Snacks4theBrain!

I’ve finally gone off the deep end, you say. What has sword swallowing got to do with science? Well, turns out, lots!

I attended and (sort of) presented about Health Care resources in Second Life on May 30 at HealthCamp Nashville, held on the campus of David Lipscomb University here in Nashville. If you are interested in the resources I compiled for that presentation you may access them at WallWisher, a Web 2.0 platform for easily collaborating on a topic. I’m not here to talk about my presentation, though, rather to share one of those interesting ways that life can surprise you with fascinating new learning if you’re open to that sort of thing.

The subject at hand is sword swallowing.

HealthCamp Nashville was set up around social/professional networking tools. In fact, I’d become aware of it through Twitter, my tech/teaching/innovation mainstay. The presentations were set up so that each presenter only had 20 minutes, with 5 more to share q and a, then 5 minutes to set up for the next presenter.

I was checking out my presentation room, the “Yellow Room.” Now, the conference had registered 150 or so attendees but only 40 or 50 showed up. Still, I wanted to do the best I could, so I decided to watch a couple presentations in the same room. I “live-blogged” it with CoverItLive and you can read about Larry Lin’s excellent presentation on Healthcare opportunities in China by visiting my personal blog at scottmerrick.net. Toward the end of Larry’s session, a tall, fit looking fellow with long blonde hair entered the room with a bag of swords. He listened attentively and when it was his turn he eased up to the front of the room.

Now, Lin’s presentation had only been experienced by about a half-dozen in the audience. Most of those filtered out in the interim and I was left with only Tim, the session timekeeper (you know, the guy with the two large cards that say “5″ and “1″ that he uses to help keep the sessions on schedule). To the new presenter’s relief, others filtered in and pretty soon we had four or five in the audience. Others came in as the twitter stream hashed #hcn09 seeped out the news that something extraordinary was going on in the Yellow Room.

I wished that I had recorded Dan’s presentation, all built around his 2006 scholarly paper published by the British Medical Journal, “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects.” The paper garnered Meyer a coveted (or not:) Ig Nobel award in 2007. These awards are given annually for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced,” and are currently announced annually a Harvard University venue to great fanfare. I actually featured Ig Nobel awards ‘way back in podcast number 47 of S4theB!. Just to give you some idea of the company Meyer keeps with this award, here’s the list of 2007 award winners (from Wikipedia):

Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people’s beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavour from cow dung.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can’t distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played backward.
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study into indexing entries that start with the word “the”.
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people’s appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.
Peace: The United States Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a “gay bomb,” which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.

You get the idea. I was prepared to scoff.

As I watched and listened, something remarkable happened: I was enthralled! Meyer had certainly done his research, and the paper was well-written and fit the mold of every academic paper I’ve read over the years. This man is a good communicator. The president of Sword Swallower’s Internationsl, he’s also, indisputably, a master of sword swallowing, as the video in this post demonstrates.

I talked with Dan after his presentation, told him that I wished I’d recorded his presentation, and incredibly, he handed me the mini-DVD tape that had recorded his 20 minute presentation. I’ll cut the audio as he prepares to do his demonstration, and you can finish with the video at blogs.vanderbilt.edu/s4theb/ !!! Here’s a link to Dan’s excellent website.

And here’s a link to the YouTube video I shot at the presentation!

Music for this show comes from Podsafe Music Network instrumentalist and composer Jean Miquel, working out of Montreal, Quebec and sharing with us his “The Sword of Fire” composition, right in line with Dan Meyer’s predilection for suspenseful music. Dan’s presentation follows!

Snacks4theBrain! episode 84 is right here, or truck on over to iTunes and subscribe!

More links!
Dan’s Twitter account @Halfdan
Dan is available to speak at science/medical events at http://tr.im/scimed
Dan’s “Have Sword Will Travel” podcasts on Itunes
Sword Swallowers Association International
Sword Swallowing x-rays www.swordswallow.com/xrays.php
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Meyer_(performer)
Ig Nobel awards: http://www.improbable.com/ig/

At the request of my wonderful Center for Science Outreach Director Dr. Virginia Shepherd and with the blessing of School for Science and Math Director Dr. Glenn McCombs, a dozen or so staff and faculty from both institutions gathered for an hour in the School’s classroom on the Vanderbilt University campus to witness my best shot at explaining why I think Second Life (and by extension Virtual Worlds) have a great deal to offer for teaching and learning.

I started off by welcoming the assembled and introducing a guest, Digital Collections Archivist at the Vanderbilt University Library, and archivist for its DiscoverArchive.

Then I proceeded a bit unconventionally (no, not moi!) by viewing most of the ten minute ISTE in Second Life video that describes how that 85,000 member International Society for Technology in Education built a virtual community (of over 4,000 members, at current count) inside the 3D platform of Second Life, after which I launched into my Powerpoint presentation. True to Murphy’s Law, I failed to hit record on my little Olympus voice recorder until we were discussing the Peggy Sheehy slide, so I will append this dialog to the beginning of my very first “Slidecast” at Slideshare.net. This’ll be a long ‘un, so take from it what you will, and my hope is that it remains as a resource for innovative educators for a good while to come.

NEW! Here’s the Slidecast RIGHT HERE!

I’ll also be glad to travel with this show or one like it, upon delivery of a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills (just kidding).

Okay, if you want the full experience, visit the link to the ISTE video in the Episode 80 blog post at blogs.vanderbilt.edu/s4theb and watch it, then pop on into the slidecast. Settle back with a bowl of popcorn and let the ‘cast cast it’s spell.

THE LOST NARRATION

I believe that there are two kinds of people: 1) the kind who say there are two kinds of people, and 2) the others. I hope I am in set number 2. That said, I have in recent years noticed a clear dichotomy in the world between people who readily latch onto the value and potentials of online Virtual Worlds and those who pretty much refuse to entertain the possiblilty. There is also, thankfully, a broad spectrum in between those two camps. Hopefully, sharing this with you will help you sort things out for yourself and your school or business.

There is more text in this presentation than I would like there to be, but I include it because it’s important. Feel free to multitask as you will by reading as I’m blabbering.

TechTipTidbit comes to you via the COMPUTER TIP OF THE WEEK from Dr T — RTemlak4dds@aol.com, in turn by permission from the CompletelyFreeSoftware online newsletter.

Finally, the lovely music that plays you out of the episode is from master guitarist David Modica, courtesy of Magnatune.com (”We are not evil!”) and just one of the absorbing tracks on his beautiful CD, available at Magnatune, “Acoustic Earth, Electric Sky.” Thanks, David!

Download S4theB! episode 80 here!

Hello ya’ll, and yes, we’re looking at episode number 79 of S4theB! I’m lacing this podcast with some really nice acoustic and electric guitar music from Oregonian David Modica, purchased at one of my favorite sources for music, Magnatune.com. You can name your own price for music there, did you know that? Think of it as Priceline for tunes!

The listen today, in addition to the fabulous guitar grooves, is the second half of sophomore presentations from the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach’s “Vanderbilt School for Science and Math,” a thriving boost to the Metro Nashville Public Schools’ learning resources that brings 25 high school students to the Vanderbilt University campus one day a week, each, for hands-on, research-grounded, lab-based schooling. You can learn more about the School for Science and Math at its website, theschool.vanderbilt.edu. By the way, in episode 80, I promise we’ll have a Tech Tip tidbit! Due to some longer content lately, I’ve neglected to add those into the mix, an omission I plan to remedy next show, when Snacks4theBrain! turns OCTEGENARIAN!

Let’s get right into this. I need to hear more David Modica. I’ll lead into the presentations with Modica’s “By Your Side,” then afterwards I’ll serve up his haunting version of “Scarbourough Fair.” If you don’t leave with a smile on your face, I’ll refund your money.

Just kidding…

Download S4theB! episode 79 right here, or click Links in the toolbar at top and open up a Podcast Pickle player for quick listenin’!

Greetings, Snackers!

For the week of July 21 through July 24 (that would be the first four days of that week), I helped six incredibly wonderful public school teachers (a broad range of grade levels in Metro Nashville Public Schools) dip their learning toes into the rapid-running river of dialog and information that is Web 2.0.

In a reprise/refinement of the week-long workshop I crafted and delivered for teachers at my own school last year, we spent our time looking at blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, micro-blogging, and VOIP/videoconferencing. The last half of the last day we spent in Second Life, the online virtual 3D metaverse that is becoming the “go-to” place for 24/7 online personal/professional networking. Our heads were spinning around by the end of each day, and one great upshot of it all may be a full four weeks of this kind of intense learning and exploration for teachers next summer.

While that remains to be seen, there’s matter herein that remains to be heard! Pop on over to your favorite podcast aggregator, or click here to download episode 73. Wait! You have another option! Click “Links” in the topbar and open up our very own Podcast Pickle Player and you can listen right here whilst you surf the Web for those cool shoes you’ve been shopping for.

Stay on through the very end of the episode: Blues-rocker Chris Juergensen’s band “Big Bad Sun” has a great song for you, “Sweet Melissa,” and no, it’s not a cover of the Allman Brothers’ classic!

As a bit of a bonus, I’d like to embed a brief chat we held during the workshop with the founder of the premier professional learning network (”social” network?) focused on Web 2.0 for education, “Classroom 2.0.” Here is our talk with Steve Hargadon (thanks, Steve!):


Find more videos like this on Classroom 2.0


Links:
VUCSOWeb20forUS! wiki
Jeff Agamenoni’s “From Mr. A to Mr. Z” blog
Skype
Twitter
Magnatune.com
Classroom 2.0

On July 10, 2008, ten School for Science and Math seniors and 19 Research Internship Program (RIP) students presented their summer research at two poster sessions in the north lobby of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Light Hall. Snacks4theBrain was there, amidst the bustling parents, teachers, and medical professionals who came to hear what these immensely talented students had to say.

Because it was so well attended, and because each student was talking at once in the great lobby of the newly renovated Light Hall, there’s a great deal of background noise. This can be experienced by you, the listener, as either really really annoying or really really exciting. I prefer the latter, as I share with you three talented high school students explaining how they spent the last month and a half of their working lives. The human brain wants to make sense of what it senses. Let yours register the joy and excitement of this very impressive morning of results from some of the most innovative science outreach in the nation!

First up? A few words from Tiffany Ellis-Farmer, Summer Research Coordinator for the RIP program. Then you’ll hear, in order of appearance, Hana Erhu, from the Nashville School of the Arts (and the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt), Tagbo Obi from Father Ryan High School, and Loi Hoang from the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt.

Innovative indie rock from Magnatune.com, Texas rocker Arthur Yoria, rounds out the podcast. BTW, I redid the opening welcome. What do you think? Comment here!

Download Episode number 72 of Snacks4theBrain! right here, or click “Links” in the sidebar and listen in our very own Podcast Pickle Player!

There’s also a little slideshow of pics I took at the session. Check them out:

Cheers!

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!

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!

On November 11-14, the annual Conference on Information Technology (CIT) was held at the Renaissance Hotel Conference Center in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. I had caught wind of the event much earlier but hadn’t planned to attend: My one work-sponsored professional development event annually is traditionally the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) put on by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Had enough acronyms!?

Well I have one more for you: NESIM, the Nursing Education Simulator produced by a team at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington and resident in the increasingly popular 3-dimensional virtual “world,” Second Life. The CIT, after all, is an event mounted by the League for Innovation in the Community College (and co-hosted this year by the Tennessee Board of Regents) and if this wasn’t innovation I don’t know what is…

Basically Second Life allows digital representations of people, or “avatars,” to interact in a virtual world where they can fly, dance, chat with either text or digital voice, and just generally do pretty much everything they can do in the real world–plus some (did I say “fly?”). More and more educators are working to exploit the value of the engagement this platform affords participants. John Miller, a full-time professional nurse and a nursing educator at Tacoma Community College, worked with a team of innovators to create a working emergency room clinic where his students can practice those vital professional skills and can make mistakes without dire human results (if an avatar “dies” in Second Life he or she just rematerializes at the site chosen as “home”), quite a win-win situation for both learner and patient, both current and future.

That’s what drew me to the CIT on Monday, November 13, after learning from an announcement in Second Life that the ISTE Island Auditorium would be the site of the “inworld” version of the presentation. What? A local event here in Nashville that would be mirrored in my favorite MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment)? I simply had to go see it.

In testament to the increasing stature of the blogger in today’s world, I emailed the CIT conference organizers with a brief request for a guest pass and it was granted: Thanks to the fine folks at the League for that! The audio you hear in Snacks for the Brain! episode 35 was captured while I helped at the Nashville location as my friend Cathy Walker in Arkansas led the group in Second Life. I have a Flickr stream containing a few snapshots of the presentation and a little video celebration at the Second Life Education Video social network at ning.com. Enjoy those if you think it might help you understand what’s going on!

This podcast is just a snapshot of the session at CIT, and if you would like to learn more about NESIM, visit the information website. For more information on Second Life, you can visit the official site or google “Second Life’ and whatever term in which you are interested. “Second Life and “science,” for example, yields 3,090,000 results–at least today; who knows how many it will return by the time you click on this link!

Music for this episode comes from both Magnatune.com and the Podsafe Music Network, songstress/composer Lisa DeBenedictis’ “The Alternate World Waltz” from the former, the rockin’ Roadside Attraction’s “World of Make Believe” from the latter. Listen up right here or open the S4theB! Podcast Pickle Player to hear on your computer without leaving your browser!

October 29th, students at the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt had the privilege of videoconferencing with Captain Charles Moore and hearing him share his first-hand experience with the horror that is our world’s vast (and only recently discovered) unplanned pit of poisons.

Captain Moore is a sailboat captain. He was recently featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” as the captain of a research vessel investigating what has come to be called the “Garbage Patch” of the Pacific Ocean. This huge area, about the size of the state of Texas, is crowded with debris from our wasteful civilization, one which, according to Cap’n Moore, is pretty much doomed to strangle its own oceans by its profit-motivated culture, in which our most prevalent products are meant to be used once and thrown away. These find their way to just below the surface of the ocean, where they accumulate, float in suspension, and threaten the habitats of increasingly large numbers of living species.

It is noted that debris outweighs living plankton in the area by a factor of 6. mindfully.org goes on to note that “The levels of plastic particulates in the Pacific have at least tripled in the last 10 years and a tenfold increase in the next decade is not unreasonable. Then, 60 times more plastic than plankton will float on its surface.” According to the Institute for Figuring’s website, “a study by the United Nations Environmental Program estimates that in this region there are 46,000 floating pieces of plastic for every square mile of ocean and the trash now circulates to a depth of 30 meters.

Students Dissecting a Bird Bolus

Wow. If that’s not thought-food for these high school freshmen (who had just spent the morning disecting seabird boluses–is that the plural of bolus?–to discover how much plastic waste they had ingested recently), then I don’t know what is. I hope it’s also a healthy brainsnack for you!

Music for this show is from Manitoba’s “Wyrd Sisters,” from the podsafe music network, and “Now is Now,” an acoustic folk-rock trio based out of the state of Maine.

As an extra added bonus, this episode features a Tech Tip Tidbit!that suggests that snacking on YouTube video might be harmful to your computer!?

Download S4theB! 64 right here, or click “Links” above to use the Podcast Pickle Player!

On Monday October 23, the freshman class at the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, settled in their chairs at the lab tables for a chat with with Mark Twickler, director of the National Ice Core Laboratory, to learn about how ice cores are collected and used in scientific research to reveal information about life and climate in past eras. This episode of Snacks4theBrain! will share out from that interaction, in which yours truly also learned some interesting new things, like about the lakes in Antarctica! Think you might be interested in participating in a research trip to the frozen south? Listen to what he says about the selection process…

Thanks to Mark Twickler and to the faculty and students of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, for this tasty morsel of a snack. Music for episode 63 hails from Magnatune.com’s Sun Palace, led by the capable and beautiful vocals of Andriette Redmann.

Download Snacks4theBrain! 63 right here, or click “Links” above to listen with the Podcast Pickle player!

Bonus links:
Polar Planet Palooza, podcasts from the poles.
Water, Water, Everywhere–blogpost by Amanda Dixon