Snacks4theBrain!

This past Wednesday, May 13, I trotted on over from my work at University School of Nashville to watch a presentation from one of the 6 groups of 3 School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt sophomores. This was the culminating session from self-directed, teacher-guided, out-in-the-field research projects, and as you’ll hear when Isaiah details what was at stake as a result of the assessment of their presentations, they were all very much into making things clear and accessible.

I watched a fun 20 minute presentation from one group, and I was relieved to see that the students were being videotaped. Perhaps we can share some more of these projects in future Snacks! I asked Dr. Chris Vanags if I could interview a group, and he graciously sent Ashleigh, Cindy, and Isiah my way. We moved over into the snack room and chatted for about 10 minutes. These are ten minutes I want to share with you. I think you’ll agree that these 16 year-olds are well on their way to lifelong learning in science, and I would say from talking with them that their self-confidence and grasp of the important concepts is exceptional. It speaks to the quality of the program a the School, which brings 25 Metro Nashville Public School high school students at each grade level to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center for hands-on research and learning one day a week, the entire academic year. I want to reiterate what I’ve mentioned here before: the rest of their public schooling does not go away, get excused, or do itself. These kids work and work hard, and they will deserve the diploma notation they receive when they graduate from their respective high schools upon completion of their senior year.

Before we get started, let’s hear some summer themed music, this time beautifully produced indie alternative rock from a project called SUPERCREEP, the brainchild of New Jersey rocker Jody Delli Santi, fresh from the podcast music network at music.podshow.com. Go visit their MySpace site and buy some SUPERCREEP! After the interview, please allow me to introduce the Dutch band Zamarro, who’ve been together 13 years without a change in band members and how come this is the first time I’ve heard of them. Maybe it’s that they’re from Switzerland? I swear, if I didn’t podcast my music education would definitely suffer! They’ll rock us outta here with a pounding hello summertime rendition of their “Off We Go.” That one’s for my son Colin…

Whilst I’m at it, I bet you haven’t seen the April 24 Vanderbilt Health News item about the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt. No? Well here!

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’!

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 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

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

On Monday, October 1st, the freshman class at the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt visited the Harpeth River, at a beautiful stretch of its snakelike path through Davidson County and Middle Tennessee. The yellow Metro Nashville Public School bus pulled into picnic shelter number 11 at the beautiful Edwin Warner Park, located just a few miles from the School’s lab at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Light Hall.

The students were out for a field trip with the intention of gathering data to assess the health of the stream. They were learning to use all manner of field instruments–digital levels, digital pH probes, GPS devices, and scientific magnifier lenses–and how to record and interpret the readings and observations from those instruments in meaningful ways. They also used their hands and their feet, “kick seining,” stirring up the stream to capture macroinvertebrates and capturing downstream-bound critters in a fine mesh sein, or net. The collected debris from these efforts was transferred into glass petrie dishes, where careful observation would identify the inhabitants of this watery evirons–would they be only the sort of creatures that could survive in polluted environments, or would they find more sensitive, delicate species that would indicate the river is satisfactorily healthy? Well, final interpretation of findings would have to wait until later, when all the data would be compiled back at the lab. For this episode of S4theB! you’re out here on the river with the students, listening in on the process.

The voices you hear will be those of students, their talented teachers, and the occasional crow, along with that of Pat Holiday, retired USGS ranger and geologist (and also Brittainy’s grandfather!). You’ll also be treated to two very nice bites of wonderful music, “The River,” and “Fire Dance,” from Jesse Manno. You can pick up these songs or the entire album, “Sea Spirits,” for a song at Magnatune.com! Alrighty, stalwart listeners, listen up right here or click “Links” up top to use the Podcast Pickle player at the site!!!

And BONUS!!! here’s a slideshow of pictures from the river visit: