The White House Agrees with us!

I was just reading the Executive Summary of the  Sept 2010 Report to the President by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) called: PREPARE AND INSPIRE:
K-12 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATH (STEM) FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE.   Quoting a portion of Recommendation #4:

Information and computation technology can be a powerful driving force for innovation in education, by improving the quality of instructional materials available to teachers and students,
aiding in the development of high-quality assessments that capture student learning, and accelerating the collection and use of data to provide rich feedback to students, teachers, and schools. Moreover, technology has been advancing rapidly to the point that it can soon play a transformative role in education. Realizing the benefits of technology for K-12 education, however, will require active investments in research and development to create broadly useful technology platforms and well-designed and validated examples of comprehensive, integrated “deeply digital” instructional materials.

To learn more about the National Science Board  report on recommended ways to foster the development of STEM professionals, entrepreneurs, and inventors.

• Read the White House press release and blog on Change the Equation and learn more aboutChange the Equation
• Read the eight-page executive summary of the PCAST report Prepare and Inspire: K–12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s Future
• Read the full report (108 pages)
• Read information on the report at the NSB website
• Members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology talk aboutteachers who inspired them in science (video)

Random notes

John, just ran across more science materials to look at:
http://www.friendlychemistry.com/ - a couple with ten years of offering this course.
Taking Science to School from the NSF.
Pandia Press'  REAL Science plus History Odyssey.

And I was just reading a fun quaint blogsite.
http://www.freelyeducate.com/

Science Education and the Hubble Telescope

Happy birthday, Hubble!

The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 20th birthday and we have some images taken by the iconic space observatory over the past two decades. Arp 148, shown here, is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. This image is part of a collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by Hubble and released on its 18th anniversary.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36698695/ns/technology_and_science-picture_stories/?GT1=43001

My involvement in the Hubble feels very personal. My Dad was a top management guy at NASA who helped push the Hubble from a concept to a fully-funded priority.  At Dad's funeral, the head of NASA told an annecdote how Dad dealt with some proposed changes and upgrades in the Hubble telescope design after it was fully funded by Congress. Essentially, the engineering team felt that the telescope had some design weaknesses and would benefit from (a very expensive) second set of cameras. The head of NASA said that he wasn't going to go to Congress and ask for it but my Dad could if he wanted. He did, he got it, and Hubble's new cameras actually saved the day and were far more reliable and useful than the original set.  

National Level Science Standards

Science standards at the national level are urgently needed:
http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards
They have standards proposed for the Language arts and math area but not so much for other subjects. And their initial work was apparently off-track, way too oriented towards engineering without adequate science.

K-2nd science education looks really cool at Science4Us.com

The Science Project Begins...Again

We are off and running developing the earth-shattering new online interative science curriculum.
Our working title- Science4Us.com.

Science Curriculum Development – K-8th grade - We are starting development on an online K8 science curriculum. The goal is to build a computer-centric online progressive science curriculum informed by the latest research.  Our conceptual foundations:

1. Students can absorb significantly more complexity than is usually offered (Taking Science to School).
2. The science curriculum should be structured around the Big Ideas  (Taking Science to School andNSTA Vision of Science Anchors) with details treated as such.
3. Standards and curriculum should be organized in grade bands rather than by specific grades: K-2nd, 3rd- 5th, middle school, and high school.
4. Students should learn science and scientific method in an integrated process in which they experience the scientific process (Taking Science to School),
5. Scientific study should be inquiry based with significant room for experimentation and failure.
6. A technology-based solution will, in a significant portion of the market, yield more cost-effective results than traditional approaches (train the teachers, create an environment for experimentation.  (Science4Us.com hypothesis).
7. An online animated and video environment can provide an inquiry-based experiential environment which largely achieves the educational goals (Science4Us.com hypothesis).
8. The real need in providing online curriculum is in creating an integrated curriculum with a common user interface, teacher and parent support materials, and an effective scope and sequence, and a learning management system. Although the web is full of powerful interactive science simulations, they are too isolated to be able to weave together into a meaningful curriculum.
9. The concept of citizen-science will be a foundation of some of the hands-on suggested further activities.  Particular emphasis will be given to the fact that the frontier of scientific inquiry is within reach surprisingly often.
10. Areas that we intend to explore include how community, social media, and web-based tools can be used for scientific education and collaboration.

K-4 Science Standards

The National Science Teachers Association
 http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4962&page=109

TABLE 6.8. CONTENT STANDARDS, GRADES K-4

UNIFYING CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES	SCIENCE AS INQUIRY	PHYSICAL SCIENCE	LIFE SCIENCE
Systems, order, and organization	Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry	Properties of objects and materials	Characteristics of organisms
Evidence, models, and explanation	Understandings about scientific inquiry	Position and motion of objects	Life cycles of organisms
Change, constancy, and measurement		Light, heat, electricity, and magnetism	Organisms and environments
Evolution and equilibrium
Form and function
EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE	SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY	SCIENCE IN PERSONAL AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES	HISTORY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE
Properties of earth materials	Abilities of technological design	Personal health	Science as a human endeavor
Objects in the sky	Understandings about science and technology	Characteristics and changes in populations
Changes in earth and sky	Abilities to distinguish between natural objects and objects made by humans	Types of resources
		Changes in environments
		Science and technology in local challenges

Criteria for the Content Standards