Snacks4theBrain!

S4theB! episode 71 is in the can, just not opened yet. Other priorities at the Center for Science Outreach have kept me busy these past few Mondays, and this coming Monday I’ll be sitting on the beach in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico with my family. Can you wait another week? I’m quite sure you can! Here is my solid promise: come mid-June, you’ll have another tasty treat from Snacks4theBrain!

Meanwhile, keep a lookout for my personal/professional blog at scottmerrick.net, and get on over to the Summer Teacher Workshops page at the CSO to sign up for my week-long Web 2.0 for Us! workshop July 21-25 (if you’re anywhere near Nashville, Tennessee!!!).

You can also check out a great little “Member Profile” at ISTE’s “Learning and Leading with Technology” print magazine, online, and follow the development of my “SLedupotential: Educational Potential of Second Life and Virtual Worlds” 3 hour workshop at NECC2008, June 30 in San Antonio, Texas.

Hasta luego!

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The Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach recently commissioned a brief video to share out the work being done at the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, and I’m pleased to share it with you, right here, right now.

The video was the painstaking work of a talented videographer from Atlanta, Georgia named Amy Cornett (Heartsong Productions), and I’d like to thank her. Download the podcast, Snacks4theBrain! episode 70, here, or click on the “Links” link in the navigation menu to open up your very own Podcast Pickle Player to listen.

Last episode I broke out the friend-music with a song from edgy Alternative rock meister Ross Falzone, a dear friend who drove the establishment of a High School level podcasting class at my school, University School of Nashville. I also shared out a song from friend Rocky Alvey’s new “Blackberry Jam (with other Fresh Ingredients)” CD on his new recording label “Muddy Sunshine.” I share another one each from each of these talented guys this week, Ross’s “Low-Fat Blues” and Rocky’s “It’s Just Me.” I know you’ll like ‘em!

And (drumroll please) watch the video!

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The 69th episode of S4theB! features a brief interview with Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach Program Manager Jennifer Ufnar, a talented, energetic environmental microbiologist who oversees grant-writing projects at the CSO and helps manage all kinds of things for this tight-knit, dedicated staff. Dr. Ufnar is chatting today about the Summer Science Institute offered this coming July at the Vanderbilt CSO. From the CSO website at scienceoutreach.org:

The Research Tools for Secondary Science Educators workshop invites secondary science teachers into Vanderbilt science laboratories for four one-week sessions. These interconnected workshops, funded by Tennessee’s Improving Teacher Quality program, will focus on science and technology content and tools for the classroom. Each of the first three weeks will focus on a different scientific discipline, one each on physics, chemistry, biology, with the fourth week covering technology tools. Each of the first three workshops are open to 25 teachers, while the technology workshop will be open to only 15 teachers.

In episode 69, Dr. Ufnar charmingly outlines some interesting details about the four weeks. They are intriguingly interwoven with leading edge content and each one promises invaluable learning, as well as a teacher stipend, for gosh sakes! Heck, I usually have to pay to take workshops! These experiences pay the attendees!

One of those workshops is mine, and you can get a glimmer of how that’ll go by my description in the podcast, and also by visiting my own little wiki-based site at ScottWeb2.0. It’ll be fun, and it’s limited to only 15 teachers, so drop on into the CSO website, download an application and get signed up! If you are thinking about hosting my week long workshop at your own school or district, contact me at scottgardnermerrick@gmail.com. There’s still time, but hurry!

Music this show is from two of my very good friends, alt-rocker Ross Falzone and Americana-folk newcomer Rocky Alvey. Some fab hammered dulcimer work from Snacks favorite Jamie Janover underscores some of the show’s narrative, courtesy of Magnatune.com. Support creativity outside the traditional box: Go visit these sites and buy independent creations!

Upload Snacks4theBrain! episode 69 here, or simply click the “Links” link up top and listen in your browser via the Podcast Pickle Player!

See you at the Research Tools Summer Institute!

Cheerio!

Dr. Ufnar’s picture courtesy of the University of Mississippi’s faculty profile page at
http://www.usm.edu/biology/faculty/Faculty_Profile_Jennifer_A_Ufnar.htm

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Hello and welcome to S4theB episode 68! This episode steps out of the box and into the virtual world of Second Life. I’m going to take you, dear listener, into the metaverse.

Second Life is a computer-facilitated world, yes, a world, and as such its content embraces more than virtual play, virtual music, virtual art, and virtual anything-else-you-can-name. I’m not going to attempt to define it, because you just have to go see it yourself. If you’re over the age of 18 you may do so at secondlife.com, and if you’re in the 13 through 17 age group, the place for you is teen.secondlife.com, where no one over the age of 17 is allowed without a thorough FBI-style background check.

Second Life is just one of dozens of versions of parallel realities being developed by companies who are convinced that the 3Di, or the 3 Dimensional internet, represents to our global culture a development as profound and innovative as the invention and adoption of the web browser. This week, for example, I’m taking part in a “What’s Missing?” summit, two days of exploration by invited participants inside IBM’s ActiveWorlds, the men in blue’s version of parallel reality. Over 350 educators and businesspeople have registered to discuss the future of the 3Di and its “leveraging for learning.”

I’ve been exploring Second Life for going on three years now. Since its launch in 2003, the science-fiction inspired brainchild of Phillip Rosedale, former Chief Technology Officer of RealNetworks (see this interview at Inc.com), Second Life has seen millions of users from every continent on the rw (that’s “real world”) earth, at least login and try it. A useful piece of data is the actual logins at any time. Right this minute, as I type this script at SL time (US Pacific–the servers hosting SL are housed in San Francisco, CA) 4:37, there are, let’s see: 40,705 “residents” online at this very minute. That’s a number featured on the login page at the SL website at secondlife.com.

How would you like that many people in your store?

Well, it’s not actually a store, though it is literally full of places to spend (and earn) real money. The Linden Exchange offers daily metrics about demographics and economics, where I see that that at this writing the average rate of exchange for Lindens to Dollars yesterday was 268.15 Lindens to the dollar. The actual rate of exchange held stable at 265 L$ per $ and there were, get this, 73,382,620 Lindens exchanged. I’m no math genius so I break out my Windows calculator to do the math: that looks like 24,460,873 US dollars exchanged. Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008. Yesterday. In one day. Let me say that again. 24,460,873 US dollars exchanged.

Still thinking this isn’t an important phenomenon?

Let’s look at some demographics–

Last Updated: Thursday, February 14, 2008
Reflects data through midnight, February 13.

——————————————————————————–
Population
Residents Logged-In During Last 7 Days 487,746
Residents Logged-In During Last 14 Days 648,681
Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days 935,326
Residents Logged-In During Last 60 Days 1,369,715
Total Residents 1 12,470,805

I begin our little tour by using SL’s search feature, clicking on the “Places” tab, and entering the term “science.” After a brief moment as the data does its data thing, I am rewarded with 76 returns on my query. The SL search engine orders its results by traffic, or how many avatars have spent at least 5 minutes in its virtual space, it’s “sim” (short for simulator). Ranking returns in this way gives and off-the-cuff indication of how popular a location is. Let’s just look at the top 5 of these today, and you can go in and explore for yourself anytime!

Sorting through the search results I see that the top returns are a mix of legitimate science sites, some of which I’ve never visited, and commercial sims that have most likely manipulated their traffic to appear high in the search results. Ignoring those, I visit in this episode two of the top 5 results, the College of Scripting, Music, and Science and Elon University, “a sandbox for science and math education, a charter member of the SciLands, and home of the Apollo 11 moon sim.” Come with me as I discover these two science resources and add them to my growing list of places to revisit in Second Life. Of particular interest is the simulation at Elon that strives to educate its visitors about our Carbon Emissions footprints!

By the way, NPR’s popular Science Friday is also hosted live in Second Life. I’ve been to one of these inworld and wow, take a look at the number of avatars present for this one!

After this podcast was boxed and ready to publish, I revisited Elon and took in the Apollo 11 build. There’s a video of that experience, sort of a little bonus for blog readers (heck, you deserve something for getting this far!), located at the Second Life video social network at http://sleducation.ning.com.

Music this episode is from our friends at Magnatune, where internationally renowned independent musicians offer you their music for a price you may set yourself! We have a Dutch percussionist and a Slovakian bassist for you today, just to keep the global them a’runnin’.

Listen to S4theB! episode number 68 here, or click “Links” above and use the Podcast Pickle Player to listen whilst you continue your other 2D internet work or play!

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Cue the ominous music. Then read this, from the desk of the National Institutes of Health Director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni. If you’re not in a clicking and reading mood, here’s an excerpt:

You may have read the recent news stories about the disappointing performance of U.S. students on an international science and math exam. The future of biomedical research and the health of this nation both hinge on getting young people excited about science and health. Unfortunately, too many of them are leaving school without the analytical skills they need to be successful in today’s economy, much less to become competitive researchers. Here at NIH, we are taking a multifaceted approach to engaging students from diverse populations in science and inspiring some of them to choose careers in research. However, there is only so much that we can do from Bethesda. Our best hope for making a broad impact on the children of this nation would be to have a grassroots movement of scientists across the country, rallying for improved science education in their own communities.

Zerhouni, E. (January 2008). Special Editioni on Science Education, Retrieved January 21, 2008, from http://www.nih.gov/about/director/newsletter/January2008.htm

Now. Cut the ominous music. Sit back, relax, and listen to some good news on this front!

Howdy. I’m sittin’ in the little conference room at 805 Light Hall in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center doing a little post-production on a digital audio file I recorded on my Dell Axim pocket PC just this morning. It’s Martin Luther King Day, and I’ve just run downstairs to have a brief but fun chat with three of the most talented young people I know–Kimberly McCue, Chris Vanags, and Angela Eeds–each a PhD in a challenging field of science, and, collectively, the faculty of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt. You can learn more about the school by visiting its website at http://theschool.vanderbilt.edu.

What I want to share with you in Snacks4theBrain! episode 67 is the exhuberance and excitement the three key players in this amazing and already successful project bring to their everyday work. Along with their extensive amalgam of experience, they also bring enthusiasm and a sense of humor to the unique weekly experiences of their lucky charges. I’ll start off with some electronica from Magnatune.com, a frisky piece called “Entry” from the Slovakian artist, “Cargo Cult.”