Eric Lagally) is a member of the Microsystems and Nanotechnology Group at the University of British Columbia (Canada). Lagally and his colleagues have devised a safe and inexpensive way for kids to make microfluidic devices. From the news item on Nanowerk,
Microfluidics, they [Lagally and colleagues] note, has the potential to revolutionize medicine and biology, reducing an entire laboratory of instruments for analyzing blood, urine, and other materials to the size of a postage stamp. Until now, however, hands-on experience with microfluidics has been impossible because of the expense and potentially toxic chemicals involved in making microfluidic devices.
The article [in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry “Using Inexpensive Jell-O Chips for Hands-On Microfluidics Education“] describes using Popsicle-type craft sticks taped to the bottom of a Styrofoam plate to form large-scale versions of the minute channels in actual microfluidic devices.
This sounds like the kind of thing you could do at home. Bravo!