Curriculum Resource: Population Growth and Climate Change

I found another good resource related to the population growth topic I raised last week when our global population supposedly reached 7 billion people.  The website Population Action International has a lot of great information and resources on it, including an interactive chart where you can see where your birthday falls on the curve to reach 7 billion--and beyond!

But the most eye-opening section to me was a serious of maps that show the connection between population growth and climate change.   In short, it seems that the countries where population growth is the largest are also, in general, the countries who will be most hurt by global climate change, at least in terms of things like reduced agricultural productivity and water availability.  It makes sense when I saw the maps, but I hadn't thought of that before.  Check out this guided tour of the maps, and then you can also make your own maps or research a specific country.

These maps make it even more evident why we need to try to reduce rampant population growth before the full effects of global warming really hit us.  We may or may not be around to have to deal with all this, but our middle schoolers should be, so this is the kind of information about their future world they should know.

NPR Features Wake County School Board $125,000 Run-off

There is a special run-off election on Tuesday for the deciding seat on the Wake County NC School Board.  Whereas all Republicans won in the 2009 elections, which gave them the controlling majority on the Board, this year all Democrats won the formerly nonpartisan election.  However, Democrat Kevin Hill did not win by enough to avoid a run-off election with the next highest-ranking candidate, Republican Heather Losurdo.

Given that this run-off would decide whether the Republicans or Democrats dominate on the school board, I expected that there would be a lot of focus on this race.  However, I never imagined that it would raise so much money.  At this point, nearly $125,000 has been donated to the two candidates, much from people and organization outside Wake County, and even outside North Carolina.

This is such an amazing amount of money to spend on a single school board race that it was the focus of a new article today on the National Public Broadcasting (NPR) program All Things Considered.  To hear their 10 minute segment on the Wake County race, and some other places where national groups are pouring outside money into local elections, visit their website here.

The Republican candidate, Losurdo, has received twice as much money as the incumbent Democrat Hill.  It will be interesting to see if that enables her to beat Hill this time around.

If you happen to live in Wake County's School Board District 3, don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

Curriculum Resource: Daylight Savings Time

Do readers out there have a hard time explaining daylights saving time to their children or students, or am I the only one?  Every year, my husband and go over the whole "Fall Back, Spring Forward" and have to re-decode what that means, let alone explain to our son why we are doing it.

Well, this year I can defer questions to an expert!

Science Jim is a wonderful science teacher who lives and teaches here in the Triangle NC region, but who also offers a number of online webinars. He's a really fun, lively guy who is a great teacher in person, but who has enough personality that he can hold kids' attention even online.

So the following is a short video of one of the online webinars he did in the past that he shares on his website for free.  He talks about some physical notions about time (like how it doesn't exist), theories on the historical development of time, puts in a plug for switching to a metric time system (one of my son's favorite suggestions), before discussing the rationale for Daylight Savings Time.  Then at the end, he comes up with an experiment that may help you get rid of some of that leftover Halloween candy (without you or your children having to eat it).

It's geared a little young for middle schoolers, but he's entertaining to watch anyway for a review of the whole concept of time.  But if you don't want to hear that, you can skip down to about minute 14 for the Daylight Saving Time business.

You can watch the video below, or else visit his website:

Science Jim Show: Time and Candy! from Science Jim on Vimeo.

We love Science Jim!

And enjoy your extra hour of sleep, everyone!

A Wonderous Gift to Libraries

Now that my son and I are doing NaNoWriMo, we've got books on the brain.  But even without that focus this month, we've always loved books and reading.  We've also always loved libraries, and are fortunate enough to live within walking distance of one, and are involved in classes and programs at some other ones on a regular basis.  So that means we're visiting one library or another about every other day or so.

We've always tried to support our local library, not only by our presence and our expressions of gratitude to the staff, but by giving them cards and treats on holidays or occasions like National Library Week.  But I found one library supporter who has put our puny attempts to thank our librarians to shame!

For the past eight months, someone has been creating some incredible paper sculptures out of books and secretly leaving them in various libraries around Edinburgh, Scotland.   Along with the gorgeous art work, the perpetrator is leaving a small tag in support of the importance of libraries.

Your imagination is probably not doing these sculptures justice.  So I will post one of my favorite ones, just to show you how fantastic these things are:

photo from The Scotsman

(yes, the dragon is made out of paper from a book)

The tag in the shell on the lower left reads:

For @scotstorycenter - A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas..... Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story.....

To read the entire saga and see all the contributions to date, visit this blogsite.

I think this is just such a beautiful project, so I wanted people to know about it and to appreciate the incredible artwork of this mysterious benefactor of libraries.  Especially at a time when things seem so challenging, sometimes art, especially when wrapped up in a whimsical mystery, can lift our spirits better than anything.  But it also gives me an idea about doing something like that for our own libraries, albeit on a MUCH smaller scale.  We may not be able to create art like that, but the holiday season is coming up.... perhaps we can hide notes of gratitude in honor of Thanksgiving?  Or be secret Santas for our librarians?  Or what if we hid notes of love for libraries in advance of Valentines Day?

Hmmm....I'll have to give that some more thought....once I get my daily 1,667 words done for NaNoWriMo!

Curriculum Resource: Another Visualization of 7 Billion People

I found another great visualization to help our students imagine a world population of 7 billion people.  This one goes well with yesterday's video on the significance of 7 billion people because it traces the growth from farther back in time, and gives more specific information about how many people there are in specific areas of the world.

This one was produced by Adam Cole for NPR:

Curriculum Resource: Explaining the Significance of a World Population of 7 Billion

While we in America were preoccupied with trick or treating, UN estimates said that we reached a new milestone:  an estimated world population of 7 billion people.  But what does that mean?  I'm not sure that I can visualize 7,000,000,000 people, let alone my middle schooler being able to do so.

But below is a great video that can help.  This video is a TED presentation by Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor and researcher and one of the world's experts on global health issues.  In this 10 minute video, Rosling does a great job presenting a visual representation of global population growth, explains where and why populations are booming, and what we can do to slow the increase.

The NaNoWriMo Challenge!

Well, I've done it--I've accepted the NaNoWriMo challenge.  As I wrote in my earlier post, NaNoWriMo is the abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month, an international program to write a novel in a month.  In my post, I wrote specifically about the Young Writers Program because my son had decided to participate in that.   However, they also have an adult program, which my son has been....let's say, strongly encouraging....me to do along with him.  While the students can set an age-appropriate goal--my son is aiming for a minimum of 10,000 words--in the adult program, you must write at least 50,000 words to become a NaNoWriMo "winner."  And all that writing must take place in the only-30-days month of November.

It's a big challenge to take on, especially on top of everything else I'm already committed to do in November.  On the other hand, NaNoWriMo is something I've been planning to do sometime "when the time is write."  But when will that ever happen?  When do I think I'll have a November that is less busy than all my previous Novembers have been?

So with my son's encouragement, along with a couple of my adult friends who have also decided to participate this year, I decided that this year was when "the time is right."  If I'm going to do it, I would much rather do it while my son is also writing a novel, and I'm much happier with some adult companionship as well.

However, this does mean I have to cut back on some things, and this blog may be one of them.  I'll still try posting, at least periodically, but they will probably be posts that mostly refer to other resources that are appropriate to this age rather than a lot of original writing.  I hope you all will understand.  I'll be back to my more normal posting style by December.

I think they will be developing a widget I can put on my blog to keep everyone updated about how my writing is going (quantity-wise, at least).  If so, I'll add it to my side column so you can see how I am doing, for better or for worse.  The first day has been good, at least.  They have figured out that you have to write a minimum of 1,667 words EVERY day for all 30 days of November, and so far today I've written 2,446.  Personally, I'm aiming for 2,500 words per day, because that is how much you must write if you only write 20 out of 30 days, and I'm sure there will be some days where I'm too busy to write.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the novel.  And I've been stockpiling some good resources to share with you this month, so I'm not abandoning you completely.  For example, tomorrow I plan to post a great educational way to help your middle schoolers understand the concept that we reached an estimated 7 billion in world population this week.