Games? Has Education Got Games? Yes and No

bonniebraceysutton 3 Comments

Make a traditional teacher angy..say games and wait for the push back. Sometimes just to be tech savvy and interested can make you lose a friendship. I lost a friend of ten years like that. We traveled India together and met often. But we taught together and I found that she despised the use of technology. “Cut that OFF.!!” She had no ability to see the learning factor in games.

 If you want to get a dressing down in education, all you have to do is to talk about games, interactive media or any infographic.

GAMES IN THE CLASSROOM?

ARE You Kidding Me?

Some people will look at you cross-eyed as if you have NO earthly idea about what goes on in a classroom. Some will hiss ” school time is too important for” games.”. I started using technology when MECC created games for education , and got to demonstrate and work on games. I also at that time was able to create games and to teach student simple game making. The power of taking the information to others in game format was good.In the early days of technology we could make our own games.

 Stopping Transformation

I used to work in a school where the assistant principal hated games so much that when the principal was away she would march to my room, confiscate the games I used in my learning landscape and I would have to wait until the “real‘ principal came back to get them.I learned to make copies of the game and to just endure the charade. My real principal liked my work( but you may know the politics of schools , she knew that I was being harassed by the lady, so we agreed on a strategy.

.Parents understood that I was creating a learning landscape. The kids who had to be in the afterschool program would thry to sneak back into the classroom where I was correcting papers to use the computers. Parents would send me supper and sometims come in and go through the games themselves. This was back in the day of simple games, like Lemonade Stand, http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade  ( The Lemonade stand game that I used was devoid of commercials) in fact the web versions are often not the original games.

Odell Lake
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odell_Lake_(computer_game)Hot Dog StandHot Dog Stand – Serve up burgers, fries, drinks and of course hot dogs with ketchup and onions on top. Hot Dog Stand is a well made and fun restaurant game. This was early food chain, and ecology. There are much better games available now. We call them serious games.

www.123-games.net/games/hot–dog–stand

We used some reading games and stories that I had from a publisher in New Zealand for reading instruction. The reading games are now a part of a cuirriculum that can be cloud based. We were on the right track.

Of course we did the turtle games and we learned turtle language.

I even got to work with my very favorite game through a number of iterations. It was Oregon Trail. Eacn new Oregon Trail got more and more complicated .. I loved the transitions, but most of all I loved creating learning around the game. The geography, the history of trails.

The recipes, the museum trips to look at the kinds of wagons that people traveled in and the posters and information about the various stops along the trail. It was an interesting way to weave in some new kinds of learning. Stack cake, learning not to shoot too many animals because they could not be carried. Researching the tribes that people met along the way.

First I used it with a whole class. Then I learned to borrow computers so the whole class could play and then we wrote grants to get more computers. Five computers worked well for the most part.

Margaret Spelling was not enamored of games. So the initiative within the Dept of Education died on her watch. Funding was cut All of a sudden as a science teacher and a person who believed in games I was suspect.

Arlington Career Center/ Special Initiatives of Choice

 I worked in an after school and Saturday initiative that was wonderful. We linked kids to their interests. We let them learn using computers and games. There are still children who do not have a computer of their own at home. There are children who line up in libraries to use computers, or who work in community centers on their digital skills. In West Virginia there are ways to get digital using volunteer fire stations. The funny part is that we at first had a mish mosh of computers so the games were different on various computers. That was not a problem.

In Arlington County, I also had a wonderful high school principal who was running a career center. He let me work with games, robotics, and innovation. Our classes were always over subscribed, We did a summer program those classes were always oversubscribed. We wove into the offering, some rudimentary knowledge of computers, a side class was to let kids build their own computer, there was the hard core games, and by that there were the kids who accessed games , educational games or games of my choice or access, and then the spinoff for robotics and NASA space science, We used a lot of Lego physics, and built small robots.

Build Knowledge, Build a Dinosaur Park, Meet a Dinosaur Scientist.. we did all of that.

What did the game do?

You had to focus on the information about the Dyno Park to run the scenario. You had to know the details of the various animals you kept. But wait, those are old games. I learned a lot about how children learn watching them choose the book, the game, and build their own dinosaurs. It was more than I knew and I had to work with them

We never have enough spaces for the children who were interested.in being in the courses. We changed it up and made it so that the games was the center or part of the learning landscape. Dinosaur, DynoTycoon, Here you will find a free download of the original Dinopark Tycoon from 1993. The classic Dino Park Tycoon includes of the ideas of new tycoon games, like zootycoon.

http://www.abandon5000.com/download/simulation-games/dino-park-tycoon.html

Smithsonian visits, Visits from an amber collector and we had a real Smithsonian scientist Dr. Embry, who let us come visit and watch him work in this magnificent setting. In the summer we would pick a topic and weave activities, hands on learning , books and field trips into a learning adventure. I got to practice this skill recently at a summer camp at the Smithsonian. It is one of my Tpak Skills. And I admit that when I can I put food into the matrix. Or plants or gardening. We worked hard in school to learn. We combined many ways in which to learn. Tpack is one of the ways that diagrams the ways of using intersecting ways of learning.

I will confess I was never any good at keeping the park going. You can download it free online, What the games did for me, was to destroy the ranking of who was the best learner in the classroom. What the games did for me was to give me an invitation to special education students, to limited English speaking children to learn. The game might be what they wanted to do, but the rest of the learning came along with the package.

I never found the resources in Amazon Trail. The students loved the game so much that I rarly got to play, but I watched them play, and saw their skills and they shared the levels of their play. More than that with the games often I could merger a Jason lesson or initiative, once during my time in the classroom, I was teaching a Jason project on jungles, using games,

Dinopark Tycoon is an excellent game which makes one remember the wonderful times of our youth. This game is great because you get to open your own dino park, and do all of the things, such as manage employees, buy inventory items, choose dinosaurs, and other exciting things to run the dinosaur park. The goal in this game is to create the ultimate dinopark and to become a real Dinopark Tycoon. People come from far and wide to visit your park, so you need to make it the best park that it can be.  My little relatives and I challenged

each other to build the best pak. I never reached excellente. I will use the excue that I got distracted.

You start by buying land, fence, and dinosaurs. The game really gives you quite a variety of dinosaurs to buy. Get a lot of money, and you can get the ultimate dinosaur, careful though, it doesn’t last long and proves to be a waste of your money!
You need to make sure you keep your dinosaurs fed or they may get restless and break out of their pens. That results in having to buy new fencing and new dinosaurs. Who knows where the dinosaurs go after they leave, but it doesn’t matter to you! After you have enough money being a dinopark tycoon, you can buy concession stands and other items to make your park even better for the guests.
The

Screenshots:

game is really easy to use. Help is easily found, in all menus of the game. If you are running low on funds, get a loan from the bank to keep you going. You need to make sure you keep your prices in check so that you are getting some sort of profit, otherwise, you’ll lose money and your dino park ends up bankrupt.
This is a great game for younger children and older children alike. Children as young as 7 or 8 and older would enjoy Dinopark Tycoon because of its easy to use interface and its real world game style. It is both a fun game to play and a fun way to learn. Through playing this game, children are learning money sense and business sense. They are learning what a dollar is worth and that they cannot just buy everything, they need to think wisely before they make a purchase because if they just buy, they will end up with no money and the game will be over.
This is a great game for public schools to have on their computers because kids really love to play it and they are also learning at the same time. Anyone can have a wonderful time playing Dino Park Tycoon!

Download Dinopark Tycoon

 

 

I had a mentor who was George Lucas. During that time he had games in education. The games were as Seymour Papert said, hard fun. I was able to use those games in my classroom and in my game work. George Lucas was all about innovative learning

He says in his recent blog that it is time to have a conversation about what is going on in our schools.

 Here is the blog.

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2010/10/11/george-lucas-blogs-about-education/

Lucas writes:

” It’s time to have a conversation about what’s right in our schools, what’s working. And as we debate what to do to fix the problems, let’s remember that there are successes in education every day we can emulate. In districts of every stripe and demographic make-up, educators are dedicating themselves to providing their students with a high quality 21st century education and using new technologies to make it happen. They are showing kids how to find and analyze information and how to creatively deploy their analyses to solve problems.”

“These educators are beginning to reinvent the learning process, guiding students through rigorous, real-life projects that integrate core academic topics and personalize the learning experience based on a child’s strengths and weaknesses. They are building confidence and ambition in children, by supporting them emotionally and providing a safe, engaging environment to learn. Most importantly, these innovative educators are creating a next generation of citizens with academic knowledge and problem solving abilities that will serve our country for years to come.”

One Christmas, there was a meeting at the ranch and I got four of the Lucas Games as a present. I have used those games in media expositions all over the world. I mixed fantasy and fiction in the study of space and we were on. In the classroom we had the various resources from the Challenger Center, and youth oriented initiatives that had their own scenarios and simulations.

In my schools I became a problem to other teachers because everyone wanted to be in my classes. I was a hard teacher in that we had to do whatever it was that the school system asked, but then there were the extras.. the MECC games and the projects t would get funding for , computers for, and resources for. The parents and children and I learned a lot about creating a learning environment, one part of it being games. The principal allowed parents to access the games and to be a part of the learning journay. We learned that hands on, minds on, brains on were exciting, we wove books, pictures and resources in to the mix and there were always games as a part of the learning scenario.

We the children, the parents and I were a network for learning. And there was a teacher on my grade level who asked me to teach these games and the Jason Project to her kids. We

became a team for those activities. My children did a lot of the teaching. But we were able to influence that teacher andf her group of kids.

There are other more interesting ways to enter the use of games , some of which I will cite.

I will confess to use of games in education from when I was learning basic. That was a long time ago. We were constructing knowledge and making our own games. Iin the after school program, we had students from all over Arlington County who came to play and who learned a lot more than they did in the regular classroom. One child would not even leave the classroom for popcorn and for a bathroom break. As much as I could I tried to be flexible  one child just would not leave the room. I ended up calling his mother. She said, I have been waiting for your call. He is acting out isn’t he. He has always been a problem in school. I said, „ Excuse me, do I have the wrong numbet? This child was the best of all of my students. He was Egyptian , who knew/ He did not speak English well, Who knew. Games were his passport to learning. I never bothered him again. I figured out a way to let him learn and then the mother and I found a community place where he could use the computer. I loved teaching him a game that a friend of mine constructed about a little Egyptian boy, Little Horus. That game seems to have disappeated, but it was good for socio cultural work.

Games have gotten more complex now. Once at Supercomputing the conference a game maker who created games for sports altered the bodies of the players as he was teaching us game design. It was fun, it was hard fun because he let us do a few alterations.

Dr, Kevin Clark at George Mason University also used games and had a couple of conferences that I went to that gave me more knowledge about the ways in which the armed forces uses games and simulations to attract recruits.

Dr, Chris Dede uses embedded assessements to help teachers evaluate knowledge.

Of course , he has always been far ahead of the pack. Well he was the person who mentored me in the uses of technology. See his latest work here.
https://www.neasc.org/downloads/dede_presentation.pdf · PDF file

You may not know Idit Harel. She has the program MaMaMedia ,http://mamamedia.com/

kind of an interactive game involvement for kids.It is loud, she says kids like it that way.

She has a new project in games that I have been priviledged to work with , Globaloria.

There is a community of teachers, who learn technology skills, and then teach students to build their own games using Flash.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Globaloria is a social network for learning web-game design and simulation production. Invented by the World Wide Workshop Foundation in the spring of 2006, it seeks to create technology-based educational opportunities through a flexible set of virtual learning networks for students in developing nations, and economically disadvantaged and technologically underserved communities. Using a network of educational web 2.0 platforms, students develop 21st-century digital literacy, master social media technology, and gain a deeper understanding of curricular areas, such as science, mathematics and health. Its activities help students sharpen their communication and critical-thinking skills for leadership online and offline, bringing them closer to the participatory and collaborative nature of work in the 21st century.[1]

[Globaloria]… aims to teach youth how to take control of their new-media world.

—Idit Harel Caperton, [2]

SERIOUS GAMES

What are games?Some are serious At the Federation of American Scientists, Melanie Stegman invites teachers to try out her game, Immune Attack. It is a serious game.

You must navigate a nanobot through a 3D environment of blood vessels and connective tissue in an attempt to save an ailing patient by retraining her non-functional immune…

www.fas.org/immuneattack,

But wait there is more at the Federation of American Scientists Learning Technology site. According to the web site,
The Learning Technologies Program (LTP) studies ways to use technology to improve how people teach and learn.  Well-paid, rewarding jobs in the U.S. depend on a workforce prepared to operate in a fast-paced, technologically sophisticated global economy.  Doing this in an affordable way for a highly diverse population demands new approaches. Since the LTP was founded in 2001, a lot of progress has been made in how educational leaders approach technology in and out of the classroom.  In 2005 when we published ourSummit on Educational Games in 2006, we were one of the few voices.  In 2010, however, the President and Ms. Obama have spoken in favor of video games as a tool for education and for fitness. 

Source :http://www.fas.org/programs/ltp/index.html

Teachers

Evaluate Immune Attack

Learn More About Immune Attack

Immune Attack is a supplemental teaching tool, designed to be used in addition to middle school and high school biology textbooks.  Immune Attack introduces molecular biology and cellular biology in detail that is usually reserved for college students.  However, it uses the familiar and motivational video game format to introduce the strange and new world of cells and molecules.

Please consider EVALUATING IMMUNE ATTACK in your classroom.  It requires 3 class periods in a computer lab over 2 weeks time.  Register here and we’ll send you the details.

Here is a modern way of using games in the classroom. This iS Dr. Bob’s Blog on games and  assessment.

What Can We Learn About Assessment From Video Games? | edte.ch

Here is one of my favorites,.

http://www.poweracrosstexas.org/

I love the Why Power Game,.

It kept me fascinated trying to run a city.

I love the embedded assessment and standards that are completed by playing this game.
What does it take to build a sustainable, green energy community? 8th Graders are showing us how using WhyPower, an interactive learning game within the largest interactive learning world, WhyVille.

Concord.org

http://www.concord.org/projects/electron-technologies

Here is a serious use of a serious game.


Using war games to treat post-traumatic stress disorder

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201…

Soldiers may benefit from virtual reality applications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A new study reviews how virtual reality applications are being designed and implemented across various points in the military deployment cycle, to prevent, identify and treat combat-related injuries.

and all the ways that I talked about that come together to help students learn.Dr. Bob Plants has this excellent blog to take the subject further.

http://sharingtree.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/what-can-we-learn-about-assessment-from-videogames-edte-ch/

Teachers to Blame? I don’t think so.. Look more closely at the “politics “of Education

bonniebraceysutton Leave a comment

A democratic education means that we educate people in a way that ensures they can think independently, that they can use information, knowledge, and technology, among other things, to draw their own conclusions.
– Linda Darling-Hammond

Transforming Education Using Tools and Well Trained Teachers

Visualization and Modeling with an IPad

Whose to Blame for Poor Urban Schools? Look more closely at the politics of schools to find out.

I am losing a lot of my educational friends lately or at least we are sparring on line. Like the press, they look at the older teachers of America and say, that the problems in education are the fault of the older, teachers the digital immigrants. Well, is it really?

When I question people about what happens in K-12 they rest the problem squarely on the shoulders of the K-12 teachers.

Why is America falling behind in academics? There are many reasons. We are 21st in the world in Science and 25th in the world in Math. We who started the use of the Internet…Well it is so bad that the Congress has created a solution.

US to back 21st century learning
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley

The US Congress has given the go-ahead for a new centre to explore ways advanced computer and communications technologies can improve learning.
The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies will focus on “bringing education into the 21st century.”Supporters said classrooms have failed to keep up with technology innovations.
“America’s reputation as an international leader rests in the hands of our youth,” said Sen. Chris Dodd.
“It should be among our top priorities to provide our students with the tools they need to maintain and build upon this standing.”
The Senator was one of the original sponsors of a bill that proposed the setting up of the centre. Meanwhile Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky spearheaded the passage of the bill through the House and said its timing could not be more critical.
“American businesses know that they need a well-educated workforce to face growing competition from China, India and Europe.”
The Federation of American Scientists said, “The creativity that developed extraordinary new information technologies has not focused on finding ways to make learning more compelling, more personal and more productive in our nation’s schools.
“People assumed that the explosion of innovation in information tools in business and service industries would automatically move into classrooms.”
That, the Federation said, has simply not happened.
The centre will support a ‘first of its kind’ comprehensive research and development program aimed at improving all levels of learning from kindergarten to university and from government training to college.
Missed opportunity
“Education is falling further and further behind the rest of the economy and we have to rethink our basic approach to helping people learn,” said Henry Kelly, the Federation’s president.
The FAS said that learning scientists and educators have known for years that people learn faster if education can be personalised and if students are motivated by seeing how their knowledge can help them solve problems they care about.
Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7569484.stm

Published: 2008/08/19 07:51:13 GMT

In the past the unmatched vitality of the United States’ economy and science and technology enterprise has made this country a world leader for decades, allowing Americans to benefit from a high standard of living and national security. But in a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas so that the nation will consistently gain from the opportunities offered by rapid globalization, says a new report from the National Academies.

Given the United States’ history of economic and scientific pre-eminence, it is easy to be complacent about these complex issues, the report says. Following are some indicators that illustrate why decisive action is needed now:

· For the cost of one chemist or one engineer in the United States, a company can hire about five chemists in China or 11 engineers in India.

· Last year chemical companies shuttered 70 facilities in the United States and have tagged 40 more for closure. Of 120 chemical plants being built around the world with price tags of $1 billion or more, one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

· U.S. 12th-graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general knowledge in mathematics and science. In addition, an advanced mathematics assessment was administered to students in 15 other countries who were taking or had taken advanced math courses, and to U.S. students who were taking or had taken pre-calculus, calculus, or Advanced Placement calculus. Eleven countries outperformed the United States, and four scored similarly. None scored significantly below the United States.

· In 1999 only 41 percent of U.S. eighth-graders had a math teacher who had majored in mathematics at the undergraduate or graduate level or studied the subject for teacher certification — a figure that was considerably lower than the international average of 71 percent.

· Last year more than 600,000 engineers graduated from institutions of higher education in China. In India, the figure was 350,000. In America, it was about 70,000.

· In 2001 U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development.

Without a major push to strengthen the foundations of America’s competitiveness, the United States could soon lose its privileged position. The ultimate goal is to create new, high-quality jobs for all citizens by developing new industries that stem from the ideas of exceptional scientists and engineers.

Increase America’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education.

· Among the recommended implementation steps is the creation of a merit-based scholarship program to attract 10,000 exceptional students to math and science teaching careers each year. Four-year scholarships, worth up to $20,000 annually, should be designed to help some of the nation’s top students obtain bachelor’s degrees in physical or life sciences, engineering, or mathematics — with concurrent certification as K-12 math and science teachers. After graduation, they would be required to work for at least five years in public schools. Participants who teach in disadvantaged inner-city or rural areas would receive a $10,000 annual bonus. Each of the 10,000 teachers would serve about 1,000 students over the course of a teaching career, having an impact on 10 million minds, the report says.

Sowing the Seeds

Sustain and strengthen the nation’s commitment to long-term basic research.

· Policy-makers should increase the national investment in basic research by 10 percent each year over the next seven years. Special attention should be paid to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and information sciences, and to basic research funding for the U.S. Department of Defense, the report says.

· Policy-makers also should establish within the U.S. Department of Energy an organization called the Advanced Research Project Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) that reports to the undersecretary for science and sponsors “out-of-the-box” energy research to meet the nation’s long-term energy challenges.

· Authorities should make 200 new research grants annually — worth $500,000 each, payable over five years — to the nation’s most outstanding early-career researchers.

Hands on Technology

Best and Brightest

Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the United States and abroad. The United States should be considered the most attractive setting in the world to study and conduct research, the report says.

· Each year, policy-makers should provide 25,000 new, competitive four-year undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 new graduate fellowships to U.S. citizens enrolled in physical science, life science, engineering, and mathematics programs at U.S. colleges and universities.

· Policy-makers should provide a one-year automatic visa extension that allows international students to remain in the United States to seek employment if they have received doctorates or the equivalent in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or other fields of national need from qualified U.S. institutions. If these students then receive job offers from employers that are based in the United States and pass a security screening test, they should automatically get work permits and expedited residence status. If they cannot obtain employment within one year, their visas should expire.

Incentives for Innovation

Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation. This can be accomplished by actions such as modernizing the U.S. patent system, realigning tax policies to encourage innovation, and ensuring affordable broadband Internet access, the report says.

· Policy-makers should provide tax incentives for innovation that is based in the United States. The Council of Economic Advisers and the Congressional Budget Office should conduct a comprehensive analysis to examine how the United States compares with other nations as a location for innovation and related activities, with the goal of ensuring that the nation is one of the most attractive places in the world for long-term investment in such efforts.

· The Research and Experimentation Tax Credit is currently for companies that increase their R&D spending above a predetermined level. To encourage private investment in innovation, this credit, which is scheduled to expire in December, should be made permanent. And Congress and the administration should increase the allowable credit from 20 percent to 40 percent of qualifying R&D investments.

The study was sponsored by the National Academies, which comprise the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter.
This news release and report are available at http://national-academies.org

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy

And Urban Schools? ????????

Academic freedom: the typical urban school district’s personnel and budgeting systems leave principals without much say in hiring teachers or allocating resources.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school system in the nation–and perhaps the worst. Slightly less than half of its 75,000 employees are classroom teachers, meaning that Los Angeles spends just 35 percent of its budget on teacher pay. By comparison, the school systems in Houston, Texas, and Edmonton, in the Canadian province of Alberta, spend 49 percent and 56 percent, respectively, of their budgets on teachers. Since 1980, Los Angeles Unified’s enrollment has grown by 180,000 students, but the district has added only 15 schools with a total of 20,000 seats. As a result, nearly 200,000 students must be bused to a distant campus while most attend multi-track, year-round schools that can push more students through but offer 17 fewer days of instruction.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MJG/is_1_4/ai_111734747

Although elementary schoolers in Los Angeles have made real gains in literacy in recent years, among high-school students, only 23 percent in reading and 34 percent in math meet or exceed the national norm on the Stanford 9. Of the district’s teachers, 27 percent lack full credentials. The system has a chronic shortage of qualified principals.
If Los Angeles is the worst school district in America, its East Coast cousin, New York City, is a close second. And the Chicago schools, while improving, are still recovering from the day in 1988 when William J. Bennett, secretary of education in the Reagan administration, pronounced them the “worst in the nation.” Why are these three school systems in such deep disarray? Certainly not because they are the three largest.

None of them has more than a fraction of IBM or Toyota’s work force, and those companies are icons of good management. Nor is it because they serve high percentages of minority children from low-income families. Houston’s schools, which are equally minority and poor, perform well relative to other urban school districts. The reason is that the school districts in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are too centralized, much too top-down in their management, for their size.

I Excellent teaching requires extensive training and experience. A seasoned, excellent teacher would have training in and experience with pedagogy and content. 

“Telecommunications provides the new learning platform of this century and is replacing the textbook as the medium through which a modern education is provided,” Lucas said. “The world’s knowledge is now available online, far beyond what books and materials can provide in schools and libraries themselves.” George Lucas


 K-12 was the group that got the blame. Most of the time I was the only K-12 teacher in the audience. But there have been times when I was not, and ageism struck. A young teacher sitting beside me
not knowing my work, or advocacy, said, its the old teachers who are to blame for all of the ills of education. She went on to talk about her mother, who was a teacher and to say that
people like her mother ought to get out of education. I didn’t say much, unusual for me. but I thought what??

I was the only K-12 teacher on a committee, the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council
. It was a lot of hard work. I learned a lot. I traveled all over the country, in areas of need, and difficulty. My teaching experience is also varied, I have taught in black schools, at the lower socioeconomic areas, in a so called charter school designed to welcome those who were interested in , in a science focused school, done team teaching and I have been a demonstration teacher for AAAS, for the use of hands-on science teaching. I have worked with Karen Buller of Niti.org and we wrote curriculum for American Indians.. and traveled to the schools in Indian country, sharing technology.
I guess most of my life has been teaching, with extraordinary experiences in professional development during the summer. As a legacy teacher. I was trained in a HBCU. Not much was expected of me, and not much was taught . According to the times, we had to be able to teach and to know curriculum to seventh grade level. The math was certainly not old or new. It was drill math. End of story.

So I think what I want to explain is that we had two societies and two kinds of schools. I boldly integrated into schools, teaching in schools as the only black teacher on the faculty of some schools who did NOT teach the tracked students. I taught , initially the gifted and talented students and I was good at it. I am an excellent teacher.

So what happened to me that did not happen to most minority teachers? I rested my professional development outside of the public schools. I was a child of museum study and my Sunday excursions to the Smithsonian, and I am stubborn. I went to the well where the movers and thinkers and those with ideas were working, in workshops, courses, expeditions, and especially had wonderful teaching experiences, learning experiences with NASA and with the National Geographic and three years of Oceanography at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Sadly, most teachers get the WORST of professional development.

TAUGHT BY THE BEST

My reason for talking about those experiences is that I was taught by the best. From various groups like NCTM, and NSTA I gathered resources, knowledge, networks, and pearls of wisdom. Who can teach the use of geography and visuals like the National Geographic. I feel into a wonderful set of examples of how to.. and it has been a passport for the use of technology for the rest of my life.
That is not the usual case for teachers. Usually the professional development comes from within the school system, or a special group of experts that they trust. It has been wonderful to see school systems allow their teachers to use Blue Webn Videoconferencing for Learning, Exploratorium, Thinkfinity Learning Network, and the resources of the National Geographic. Some school systems , even advise their teachers of learning opportunities and initiatives that occur.

I believe that some of the politics in school systems and the
lack of professional development of merit are to blame for the teachers who do not measure up. Not being new teachers they have been allowed, encouraged to teach as they do. It probably didn’t make much difference.

They were teaching minority kids. Who cared?

There is blame in the politics of teaching, the bad professional development , the use of only in-house knowledge, and the stubbornness of schools resisting change and depth of content knowledge. I worry about the digitally naive and the content deprived teachers. But then, who cares? To people like Michelle Rhee, its the older teachers. I don’t think that rings true for all teachers.

We might also remember that there was a knowledge divide
a content divide , and of course the low expectations exoected for those who teach our most needy students.

SOLUTIONS

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-Lets_Be_Digital_Multipliers-ET-01-09.pdf

Comcast

Thinkfinity

Teachers ask about STEM, is it a Flower? No , It is the flowering of new ways to teach Science, Technology , Engineering and Math

bonniebraceysutton 2 Comments
Family STEM Learning

AAAS Science Days

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers drive our nation’s innovation and competitiveness by generating new ideas, new companies and new industries. However, U.S. businesses frequently voice concerns over the supply and availability of STEM workers. Over the past 10 years, growth in STEM jobs was three times as fast as growth in non-STEM jobs. STEM workers are also less likely to experience joblessness than their non-STEM counterparts. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics workers play a key role in the sustained growth and stability of the U.S. economy, and are a critical component to helping the U.S. win the future.

• In 2010, there were 7.6 million STEM workers in the United States, representing about 1 in 18 workers.

• STEM occupations are projected to grow by 17.0 percent from 2008 to 2018, compared to 9.8 percent growth for non-STEM occupations.

• STEM workers command higher wages, earning 26 percent more than their non-STEM counterparts.

• More than two-thirds of STEM workers have at least a college degree, compared to less than one-third of non-STEM workers.

 • STEM degree holders enjoy higher earnings, regardless of whether they work in STEM or non-STEM occupations.

application/pdf iconstemfinalyjuly14.pdf

Robert Ping, sharing visualization and modeling images from the Teragrid

STEM Initiatives,, Outreach, Teragrid , Family Science Days

 
What is a girl to do, earn and learn!!
Just a few NCWIT resources for your perusal
NCWIT Resources

NCWIT offers a range of resources to suit your needs.  All of our resources are FREE, easy-to-use, downloadable, and printable.

  • Practices NCWIT promising practices use social science research as a foundation for advice, case studies, and activities that are proven to attract, retain, and advance girls and women in IT.
  • Talking Points NCWIT Talking Points are a series of easy-to-use conversation cards designed to promote the involvement of women in IT by helping people talk about the issues.
  • Programs-in-a-Box NCWIT Programs-in-a-Box offer turnkey solutions to pressing issues facing the IT community. Programs-in-a-Box provide all the components necessary for quick and strategic action, right out-of-the-box.
  • Workbooks & Guides NCWIT workbooks and guides provide you with practical, hands-on steps for changing your recruitment and retention practices and implementing institutional reform.
Never too early to learn to love science!

Family science days at AAAS in Washington DC

Women in STEM: An Opportunity and An Imperative

Today Commerce's Economic and Statistics Administration released the second in a series of reports on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This report, entitled Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation (PDF), looked at women and STEM. The results offer an opportunity and an imperative for women and America. The results showed that women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.

Other key findings are:

Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs–considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare
For more information on this topic, read Chief Economist Mark Doms's blog post about the report and ESA's first report on STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future.
Women in STEM: An Opportunity and An Imperative

Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs–considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare
For more information on this topic, read Chief Economist Mark Doms's blog post about the report and ESA's first report on STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future.

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Women in STEM: An Opportunity and An Imperative

Submitted on August 3, 2011 – 11:30am
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<a href=”http://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/images/2011/august/stem-totalworkforcetotalste.jpg&#8221; rel=”lightbox[field_photo][Gender Shares of Total and STEM Jobs, 2009Download Original]”>Gender Shares of Total and STEM Jobs, 2009

Today Commerce’s Economic and Statistics Administration released the second in a series of reports on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This report, entitledWomen in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation(PDF), looked at women and STEM. The results offer an opportunity and an imperative for women and America. The results showed that women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.

Other key findings are:

  • Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
  • Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs–considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
  • Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
  • Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare

For more information on this topic, read Chief Economist Mark Doms’s blog post about the report and ESA’s first report on

STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future.http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1107/stem-education/flash.html



Engineering new ideas at Tracy Sdhool, Tracy Learning Center, Tracy, CA.
Girls can learn to engineer.

			

	
	



			
				



	

				
What Science Pipeline? Making Sense of STEM Offerings! Part One

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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Family Outreach Days at AAAS Family Days  - Teragrid Booth
Students explore visualizations of the oil spill.


We all know that many students are not anywhere near talented teachers who can give them the information they need to be curious, understanding, interested and involved in the STEM initiatives. For many there is no pipeline, no indepth knowledge of any of the subjects that will create workforce, or future readiness for careers.


As a career STEM teacher, I was teaching science, math, problem solving, engineering and the use of technology early, i caught a lot of flack.  There were helpful groups of people and organizations that  reached out to me, to others and who helped us to become the teachers that need to be STEM educated. There were these teachers an d we were ridiculed during the Bush administration for teaching science. It was the bottom of the needs totem pole for M. Spellings. So we were not groomed, by our school systems or regarded in a good light. Political winds blew us away.


There was


NASA has many resources that a teacher can personalize and share with no cost.
Astronomy , space science education, the Chalenger Center Programs, so many offerings


,  NASA’s Education Materials Finder will help teachers locate resources that can be used in the classroom. Users may search by keywords, grade level, product type and subject. With hundreds of publications and Web sites indexed, the finder is the best way to locate NASA educational resources.


›  Find Materials Now


We meet the world on the news , but do students know where in the world the news is coming from?


The National Geographic Society and its Outreach to Teachers


Community, Education, and Student Outreach, http://www.informationweek.com/news/231003049



education.nationalgeographic.com  


Most remarkable in the way of transformational and experiential teaching was the experience offered by the National Geographic. It was not just an experience for me. There are Alliance groups within the Geographic. There are opportunities. I had a month of involvement in all things geographic. What they have to offer changes as the programs expand. There is a section on education, there are special programs, , there are lesson plans and there are mentorships to be had in the AAGE.


National Geography Standards




The first ever national geography standards, Geography for Life, were published in 1994 and are being voluntarily adopted around the country. These geography standards are benchmarks against which the content of geography courses can be measured. Standards will affect the education of all children in the United States, and they should be part of the program of instruction of schools in your community. Copies of Geography for Life are available for purchase from the NCGE store.


The Geography Standards Framework consists of two levels. At the first level, the subject matter of geography is divided into six essential elements. By essential we mean that each piece is central and necessary; we must look at the world in this way. By element we mean that each piece is a building block for the whole. At the second level, each essential element contains a number of geography standards, and each geography standard contains a set of related ideas and approaches to the subject matter of geography.


National Geography Standards




The first ever national geography standards, Geography for Life, were published in 1994 and are being voluntarily adopted around the country. These geography standards are benchmarks against which the content of geography courses can be measured. Standards will affect the education of all children in the United States, and they should be part of the program of instruction of schools in your community. Copies of Geography for Life are available for purchase from the NCGE store.


The Geography Standards Framework consists of two levels. At the first level, the subject matter of geography is divided into six essential elements. By essential we mean that each piece is central and necessary; we must look at the world in this way. By element we mean that each piece is a building block for the whole. At the second level, each essential element contains a number of geography standards, and each geography standard contains a set of related ideas and approaches to the subject matter of geography.






 Earthwatch Education


Earthwatch fellowships enable critical partners to participate in research expeditions worldwide. Each year, Earthwatch’s Fellowship Programs enable hundreds of students, teachers, conservation professionals, and corporate employees to join expeditions at little or no out-of-pocket expense. Earthwatch Fellows are emissaries of the Earthwatch mission, sharing their experiences and new knowledge with thousands of students, teachers, and colleagues upon their return.


Educator Fellowships


Summer Fellowships

Get out of the classroom and head into the field to learn about cutting edge research and conservation efforts, to develop professional skills, and to make a difference for our shared environment! As a summer educator fellow, you’ll spend 1-2 weeks of your summer recess on an Earthwatch expedition alongside a diverse team of volunteers led by prominent field researchers. After your expedition, you’ll bring the world back into your classroom and to your students as you’ve never done before.


Learn more about our Summer Fellowship program.


Live From the Field

Live From the Field educator fellows join Earthwatch research teams during a brief portion (7 to 10 days) of their school year and share their experiences with classrooms at home using blogs containing, photos, videos, lessons, and activities. Live From the Field educator fellows also connect with students through live video and phone conferencing at scheduled times during their expedition.


I joyously participated with other teachers in Earthwatch Outreach.  It was fun to be an Earthwatch fellow. Working with a scientist in the field using technology to share the archeological findings was hard work, but rewarding. I learned the culture of the island, the history of Mallorca, I learned about archeological excavation , and how we could use technology to map the site and the finds. Many teachers have been Earthwatch Fellows. The experience can be a life -changing event. Who knew about the other history I learned so much about . The cultures of the Med were unknown to me. Dr. William Waldron was the PI at the time. I participated in a further grant, we mapped the Mongoose popution of St. Martins .. and then volunteered to do Turtle nests , at night , another project. Nothing in a textbook can match the experience. Nothing!


K-12 classroom educators of any subject(s) from public or private schools nationwide are eligible to apply for Earthwatch fellowships. The strongest applicants are those who are passionate about teaching, excited about making a difference with their time and talents, and committed to engaging their communities using their knowledge, passion, and energy.


A starting point is the Education Department of the National Geographic. I don’t remember why I knew about them, or what I saw that made me apply to a summer institute.


, NSTA and their workshops, NCTM and their initiatives , Shodor.org and their free resources, the Fish and Wildlife Service, 4H and the SET program, the Exploratorium, and wait there are more, but I won’t name them all.


There is a digital divide, and there are resources everywhere, if teachers can access them, but given the state of broadband, in many areas that are rural and distant , the people who are concerned about STEM , are creating a false illusion that teachers create the problem.


There is also the knowledge that we in the classrooms have a mandated methodology which we can tweak but the management, ie the school boards and policy people make most of the decisions. So, what ‘s a teacher to do? Stay tuned. The age of Sputnik is over!!


The age of Transformation , has begun in Education.


http://chronicle.com/article/A-Size-That-Fits-All-for-the/128421/






Exploring the Teragrid
Outreach to the public sharing research = Oil Spill simulation


Michael Morgenstern for The Chronicle


By Hal Salzman and B. Lindsay Lowell

The strength and size of the nation’s science-and-engineering work force are the subject of much concern, following the Obama administration’s education initiatives; international testing that shows students in Shanghai at the top of the world; and, last year, an update of the influential report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” That report finds the deterioration of America’s competitiveness so severe that it is likened to a Category 5 hurricane. It calls for the United States to create a “New Sputnik” education initiative and expand our science-and-engineering work force. It reinforces a common worry over American students’ lackluster international standing compared with those in several Asian nations and in a handful of small European nations.


We believe that those concerns are overstating and misidentifying America’s challenges in science and engineering, and that they are missing the real opportunities for improving the nation’s education and work force. As we examined the evidence, several points became clear: The United States needs to improve education broadly rather than expand particular fields of study; look inward rather than abroad for exemplary educational models, in light of the limits of international comparisons; and focus on the core lessons about improving the lowest-performing group of students. There is actually no compelling evidence that, over all, the educational pipeline is failing to meet demand.

Our recent analysis of Department of Education data for three decades followed students from high school to the job market. We found little in the way of overall change in students’ pursuit of science-and-engineering studies or their entry into those careers over the past 30 years. We found that while a steady proportion of college students graduated in science and engineering, no more than half of them landed jobs in a formally defined core science or engineering occupation.

So, given a steady supply, why do companies report difficulty in finding ideal workers? Listen carefully and it sounds as if the employers would like entry-level workers to have skills not typical of newly graduated students. Leading engineering companies seek technologists with a depth of skill in a technical area combined with a broad education across technical fields, business, and the social sciences. Colleges find it difficult to develop all of that in only four years. So the hiring difficulty may reflect problems with pedagogy, the structure of higher education, the unwillingness of some employers to train new workers, and a lack of collaboration between academe and industry. It does not, however, indicate a loss of student interest or a shrinking pool of science-and-engineering graduates.

Nevertheless, some policy makers and industry leaders believe that to meet the demands of our knowledge economy, more such education is needed. They even think it is preferable to other fields of study. While acknowledging the value of science-and-engineering knowledge, we find that it is but one of many forms of valuable knowledge. Moreover, the science-and-engineering managers we interviewed expressed dissatisfaction with the “soft” communication, or teamwork, skills of their new engineers. And changes in hiring patterns suggest that the nation’s economic future depends on developing a balanced portfolio of well-educated workers across the spectrum of skills, knowledge, and disciplines.


Finally, some industry lobbying groups and high-tech companies seek to augment the supply of domestic workers by importing foreign labor on temporary visas. But this confuses the purpose of those programs with the country’s immigration policy for citizens-in-waiting. Immigration policy is driven by a long-term vision and a wide range of social and political objectives. The original intent of temporary-visa programs, on the other hand, was to meet short-term, not structural, labor shortages. Ensuring that labor markets are not distorted by short-term visas, which in their current form lead to a number of labor-market and social problems, is not anti-immigrant, and does not undermine the strength of U.S. science and engineering. In fact, raising the numbers of temporary visas for foreign workers during cyclical talent shortages can distort labor markets and discourage domestic students from careers in engineering and the sciences.


While we do not maintain that our study, or any one study, is definitive, we do believe that influential groups should consider new evidence in their quest to advance science, technology, and economic growth. When we look at the past three decades, the data support a far more favorable set of conclusions on student performance and supply than those promulgated by critics of the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) pipeline. At the same time, our research supports the widely recognized fact that women and minorities are the most likely future source of STEM workers, and, discouragingly, that where the education system is most clearly failing is precisely for those populations. Of course, focusing on the big picture leaves out clear-cut examples of unfilled shortages of workers in esoteric but crucial occupations.

The classic tried and true formulation is that supply follows demand or, less sanguinely, that depressed wages and discouraged workers result if supply outstrips demand. To avoid those problems, a number of demand-side policies should receive support from all quarters. These policies include stable and increasing government financing for research, reinvigoration of lagging private-sector investments in research, tax breaks and other incentives for research-and-development activities, and the creation of an environment that encourages entrepreneurship. In terms of education, however, the evidence clearly points to improving basic education for low-performing students, schools, and populations—not an attempt to artificially inflate the number of science-and-engineering degrees awarded.

Hal Salzman is a professor of public policy at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. B. Lindsay Lowell is director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.


THE JACK  kENT COOKE FOUNDATION


No Gifted Child Left Behind?  First, the good news: It turns out, millions of kids from low-income families are acing standardized tests. Now, the bad news…http://www.jkcf.org/news-knowledge


With the tests we find that there are many who have the capacity to learn, to create to innovate, but, sadly nothing happens.  Download the report, here is the summary.


Today in America, there are millions of students who are
overcoming challenging socioeconomic circumstances
to excel academically. They defy the stereotype that poverty
precludes high academic performance and that lowerincome
and low academic achievement are inextricably
linked. They demonstrate that economically disadvantaged
children can learn at the highest levels and provide hope
to other lower-income students seeking to follow the
same path.
Sadly, from the time they enter grade school through
their postsecondary education, these students lose more
educational ground and excel less frequently than their
higher-income peers. Despite this tremendous loss
in achievement, these remarkable young people are
hidden from public view and absent from public policy
debates. Instead of being recognized for their excellence
and encouraged to strengthen their achievement, highachieving
lower-income students enter what we call the
“achievement trap” —
educators, policymakers, and the
public assume they can fend for themselves when the facts
show otherwise.
Very little is known about high-achieving students
from lower-income families — defined in this report as
students who score in the top 25 percent on nationally
normed standardized tests and whose family incomes
(adjusted for family size) are below the national median.
We set out to change that fact and to focus public attention
on this extraordinary group of students who can help
reset our sights from standards of proficiency to standards
of excellence.
This report chronicles the experiences of highachieving
lower-income students during elementary
school, high school, college, and graduate school. In
some respects, our findings are quite hopeful. There
are millions of high-achieving lower-income students
in urban, suburban, and rural communities all across
America; they reflect the racial, ethnic, and gender composition
of our nation’s schools; they drop out of high
school at remarkably low rates; and more than 90 percent
of them enter college.
But there is also cause for alarm. There are far fewer
lower-income students achieving at the highest levels than
there should be, they disproportionately fall out of the
high-achieving group during elementary and high school,
they rarely rise into the ranks of high achievers during
those periods, and, perhaps most disturbingly, far too few
ever graduate from college or go on to graduate school.
Unless something is done, many more of America’s brightest
lower-income students will meet this same educational
fate, robbing them of opportunity and our nation of a
valuable resource.
This report discusses new and original research on
this extraordinary population of students. Our findings
come from three federal databases that during the past 20
years have tracked students in elementary and high school,
college, and graduate school. The following principal
findings about high-achieving lower-income students are
important for policymakers, educators, business leaders,
the media, and civic leaders to understand and explore as
schools, communities, states, and the nation consider ways
to ensure that all children succeed:

			

	
	



			
				



	

				
TeraGrid ’11: Extreme Digital Discovery , and  a Teacher’s Experience, Before the Dawn of XSEDE

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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Teachers Touring TACC
Ray Rose , Henry Neeman, Vic Sutton, and Bonnie Sutton sharing the ideas of Teragrid with help from TACC






TACC TourTeachers Exploring TACC



































TeraGrid ’11: Extreme Digital Discovery


A Salt Lake City Experience


July 18-21, 2011


I was lucky to get funding to attend the Teragrid Conference in Salt Lake City. My foundation funded me to attend the last conference before it’s change to the new outreach. I have attended many of the Teragrid Conferences, networking with, learning with and being challenged to understand the use of new technologies. These were experiences in which real researchers, collaborators and EOT people created a conference. I usually attended the EOT Track. The rewards have been outstanding to the children , teachers and groups that I am able to share with.


My favorite set of presenters were Jeff Sale, and Diane Baxter.  Jeff is encyclopedic in his knowledge of visualization and other topics , and Diane’s presentations always allowed me to understand, share and teach with people outside of the Teragrid community. She shared liberally her ideas and was always up to thinking about new ideas. At various conferences I was able to do outreach and share the ideas of the gateways.  I also attended two workshops at the cneter in San Diego, In one of the workshops I learned GIS , GPS and was able to attend the ESRI conference. I am teaching those skills in a project in Washington DC to students who may not have access to those learning opportunities in the schools. They come on Saturdays to the JEF Center . ( the center is run by Dr.  Jesse Bemley , another Teragrid participant) It is a minority outreach initiative.


Teragrid Support for Bridging to K-12


One of the ideas we had was to bridge teaching andf learning conferences with the Teragrid. We first did this in Washington , DC prior to the ISTE Conference.  Just the networking that happened at that conference spread ideas, created friendships and enriched the K-12  learning community.  Here were the leaders of Teragrid sitting with us, and sharing their EOT ideas. It was powerful. We learned about various opportunities, internships and curriculum ideas for classrooms. One outstanding resources is Shodor.org Their mission: to improve math and science education through the effective use of modeling and simulation technologies — “computational science.”


Shodor, a national resource for computational science education, is located in Durham, N.C., and serves students and educators nationwide. Their online education tools such as Interactivate and theComputational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD), a Pathway Portal of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), help transform learning through computational thinking.In addition to developing and deploying interactive models, simulations, and educational tools, Shodor serves students and educators directly through workshops and other hands-on experiences. But the best part of Shodor I think, is learning feom Dr. Bob Panoff. He is a talented teacher who introduced us to many materials we could use in the classroom.


When you talk about STEM and resources for the learning communities it would be important to understand the connections, the gateways , and the specialized lessons that are a legacy of the initiative.


The Teacher Tech Program at San Diego is a wonderful one. I participated in the Teacher Tech program at Rice University. Here is the web page they let me learn to make. ( http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/bbracey/)


All of the links of that web page are not working, but the ideas of sharing and learning and continuing to progress with other teachers continues you can also see how widely I was able to share the ideas that I learned.  Rice is in Houston, Texas and so we had visits from an astronaut and visits to the space center. There was minority outreach too. It was one of the first workshops that I attended that was very diverse in membership. Dr. Richard Tapia was one of our mentors.


TACC -TCEA- Teachers  Uniting and Sharing Powerful Ideas


. This year a group of us went to the TCEA conference in Austin , Texas to share the ideas of Supercomputing. We took teachers from the conference to a Teragrid Site which is TACC. The Supercomputer at TACC is called LoneStar. A team , including Ray Rose, Henry Neeman, Vic Sutton and I planned to share the ideas of Teragrid with teachers who may not have known much about the Teragrid.  We were nervous as we planned, suppose we got no takers. But we had Henry Neeman’s workshop just in case, and then there was a tour that we did for the teachers with a program planned by the TACC facilty just for them. You will see pictures of the tour attached here.

Faith Singer-Villalobos was the person who helped us create the workshop for the teachers.

It was a great experience for the teachers. We decided to try to expand our outreach. After the exprience with the teachers we created a paper sharing the ideas of Supercomputing.

 Here is our white  paper!!  We claim the TACC opportunity  as a success!!


http://etcjournal.com/2011/04/01/white-paper-21st-century-education-computational-thinking-computational-science-and-high-performance-computing-in-k-12-education/


Scientific Computing Curriculum Outreach for the Future Workforce


To educate the next generation of researchers and computational professional, TACC created a unique curriculum for The University of Texas at Austin which allows students to study supercomputing and earn a Certificate of Scientific Computation. TACC scientists teach five undergraduate and graduate level courses at The University of Texas at Austin, in the Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation. Four of TACC’s advanced computing courses are part of the requirements for the certification, which is the equivalent of a minor. Even better, TACC is going to share resources that will be in the education department ‘s digital center, with the help of Dr. Paul Resta at the University of Texas at Austin. We are planning a workshop involvement for teacher educators from the SITE.org AACE group. That conference will be in Austin next year in the Spring, March 7-9.  We will be able to create a new interface and we are excited about it.

We are the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education, and it their our mission to promote research, scholarship, collaboration, exchange and support.


Who is Dr. Resta? I met him in the CIlt.org initiative which was another EOT program from the NSF. Powerful silos are broken and teachers , researchers ,professors and industry worked together on powerful ideas.


What was CILT.org?


The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) was founded in October 1997 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to stimulate the development and study of important, technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) learning. CILT has engaged the collaborative efforts of a wide range of people, institutions, and organizations including cognitive scientists, computer scientists, natural scientists, engineers, classroom teachers, educational researchers, learning technology industry leaders, and policy analysts. CILT was designed as an inclusive national effort led by five institutions—SRI International, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, and the Concord Consortium. Senior researchers at these five institutions shared in the leadership of CILT. This distributed structure brought together substantial experience in foundational research on learning, technology innovation, and school improvement.


    

  • Four “theme teams” focused the efforts in areas of highest promise. These areas are Visualization and Modeling, Ubiquitous Computing, Assessments for Learning, and Community Tools. CILT also conducts synergy projects that synthesize important ideas and tools from all themes to create more robust educational programs for use in schools.
    • 



Education, Opportunities and Training Teragid to the General Public




General Public


One of the ways that EOT worked  to share with the public was to


generate interest in Science and Technology using Stereoscopic 3D Videos, I PADS with visualization models and other outreach materials


Targetting students in grades 5-12 as well as the general public, each video is approximately five minutes in length and has elements of computer-generated imagery and live-action. The first two have already been shown to thousands of viewers at numerous locations and events throughout the US. A third video is currently under production and scheduled to be released late 2011.


Here are a series of activities for general outreach to the public from the Teragrid AAS Family Days


https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150145530156327.334346.593996326&l=bc9b0c4957


Teachers used  the research of this group to learn with and participate in specialized workshops and initiatives.


Teacher Resources


Here are PDF’s of special projects from the Teragrid for teachers.


Download a PDF of the TeraGrid 2010 Science Highlights brochure



THE FUTURE?


The  same sort of work—only in more detail, generating more new knowledge and improving our world in an even broader range of fields—will continue with XSEDE.


XSEDE leader John Towns gives an overview of the new project and how it will build on TeraGrid in this short video.


NCSA’s John Towns talks about the NSF-funded XSEDE project


www.ncsa.illinois.edu

































			

	
	



			
				



	

				
Studying the Chesapeake Bay, Using Digital Resources and the Arts!!

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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Exploring the Chesapeake Bay


Children who may not know the way of estuaries to the sea can learn using valuable online resources.


I use a different way of teaching. Marc Prensky is right. There are people who know a lot more than I do about the Chesapeake Bay.I became the facilitator for learning, connecting the dots and some of them were using the arts , digital media and hands on science by mistake really. I had training from the National Geographic which included maps, history, art and a great video.


I wanted to think how to fund all of this and how to create a rich environment . I wrote some grants, the parents and I had a meeting and we enlisted some help from the Fish and Wildlife Service.


The Chesapeake Bay is the most important water way in this area. I took courses at the National Aquarium in Baltimore , and learned to write curriculum  . For three years I investigated


estuaries, and then the Bay as a system and then the ocean. I think I would have become a Marine Biologist if I had not been swayed by technology and the Clinton administration. But I had the curriculum , but as usual not the permission to use it at my grade level and so I reached out to NASA, NOAA, National Geographic, the Chesapeake Bay Society and parents and I found a way to get a grant. When money is given in schools and principals sign their permission , you can do wonderful things.


The final trip was ito Baltimore


We started by sharing resources from the Fish and Wildlife Service



We did Duck Stamps. We drew Duck Stamps  and learned about the various ducks who come to the Chesapeake Bay.


Here is a set of photos and resources from the Fish and Wildlife Service


http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/  The people who came from the Fish and Wildlife Service brought posters and resources too.

The Fish and Wildlife people gave us a bus to the Blackwater facility. We saw ducks in the wild and had an outdoor excursion.


National Aquarium in Baltimore


The National Aquarium in Baltimore is a beautiful place. It is expensive for students and we decided to do a bus tour.


Thank heavens for grants.



The education program is fantastics, we did adaptations and studied the salinity, turbidity waves and tides, microscopic life , seined and did pollution studies from different sites on the Chesapeake.But we did our homework. We read stories about the CHesapeake Bay, and wrote some of our own. We studied the maps of the bay and the estuary.


Smithsonian Estuary Research Center


You can see that we did a lot of work at this research center, before we had our “Eat a Crab Lab” and other activities









3.   About Crabs – Lesson 1

…ere the River Meets the Sea: Exploring Life in the Chesapeake Bay with Smithsonian Scientists SERC Project Home Page Project Team Members Activities & Lesson Plans Project Resources Photo Gallery S E R C Schenectady City School District +————-+—————-+———– Lesson About Index Crabs Lesson Worksheet 108 1 Education Drive Schenectady, NY 12303 Blue Setting Crab Up A SERC: 518.370.8100 Observation Salt Tales of the Water Blue Crab Aquarium About Crabs Lesson No. 1 OBJECTIVES: 1. Students will use the Internet to learn about the Blue Crab. 2. Students will be able to identify the…		





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    Grade Level: K-5











4.   About Crabs

Where the River Meets the Sea: Exploring Life in the Chesapeake Bay with Smithsonian Scientists SERC Project Home Page Project Team Members Activities & Lesson Plans Project Resources Photo Gallery S E R C Schenectady City School District Lesson About 108 Index Crabs Lesson Worksheet Education II 1 Drive Schenectady, NY 12303 Blue Setting 518.370.8100 Crab Up A SERC: Observation Salt Tales of the Water Blue Crab Aquarium About Crabs Lesson No. 2 OBJECTIVES: 1. Students will observe a live Blue Crab. 2. Students will be able to distinguish between a male and fema…		





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    Grade Level: 9-12








That service has a portable traveling lesson. I can’t think it is as exciting as being at the place.


If you look at the pictures you can see how fantastic it is. The children go out on a pier where there are stations . They have science experiments to perform.  We learned the data we needed to do the experiments back in the classroom.


One of my students surprised me. Since we were so early in the year in the crab season. I said if they caught a crab I would


buy a bushel to steam back at the school. Well this child had a plan. Her mother was a biologist. She captured an immature


stage of the crab and precisely identified it.  So we did have an eat a crab lab extra session.


The National Geographic had maps of the Chesapeake Bay and we took a canoe trip on one of the rivers we studied.


Blackbirds in the reeds, a smooth adventure.




National Geographic is partnering with groups – across a range of scientific disciplines – that are interested in exploring how FieldScope can better support student geographic learning and outdoor investigations.


FieldScope Projects  http://www.fieldscope.org/


This is awesome.


National Geographic FieldScope is a web-based mapping, analysis, and collaboration tool designed to support geographic investigations and engage students as citizen scientists investigating real-world issues – both in the classroom and in outdoor education settings. FieldScope enhances student scientific investigations by providing rich geographic context – through maps, mapping activities, and a rich community where student fieldwork and data is integrated with that of peers and professionals, adding analysis opportunities and meaning to student investigations.




Chesapeake Bay


The Chesapeake Bay FieldScope Project is a “citizen science” initiative in which students investigate water quality issues on local and regional scales and collaborate with students across the Bay to analyze data and take action. Chesapeake Bay FieldScope is a project of National Geographic’s Education Programs in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office.






Serc does on line teaching for everyone. But I did it from the Pier and Reed Center.


Marc Haddon was my contact for a long time there.







See the  SERC Lab



This was a teacher workshop


Art was mosaics, writing a play about the bay, drawing the animals of the bay, creating a workbook for people who loved the bay, and writing a grant, the kids did this, to be able to take field trips to photograph the bay.














I never knew that there was a  boating minority connection to the study of the Chesapeake Bay regarding Frederick Douglass.


He created with others , a boat building facility for blacks to be able to be involved in the shipbuilding enterprise.


Who knew?


We collected books and read them about the bay and its children.


In the end we loved best the study of Anoxia Mae.


We wrote a grant with the help of parents and had $5000.oo to spend on field trips, excursions, making movies and posters.


This was at Ashlawn School  in Arlington, Virginia.




We did a lot more than this. One of the things you learn from being a teacher trained by the National Geographic is that children with an interest in geography learn and share with the community. So my children went to the school board to complain about the filth in local streams, and got some help on organizing a clean up day with the Arlington County  Board.


I did not plan that idea. The kids did. You can see why theme based, supported project based learning is wonderful for students.




I am thankful for the training I had at the National Geographic Society as an educator.


If I was teaching now, in a classroom, I could add the GIS information to this program.






ESRI and the National Geographic help make for a rich learning experience for kids.




More resources for everyone are at My Wonderful World .org.



























			

	
	



			
				



	

				
Family Online Safety Contract

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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I don’t know if people know how concerns about online safety  affect the use of technology in schools and families and communities. While working in a rural area, I came in contact with a parent who told me that he solved the cyberbullying program by cutting the cord to the computer.  It made me sad. It made me jump to the reality of the problem. I think the following document is a good way to start the conversation.


I have been reading and learning about family involvement in online safety.


I found this contract  that I think is a great initiative for summer for families.


PTA and school groups could facilitate the sharing of this document.


Family Online Safety Contract


http://www.fosi.org/images/stories/resources/family-online-safety-contract.pdf




















*Adapted by FOSI/ICRA from various online safety pledges and contracts developed by multiple entities: SafeKids.com (www.safekids.com/contract_kid.htm); The Mansfield/Richland County Public Library (www.mrcpl.lib.oh.us/WebContract.htm); Federal Trade Commission Cyberpassport (www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/sitesee); 911paging.com (www.paging.com/internetsafety/internetcontract.htm); I-SAFE America (www.isafe.org/contract-printable.html) 





			

	
	



			
				



	

				
Losing a Mentor but Finding my Way, Anyway!

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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From a visit to Tracy School
Engineering 101




Students construct knowledge using great fiction


Reading, Writing and Thinking






Jack Taub was a mentor of mine. You may never have met him.He recently died without making his dreams of an independent educational initiative for every child a reality in America. He invested his life and funds in trying to make this dream come true.


He was a cheerleader for education who tirelessly campaigned to make a difference, a transformation of learning . He had been a cheerleader for education for me. I have been to endless meetings where he pitched his dreams and ideas. He wanted to launch a thousand schools of transformation based on the Tracy Calidornia, model.


History


Before I met Jack, I was a Christa McAuliffe Educator for Diversity. That put me in touch with Chris Dede , and Seymour Papert to name a few of the innovative educators we were learning from.  We worked through the NEA, NFIE. Teachers contributed money on the death of Christa in the shuttle accident to innovative teaching and learning.


Home




Today the   NEA Foundation’s works  in closing achievement gaps highlights the importance of engaging not only the teachers who provide instruction, but the principals who lead buildings, the superintendent who runs the district, the families who send their children to school and the teacher association leaders who negotiate the working contract for public school employees. Together, these groups are shaping learning environments and opportunities for all students to achieve at higher levels.


Learning Transformational Practice


There was so much to learn. So many ways to use technology and too little permission and or understanding in the schools. We worked hard to demonstrate this technology. With NCLB, in spite of the gathering of experts who talked about STEM and purposed use of technology teachers were reduced to teaching for the test, or suffering from the results of too much testing. The tests might have been ok, but there were school tests, practice tests, grade level tests, special focus tests.. you get my drift.




When I met Jack Taub it was  long after my star had set. I was no longer in the press, working for the Lucas Foundation, or influential. He was using his influence to breathe life into my dreams of a level playing field in education.


I was attracted to educational transformation by a chance encounter trying to solve problems for a child who was being labeled as unable to participate in regular education because of a writing handicap. The child was brilliant, he just could not physically write.


At the time that I was caring for this child, hoping to save him from being labeled, I decided to let technology into my classroom. It is not that I was disliking technology. I had no idea of the power of technology. At the time, I did not think I needed too much technology. After all I was trained by NASA, taking classes at the Smithsonian, and taking workshops from a number of places. I had resources and I knew how to make a beuutiful classroom. But..this is the problem.. the kids wanted to use the technology. I was letting one child use the technology and they all wanted to.


Time for a sea change.


Theme based learning, parent involvement, community involvement. This was what seemed like very hard work.The hardest part of it was learning to involve parents, the planning, the sharing and the students learning to use the tchnology.


Students mentored others, parents helped me when National Geographic had new ideas and resources that the tech support team did not understand.


Here is what happened. We were able to get more computers because other teachers did not want to be bothered with the technology. Frank Withrow and Jenelle Leonard had some initiatives going from the Department of Education , and my kids, parents and I were on the fast track to tranforming educational practice.


So what happened to that student who was having trouble you would be surprised at the outcome. He loved to write on the computer. More than that he often pushed my abilities and ended up teaching or learning something with me. I found to my surprise that for the plays, the kids would make the handouts, create art and make the flyers. This was great. He won my first computer for me. More important he escaped being placed in special education because his writing skills won him national prizes and confirmation of his abilities.


Before that  I used to take a computer home on weekends.. Hint. It was NOT a laptop.


Games


Games were a part of our learning as well. MECC was allowing students and teachers license to use the games and simulations in the classroom. This also made for a transformation. Games were not accepted in schools in many places. However, MECC allowed me to work with them and to demonstrate the games that they had then. We also were able to create out own games using basic and a few simple languages. School was a fascinating place to my students, and community. We had NASA, National Geographic, and NSTA. We were on the edge of the new learning cuve. Kidsnetwork was one of the projects that we were able to explore. I was able with the National Geographic to fall into technology during a summer.


The learning experience that summer was more than transformational. There was geography, social studies, research and other ideas that you can find at http://www.mywonderfulworld.org.


The better I got at using technology, the more difficult it was to stay in a classroom. Fortunately, I was involved with the Clinton White House in several initiatives. We at the National Informational Infrastructure ASdvisory Council, worked with the White House to infuse technology into the schools of the US. So I had mentors all over the place.




The Tracy Learning Center is the first in a network of research and development schools implemented to demonstrate Emaginos Learning. The Tracy Learning Center is a dynamic response to the compelling need to revolutionize teaching and learning. The foundation for Emaginos Learning has its beginning in the vision, creativity and innovation used to design the Tracy Learning Center. The Tracy Learning Center opened in July 2001 and operates as a K-12 charter school. The Tracy Learning Center serves as a model for both public schools and learning in the private sector. It is an innovative collaborative of industry, education and government that provides a positive change in the process of learning.

This is a model you should see. This is a model that should be disseminated in geographically and educational correct models.


While I wait and hope for funding, I am being supported in ideas by the groups working in Supercomputing and in the Teragrid communities. The Shodor.org, foundation has a great set of curriculum materials.  I have grown in my understanding of computational thinking and supercomputing applications.


To keep my teaching focus. I go to workshops on Saturday , in Washington DC, in Naylor Gardens to help instruct willing minority students in GPS, GIS and use of the computational sciences. I work with Dr. Jesse Bemley , a computer scientist and other volunteers on Saturdays to transform , inform and create an awareness of new ways of learning .


I get inspiration from the Nationsl Science Board workshops . From a visit to Tracy School


Bonnie Bracey Sutton

			

	
	



			
				



	

				
Transforming Teacher Use of Technology with Use of Teragrid Outreach Resources

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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Sharing the Vision of THe Teragrid
Family Science Days AAAS Teragrid Outreach








Three Dimension/Film of the Teragrid Outreach in the AAAS Science booth






You may ask, what is the Teragrid?


  Teachers find it an empowering resource…


A formal definition is this:


TeraGrid is an open scientific discovery infrastructure combining leadership class resources at 11 partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource.


Using high-performance network connections, TeraGrid integrates high-performance computers, data resources and tools, and high-end experimental facilities around the country. Currently, TeraGrid resources include more than 2.5 petaflops of computing capability and more than 50 petabytes of online and archival data storage, with rapid access and retrieval over high-performance networks. Researchers can also access more than 100 discipline-specific databases. With this combination of resources, the TeraGrid is the world’s largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.


TeraGrid is coordinated through the Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG) at the University of Chicago, working in partnership with the Resource Provider sites: Indiana University, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the National Institute for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Purdue University, San Diego Supercomputer Center, Texas Advanced Computing Center, and University of Chicago/Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.


The research community supports teachers, and education through outreach in several ways.  Each of the research communities has a specific education section . Gateway if you will to the use of the research .


San Diego Supercomputing Center features the subject of Computational Thinking using a well thought out project that was written by Pat Phillips of Microsoft. You can find that here:  http://education.sdsc.edu/resources/CompThinking.pdf


You may have noticed that the major teacher organizations, CSTA, ISTE, CoSN, and SITE featured papers, workshops and discussions on the use of computational thinking in the classroom. This was a planned outreach started by the network of educators and researchers within the Teragrid network.


Here is one of the papers presented at the Consortium for School Networking in New Orleans in 2011:


http://etcjournal.com/2011/04/01/white-paper-21st-century-education-computational-thinking-computational-science-and-high-performance-computing-in-k-12-education/


Executive Summary


The 2010 National Educational Technology Plan says “…technology is at the core of virtually every aspect of our daily lives and work…. Whether the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or music, 21st-century competencies and such expertise as critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication should be woven into all content areas.”


Since the late 1990s, the US has been trying to describe what a 21st century education should look like. Futurists are trying to divine the skills that will be needed for jobs that do not yet exist, employing technologies that have not yet been invented. However, a careful look around can allow us to see many areas that have been virtually unnoticed by those who are focused on 21st century skills.


Supercomputing – sometimes called high performance computing – is not a new technology concept, but the supercomputers of 25 years ago were about as powerful as a cell phone is today, and likewise the supercomputers of today will be no better than a laptop of 10 to 15 years from now. As the world of the biggest and fastest computers has evolved and these computers have become increasingly available to industry, government, and academia, they are being used in ways that influence everyday life, from the cars we drive, to the food in our cupboards, to the movies we enjoy.


Supercomputing is not an end in itself, but rather the technological foundation for large scale computational and data-enabled science and engineering, or computational science, for short. It is a collection of techniques for using computing to examine phenomena that are too big, too small, too fast, too slow, too expensive, or too dangerous to experiment on in the real world. While problems with small computing footprints can be examined on a laptop, the grand challenge problems most crucial for us to address have enormous computing footprints and, thus, are best solved via supercomputing.


As a result, in order to be competitive as a nation, we need to produce knowledge workers in far greater numbers who understand both what supercomputers can do and how to use them effectively to improve our understanding of the world around us and our day to day lives.


The thinking about large scale and advanced computing has evolved, too. Today, we realize that, while not everyone will be using big computing in their jobs, they will need to understand the underlying concepts.


These concepts collectively are referred to as ‘computational thinking’, a means of describing problems and how to solve them so that their solutions can be found via computing (paraphrased from Jeanette Wing, Jan Cuny, and Larry Snyder). Computational thinking includes abstraction, recursion, algorithms, induction, and scale.


Our 21st century citizens, entrepreneurs, leadership, and workforce will be best positioned to solve emerging challenges and to exploit new opportunities if they have a strong understanding of computational thinking, how it applies to computational science, and how it can be implemented via high performance computing. These are true 21st century competencies that will serve our nation well.


The authors of the paper have been immersed, involved and integrated into the Teragrid community through attending workshops, NCSI initiatives, online contact with the researchers and outreach specialists over a period of time that has proved to create a powerful network of educators sharing the story of possibilities within the Teragrid.


An initial outreach , Teacher Bridge Day , which preceded  an ISTE and CSTA conference, united teachers and educators who then continued to work together over the period of months . The teachers benefitted from the combined efforts of the many researchers and outreach specialists who participated and contributed to the very first workshop.  Following that workshop, there were involvements with ITest through Joyce Malyn Smith.


I am pleased to say that this year , Joyce and the educators at SITE.org reported a large number of people interested in the strand. Joyce took the idea and developed it into a specialized strand for the ITest Community.


Here are a few of the 2011 presentations from the Aera Annual Meeting.























There may be more resources that link to the outreach of the Teragrid. I have chosen these to share.


Joyce was also a force at the SITE conference in Nashville, TN. The informal outeach team, those of us who try to broaden engagement and show diversity were there to shake up the force within SITE.org . We established a SIG for Computational Thinking and fielded a number of workshops.


We worked also at the K-12 levels of technology in Texas at TCEA.


 Everything  is Big in Texas:  TACC and Supercomputing , at  TCEA


 Ranger?    Stallion ? Computational Thinking and Learning


I  go to Texas a lot. My brother lives there, friends live there,  NASA holds events. I have been to Lockhart for BBQ, to Galveston for a wedding, to San Antonio and other places. I even know lots of recipes and ways to BBQ. But Austin put the icing on the cake for those of us doing digital outreach and broadening engagement in Supercomputing.I took classes at Rice (Teacher Tech) with a Supercomputing scholarship.  I have digital sisters and brothers in Texas.


TEXAS


Why not? Texas is a huge state and I have found lots of friends and educators who support my ways of thinking there.


I participated in a Teacher Tech  workshop at Rice University in Houston, and met Karen North and Dr. Richard Tapia. For a long time I was in constant email touch with a LOT of Texans. We were not sure what kind of reception we weuld get in 2011, this being a new topic to many people. I have been to Austin a lot, so when I see the statue of Barbara Jordan and the big guitars, I feel at home. We had a Supercomputing conference in Austin a few years ago as well.


Ray Rose, Henry Neeman, Vic Sutton and I have been a team at other conferences, we were literally breaking the ice in Austin for educators. It was scary to do.


. (It was very , very cold)  The keynote was a very warm one by Leigh Anne Touhy. The Blind Side was written about her true life experience. She set the tone for broadening engagement and social justice for me. She shared how her life was changed . I had not seen the movie , but I will.


We think that in education there is a blind side to the understanding of technology, particularly computational science, so we put together a workshop for Supercomputing and the use of the Teragrid and we did  a workshop for Emerging Technologies, and a tour of the TACC center.on the campus.


 TCEA  Supercomputing and the Teragrid…  no limits, remember?


Henry Neeman has a great presentation , ” What in the World is Supercomputing!“. We took it to a state conference. Did I mention he is from Okahoma? They razzed him a lot, but he just kept on presenting. The interesting thing about it is that he is a reseacher, who can bring the ideas down to earth with fun, and understanding. Henry can do this in person, on line or in a course online. You can fund a lot of the information here.


http://www.oscer.ou.edu/Symposium2003/neeman_bio.html


Nothing like being with him in person however. Think Puzzle. Think a guy moving around at the speed of light, absolutely able to help you understand Supercomputing. This is Henry.


http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5653613&l=8267b33412&id=593996326


Dr. Neeman also has taught a series of workshops titled “Supercomputing in Plain English”, directed at an audience of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff not only in computer science but also in a variety of physical science and engineering fields. Dr. Neeman’s research interests include high performance computing, scientific computing, parallel and distributed computing, structured adaptive mesh refinement, scientific visualization, Grid computing and computer science education. You can find his materials on line. He is the Education and Outreach Chair for Supercomputing 2012 in Seattle.


We embarked , engaged, energized , and educated teachers so that they could be empowered to understand the computational sciences. We had outreach materials from the Teragrid. So well put together, and such a hit with the educators.


All three of the sessions were a success. We did not have supertech people except one or two and we had about 50 people in the first workshop.


TOURING TACC


The second was the tour.My heart fell when I went to the bus, because at first I could not see it was full. We had a grand tour of TACC. I love the visualization images .http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/scivis-gallery/


The University of Texas at Austin is one of the nation’s leading universities, an academic institution of enormous breadth and depth, with 50,000 students and 3,000 faculty. It’s an economic powerhouse that pumps more than $8.2 billion into the Texas economy each year. It ranks fifth in the world for academic citations and is the recipient of more than 400 patents. Seven of its doctoral programs rank among the top 10 in the nation.


The University of Texas’ intellectual firepower extends far beyond its classrooms and labs. In addition to ongoing research in 18 colleges and schools, the university sponsors 100 separate research units and 10 organized research units, such as the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).


TACC plays a pivotal role in the new culture of computational science at The University of Texas at Austin and is central to UT’s success as a major public research university. TACC boasts world-class resources and expertise that enable scientists and researchers to find solutions to the biggest problems facing science and society. From climate change to medical research to energy resources, traditional and renewable, advanced computing provides the tools that are critical to discovery in science and across disciplines. Faith Singer-Villalobos lead the presentation and discussion.


TACC’s education and outreach programs support their mission to enable discoveries that advance science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies. We all benefit from advanced computing in our everyday lives, from more accurate weather reports, to safer automobile designs, to smaller, lighter electronic gadgets.


TACC’s education & outreach programs introduce K-12, undergraduate and graduate students to the power of advanced computing for science, technology, computer science, engineering, and mathematics. It believes that the students are the next generation of Einsteins, Curies, and Hawkings, who will someday make breakthrough discoveries that we can’t even imagine today.


We wanted to touch the future through sharing with the teachers what the university and supercomputing had to offer.


Teachers touch the future.


Our last presentation was to identify the real 21st Century Literaraies.  about data visualization, and computational thinking, data mining and global collaborations. We were able to share partnership organizations to teachers for field experiences, National Geographic, Earthwatch, NASA , NOAA but most importantly to show ans share curriculum opportunities that were free.


Shodor.org


http://www.shodor.org/activities/


and Scalable Game Design


http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Scalable_Game_Design_wiki


http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/gamewiki/index.php?title=Scalable_Game_Design_wiki&oldid=3534#Game


Meanwhile San Diego is doing outreach of this kind.


Upcoming Computer Science Courses for High School and Undergraduate Students


http://education.sdsc.edu/


Introduction to C++ Programming 

Mondays, January 10 – March 14, 2011– 4:30pm- 6:30pm (weekly)


This class  introduces programming concepts to students, with no previous programming experience required, and will focus on learning to read and write programs in C++. The class will focus on in-class programming and participation. The course will move quickly and students are required to have access to a computer at home. The course will cover IDEs, programming basics, compilation, execution, flow control, functions, arrays, pointers, file I/O, structures and classes. Weekly homework assignments solidify understanding in preparation for a comprehensive final project.


Introduction to Programming in Python ( this already started)

Tuesdays, January 11 – March 15, 2011– 4:30pm- 6:30pm (weekly)


This course offers an introduction to computer programming via the Python programming language. Students listen to weekly explanation-demonstrations of and gain simultaneous practical experience with basic coding concepts such as calculations, string formatting/manipulation, conditional statements, iteration, file i/o, and the abstraction of functions, as well as programming style. Weekly homework assignments solidify understanding, and a final project offers the opportunity to creatively deploy the class materials. This course is designed to prepare students for the class’s final project, the creation of a computer program that generates a poem.


In our network we can identify lots of opportunities for K-12. Teragrid even features them in a booklet.


How much data is that? Check out the visual idea of it.


http://www.focus.com/images/view/52784/


			

	
	



			
				



	

				
The National Broadband Map. Be Active ,Report your Broadband Speed

		
				

			bonniebraceysutton
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It is a tool for your use. Here is what you can do with it. You can go to your school board and demonstrate broadband use in your community.


You can share your speed and help to fill out the National Broadband Map.


 


In case you missed it, it is a kind of citizen transparency project.







Last week some of us were treated to a sharing of the National Broadband Plan http://broadbandmap.gov/ this was from the office of


Karen Cator at the Dept of Education and they shared data on the schools. This was one of the great workshops presented at CoSN.







 It is an amazing tool. Here is the workshop for that in a PDF.


http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/090724/BroadbandMappingWorkshop_090724.pdf. The Dept of Education and NTIA collaborated on that presentation. The broadband map can be used to analyze.


This is the section of the map that shares what you can analyze. This is taken from the web site.


 


Analyze


Use the tools on the map to rank an area by a specific broadband attribute, generate summaries of broadband availability for a given area and download reports containing popular statistics.


 


Use the rank  tool to compare broadband availability in different areas. Generate a national list of states, counties, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), Congressional Districts, census designated places or Universal Service Fund (USF) study areas by broadband speed, technology, number of broadband providers or demographic information. The tool also generates ranked lists within a state, including by county, census designated place, Congressional District, state legislative district, MSA and USF study area. You can compare areas.


 


Use this tool to generate an overview of broadband availability for any state, county, state legislative district, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Universal Service Fund (USF) study area, or Native Nations. This should be helpful to your learning community, your school board, and local consumers.


Popular Reports »


View and download popular reports.


    

  • ▪  Broadband Availability in Urban vs. Rural Areas
    • 

  • ▪  Number of Providers by Speed Tier
    • 

  • ▪  Access to Broadband Technology by Speed
    • 


  • 

    • 



 


The National Broadband Map Created and maintained by the NTIA, in collaboration with the FCC, and in partnership with 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia.


 


 


Understanding Actual Broadband Performance by Visualizing over 1,000,000 Tests Every Day


Last week, I spent time with Vint Cerf. I know him from the time at the National Infrastructure  Information Advisory Council. He was keynoting a forum at the New America Foundation on Broadband,


You can demonstrate the technology he used.


He showed us a number of variables by which we could use the measurement lab to access real time data about the Internet.Measurement Lab. You can demonstrate this tool. 







Google Inc.PlanetLab ConsortiumNew America Foundation’s Open Technology InstituteHere is a second tool.


Google has a different tool. Kind of  Gapminder for Broadband and it is international as well as national.


Here is what the mapping does.


Google maps 300TB of real-world Internet speed data


How fast is your broadband? 


M-La, a partnership between the New America Foundation and Google meant to measure Internet connections, has given Google two years worth of actual broadband connection data, as measured by users. That’s more than 300TB of data, which Google has imported into its Public Data Explorer for easy viewing and analysis. The results are remarkable.


Measuring Internet access has been tricky for years. Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation told Ars back in 2009, when M-Lab got underway, that detailed network data about speeds, latency, jitter, and more used to be in the public domain until the government-run NSFnet was privatized in the earlier 1990s. Today, though, it’s hard to know what speeds ISPs are actually offering (knowing what speeds they advertise, by contrast, is simple).


M-Lab has distributed testing tools for two years now and its servers have recorded data on the results. One of the most basic measurements is pure speed, measured in megabits per second. When these real-world speeds are charted on a map, they make Internet speed differences obvious in a way often obscured by simple lists and numbers. For instance, the two images below compare Internet download speeds in US states to Internet download speeds in European countries (many of which are the same size as US states). Speeds are medians.


More Resources?


M-Lab is one of many projects exploring ways to help users more clearly understand the performance of their broadband connections. If you’re interested in exploring further, here are a few other active projects that we know about. (Note that these projects are not associated with M-Lab.)


    

  • The FCC’s “Test My ISP” project:
    
Together, the FCC and Samknows are setting out to provide US consumers with reliable and accurate statistics of their broadband connections. If you are interested in using one of our units to measure your home broadband connection, then please sign up below. You will get to play a part in changing the face of the American broadband industry and you also get a free high-speed wireless router!
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  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Test Your ISP” project and Switzerland client: “[Switzerland is] an open source software tool for testing the integrity of data communications over networks, ISPs and firewalls. It will spot IP packets which are forged or modified between clients, inform you, and give you copies of the modified packets.”
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  • Northwestern University’s Aqualab Project and Network Early Warning System plugin for Azureus: “Passively monitor[s] your BitTorrent performance and check[s] for changes that might indicate problems with the network.”
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  • Harvard Berkman Center‘s & StopBadware.org‘s Herdict: “Herdict Web aggregates reports of inaccessible sites, allowing users to compare data to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem.”
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  • BroadbandCensus.com: “A user-generated census of broadband speeds and availability.”
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  • SamKnows Broadband: Provides broadband information in the U.K. and runs aperformance testing program in collaboration with individual users.
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  • University of Washington’s Web Tripwires: “Measur[ing] how often web pages are changed [by an intermediary] after leaving the server and before arriving in the user’s browser.”
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  • NNSquad: “An open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet’s users to help keep the Internet’s operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions.”
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  • GCTIP Forums: “a free discussion environment to act as a clearinghouse for all stakeholders (technical, consumers, ISPs, government-related, etc.) to interact on the range of “network transparency” and associated topics.”
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  • A group of researchers at Georgia Tech have created NANO, a Linux-based application that identifies performance degradations resulting from differential treatment of specific classes of applications, users, or destinations by a network operator. Future versions of NANO plan to make use of the M-Lab platform.
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  • The Netalyzr analyzes various properties of your Internet connection that you should care about — including blocking of important services, HTTP caching behavior and proxy correctness, your DNS server’s resilience to abuse, NAT detection, as well as latency & bandwidth measurements — and reports its findings in a detailed report.
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Test Your Internet Connection 


GO HERE..http://www.measurementlab.net/














Use these tools running on M-Lab to test your internet connection and






About the tools:


    

  • By using these tools, you help advance research by contributing valuable data about broadband performance.
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  • The tools only collect data related to the specifically orchestrated communication “flows” between your machine and the M-Lab server.
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  • The tools do not collect information about your other Internet traffic, such as your emails, Web searches, etc., or any personally identifiable information, unless you affirmatively provide it in response to a specific request, such as a form that asks you to provide your email address, etc..
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  • All data collected by the tools will be made publicly available.
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  • All tools are created by individual researchers, not M-Lab itself.
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    Network diagnostic tool
    

    Test your connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of problems limiting speed.
    

    Glasnost test
    

    Test whether certain applications or traffic are being blocked or throttled on your broadband connection.