Teen Summer Camp Opportunity: The Science of Climate Change

Rising North Carolina high school juniors and seniors are eligible to apply for a FREE four-day program on the science of climate change sponsored by the RTP branch of the EPA.  It will take place the week of June 10-13, 2013, and will emphasize case studies and what people can do to mitigate their contribution to the problem.  The deadline for application is Friday, May 3, so your students had better apply soon if they are interested!

For more information, see the official announcement below:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Research Triangle Park, NC is offering a FREE weeklong Summer Enrichment Program to educate NC high school students about the science of climate change. Students will learn what climate change is, how it can affect their health and lifestyle, how they can take action to reduce the impact of climate change and ways in which to adapt to minimize the impacts. Program sessions are led by scientists, engineers, and policy makers from here at EPA, as well as by other experts. Hands-on experiences and interactive case studies are emphasized.

Interested students who are rising 11th and 12th graders in NC are eligible and encouraged to apply. Participation is limited to 25 students. The Program will be held June 10-13, 2013, from 9 am to 4 pm EST Monday-Thursday. The Program will be hosted at the EPA-RTP Campus. Participants must commit to attending the entire Program and provide their own transportation.

Application materials are at http://www.epa.gov/rtp/climate_change/climate_change.htm. Applications will be accepted on a space-available basis through May 3.

Contact: Kelly Witter Leovic
Director of STEM Outreach Sharing Science Technology Engineering & Math (STEM) in our Community U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory
Email: leovic.kelly@epa.gov, 
Phone: 919-541-7717, 
Fax: 919-541-3615 
Office Location: Room D320B EPA-RTP Main Campus 
Mailing Address: MD 305-01, U.S. EPA, RTP, NC 27711

Turning Coral Conservation into Child's Play

I haven't posted in quite a while.  I wish I could say it was due to Screen Free Week and my virtuous decision to eschew all things electronic, but it wasn't.  It is because I've been so busy with the Cards, Coral & Kids campaign for my son's environmental awareness group, Healing Oceans Together (H2O).

The idea behind this project, which is to create a Pokemon-like card game that would teach people about coral reef life and ecosystems and actions they can take to help the corals survive, is explained here and here, so I won't go into that again in my blog.  What I wanted to talk about here is some of the thinking behind the project.

You know, young teens are interesting creatures.  They are old enough to realize some of the problems with the world, and most are hopeful and confident about being part of the solution.  They tend to be really into Earth Day and recycling, Save the Planet, Stop Global Warming, Protect the Rain Forests, and the like.

And yet, on a daily basis, we are still telling them "Shut the Refridgerator Door!"  "Turn Off the Lights when You Leave the Room!"  "Don't Leave the Computer Running All Night!" or the frustrated but perhaps dangerous question of "Why Does it Take You 30 Minutes of Running Water to Take a Shower?"

Maybe it's different at your house.  But for many of us, our children's grand rhetoric for saving the planet doesn't match up with their everyday life habits.  Of course, that's really true for most of us adults as well...

In H2O, the students have been studying ocean science and math since September.  We decided to hone in on coral conservation because coral reefs are really the marine equivalent of rain forests.  Although coral reefs only make up about 0.1% of the oceans, they are home to approximately 25% of all marine life!  Also, corals take a long time to grow, so our damage to reefs that may be hundreds or thousands of years old can not be replaced within many of our human generations.

But what to do that would make a difference?  There are already tons of books and videos and ads and educational resources on this issue, but people continue doing what they've always done.  As parents, we've trying nagging, threatening, bribing, begging, and everything short of bloodshed, and yet...we, too, are largely ineffectual.  So we needed to come up with something else, something new.

And then we had a brainstorm.  Instead of using guilt and threats and dire warnings of environmental catastrophes, what if we made saving the coral reefs fun?  What if we made it....into a game?

In approaching it this way, we were influenced by the work of Jane McGonigal, whose work is summarized in a video I included in an earlier post.  Her video on that page, a TED talk on how "Gaming Can Make a Better World," is a synopsis of her wonderful book, Reality Is Broken:  Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  In short, she argues that time people spend on video games actually helps them develop positive characteristics (such as working hard, cooperation, and optomism), and explores how to structure games so that we can channel all the time people spend playing games into social activism games that will help solve Earth's real-world problems.  It is a fascinating and inspiring book, and I recommend it highly.

So, in short, that is what we are trying to do with this game.  First, the game will teach students (and adults as well) the real science behind food chains and interlocking ecosystems in the coral reefs.  We think this is important because we think if people knew more about all these fascinating creatures, they would love them, and we take care of the things we love (for more of our philosophy on that, read the Family Educators Commons article that Maria Droujkova and I co-wrote on the Shareable website).  But secondly, we will build into the games a way for them to earn (or lose) points based on their actions in real life.  You insist that I drive you to the library?  You lose 5 points.  You walk or ride your bike there yourself?  You gain 5 points.  You stand there with the refridgerator open as you drink your water/milk/juice?  You lose 3 points.  You close the door and drink it at the table?  Well, I don't know that we'll give you points for that, since that should be normal behavior, but at least you won't lose points.  You keep your showers under 10 minutes?  You get 2 points.  You keep your showers under 5 minutes?  You get 5 points.

You get the idea.

Anyway, we think this game has the potential to give kids incentives for to change those behaviors that we parents have been nagging them about for years, but to no avail.  If we all make those small changes, maybe they won't completely solve the problem, but they will make things better.  And making things better is something that can make us all feel good.

If you would like to be a part of helping to make this game happen, then please visit our Cards, Coral & Kids campaign.  For a small donation, you could get a deck of the cards before they are released to the public, participate in our pilot trials and research project, or even give input into the cards themselves!  Also, please spread the word about this idea to all your social media networks, email loops, and friends and family.  Getting the funding we need to develop the game requires reaching lots of people, so anything you can do to help is greatly appreciated!

Craft Coral Reef

I haven't been blogging as much recently because I've been so involved with the Healing Oceans Together (H2O) environmental education and awareness group that my son is helping to organize.  (Regular readers of this blog may remember the Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest that H2O ran earlier this year.) 

Now the group has moved on from raising awareness about sea slugs to encouraging people to help save the rapidly-disappearing coral reefs.  The first step in the process is that H2O is creating a community-based Craft Coral Reef to exhibit at ChambersArts, an art gallery in downtown Cary.  This artistic version of a coral reef, which will incorporate crochet and knitting, origami, beading, and other crafts, is supposed to remind people of the precious beauty of the coral reefs, educate them about the important role they play in our ocean ecology, and inspire them to take actions to help protect and preserve them.

We've been holding a series of FREE public workshops to get other people crocheting and crafting along with our group and contributing to the growing reef.  So far we've held three public workshops, and the results have been great.

Before launching the project, H2O crocheted some sample creations to show people:

But a few weeks later, after the second public workshop, the Craft Coral Reef had grown to this:

Beautiful--and exciting to see the progress!

For more information on this project, including some photos from the workshops we've held, check out the complete write-up on the Healing Oceans Together blog.  

You can follow that blog if you are really interested.  I'll also post some more photo updates to show you how our community Coral Reef grows.

Finally, next week we are launching another exciting initiative related to our "Save the Corals" campaign.  So stay tuned for that announcement!

Happy Earth Day!

Tomorrow is Earth Day 2012, which is supposed to be the largest civil observances in the world, as approximately one billion people across the planet celebrate it.

There are so many things I could say about honoring the Earth, but this is the nature video that currently is most inspiring me:

The video is by Norwegian photographer Ole C. Salomonsen, with music by Norwegian composer Kai-Anders Ryan.  It captures on film the aurora borealis--a topic that has always fascinated me and that is one of those things I want to be able to experience for myself someday.   Salomonsen used stop motion video to film the Northern Lights in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland from fall 2011 - spring 2012.  He would film with two or three cameras at a time, and shot about 150,000 frames, although only 6,000 frames made it into this video.

It is such a stunning testimony to the beauty of the natural world, albeit a very different world from the green and temperate climates of North Carolina.   I hope you will enjoy it and also be moved to take some small step yourself to help keep our planet clean and healthy.

Is The Hunger Games Turning Students Off to STEM Education?

Are students turning away from pursuing careers in science and math because of books like The Hunger Games?  Popular author Neal Stephenson thinks so.  Stephenson argues that current science fiction writers depict such a dark and depressing picture of the future--like children being forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the ruling elite and for the subjugation of the laboring masses--that students are not inspired to be part of making that future come to be.  If science, engineering, and math is going to create a future society like Panen in The Hunger Games, or the Realm in Incarceron, or post-apocalyptic Chicago in Divergent (gosh, haven't I written up that review?  I'll have to do that), or dozens of other popular YA books, movies, and TV shows, why would students want to participate in that?

To Stephenson's mind, it all contributes to our society overarching problem, which is an inability to, in his word, "get big things done."  So he has created an effort entitled the Hierarchy Project to convince science fiction writers to create some more optomistic visions of the future that would inspire students back into the world of science and math as a potential solution provider rather than a conveyor belt to our dystopic future.  To hear more about his views on this topic, read his article on Innovation Starvation.

Stephenson is not the first person to raise these concerns.  Indeed, my first-ever blog post, Are Bella and Edward LITERALLY Warping Your Adolescent's Brain, was about a conference at Cambridge that was examining whether dark themes in current YA literature were physically changing adolescent brains.  But I thought it was a good follow-on to my earlier post this week about Neil deGrasse Tyson's concern that we have forgotten how to dream.  I do think that perhaps the biggest problem is STEM education is our students lack of desire to pursue it, and I do think that these dark, science-enabled dystopias could be a part of the problem.

It also brings to mind a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. that I described inanother earlier post.  Nichelle Nicols, who played the African American communications officer Uhuru in the original television series of Star Trek, told of Dr. King telling her that Star Trek was the most important TV show at that time because it gave people a vision of the future world he was trying to create in his speeches--a place where people of all races (and even different planets) worked together in peace and respect to take on big challenges.

That was the time I was raised in.  Star Trek may seem to today's eyes to be cheesy and bombastic, but it was unfailing optomistic about human potential enhanced by technology.  Our children are growing up in times where it seems to be preferable to be vampires and werewolfs and zombies and such to becoming a scientist (unless you want to go into murder investigation, since I guess the numerous CSI shows require quite a number of scientist to analyze all that crime evidence the detective amass).

So I hope Stephenson and his Hierarchy Project help to encourage some writers to give our adolescent some less grim scenarios of their future.  It may not be the biggest part of the solution to STEM education, but it sure couldn't hurt.

The Power of Dreams in Education

Why aren't US students going into careers in science, engineering, and math?  That is a question we've been asking as a society ever since I was working professionally in Washington DC in education policy in the 1980s.  There have been many proposed answers to that question, but mostly the blame as been laid on our education system.  Our science and math education isn't rigorous enough, or it isn't concrete enough, or it isn't relevent enough, or it isn't hands-on enough, etc. etc. etc.  So our latest response has been lots of government and private programs to improve education in what is now called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

While I know science and math are tough disciplines--tough to learn and tough to teach (she says, having just completed teaching a hands-on physics class on light and optics that required lugging multiple sets of things for hands-on experiments to an outside classroom for five weeks)--and that we could definitely improve our science and math education, to my mind, that isn't the biggest problem with our current "brain drain" in STEM careers.  The data I read indicates that most of "the best and the brightest"are choosing to go into fields other than math and science.  That is to say, even if we could wave our magic wands and make our STEM education programs perfect, that isn't going to change the situation if students refuse to go into those programs in the first place.

There are many aspects to why American students aren't studying STEM.  But one of the big ones, according to astrophysicist and science writer/media specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we, as a nation, have stopped dreaming about a better future and the important role science, math, and engineering have in getting us there.

I could say more, but Tyson himself says it so much better in the short video below, entitled "Why We Stopped Dreaming:"



There is no way I can improve on that.   Except that I would say that it is not just limited to STEM.  I grew up in the Washington DC area, where almost everyone there was employed in what we used to consider "public service."  When I was growing up, working in Congress or the White House, the multiple court systems, the many federal agencies, the military complex built around the Pentagon, the related research institutes, the multiple non-profit public interest groups on all sorts of issues--all of those were honorable professions, and even though people found it a financial sacrifice, in terms of making a lower income than they might have had in private industry, it was worth it because they believed they were making a difference or playing a role in making the world safer, smarter, healthier, and better.

Now, after decades of people bashing "the government," our best and brightest don't want to work there either.  Looking at the nastiness and frustration among our top politicians--the US Congress and White House--it is no wonder that our students don't want a career in politics.  Education is another field where most of the public policy discussion is very negative, constantly highlighting all the perceived failures and rarely lauding the good work done day after day by millions of teachers across our country.

So what is left?  Becoming an athlete, rock or rap star, an actor/actress or, even better/easier, becoming a celebrity through so-called "reality" TV?

This is a tough, tough problem, and I don't know how we are going to solve it as a society.  But I know one thing.  As teachers and as parents, we need to support our students in dreaming again.  And I think it is particularly important in this middle school age--when they are old enough to understand and deal with some of the real substantive problems of our culture, but haven't yet experience so much frustration and inability to make a difference that they become cynical and indifferent.  In our case, it is why we are so heavily invested in a effort called Healing Oceans Together, where the students wrote the following mission statement for their group:

Healing Oceans Together (H2O) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of the seas, raising public awareness about the oceans, and supporting the community through environmental education. Our organization is largely student-driven and is exceedingly resourceful. We are homeschoolers saving the world one step at a time, because we believe that everybody, working together, can make a difference.

I have to end with quoting (yet AGAIN, for those who know me) from one of my favorite books of 2011, Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt.   In this passage from the book, which is set in the 1960s, the junior high science teacher, Mr. Ferris, is talking to a group of incoming students.

 "Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dream. You come to build fantastic castles into the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High School would grow up to do".....what? What castle will you build?"

With all our focus in education on test scores and STEM initiatives and funding priorities, we are forgetting to encourage our students to dream big dreams.  And what kind of a life are preparing them for without dreams?  As Langston Hughes said in his poem, Dreams:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.  

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Win $50,000 in the Google Science Fair

Do you know any teenagers (13-18) working on an awesome science project of their own design?  If so, you may want to encourage them to enter it in the Google Science Fair, an international online science competition sponsored by Google in partnership with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic, and Scientific America.

The Google Science Fair follows the same basic rules and procedures as a physical science fair, but students must go the extra step of presenting their work through videos and other digital means (another good skill to be developing).  Students from public, private, or home schools around the world can compete in the three age categories of 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18.  There will be 15 global finalists who will be flown to a physical competition event at Google headquarters in July.  The finalist winners in each age category are awarded a $25,000 scholarship and the opportunity to engage in a high level science research experience, while the Grand Prize winner will get a $50,000 and a National Geographic scientific expedition to the Galapagos.  There is also a $50,000 prize for the Science in Action winner, the project that best addresses a social, environmental, or health issue in a way that makes a difference in the lives of a group or community.

For more information or to sign up, visit the Google Science Fair website.  However, projects are due by April 1, 2012, so your student scientists will have to submit their work soon.

For an inspirational video Google produced encouraging student science, click below:

And to hear more about the rules of the competition, watch the following video:

Curriculum Resource: TED-Ed

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a great fan of TED, which shares "Ideas Worth Spreading" by posting FREE videos of some of the leading thinkers and doers across the world as they give presentations on important topics--all in 10 minutes or less.

 Today, TED launched a new initiative called TED-Ed that will bring the TED philosophy to education (although I've used plenty of TED videos in my lessons already). TED-ED is a TED You Tube video channel dedicated specifically to "Lessons Worth Spreading." That is, TED-Ed posts more FREE videos of some exemplary lessons that TED has enhanced by adding appropriate animations or other features (when necessary--some talks are fine on their own).

 Right now, TED-Ed has just a handfull of videos, but by next month, they plan to add lesson plans and tools that allow teachers to customized the videos to their own classes (such as embedding questions or comments, etc.). They are also accepting nominations for outstanding educators or animators to use in the project, as well as suggestions for desired lessons. 

TED-Ed is geared to the high school level and above, but I think the videos I watched would be appropriate for mature middle school students as well. But check them out and judge for yourself. For example, in honor of my middle schooler who has been enthralled with the deep sea since he was 2 years old, watch the TED-Ed video below on "Deep Ocean Mysteries and Wonders:"

Curriculum Resource: Teaching Evolution

So if you are a family that doesn't believe in and/or doesn't teach evolution, then you want to skip this post.

But for those who do...

I found a great series of lesson plans about teaching evolution on a website hosted by Indiana University.  These lessons were developed for teaching high school biology, but the authors say that, with some modification, they could be adapted to either an advanced middle school or introductory college level class.

There are over 50 lesson plans or mini lessons that are available on line, along with some titles that I suppose they are still developing.  It is broken into two big categories:

• Evolution Patterns
• Evolution Processes

Subcategories under Evolution Patterns are:

• Geological/Paleontological Patterns:  General
• Human Evolution Patterns
• Classification, Hierarchy, Relationships

The subcategories under Evolution Processes are:

• Adaptations, Imperfections, Contrivances
• Variation and Natural Selection
• Speciation
• Macroevolution

So it is a nice, comprehensive approach to the topic, it seems to me.  I haven't looked at all the lessons, but most of the ones I did read had an experiment or hands-on component.  Not all of them are suitable for an at-home science lab, but many of them can be done in a homeschool setting.

So check them out here.

LEGO Competition Offers Free Legos to Creative Education Contestants (including Homeschoolers)

The LEGO Corporation is running its 2011 LEGO Smart Creativity Contest for K-12 educators living in the United States.  It is open to teachers in public, private, or home-based schools.  

To enter the competition, teachers must create a video that is no longer than 150 seconds (2 and 1/2 minutes) that demonstrates how they have used LEGO products in an educational way.  However, the focus is on creativity, so the company isn't looking for a dry, academic explanation of a LEGO-based lesson plan.  Instead, they encourage skits, songs, rapping, stop-motion animation, or other fun ways to excite fellow educators about using LEGO in the classroom (even if the classroom is your kitchen table)!

Winners in five categories:  Public/Private Schools K-2, 3-5, 5-8, 9-12, and Homeschools, will each receive LEGO Education gift certificates worth $2,500, with one grant prize winner receiving a $5,000 gift certificate.  All winners will also get an expense-paid trip to the LEGO Education Summit on November 16, 2011.

However, if you are an early applicant, you may get a prize just for participating!  The first 8,000 public and private school entries, and the first 2,000 homeschool ones, will receive a FREE LEGO Smart Kit.  So it is best to get your contest video in as soon as possible.  The deadline for the competition is October 14, 2011.

For more information, or to access the complete rules and registration materials, visit the 2011 LEGO Smart Creativity Contest homepage.

Good luck to all competitors.  Let us know if you win!

Entrepreneurship in Education

I have been thinking about entrepreneurship a lot lately.  I think this is mainly due to three educational initiatives I'm currently working on:  (1) a summer entrepreneurship camp targeting youth at risk; (2) a summer camp/potential franchise operation to create educational programs for students with attention deficit disorder/ADHD; and (3) an ambitious middle school coop for the next year that will require substantial fundraising and entrepreneurship to raise the money to create some significant community awareness of the topic of the coop (which happens to be preserving our ocean resources).

It turns out that Chris Lehmann has been thinking a lot about this topic as well.  Lehmann is doing so because he is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA.  The Science Leadership Academy is a partnership high school between the public schools in Philly and the Franklin Institute.  Between what I know about the museum, which I did visit once, and what I read on the school website and on Lehmann's often-thoughtful blog....well, if you have to go to school, this looks like a pretty cool school to go to.

In the opening paragraph to his blog post on Entrepreneurship, I think the way Lehmann defines entrepreneurship is brilliant, especially as it relates to education:

I've been thinking a lot lately about entrepreneurship. People tend to immediately assume that means business, but I don't. Entrepreneurship is part of SLA's mission statement. But it's the part that oftentimes is - I think - hardest to see if you don't know what you're looking for. In the end, its about owning your ideas and doing interesting things with them. And I don't mean "owning" in some sort of proprietary non-sharing sort of way because collaboration is a huge piece of entrepreneurship. I mean owning your ideas in such a way that conveys that your ideas have power and have meaning and have use. Ken Robinson in one of his talks defines creativity as, "having original ideas of value." That's not a bad place to start. Entrepreneurship suggests that when you do something with those ideas.

Having important ideas and doing something interesting with them--that is certainly the basis of all three projects I mentioned above.  But, really, shouldn't that be what all of our educational endeavors should be leading students to do?  To think great thoughts and then to take action on those thoughts in a meaningful way--what a great way to think about the ultimate goal of our interactions with students.

So crystalizing that idea for me is a great gift from Mr. Lehmann's post (which you can read in its entirety here). But another gift was a TED video suggested by one of his commenters on the topic of teaching students to be entrepreneur. This was PERFECT for me, not only because it deals directly with what I'm doing in the entrepreneur camp and the ocean project, but because it makes the link between entrepreneurs and ADHD, which the presenter calls "the CEO's disease." Plus, at the end, there is a 2 minute animation that was so inspiring that it had me in tears. Here is that TED talk by Cameron Herold:

I'm just so grateful for the insight provided by Mr. Lehmann and Mr. Herold that I wanted to pass it on to all my readers.  I think it is a critically important concept that we need to nurture more in our educational endeavors, both inside and outside of school.

UPDATE: I decided to add the entrepreneurship video on its own, because I think it can be a useful educational resource by itself.

How to Get Accepted into Highly Selective Colleges

Last month my homeschool support group had a workshop on Selective College Admissions by Richard Bowden, the executive director of the Summer Science Program (SSP). The SSP is a college residential summer enrichment program for gifted high school students to engage in top-level scientific research. Thus, not only does Bowden lead a selection process that is similar to those of the top colleges (they typically receive applications from only the very top high school students, and accept only 13% of those), most of the SSP students go on to the most selective colleges (in 2010, 80% of the 68 SSP students enrolled in either Ivy League colleges or in Stanford, MIT, or Caltech).

The following are some highlights from Bowden’s comments:

Why Apply to the Most Selective Colleges?

Here are what Bowden says are good reasons to apply to such schools:

• You have a particular passion for that college and/or its programs
• These colleges have large endowments, and so can be more generous with financial aid
• The student body is made up of high achieving students, so you will be going to college surrounded by other smart, motivated, hard-working students
• The alumni network can be valuable
• Why not? Bowden suggests that if you are interested and think you have at least a shot, you might as well apply to one or two of those schools and see what happens

Bad reasons to apply to these colleges are:

• You are applying for the status of these types of colleges, not because you are really motivated to be challenged at that level
• Your parent(s) went to that college
• Your parent(s) want you to go that college

Some General Advice about Applying to College

• The process should be driven primarily by the student, NOT the parents
• Bowden recommends the Princeton Review’s Cracking College Admissions as an excellent resource for information on applying to college.
• Start early. For example, Cracking College Admissions has guidelines for what you should be doing for each year in high school (that is, starting in 9th grade).
• Don’t apply to 20 different colleges. It is expensive, time consuming, and the colleges can see that you have applied to many colleges. Applying to lots of different colleges leads the colleges to believe that you don’t really know what you want and are just applying all over, rather than having figured out what colleges are a good fit.
• Try to see things from the perspective of the college admissions staff. You are likely to be more successful if you are coming from what the college needs/wants, rather than from what you need/want.
• Don’t put too much pressure on yourself about getting into a highly selective college. You don’t need to go to an expensive, big name college to get an excellent education.
• Don’t take it personally. If you receive a rejection letter, remember that the college is evaluating your application, not you. There is a difference, because your complex and rich personality can never be reduced to even the most extensive college application.
• Realize that because of the vast numbers of applications involved, for many students it is largely a matter of luck whether you did or did not get in.

So What Do These Highly Selective Colleges Want Anyway?

Bowden reminded us that each college admissions staff person at top colleges typically reads and considers over 1,000 applications. What is going to make that person read your application and say “Wow! I want this student to come here!”? According to Bowden, there are basically two things these colleges want to see for a successful application.

The number one thing is Excellence. As Bowden put it, these colleges are looking for students who have “academically plastered the ceiling.” That is, they have taken advantage of every academic possibility, gotten straight A’s (or close to it), and made it look easy. They have taken as many advanced classes as possible (for example, calculus is practically a requirement to get into somewhere like MIT or Caltech), and still have time and energy left over for sports, community service, and other extracurricular activities.

Bowden said that colleges continue to stress that test scores, such as the SAT or ACT, are not the biggest factor, but don’t kid yourself--the colleges do look at them and they are important in the overall selection process. Test scores are particularly important in the case of applications from homeschoolers, because colleges are looking for some external evaluations of the students. This can include SAT/ACT scores, AP or SAT subject matter tests, grades in classes taken at community colleges or other outside educational providers, etc.

On the other hand, Bowden states that the colleges do take into consideration the life circumstances of the applicants when considering their performance. Students who come from a more challenging background--for example, those born into a non-English speaking family or one with no college graduates, or someone whose socio-economic level is such that they had to work long hours to help support the family--can have a less perfect GPA or test score. However, students from well-to-do and educated families who have attended private schools all their lives had better maintain a pretty-close-to-the-top level of academic performance.

But outstanding academic performance is not enough for these colleges. The second thing the college is looking for is something about you that is Extraordinary. Your application must demonstrate there is something about you that is deep, valuable, and unique--something that you, and you alone, will bring to their freshman student mix. Colleges look for students who have discovered their passion and have explored and committed to that passion in a meaningful way. Also, colleges like signs that you have grappled with and overcome adversity in some way. It doesn’t have to be a socio-economic and/or poor family background factor, although those can be strong ones. It can also be dealing with health or learning issues, challenging yourself to your limits in some way (academically, physically, psychologically, etc.), or mastering the subject or activity that DIDN’T come easily to you. Ideally, this kind of thing will be reflected not only in your information about school and extracurricular activities, but also in the personal essay you write for your application.

For those of us homeschooling, Bowden said that this is an area in which our kids could have an advantage. The flexibility of the homeschool schedule opens up opportunities for our students to be involved in internships or important projects, etc., in a way that students who are in school all day just can’t do. So homeschooling teens should make sure to take advantage of that to take on something personally meaningful and significant to them that will help their application stand out!

Finally, Bowden pointed out that this overcoming obstacles and/or significant accomplishment has to be something “real” for the student. The idea is not just to have something that looks good to colleges. The real value of taking on a challenge and overcoming it is that students grow and become better, more mature people. The fact that they are better people makes the college want them, not the project per se. And even if they don’t get into a top tier college, they still have created value for themselves through their personal growth. This is an area, Bowden warns, in which parents can either help or hinder their students. It is great when parents support their children in taking on meaningful and calculated risks. Some parents, however, try to protect their children from these kinds of things--which can be scary and painful to go through--and thus rob them of an opportunity to grow.

What About Letters of Recommendation?

Another component of the application packet are letters of recommendations from an adult outside the family who knows the student well. Here, Bowden had a quote that was probably my favorite line of the evening. When talking about these letters, Bowden stated, “They can’t be just good. They can’t even be glowing. They have to be INCANDESCENT.” So pick the people who write your letters of recommendations carefully. Bowden suggests that you ask them if they can write you a strong recommendation, and give them a way to decline if the letter is not going to be... incandescent. Also, make sure to include letters from different perspective--that is, not ALL academic references or ALL extra-curricular references.

There were many other little tidbits and pieces of advice given over the 90 minute workshop, but those were the major categories we covered. It was really a wonderful session, because it is so helpful to hear this information from an insiders perspective. I found it so valuable that I asked Bowden’s permission to post a synopsis of his comments on the web for others to read as well, which he graciously provided.

Many thanks to Mr. Bowden for sharing his expertise with us all!

Amococo: The Junction of Art, Math, Science, and Imagination

uminaria by Architects of Air.  This is our second visit to a luminarium, and we have found it to be such a truly awe-inspiring experience that all I can say if one ever comes close to where you live, make sure you go see it.

The luminaria are vast, colorful walk-through labyrinths of intense color and pure light, all contained by the most gossamer of vinyl walls.  They are based on the technology of bouncy houses, but instead of creating a bouncy kid frenzy, they become fantasy mazes that are beautiful and meditative.  They are so inspired by Arabic architecture, so there are some tessellations and almost opt-art effects along with the almost psychedelic colored mazes.

Words totally don't do these exhibits justice, and even pictures can't really present the wonder-filled experience.  But here are some of my favorite pictures from the current Raleigh exhibit, which is called Amococo:

Is it science fiction?

Or following a white rabbit?

Maybe there will be a hobbit in the next section...

Optical illusions

Capturing the rainbow

Hope to see you at Amococo!

In Raleigh, the exhibit will run this today and tomorrow from 11-7 in conjunction with Artsplosure.  It costs $5 per person, but I think it is well worth the money...we spent an hour and a half there.  If you don't live by Raleigh, well, then I hope there will be one visiting a location by you soon.

Earth Day Blog Hop

In addition to the book giveaway and webinar on teaching hands-on science that I am holding in honor of Earth Day 2011, I've decided to extend our celebration of Earth Day by hosting my first blog hop.  If you aren't familiar with a blog hop, it is a group blogging event in which a number of different blogs all agree to do posts on the same theme or topic.  Each blog posts not only its blog post on the subject, but also the list of the other blogs who are participating as well.  The idea is that each blog's set of readers can check out the posts of the other blogs as well, getting different perspectives on the theme as well as being introduced to some new blogs.

If you are a blogger and would like to participate, here is what you need to do:

1.  Between now and Earth Day 2011, which is April 22, create a post relating to Earth Day on your blog.  It should be a post that discusses Earth Day from the regular perspective of your blog.  So, for example, if you have an artistic blog, it could be an Earth Day art piece; if you write a current events or political blog, it could be news about Earth Day; and if you work or parent preschoolers, it could be about how your little ones are celebrating Earth Day.

2.  Once you have created your post, add it to the Linky Tools list at the bottom of this page.  Linky Tools is a great piece of software that makes your link appear not only on my page, but it will also update the list on any other blog that has copied the code onto their site.

3.  So, after you have added your link, you need to copy the list to your blog so that your readers can see all the other Earth Day posts.  The following are the instructions about how to do that.

To add the links to your blog, copy this code for Blogger blogs:

<script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=84371" type="text/javascript"></script>

Or this one for free WordPress blogs:

<script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=84371" type="text/javascript"></script>

and paste into your blog, using the Edit HTML tool.

4. Finally, you get to add this lovely button to your blog to indicate you are participating in the Earth Day Blog Hop.


Copy and paste the following code into your HTML editor in order to have the button appear on your website:

<a href="http://teachingyourmiddleschooler.blogspot.com/2011/04/earth-day-blog-hop.html"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdi1ubtJGdh7qqSqTuGs53ScjktgHni_cAUIRTr3l1Hwpt7Nfcfm092mGO7_dbz5Mr1aHaM7Bqq7CMLuTV-JXUl1zvIOo-V5ij6JErYrg1mZBHlodJd5M_9RzrYd0odj8-PVtiGMzpJg/s1600/EarthDayButton.jpg" />
</a>

And that's it!  You will be an official member of the Earth Day Blog Hop.

We have a few people already lined up for this blog hop, including Maria of Natural Math and Michelle of Homeschool Literature and Pandahoneybee's Homeschooling Adventure.  But we would love to have lots more bloggers join us!  Let's focus some blogging attention on Earth Day to remind us all of ways we can do more to appreciate and protect our planet.

Applications to Be a 2011 JASON National Argonaut Due February 28

The JASON Project, a science, math, and engineering education program geared to middle schoolers that I've mentioned before in my blog for their fantastic curricular resources, is accepting applications for students who want to be 2011 JASON National Argonauts. In this highly competitive program, students spend up to 10 days in the summer working in the field with professional scientists investigating some real topic in oceanography. The rest of the year, they work with The JASON Project through speaking engagements, podcasts, posts on forums, and such. All travel, equipment, food and boarding, and other expenses of participating (and the field experiences are international) are paid by JASON.

To be eligible, students must be 14 or 15 by June 1, 2011. However, if you have younger students who may want to apply in the future, I suggest you check out the application now. Students have to show great promise in math or science, as well as demonstrating a good academic and community service background. However, they are also looking for students to have some physical skills, including swimming, snorkling, diving, rock climbing, and the like. So if you are serious about applying for this program, you could spend the time until you are old enough working on some of those experiences to help you be a more competitive candidate.

The information about applying is on the JASON website (you will have to create an account in order to access it, I believe). You can also address additional questions to argo@jason.org. The application deadline is February 28, 2011.

Good luck to anyone who applies. Make you that you let us know if you make it!

Middle School Minorities Achievement Gap in Math and Its Effect on College Success

On an email loop of my friend Maria's Natural Math community, there is a discussion going on right now about some research that taking advanced math, particularly calculus, in high school leads to greater success in science classes in college.  But I think the path to calculus in high school begins earlier, particularly with the math instruction students get in middle schools.  And several articles or reports published lately suggest that advanced math instruction in middle schools is problematic for many ethnic minorities, particularly African-American males.

One great example of this, I think, came from a recent article in The Washington Post about the school many publications list as the best public high school in the country, the magnet Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County (outside Washington DC).  While the school is almost universally lauded for the quality and subsequent success of its graduates, it has come under fire recently for the low percentage of black and Hispanic students, despite several years of a concerted minority outreach and recruitment program.  While blacks and Hispanics represent about one third of all students in the surrounding public schools, they make up only 4% of the TJ population.  Approximately 90% of students are Asian or white (with Asians accounting for a slight majority of that number), while the remaining students categorize themselves as "multi-racial."

The school's explanation for such a dramatic under-enrollment of blacks and Hispanics?  One of the pre-requisites for applying to Thomas Jefferson is that the student passed Algebra in middle school.  School officials claim that there is not a large pool of black or Hispanic middle school students with Algebra already under their belts from which they can recruit.  So should Thomas Jefferson drop that requirement for underrepresented minorities, or should the area middle schools do a better job of getting more of those students through Algebra?  (For comparison, the state-wide magnet program at the the residential North Carolina School for Math and Science has about a 10% black, 3% Hispanic, and 1% Native American population; that high school strongly recommends, but does not require, Algebra.)

This issue has been under a lot of discussion here in Wake County, because recent data shows that in previous years, where teacher recommendations were a major factor in admittance to advanced math classes, Asian and white students were admitted to Algebra at much higher rates than other minorities.  In 2008, over half of all test-qualified white or Asian students were enrolled in Algebra 1 in 8th grade, while among black and Hispanic students with similar test scores, only 40% went on to Algebra.  Things were even worse in 2006, where only 19% of high-scoring black male students were placed into advanced math.  This led to a policy change this year where students were placed into math classes purely on math scores, rather than considering teacher recommendations (although the effects won't begin to show up in Algebra until next year, because they still have a requirement for students to complete pre-algebra before entering the Algebra 1 class).  For a detailed analysis of this data, see the article entitled "Math Placement and Institutional Racism in Wake County Schools?" on the excellent blog "Barbara's Take on Wake."

It will be interesting to see the data in a couple years about what happens with this policy change.  Is it really true, as Barbara suggests, that the WCPSS has institutional racism in terms of minorities in math?  Or do the teachers know something that the test scores don't show?  Of course, if we refused to allow failure and gave minority students additional time, if necessary, to complete such classes, that might be the best of both worlds.  But as my blog posts ofNovember 14  and November 21 demonstrate, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

But this only deals with the under-represented minorities who are actually scoring well on their math tests.  According to a recent study by the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation's largest urban school districts, among the urban school systems participating in the study, only about 12% of black males tested at or above the Proficient level in 8th grade math; at least 50% of 8th grade urban black males scored below the Basic level.  According to CGCS, this eventually leads to black men accounting for only 5% of all college students in 2008.

I don't know the answer to all this.  But it is a troubling question to examine.

Plans for the NC Museum of Natural Sciences New Research Center

As I discussed in a previous post, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is building an addition that will house new educational, research, and exhibition areas to help visitors understand how science has developed the scientific knowledge it has attained.  While there are all sorts of exciting plans in the works--multimedia presentations, interactive displays, and working state-of-the-art labs, particularly exciting for those of us with middle schoolers students and above are the possible of expanded educational programs that can go into greater depth about some of science's most pressing issues.

Today we got a preview of some of the plans under development from one of the Museum's educational staff.  First, the bad news:  the new facility will probably not be operational until 2012.  They expect to complete construction by late 2011, but preparing the exhibits and laboratories will take additional time.  In particular, there has to be a "settling in" period of some months that will allow dust, particles, or other cast-offs of the construction materials to clear the air before they can bring in the sensitive computer and laboratory equipment that will outfit the building.

However, once things get underway, they expect to be running educational programs in several different labs.  The labs specifically mentioned were a macrobiology lab, a microbiology lab, and a digital visualization lab that will specialize in helping us to understand how all the data scientists collect can be displayed in a visual way so that humans can actually understand it.  It sounds like these labs will come complete with fantastic microscopes and other equipment that will allow a small class to have hands-on experience with some advanced science topics.

So we still have to be patient for a little while.  However, particularly for those of us in the Raleigh area, it seems like this will be a great addition to our children's access to high-quality hands-on science education.  Also, for those of us who homeschool, the Museum is definitely open to and enthusiastic about working with homeschoolers to make sure their new offerings help meet our needs for the kinds of hands-on laboratory science that prepares our students for college.

Science Olympiad Openings for Wake and Johnston County NC High Schoolers

It's not too late to become involved with Science Olympiad!  We have room for 10 more homeschooled students from Wake and Johnston counties in grades 9 - 12.  The Raleigh Tournament will be held on Saturday, February 5th at Green Hope High School.  The Science Olympiad is a nationwide competition in science. Students can earn medals competing in many different individual events, and their placement contributes to their team's score. Teams who do well at the Regional Competition continue on to the State Competition (held at NCSU April 29 - 30), and then to the National Competition.

The following events are still open:  Astronomy; Bottle Rocket; Disease Detectives; Dynamic Planet; Ecology; Experimental Design; Microbe Mission; Mission Possible; Mousetrap Vehicle; Mystery Architecture; Optics; Remote Sensing; Sounds of Music; and Write It, Do It.  Please click on this link to find out more about these events (scroll to Division C events): http://www.sciencenc.com/events.php#c  Students can compete in up to 4 events.

If you would like more information, please contact Teresa LaFond: ojmom_2000@yahoo.com or 919-460-7365.

Science Education Resource for High Schoolers Coming Soon

I had a really special  opportunity this evening for some advanced information about the new science education wing being built adjoining the North Carolina  Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh (affectionately called "the dinosaur museum" by many local families due to the rooftop glass dome where pterosaurs can be seen circling the fierce Acrocanthosaurus fossil known as the "Terror of the South).  The new section, currently called the Natural Resources Center (although that name may change), is an 80,000 square foot addition that will house labs, interactive exhibits, live presentations, and classes geared towards middle school students and up.    There will be a four-story, round multimedia presentation area called The Daily Planet that will introduce visitors to science research and topical scientific discoveries.

As explained by the museum staff, the existing museum was designed to answer "What Do We Know About Science?"  The new component will answer a different question:  "How Do We Know It?"  The new center will give students a chance to really delve into the meat of scientific inquiry through classes and interactive labs that let them use real lab equipment to collect data, make predictions, and find out results of current scientific investigations.

Another facet of the new building is that it is designed and being constructed with the latest in green technologies.  We were fortunate enough to get to hear from the architect about how the floor plans had been designed to maximize natural lighting (through windows with super-efficient glass, so that they save energy costs as well as let in light), how the rainwater will be collected and recycled to flush toilets and water plants, and how environmentally-friendly building materials are coming from local sources, saving transportation costs of the supplies.

For more information on the facility, or to see the architects' drawings and visualizations, visit their website at:http://naturalsciences.org/nature-research-center/how-do-we-know.

It looks like it will be a fantastic place for people from all over to visit, but those of us who live in the area will be particularly fortunate to have such a cutting edge learning and research facility easily available to our children