Doing the Right Thing at University of Virginia

I have been following the recent tumult over the secretive ouster of University of Virginia's first female president,  Teresa Sullivan.  We don't know exactly why the Board acted as it did--since they won't tell us.  But based on what we do know so far, it seems like a bad move, and as an educator, I'm delighted to see the UVA community rising up in protest.

I'm sure that the main plotters behind this academic coup d'etat, Board leaders Rector Helen E. Dargas and Vice Rector Mark Kington, sincerely believed that they doing the best thing for Virginia's prestigious public university, which was founded in the early 19th century by Thomas Jefferson.  However, from what I've seen from the limited information available, I think they were mistaken.

Here are my concerns in regards to their actions:

1.  Lack of knowledge of and respect for the academic procedure and community

Dargas and Kington are politically-appointed business people, with limited experience in education (as far as I have seen).  The way they went about this decision is completely out of line with the general academic commitment to dialogue and deliberation.  Quietly turning individual board members against the popular president through secret, one-on-one meetings that subvert the open meeting laws that govern public institutions like UVA is, at the very least, skirting the spirit of the legislation.  But it is a direct affront to the academic values of openness and discussion and developing consensus that are still strong in higher education.  Frankly, for them to think they would get away with this without raising a major stink among the UVA community just shows how little they understand about the core values of what, in the end, is what makes UVA a school that was ranked as the #2 public university by the 2012 US News & World Report -- namely, the people, particularly the faculty and academic leadership.

2.  Lack of understanding of the double-edged sword that is online learning

The rumor is that Dargas and Kington wanted to replace Sullivan because she was not willing to make deeper cuts into the existing academics and to leap more rapidly into the world of online learning.  Certainly, the emails that the UVA student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, received in response to their Freedom of Information Act request that does still legally cover public universities, show Dargas and Kington emailing each other pieces hyping the move towards online learning in higher education.  They cited the examples of Stanford and Harvard as the direction in which they felt Sullivan should be embracing more eagerly.

However, there is no indication that there is any deep understanding among these people about how or what or even why UVA would be doing in the online education field.  There seems to be an assumption that online learning would reduce costs while maintaining the university's reputation.  But, uh, how?  The classes profiled in the articles they eagerly shared with each other are available to anyone for free.  They are not bringing in any new revenue for their respective institutions.  They are also not eliminating any of the costs of the on-campus classes.  These online offerings are not related to the finances of Stanford or Harvard.  Rather, they are simply methods of sharing information and expertise to a larger audience.  While helpful, do they come anywhere close to replicating the experience of a Stanford or Harvard education?  I think not.  (For more information, see the excellent article by Stanford professor Larry Cuban, "Three Ways of Integrating Technology in Schools," which talks about how we tend to confuse mere access to information with education itself.)

It is not easy to do online education well, nor is it always a money maker.  It takes discussion and consideration about how it can be used appropriately and effectively, which is not always obvious for a large and selective university like UVA.   Again, the Board is showing its ignorance if it wants to jump into this field willy-nilly without a well-thought-out plan.  (For more information on this issue, see George Washington University professor David Karpf's article "UVA Board's Lazy Business Sense" on the Huffington Post.)

3.  Lack of commitment to low-income and minority students

So this has not been discussed in the papers, and I may be making it up.  However, another item that these two board members emailed each other about was about another university cutting back on expensive financial aid packages.  This concerns me because in 2004, UVA became the first public university to guarantee full financial aid to low-income applicants.  It has a strong commitment to enabling low- and moderate-income students the opportunity to attend without acquiring massive amounts of debt.  It has also had the highest black graduation rate among the so-called Public Ivies.

Perhaps scaling back on these aid packages is not part of the Dargas and Kington agenda; but, then again, since they have only given vague reasons for the differences in opinion that required Sullivan's resignation, perhaps they are.  It would be a shame for UVA to give up the great strides it has made in this area.  Also, statistics generally show that low-income and minority students tend not to do as well in online education as do wealthier students--one of those pesky details about online education that needs to be examined if it is to be done right.

So we will see how things shake out.  But let me end with something I wish Dargas and Kington had seen before they headed down this contentious path.  It is another commencement speech by Salman Khan, this time at his own alma mater, MIT.  While continuing the positivity prescription of his Rice graduation speech, at MIT Khan talks about MIT's free online classes, and how proud it made him as a graduate that his university was sharing its knowledge for free because it was the right thing to do, and how it influenced his own decision when it came to Khan Academy. 

Because, after all, isn't that really what we want our universities to do?  To encourage its graduates to do the right thing, not just the cheapest or most expedient or most profitable thing?  And how will a school teach its students those things if it doesn't do it itself?

Curriculum Resource: Art Appreciation through Smarthistory

I wanted to share a website I discovered recently and now love.  It is an art appreciation/art history website called Smarthistory.

The backbone of Smarthistory is (at this point) over 400 videos on different pieces of art, artists, or art period or concepts.  The home page basically organized these by timeline, so they fit in well as an art history resource, or as a way to quickly add art content to a history lesson.  However, inside the website you can search for videos not only by time, but by style, artist, or theme--which makes it a very flexible resources for incorporating art content in other kinds of lessons as well.

One way this website really stands out, however, is that there is an entire section on how users can make their own similar videos.  It covers the technological tools to work with images and video, advice on approaching presenting art, tips on interviewing art experts, and even philosophical discussions on the difficulties of combining text and educational resources with the experience of appreciating a piece of art. This helps both students and teachers be not only a consumer of Smarthistory's videos, but a potential creator of their own reflections and mediations on art.

Smarthistory also has some suggested curricula:  a 15 week Art History Survey (Western Culture) and a 15 week Art Appreciation Survey (again, Western Culture).  These were developed for the college level, but I think they could be very helpful, perhaps not for middle schoolers, but definitely for high school, especially those preparing for AP exams in related history or art areas.  For teachers, Smarthistory has been developed under a Creative Commons license, and they encourage teachers to embed their videos in their courses and online syllabi (with proper attribution, of course--but they give you the proper citation on their website.)

Smarthistory was developed by some experienced teachers of art history/art appreciation, and it shows.  However, they have recently merged with Khan Academy, which I think is a win/win for both groups.  Khan Academy gives Smarthistory more technological and institutional support, plus access to a much larger user base, while Smarthistory expands Khan's more math/science/technology focus into a strong curriculum in the humanities, and gives a softer, artistic edge to their rather geeky presence on the web.

All in all, I think it is a very well done project that adds a lot to our online resources on Western art.

Curriculum Resource: How We Use Energy

About 60 years ago, the average American produced about 4 metric tons of carbon dioxide due to the energy s/he used.  Today, the average is almost 5 times that--19 metric tons per person.  So what changed?

PBS Learning has produced a nice little interactive illustration of the ways that energy usage has changed between now and then.  Check out Changing the Balance.

Curriculum Resource: The 50th Anniversary of Americans in Space

Today we can celebrate not only our Founding President and the President who led our nation through its greatest challenge, but also 50 years of Americans in space.  On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet in his Friendship 7 space capsule (Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth in his Volstok space craft the previous year).   Americans at the time were transfixed during Glenn's approximately four-hour flight, which would lead in just a few years to Americans being the first humans to walk on the moon.

NASA is marking the occasion with an online interactive educational resource on Friendship 7 and the Mercury Space Program.  It has lots of facts and multimedia materials to explore, including interactive views of the interiors of the space capsules, the rocket technology, components of the space suits, flight trajectories, etc.  It also includes video footage of various aspects.

Below is one item from that website. It is a 25 minute video NASA has produced on the 50th Anniversary of Friendship 7:



I think it is hard for our middle schoolers, for whom space travel is such a regular occurence that no one even follows it any more, to realize how revolutionary it seemed at the time.  So I would add to the official NASA videos a couple of great movies about the space program--The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 (which is one of my favorite movies ever).

Hmmm...perhaps after I fix a version of last year's Presidents Day meal, we need to settle down in front of a great space flick tonight....

The Great Backyard Bird Count

So many things to celebrate this weekend!  But I wanted to mention one that can be one of the most educational of all, which is The Great Backyard Bird Count.

The GBBC is an event sponsored every year over Presidents Day weekend by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Audubon Society, and the Bird Studies of Canada.  For the Friday through Monday of that weekend, they ask people all over North America to count the largest number of birds of each species they see while walking, hiking, and birdwatching.  They compile them all into statewide and national lists to see how the bird populations seem to be doing in the U.S. and Canada.

The great thing about this project is that you don't need to be an accomplished birdwatcher to participate.  They have a lot of tools built into their website to help you learn about and to recognize the birds you are most likely to be seeing, based on your vicinity (zip code and/or habitat).  You input your information about where you are birdwatching, and they come up with lists of birds that are indigenous to that area.  You can click on specific birds to see a picture and to read more about them to decide if that is the bird you saw, if you aren't already familiar with the species.

If you are interested in going in more depth about birdwatching, they have a great resource on Building Skills that teaches you ways to identify birds more accurately.  They have an entire section on GBBC for Kids, which not only provides simple information and some puzzles and crafts, as well as some games that are not only kind of interesting to do, but is building their online bird identification software so it will be better at helping unfamiliar birders to correctly identify the birds they see.  Finally, it is a way to have your children assist with an international science data collection effort, and see how their contributions at a local level help build a national database.

We are not great at bird identification.  However, we try to do this regularly, and every year we learn to identify at least one or two more birds than we did the year before.  And here in the Triangle NC area, the weather has been glorious to be out with the birds.

You can still participate today and tomorrow (Sunday and Monday), so I encourage you and your middle schoolers to take a walk, or to watch your bird feeders for a sustained period, and become part of one of the largest citizen science activities in the country.  Of course, the resources are available year round, so they are good to know about whenever you have a question about birds.  But it is fun to contribute to a large group project like this.  You can even print out a certificate to demonstrate your participation, and may even win a prize given to randomly-selected birdwatchers.

Please Vote in the Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest

Photography by Steve Childs
used under Creative Commons license

Aren't they incredible?

These are just some of the contestants in The Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest.  This competition is an online poll being held by my son's environmental education and awareness group, Healing Oceans Together (H2O).

The goal of the The Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest is to raise awareness about this fascinating and often overlooked inhabitants of seas all around the world.  The middle school-aged students who make up H2O believe that as people learn more about some of the more numerous but less publicized underwater creatures and come to appreciate them, they will be more willing to take action to help protect our global oceans.

Because they love sea slugs (the common name for the animal classification known as nudibranchs), they are holding The Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest in honor of Valentines Day.  So between now and Sunday, February 12, they are asking people of all ages to

Glaucus atlanticus © Taro Taylor,
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

visit the contest webpage to learn more about some outstanding types of sea slugs.  Then scroll to the end of the page to vote for your favorite.

The winner will be announced on Valentines Day, February 14, 2012.

They also have a map of visitors, and are hoping to get responses from all the different areas in the world where sea slugs live.  Since sea slugs live in almost all oceans and seas, that means pretty much from everywhere!

Photography by Patrick Krug
used under Creative Commons license

So after you have voted, please take a minute to help refer other people to the site.  Please encourage your friends and families to vote, and/or post information information about the contest on your eloops, blog, website, Facebook, Twitter account, or any other types of social media that you may use.

It is free and anonymous, and participating in the poll will not put you on any mailing list or anything like that (although if you are interested in keeping up with what is going on with this middle school-aged coop, you can sign up on their mailing list here).

Photo by: John Albers-Mead
by Creative Commons license

Help support these wonderful invertebrates, sometimes called "the living jewels of the sea," by visiting the contest page and by spreading the word among your networks.

Let's help these middle schoolers, who believe they can make a difference in the world, by generating some world-wide love for these under-appreciated wonders in our waters!

Should We Be Supporting Virtual Schools?

There was an excellent story in the Washington Post this weekend on the pros and cons of virtual schools.  Virtual schools are sort of a hybrid between public charter schools, online learning such as Khan Academy,  and homeschooling.  Virtual schools are K-12 educational systems run by public schools to teach children their entire education at home using technology.  These are generally treated as charter schools (and thus exempt from many school regulations), but are paid for and treated as part of the public school system, usually with significant learner support expected by the at-home learning coach (e.g., parent or other similar substitute).

It is quite an extensive article, so I recommend that you read it in full here.  But here are a few of the items that stood out for me:

Some Pros:

• Virtual schools provide a different educational choice for students who can't go to school or who have been failing in traditional school.
• For parents, virtual schools are similar to homeschooling, but without the responsibility or expense of obtaining high-quality curriculum yourself.
• Technology allows students to study at their own pace and schedule, to review what they don't understand as often as necessary and to skip through the things that they do, to use multi-media rich learning materials, and, to some extent, to adjust learning to their own learning style.
• Companies are investing lots of money into curriculum development, which presumably should translate into high-quality learning tools.

Some Cons:

• Virtual schools have a pretty terrible achievement record, both in terms of test scores and in completion/graduation rates.  One study showed that only one third of the schools managed by the largest player in the business, K12 Inc, met the federal NCLB standards last year.  And the article had an example of the Colorado Virtual Academy, also managed by K12, which has achieved only a 12% on-time graduation rate, compared to 72% of other schools statewide.
• In at least some states, the Virtual schools are "locating" in the poorest, most rural counties that received the highest levels of funding support from the state, but are enrolling students from throughout the state and counting them as students in that poor county.  So, for example, the Virginia Virtual Academy counts all its students as being from its home base in Carroll County, which the state reimburses $5,421 per student.  Therefore, the 66 students enrolled who actually live in Fairfax County, which would only receive $2,716 per student if they attended their local schools, are costing the state twice as much by being counted as Carroll County students.
• Socialization can be a big issue with these students, because unlike local homeschool organizations, which foster a variety of group social and academic experiences, virtual school students receive all of their education in their own home, even starting as early as kindergarten.  Virtual schools are trying to address that issue and find more opportunities for their students to interact with their peers.
• While these companies are paying 35% less for their teachers than traditional schools, they are putting lots of money into lobbying politicians.   According to the Post, in the past six years, K12 has contributed half a million dollars to US politicians, 3/4th of which went to Republicans (who are typically stronger supporters of the school choice movement).

This is actually a subject I know a good bit about in general, because not only do I homeschool, but I used to work in the distance education field before that.  The pros and cons above (at least the ones that don't have to do with funding and lobbying) are things that we have long known about the potential and the problems with distance education.

Education via technology is sometimes the only solution for some students, such as those that are geographically remote or isolated (students in Alaska, rural Maine, or the mountains of West Virginia, for example) or who have health problems, physical disabilities, or other issues that prohibit them from attending traditional schools.  Beyond that, distance education can be a fantastic option for disciplined, self-motivated learners.

However, while that designation applies to some percentage of students who fail in traditional schools, that description does not apply to the vast majority of struggling learners.  Particularly students in poor communities have little or no home support for their learning, since they are often in full-time employed single parent or dual working parent homes, many of who are illiterate and/or do not speak English.   They do not have access to the type of "learning coaches" that is critical for making this kind of education work, particularly for elementary-aged students.  So while it sounds good to say these programs give choice to failing learners, the reality is that having these types of students trying to learn through technology at home without any support is likely to make their educational performance be even worse, not better.  

As a homeschool mom, I can attest to the fact that showing a child the best-producing, most enthralling computer-based instruction featuring the most brilliant people on the planet does not ensure that he or she will learn anything from it.  As I have stated in an earlier post, education is so much more than just giving a child wonderful instructional content.

So while I'm not saying I don't think they have potential and shouldn't play a role in the panoply of educational options we are fortunate enough to have in our country, I, personally, am suspicious about how much at least some of the schools are really dedicated to solving our educational problems, and how much they are about making their owners a substantial profit.

But take my word for it.  Read the Post article, check into the situation in your state, and if you have any opinions, pro or con, feel free to add them below.

PS--Thanks to my father, who lives in DC, for pointing out this article for me.  Also, just to be clear, I am extremely supportive of distance education options for taking some classes, particularly among older students.  But the virtual school, which supplies the entire educational curriculum at home from literally grades K-12, is an entirely different matter.

Curriculum Resource: Math and Videogames

I've found what looks like an incredible resource.  It is an online, multi-media, interactive, self-paced course on math concepts used in video games.  It was developed by WNET, the public broadcasting network in New York City, for 7th-10th graders, although advanced younger middle schoolers could probably use it as well.

The lesson demonstrates how algebraic concepts, such as linear relationships, rate of change and slope, algebraic and numeric expressions and equations, and graphing transformations, underlie the design and playing of many video game challenges.  Of course, it is interactive, so students are called upon to solve such problem to demonstrate some typical video game techniques.

You can access the entire lesson for FREE at the Teacher's Domain website (although students will have to create an account if they want the lesson to record their input for various challenges).  You can also download a Teacher's Guide about how to support math learning through this lesson at the same location.

Curriculum Resource: The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM)

:When you have a big task looming ahead of you (like writing 50,000 words in 30 days), which you have been spending too many of your waking hours on already, distraction is only a click away with the Internet.  In one of my flights of fancy today, I discovered the Museum of Online Museums (MoOM), which actually is a fabulous resource.

The Museum of Online Museums is just what it sounds like--a collection of links to museums around the world with exhibits and other information available online.  But what a collection!

It is divided into different sections.  The first section, The Museum Campus, has all your usual suspects--the Smithsonian, MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virtual Museum of Canada, etc--with links conveniently located on the same page.  Then there is The Permanent Collection, which has mostly art and university collections that you might not be aware of, but that could prove useful--sites like Duke's Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, or the Flanders Fields Museum, or Art Treasures from Kyoto.

Finally, you come to Galleries, Exhibits, and Shows.  This part contains listings to the most bizarre and diverse collections I've ever seen.  Here are a sampling of the current exhibits:

• Museum of Snake Charmer Imagery
• The Aerosol Spray Paint Can Museum Covers
• International Gallery of Restroom Hand Dryers
• Take Out Beverage Lid Collection

And it goes on and on like that.  MoOM picks out a few of these to feature each quarter, but there is something there to fit almost anyone's fancy.

However, this is a great resource to know about to answer questions our students have about obscure things.  For example, I have accessed The DOS Museum (one of their listings) before when trying to remember and explain the history of computer development to my son.  That's not one of the most obscure, but you get the idea.  It's a good place to bookmark for when they ask you something about the history of some aspect of our culture that you have no idea where to start looking for the answer.

Finally, it can come in handy when you are writing something like NaNoWriMo.  For example, say I am writing a scene about my protagonists going to the movie in either a different country or a different time period.  What candy should I have them buy to consume during the movie?  Well, by visiting Mike's Candy Bar Wrapper Collection, I can not only find the correct name of the candy they would eat in Canada, but describe the wrapper as well.

So whether you are looking for more academic purposes, or want to lose yourself in the wormhole of the World Wide Web, (MoOM) can help you out.

How to Do Science at Home

The following video is a 50 minute-long talk by science educator Jim Mueller, aka Science Jim, about how to do science with your children at home.  He talks about such things as foundational principles, what is appropriate when, sequencing, and science educational philosophies.  While it may be particularly valuable for families with younger children, because he starts with teaching children who are 8, 9, and 10, I still think it is helpful for middle school education as well.

I can also attest to Science Jim's teaching skills.  My son has taken both traditional in-person classes and online classes with Science Jim, and has enjoyed and benefitted from them both.  We did a year-long course of physics with Science Jim, and I think he had a very good approach to the topic, with excellent hands-on experiments and good sequencing and explanations.   But he is also a fun and humorous guy who relates well to young people, which can make a big difference in your child's attitudes towards doing science.  If you are interested in taking some of his classes, check out his website, which also contains resources you can purchases, such as the e-books and videos he has done, as well as some other free videos on science topics.




Help for Doing Science at Home from Science Jim on Vimeo.

Curriculum Resource: Who Wants to Win (REAL) $1,000,000--Math Edition

Yesterday we talked about a science game based on the TV show, Who Wants to Win $1,000,000?  Today, we are talking about a site that is offering $1,000,000 (to be split with their most inspirational math teacher) for people who solve 13 great math questions, one for each K-12 grade level.

Just one caveat--the sponsors of these competition, Math Pickle and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, haven't yet gotten the funding for the puzzle winners.  But I guess they don't have many people claiming to be winners yet, either, so perhaps they've got a while to raise the money.

Here is a video that presents the unsolved problem for the 8th grade, which is based on the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur in the labyrinth:



Even if you don't expect to win $1,000,000, you should definitely check out Math Pickle.  It has a bunch of different videos, all geared to specific grade level, about ways to spice up your math teaching.  In particular, it features puzzles, exploratory questions, and hands-on activities that draw students into problem-solving and applying the math they are learning, rather than doing rote exercises.   The problems and ideas are quite interesting, and I've tried a few of them with my own son.

It is this kind of approach to math (also a hallmark of the work we have done with Maria Droujkova of Natural Math) that has turned around my son's attitude towards math, which he used to hate but now thinks is neat.  And that is worth more than $1,000,000 to me.  So it is worth your while to visit Math Pickle and pick up a few ideas for getting your students engaged in math problem solving.

Curriculum Resource: Teaching About 9/11

There is now just one month before the 10th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/2001.  Most of our middle schoolers were alive during those painful times, but were too young to know what was going on.  However, with all of the focus we can expect on this 10th year remembrance, it will probably be a time when you want to have a serious discussion with your young adolescents about what happened that day.

The History Channel has a website that may facilitate your discussion.  Entitled 9/11 Attacks:  102 Minutes That Changed America, it has maps, interviews, videos, and other resources related to the events of that eventful day.  However, be prepared--there is a lot of on-the-spot footage that depicts both the terror, and the heroism, of that day.  I haven't watched all the videos myself yet, but the ones that make me the saddest are the footage of the firemen charging into the buildings without faltering, determined to saving lives in a place that I know is going to collapse around them.  So I don't know how emotional you are, but I know I need to preview these videos before sharing them with my son.  

On the other hand, in these times when our political systems appear to be in disarray, when our confidence in our country may be shaken, and when we are seeing the English riot in a way we would never expect from such a civilized country, it may not be bad to show our tweens these videos of people rising up and acting in such an honorable way, even though it cost many of them their lives.

Curriculum Resource: IMF International Economics Games

Perhaps it is all this focus on the debt ceiling debate, but our homeschool group has been abuzz about economics education discussions and resources lately.  But when I heard about these two online games by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), I knew I had to post them, seeing as I have not just one, but TWO people in my immediate family who have served as the US Executive Director to the IMF!

The IMF has an educational section on its website with curriculum guides for middle school and high school teachers, and some online games for middle school and high school students.  The first game for the middle schoolers is called Where in the World & What in the World is Money?  In this game, students use a time machine to visit cultures around the world at different times in Earth's history, and discover that the units of exchange have varied greatly over time and space.  The other game for this age group is Trading Around the World, which is a little more involved than the first one.  Students choose to play a role based on a trader from different continents across the world.  They your trader goes about trying to sell his/her goods at the best prices, while buying other things at the biggest bargains.  Sometimes the desired trades are blocked by trade barriers, which helps students understand why international organizations like the IMF exist to keep trade flowing.

If you have a high schooler, or an advanced middle schooler, you could also check out the Money Mania game.  It is a quiz on macroeconomics, set as a game show format.  You pick your character, who is competing against a typical uninformed high school student and a college economics major.  But it isn't easy!  In the beginning, I was getting trounced by the college econ major.  But then they asked some questions about policies that my father spent most of his early career working on....so shame on me if I didn't get those right!  Then, at the end, they asked four questions specifically about the IMF itself, all of which, fortunately, I got right (did I mention TWO of my family helped run the IMF?).  But even with those advantages, I ended up tying with the college student.  So I don't know how well most higher schoolers would do, let alone middle schoolers.

Still, these are fun ways to help explain why it might matter whether or not the US defaults on its international loans, and some other aspects of international economics.

Lesson Plan: Mendel's Experiments in Genetics

Happy Mendel's Birthday to all!  As Google let us know, it is the 189th birthday of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian scientist who first recorded the patterns of reproduction, famously breeding peas to see what traits were passed onto the next generation, and thus earned the title of Father of Genetics.

Like I've said before, we like to celebrate everything around here, so we had a Gregor Mendel birthday party today.  We invited some friends over and together did an activity based on Mendel's cross-breeding peas experiment.  But since we didn't have the time for new plants to grow, plus peas aren't really that exciting for middle school-aged students, we did a simulated cross-breeding of a much more interesting life form suggested by our recent excursion to see the last Harry Potter movie--we did our simulated gene pool analysis based on breeding dragons!  We used a wonderful lesson plan developed at Vanderbilt and added onto by former middle school teacher Nancy Clark called "Inheritance Patterns in Dragons," which you can download from this page. (But if you aren't into dragons, but are into Harry Potter, there is another site where you can map the genetic path through which Muggles can produce witches and wizards and magical folk can have Squibbs from the National Institute of Health.)

After a general explanation of DNA and genetics, each student chose a set of seven "genes" with different dominant or recessive traits from the same male and female parents.

However, a worksheet helped them figure out what traits would be expressed in each specific offspring (fire breathing vs. no fire, number of toes or spines, color of body, wings, and tale, etc.).  Then each student drew a picture of a dragon with the genetic trails of that pairing.

So, for example, all the dragons (different in style though they might be) had blue bodies--obviously a dominant trait.  Three of the four had red wings and red tails; however, one had yellow wings and a yellow tail.  This demonstrates the fact that the same parents can produce a smaller number (statistically) of offspring with recessive trails, even if the parents themselves don't show those traits.

Anyway, the students really enjoyed it, and seemed to be clear about the basics of genetic inheritance after doing this exercise.

Plus, because it was, after all, a birthday party, I made a dish of Dragon Dip:

This is basically a healthier and vegan version of nachos, with whole wheat tortillas as the skeleton, tomato salsa as the blood, refried bean dip as the muscle, and, in honor of Mendel, peas as the dragon skin (except for the wings, where the skin is made of corn.  It is finished off with a grape tomato for its eye and dried jalapeno peppers as the fire breathing part, heated in the oven until hot, and them consumed with dragon skills (tortilla chips).

There are also some great online resources to use to explore this topic.  BioLogica has two web labs on genetics:  an online dragon genetics simulation, and animations of topics like meiosis along with a pea breeding experiment (like Mendel's) that is based on the fairy tale of the Princess and the Pea.  The Pea Soup website tells Mendel's story, as well as having an interactive simplified simulation of the pea experiment.

This is a fun topic to explore with middle schoolers, especially if you can include some of these more imaginative resources.....and everything goes better with some dragon-based food!

Curriculum Resource: Where Does Pi Come From?

This evening I attended an absolutely fantastic webinar that was part of the Math 2.0 series that my friend Maria of Natural Math runs.  If you have a middle schooler (or even a high schooler) taking Geometry, you and your child should check out the recording of this hour-plus educational lesson.

The session was called "Pi in July," and featured two mathematicians:  David Chandler, a mathematician who teaches at a California public charter school that supports homeschooling families and offers supplemental instruction to major high school math textbooks at Math Without Borders ; and Allison Krasnow, a mathematics teacher at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, CA.  The two have been working together to develop ways to explain to students where the number Pi actually comes from.

Chandler began by explaining, using geometry and especially the Pythagorean Theorem, how the approximation of the number Pi was originally derived by Archimedes in ancient Greece.   He started with a simple graphic that demonstrates why Pi is between 3 and 4, and not 10 or 7 or some other random number.  Krasnow then took his idea and modeled it in GeoGebra, a free open source software for creating geometric figures.   Finally, Chandler worked through the process that Archimedes used to figure out this key mathematical number--except that he used a spreadsheet to crunch the numbers up to millions of points.

I'm not doing the talk justice, but it really is a brilliant process.  My 12 year old son participated and was able to follow everything step by step, and really got the concept of why Pi is what it is.  I think that is so much better than when I learned geometry, when I was just given the value of Pi to plug into formulas with no idea where it came from or why I should believe it.

For more information on the webinar and the presenters, or to access the recording of this session, see the Pi in July page in Math 2.0.

Curriculum Resource: The History of English in Ten Minutes

We seem to be doing even more educational activities than I had planned for the summer.  However, they tend to be the more fun and laid-back investigations of various topics.  One resource that we've stumbled onto recently and have really enjoyed is The History of English in Ten Minutes.

This is a serious of one-minute cartoons on the different ethnic or writing contributions to the English language.  The cartoons are quick and funny, although they don't have a lot of depth.  But they help to depict the wide variety of places that English expressions came from, which helps to explain why spelling can be SO CRAZY!

Don't take my word for it--watch it yourself.  All ten short videos are embedded below.  My son enjoyed them so much that he watched all of them without my even having to ask him to do so.

Does Khan Academy Represent the Future of Education, Part 2

Last month, I wrote a blog post about the free, online Khan Academy and whether or not that represents the future of education.  My friend Maria of Natural Math has just written an interesting post on her blog on Metaphors explaining Khan Academy that encouraged me to think a bit more about this matter.  So this is the metaphor I would offer about Khan Academy:

Forrest Gump taught us that life is like a box of chocolates.  I would say that Khan Academy is like a can of soup.  Education, however, is like a family dinner.

To explain this metaphor, I have to go back, wow, like 20 years ago, when I visited the National Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (which does the same sort of thing for the Air Force that its more famous cousins in West Point and Annapolis does for the Army and the Navy).  Our guide, who was one of the instructors at the Academy, told me something that really stuck with me.  He claimed that only about 25% of his job as an instructor was to teach the content in his classes.  The vast majority of his job--75%--was to be a role model who exemplified by his character and his behavior what it is to be an exemplary Air Force officer.

And while that ratio may be off compared to traditional schools, given the special nature of those military academies, I think that there are some similar roles for all teachers.  So much of education is all about the kind of person that student is becoming, not the academic subjects at all.  We send children to classes to learn math, indeed, but also to learn to be responsible, to be punctual, to get work done by deadlines, to get along with other people, to continue to struggle with something you don't understand until you do, to work collaboratively, to be creative, to be a problem-solver....tons of things besides math (or science or English or whatever).

So, for example, if it were just about the content, you would think homeschoolers would be all over Khan Academy.  We could set our children up on the computer and tell them to work their way through the videos until they are all done.

But nobody I know homeschools like that.  When people uninformed about homeschooling talk to us, their first question is always, "But what about socialization?"  And it is all we can do not to gaffaw in their face, because at least in an area like the Triangle NC, our kids are the most socialized kids on the planet.  My son had some kind of group learning situation almost every day last year.  He went to Math Clubs and Math Treks, did group nature explorations, participated in an history coop and a large, multi-age and multi-disciplinary coop, had art classes, wrote group stories for the homeschool newspaper, read and discussed over 100 books in several different book clubs, played on a homeschool baseball team, and studied world religions in Sunday School.

If it were just about the content, why would I do that to myself?  The answer is, of course, that what I want for my son's education is so much more than just the academic content of his classes.

So, to return to my can of soup....Khan may be a master teacher (maybe...there are certainly lots of master teachers), and the Internet is a vehicle by which he can can himself (or other master teachers) and make it easily available.  And canned soup is certainly handy to have.  You can get canned soup from Master Chefs--for example, Wolfgang Puck sells canned soup--that probably tastes pretty good and that is pretty healthy (although I don't think it can match the homemade chicken, barley, and vegetable soup that I make weekly for my son's lunch and that takes a minimum of about 30 hours, since I use my friend Laura's recipe for making super-healthy 24 hour bone broth as the base for the soup).

But canned soup does not a family dinner make.  The family dinner is about the other people, and the relationships, and tablecloths and silverware and candlesticks, and the conversations, and all of that, even if the family is eating canned soup for dinner.

So, Maria, there is my analogy.  Khan Academy is like a can of soup.  I might occasionally give my son a can opener and tell him to go heat one up, but I would never confuse it with a meal.