Taking Up the Ten Tools Challenge

“I accept your challenge!”

Jane Hart has thrown down an intriguing 2013 gauntlet:  commit yourself to learning how to use ten new technology tools in 2013.  What a great way to walk the talk. I often extol the teachers I work with to invest time to learn new tools or adjust their use of frequently used tools.  Afterall, learning how to use a new media tool is the perfect place to be in order to help others do the same.  Beginner’s mind has a way of helping us to find new approaches, fresh perspectives, and empathy.

In her blog post about the challenge, Jane suggests you devise your list of new tools (ok, I’m working on it), go public with your commitment and write a blog post about your plan (check), tackle one tool per month (gotcha), and blog about the experience each month with a final, culminating blog post at the end of the year reflecting on the whole experience (righto).  I love this idea.  Not only does it give some structure to something that I should do anyway, Jane will network the people joining her in the challenge so that we can all learn from each other.  I’m already learning as I read the blog posts of others taking up the challenge…like Joitske Hulsebosch (Lasagna and Chips), David Kelly, Michael Mades, and Tracy Ross.

So, I accept your challenge, Jane.  And thanks for extending it!

My 2012 Learning Harvest

Many years ago I worked with a woman who, each year, made a poster of sorts at New Year’s time. These posters were visual summaries of her year – key events, people, places, and ideas – and they served as a way for her to reflect on the year gone by and prepare for the year ahead.  It occurs to me now that she was way ahead of her time. Those posters were a type of personal infographic, before we knew what an infographic was (just take a look at these 2012 New Year’s infographics!).

So as 2012 winds to a close, and 2013 approaches, I will attempt my own year-end poster, in the form of a blog post – a look back at my 2012 learning harvest, as I prepare for 2013, and an attempt to make my own learning as transparent as possible. To honor the importance of personal learning networks, I will acknowledge along the way, the people who were mentors, advisors, thought-leaders, and role models to me (even if they didn’t know it).

Loving my iPad

Score for the Tablet. In 2012, I added an iPad 2 to my technology tool box and, whoa doggies, have I put it through its paces. During our summer trip across the U.S. it was our GPS, our connection with friends and family, as well as the primary way we foraged for food, gas, and lodging. With the addition of a Logitech keyboard, it’s become my primary note-taking device at conferences and in meetings. I read on it, look up (and archive) recipes, send texts, take photos, edit videos, and use its timer. Its portability and size makes it extremely useful. Interestingly, I often find myself touching the screen of my laptop, expecting it to respond to my finger.

Chimera Cosmos and Spiral Theas

An ever-deepening understanding of online, 3D, virtual worlds.  With my friend and travel guide, Liz Dorland, I got to know many new virtual worlds – exploring, touring, meeting new people, and trying new adventures.  These are crazy, weird and wonderful places with all kinds of learning going on. I am certain we’ll all be shopping, learning, browsing, and interacting in online virtual  worlds in the not-too-far-distant future. If you haven’t yet explored a virtual world (e.g. Kitely, OpenSim, Jibe, Second Life), set that as a 2013 treat for yourself.  It’ll stretch you in ways you can’t imagine.

Women in Control participants

If our WIC patients can do it, anyone can. In 2012 we concluded a health promotion research project with Boston Medical Center called Women in Control (WIC).  This project examined the efficacy of using virtual worlds for patient education and healthcare behavior support (earlier blog post).  What I learned from that experience could fill a hard drive, but here are the most important learning highlights: the intractable nature of type 2 diabetes, the power of virtual spaces for group support sessions, and the resilience of the women in this study.  Our WIC patients were 40-60 year-old women with raging type 2 diabetes and low literacy who had rarely (if ever) touched a computer before they enrolled in our study.  And there they were, teleporting around, chatting, and dancing in virtual space as avatars; rolling with the complexities and figuring it out. It was a delight to observe their learning and the way that mastering such a complex environment gave them confidence and new-found personal power.

The importance of documenting and publishing your work. Through the work we did at BMC and the strong leadership of Dr. John Wiecha,  Dr. Suzanne Mitchell, and Dr. Milagros Rosal, I learned the importance of documenting what you’re doing along the way, and then reflecting on that as a learning path. As we planned the various projects we simultaneously planned the documentation. I learned to think in terms of what artifacts, recordings, measurements, and documents we would need in order to evaluate our progress, make adjustments along the way, and then thoughtfully, precisely, and usefully share what we learned. And we now have an impressive portfolio of published articles, sound recordings, photo logs, blog posts, and magazine features that explain the project and the results, a vivid record of what we all learned together.

Marjorie Williams and Markets of Paris

Amplify your signal and build community via the network effect.  I know, I know, it’s a familiar riff, but one I can never get enough of it.  My friend Marjorie R. Williams co-authored a book called Markets of Paris, 2e this year.  It’s a good book (a very good book) but she made it even better by launching, and then grooming, an impressive online presence to compliment the book.  Her website, blog, Facebook page, Pintrest board, and Twitter stream not only allowed her to post updates, additions, and supplemental information but it gave her readers the chance to join in community, share their experiences, provide suggestions, correct items in the book, and enhance everyone’s enjoyment of Paris’s markets. So nicely done.

Al Filreis and the Mod Po team

The reach and impact of massive, open, online education (MOOCs).  In the fall I took an online Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course taught by Dr. Al Filreis and a phalanx of graduate students at University of Pennsylvania (via Coursera).  It was a terrific learning experience (summary blog post) and a breath of fresh air to confirm that innovation is alive and well in higher education. The speed with which some of our greatest institutions have jumped on the online learning bus and urged faculty to create courses is impressive.  Of course, we have a long way to go and not all MOOCs are exemplars, but these are interesting times.

Hope for improving education from within. Gardner Campbell, George Siemens, Alan Levine, Cathy Davidson, David Knuffke, Nancy White, Bonnie Stewart…whether they knew it or not, they have all been valued guides for me this year. I’ve watched and listened to them participate in online communities, networked seminars, discussion groups and forums, and soaked up their blogs.  They are all intensely committed to improving education and they all walk their talk from within – advising, guiding, suggesting – while they practice.  As Gardner Campbell says in a recent blog post of his, “I’m convinced that we can find that rich soil beneath the pavement…and demonstrate that those brave flowers knew something afterall.”

Beginner’s mind?

The value of beginner’s mind. Perhaps the most significant of my lessons learned in 2012 is the importance of remembering the click and whir of the beginner’s mind.  We moved from Massachusetts to California this year – put all our stuff in a moving van and moved to a new home and a new neighborhood.  With the million and one small connections that make up daily life cut asunder, we began the process of figuring it out and rebuilding.  Where’s the post office, how does the parking work, where should the cereal boxes go, what day is trash pick-up, what’s the shortest route to the freeway? Each day I woke up with a long list of things to figure out and mental maps to construct. There are so many options and possible paths when you lack knowledge, as opposed to the carefully honed path of the expert. It was exciting, but it was also exhausting.  I was working hard and felt frustrated over my mind’s inability to suck up information, store, and retrieve it quickly enough. I want to hold tight to those feelings and remember them well the next time I’m building a learning experience for someone else.

Shrooms

After two weeks of autumnal rain, looks what’s sprouting up in our garden.  Lovely…

Reflections on #ModPo

Al Filreis and graduate students in a ModPo video.

The Modern and Contemporary American Poetry MOOC has drawn to a close. Papers are in, last discussions have ended, and the organizers have surveyed the participants. Time for a little reflection on the experience. As background, I enrolled in ModPo – a massively open online course (MOOC) offered by Coursera and taught be Dr. Al Filreis (University of Pennsylvania) in the fall. Here is the blog entry I wrote at the start of the course.

Overall, it was a positive experience. I learned a lot about American poetry. The content was rich, the course was extremely well-organized and executed, and the organizers made the most of participatory media tools they selected (video, discussion boards, Twitter, Google Hangouts, podcasts, and blogs) to draw us in and get us thinking. Here’s a (rather shaky, sorry) home video, shot by Al Filreis, at the end-of-course party held at the Kelly Writer House (where he is based) on campus at Penn. Apparently, participants who lived within driving distance came for the event to join Filreis and his graduate students to raise a glass and reflect on the course. Some real love here.

Falling by the wayside.

So, that’s the good part. The not so good part? Well, first off, I didn’t finish the course. My bad – but that fact deserves some examination. Like many who enroll in these massive online courses, I fell by the wayside. I was struck by the figures mapped out in this bark from CogDog. In his post, Alan Levine recounts his experience taking a Social Network Analysis MOOC. Two tenths of a percent of those originally registered in his course completed it.  I don’t know what the ModPo numbers are, but it’s probably close.  From where I sit, the drop-off problem has two roots.  First, there are no repercussions for the participant if s/he falls behind – I haven’t paid anything for the course, since I’m not working toward a degree I don’t have that fire in my belly, there’s no one there to notice if I don’t show up, and I don’t disappoint anyone (but me) when I don’t keep up.  Of course, all of that is a personal thing with the learner.  The more intractable problem, and the one that Alan focused on in his post, is that the course proceeds along at its own rate – not at my pace. There is no wiggle room for me and the rest of my life.  My ModPo completion problem began with an extended trip in the middle of the ten-week course.  Even though I had internet access on my trip, travel being what it is, I fell behind.  And once I fell behind, it was a downward spiral.  I couldn’t submit the assignments.  The live synchronous sessions were impossible to follow without the readings.  My pals in the Facebook group and on Twitter were referencing things I didn’t understand.  As Alan points out, surely one of the primo affordances of online learning is the ability to flex time and make it work for busy lives.

The ModPo-ers who submitted the four required writing assignments, peer reviews, and completed the quizzes will all receive a Coursera certificate of completion. There were no grades in this course – the focus was on effort, peer review, and discussion. I’m not sure how many certificates were awarded, but as soon as I find out, I’ll post it here.

But here’s the other thing. The amount and level of participant interaction.  What George Siemens refers to as a distinction between xMOOCs and cMOOCs.  The former, xMOOCs, mimic the structure, cadence, and methods of a traditional course (lecture, quizzes, etc) whereas the later, the cMOOC, leverages the connectedness of the participants (see one of many meaty posts on George Siemen’s blog).  While the ModPo organizers did a very good job with video [particularly in the live synchronous sessions where the Twitter steam and an 800 number (!) were used to foster participation] and there were discussion boards (unwieldy and unmanageable) and assignments, the main elements of the course – where the action took place – were familiar territory for a college course: read, listen, watch.  The most effective (for me) community elements sprung up on Facebook and with a friend who was also taking the course. That action sprouted up organically, outside of the course’s formal structure.

Connectivism

What George Siemens (and others) encourage is a more connected experience. An emphasis on knowledge creation, rather than knowledge transmission.  Courses that emphasize authentic assessment models where students demonstrate their understanding and skills through the products they produce and courses with distributed, multi-spaced interactions. ModPo was a fabulous beginning.  I swoon over the impact that it will have as the incredible Al Filreis and his creative team evolve the pedagogy, leverage newer and better tools, and tap into the vision of a more connected model.

It’s amazing, when you think on it, how far we’ve come.  Afterall, MOOCs have only been a thing since 2008 – with the Siemens and Downs first MOOC – CCK08.  And now we have many major universities offering MOOCs, two new companies (Coursera and Udacity in 2011) providing 100′s of MOOCS for all, and enough press coverage to choke a horse. I completely agree with Ryan Tracey on his well done blog post on the Future of MOOCs  - MOOCs are here to stay and their impact on education will be felt by all.

Alameda Point

Alameda Point – Alameda, California

We recently moved to Alameda, California where we are now settling in and learning about the history of our new home.  The town of Alameda is actually an island, just east of San Francisco, nestled next to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay.  One of the more fascinating aspects of our island’s history is an area on the west end called Alameda Point – a 918 acre site which, for 57 years, a humming Naval base.

But the story of Alameda Point begins earlier.  Athough an island now, Alameda was once on a peninsula. In the early 1900′s an estuary was dredged through and the peninsula of Alameda became the island of Alameda. The industries that sprouted up on the island – a borax company, coal-to-gas plants, and an oil refinery – added contaminates to the excavated dredge material which was mostly dumped on the western side of the island.

Alameda Naval Air Station

In 1936 the Navy purchased that western landfill from the City of Alameda and commissioned a Naval Air Station there in 1940. Over time, further tidelands and sloughs were filled and the Air Station’s acreage grew. By the time World War II was underway, there was a combined military and civilian force on the base of 18,000 people, as well as many local civilians employed there.  The station included two runways, two helicopter pads, a control tower, airplane hangars, seaplane hangars, an aircraft carrier berthing pier, as well as acres and acres of very large service buildings and storage facilities. Aircraft were manufactured and repaired on the base and training programs for radar operators took place here. Nuclear powered aircraft carriers were home-ported at Alameda into the 1990s. Here is an aerial map with clickable information, to give you a feel for the place.

The Pan Am China Clipper hangar.

Pan American World Airways used the Alameda yacht harbor as the California terminal for China Clipper trans-Pacific flights beginning in 1935.  The China Clipper terminal is still there at Alameda Point, and is designated a California Historical Landmark. There are two museums on the Point – the Alameda Naval Air Museum and the decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet.  The Hornet was an active participant in WWII and the Vietnam War and acted as the recovery ship for NASA’s Apollo 11 and 12.  You can tour the ship and see the collection of fighters and helicopters on deck, as well as the museum inside.

The Navy closed the base on April 25, 1997.  The City of Alameda purchased the land in 2000 and its been in a sort of developmental limbo ever since.  In 1999, NAS Alameda was listed as a Superfund cleanup site with 25 locations on the base identified as needing remediation (mostly for PCB contamination).

The buildings are still there and anyone can go out to visit.  There is a real ghost town feeling to it, as you can see in the photos below. Boarded up windows, peeling paint, weeds sprouting, and concrete crumbling.  But there is also a military neatness to it all, not to mention a remnant sense of the humming, thriving work that went on here not so long ago.  As I ride through on my bike, I feel like if I listened closely enough, I could hear the grind of engines and the hum of workers toiling away inside the immense hangers.

I don’t know what it is that fascinates me about the place – but it does.  Maybe it’s the sheer scale of it – a testimony to the power of human endeavor and engineering?  Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s abandoned – it reminds me of one of those Twilight Zone episodes when the hero comes up on a deserted setting, with everything left in place, as if all the occupants were suddenly vaporized, leaving behind their half-finished cups of coffee and their still smoldering cigarettes?  Or maybe it’s a bit of wabi sabi – the Japanese aesthetic over the beauty in ruin and rust?

Old guard station at entrance.

The Pan Am China Clipper hangar.

The Commisary

A church.

A Network Effect Case Study: #organellewars

Here’s a really good network effect story for you – out of Brad Graba‘s Illinois high school biology classroom.  Mr. Graba decided to modify an oft-used student project for his unit on the cell.  In the typical “organelle project”, students pick a cell organelle (the nucleus, the mitochondrian, etc) to promote and (working in teams or as individuals) they wage a campaign for their organelle to be elected President.  Their stump speeches contain the rationale for the organelle’s importance to the cell – what their “job” is, what happens to the cell if they are out of action, how they relate to the other organelles, etc. The project culminates in an “election” where the class votes to choose a “President Organelle”.  Teachers typically do this activity in the fall (around election time).

Example Storify from the Organelle Presidential campaign.

Mr. Graba decided to add a social media twist to the project and encouraged his students to use Twitter to get their organelle’s stump speeches out there.  Students signed up for Twitter accounts in the names of their organelles (e.g. MightyMito), with identifying photos (many used iconic micrographs) and started posting their messages.  Students composed some really interesting and funny messages, adding to their posts with images, drawings, and links. Within 12 hours the Twitter stream caught the attention of a couple of cell biology researchers, including Anne Osterrieder, from Oxford Brookes University in the UK.  She blogged about the student project here and suggested that the students use Storify (a site that facilitates storytelling through the curation of social media) to assemble their various tweets, images, and other resources for each organelle. Check out this one on the Revenge of the Nucleus (“May the Nuc be with you, young eukaryote”).

More scientists tuned in, adding to the tweets, giving students suggestions, articles to read, other sources of information, and actually weighed in on the vote.  John Runions (@JohnRunions), aka Dr. Molecule in the weekly BBC Radio show, caught wind of the project and suggested the hashtag #organellewars, to make it easier to find all the posts. The interest of the scientists and the BBC, of course, spurred the students on.  Bam.  Network effect.

What great work.  This teacher did it right.  He picked a meaningful assignment, selected the right tools for the job, made the expectations/goals clear, provided all the necessary scaffolding, and then turned it over to the students so that they were the producers – not passive consumers.  Once they caught fire and started producing good material, others noticed.  The students now have pride of ownership, a sense of what real, working scientists do, a deeper understanding of cell structure/function, and a compelling record of their work – and Mr. Graba has a few new tools in his tool box.

Nice.

An Little Election Story

Here we are on the big day of the 2012 Presidential Election and I have a small story to tell that will hopefully cheer you, as it did me. I go regularly to a local gym for my morning workouts. It’s a funky place – pretty old, a bit musty and tired, but it works. One of the things I like about this gym is the huge range of people who work out there – old, young, all colors, muscle men and fragile older women.

So, I’m working away on an elliptical, one in a short row of side-by-side machines, and a fellow (about my age) gets on the one beside me.  Soon after he begins his workout, an elderly gentleman walks up to our machines with a book in his hand.  The elderly gent begins to thank my neighbor for the loan of the book and tell him how much he enjoyed it.  I can tell from the nature of the conversation that they don’t know each other well and are navigating new relationship territory through possible common interest in this book, Michael Korda’s book on The Battle of Britain.

Quickly their talk turns to the presidential election (sigh) and it becomes clear that my exercising neighbor is an Obama supporter and the elderly book-returner will be voting for Romney. They make a few stabs at each other, mostly harmless but with an underlying intensity that comes from strongly held opinions.  I can tell that they are walking over familiar  territory.  I can also tell that they will never convince each other to make a different choice, and I can feel myself bracing for conflict.

The elderly gent offers to stow the book on a nearby shelf for its owner so that he can take it home after his workout.  My neighbor, now a little breathless from his workout, gestures with his chin and asks him to put the book over there, near his jacket and hat on the shelf.

“Oh, you mean here,” says the older man, “on the left?”  (intentional pause) “You see, I was drawn to put the book over here – on the right.”   At which point he looks up at me, winks, and says, “It’s just my natural tendency.”  We all three break out laughing and the book-returner tells me to be careful of this guy and I quip, “It’s ok, I’m left of him.”  And we laugh some more.

OK, so we disagree.  So my exercising neighbor will never convince the book-returner to support universal healthcare, a woman’s right to choose, the importance of federal regulations and safety nets, let alone to change his vote – but they can still talk with each other.  They can still exchange ideas about the Battle of Britain and favorite books.  They can still have a laugh.

NABT 2012: Day #3

Shirley Malcolm, Head of Education and Human Resources for AAAS, kicked off the Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education plenary session with a welcoming talk.  She started with the importance of biology in our lives and went through various AAAS resources – particular issues of Science, Thinking Evolutionarily, as well as the Vision and Change Report.  She talked about the fact that there have been many past “calls to action” (Project 2061, to the NRC report, to the Next Generation Standards) but she says that she’s never felt more optimistic about a call to action actually working. Project 2061, for example, had “a lot of influence but not a lot of uptake”.   She warns that this kind of change is not an easy process because, of course, it’s not just about the science.  But she sees Vision and Change as a different approach to change.  A way to transmit our values and apply pressure from the top down, as she put it.  Additionally, she thinks that we now have an expanded and expanding base of knowledge, new insights about the way we learn, new tools for research, and new teaching/learning tools.  She also spoke of a compelling convergence – with the NRC Science Framework, AP Biology revised curriculum, MCAT reform, and V&C II  all advocating for the same ideas.

” Our goal is to have the biology we teach reflect the biology we do.”   – Shirley Malcolm

Robert Dennison as Charles Darwin.

The next session I attended was Robert Dennison, appearing as Charles Darwin.  I know it sounds a bit corny, but really, it was an absolutely lovely thing.  As you can see in the picture, he takes on the persona of the elder Charles Darwin, complete with full beard and cane.  Dennison really “becomes” him – talking off a script, but clearly improvising and entering the mindset of the times and his character.  I loved to hear his descriptions of “going beetling”, his fascination with geology (“I began to wonder, why aren’t all scientists geologist?”), and describing the amazing opportunity to join the voyage of the HMS Beagle.  He goes on to describe the journey, his collections and adventures on land.  He talks about his family – the impact of the death of his daughter – and, of course, the writing and publication of “The Origin” (as he put it)….”It is really the chief work of my life.”  At the end, he entertained questions from the crowd and handled them beautifully. Questions like,  ”Please settle the record for us, were you hired on the Beagle as a companion, a naturalist, or a physician?”  “What do you think of Social Darwinism?”  “Do you know a man named Gregor Mendel?”  When asked more about his home life, he shifted easily to a series of a photographs of Down House.  Photos of the home, his office, the sand walk, his microscope, a portrait on the wall… “And this is, of course, a portrait of me in front of a portrait of me.”  Wonderful.

Evolutionary Transformations session.

I sat in on some of the Introductory Biology Project sessions but found the content of them fairly obvious and not as helpful as it might have been.  I came in and out of the Evolutionary Transformation sessions, which went on all afternoon.  Terrific talks from Lynn Nyhart (science historian), Betsey Dexter Dyer, Patrick Phillips, and David Hillis.

Fred and Theresa Holtzclaw

Fred and Theresa Holtzclaw did their usual excellent job with a session called “Help Your Students Succeed in AP Biology.”  These two experienced AP teachers shared their best strategies – how to improve essay writing, inquiry lab skills, hidden online resources, and the use of mini posters to encourage science process thinking.  I always learn so much from them.  Here’s a photo of one of their sample “mini posters”:

Mini poster.

Peter and Jean DeSaix

Peter and Jean DeSaix (UNC Chapel Hill) gave us a really intriguing session called, “My Sister is a Polar Body”.  Peter and Jean are the parents of so-called identical twin girls.  At their birth, the attending physician called them identical twins because they shared a chorion.  But, as they grew, it became clear that they were not identical (different hair and eye color, different blood types, etc).  The DeSaix’s  feature their daughters as a perfect case study for examining the concepts of “twin-ness”, meiosis/mitosis, gamete formation, and inheritance.  They walked through a number of possible scenarios to explain the egg and sperm origins of their daughters…first polar body, second polar body, which sperm, etc. all of which made everyone in the room really think.  They will be posting their slides (which were terrific) on the NABT web site.

Case study drawings from “My Sister is a Polar Body”.

Diane Sweeney and Mike Judge (Punahou School) did a fabulous job with an afternoon session devoted to activities and ideas useful for teaching Big Idea #3. Diane will also post her slides to the NABT web site, but you have to check out this video of a student’s dissertation (“Antisense Oligonucleotides-Mediated Exon Skipping for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy”) choreographed as a dance (part of a series of YouTube videos from Science Magazine’s annual “Dance Your PhD”):

Then I went to Caroline McNutt and Bonnie Taylors (Schoolcraft College) session on “The Hybrid and Flipped Biology Classroom”. They’ve developed a hybrid non-majors biology course at Schoolcraft that only meets face-to-face once per week, the rest of the course is done asynchronously online.  They modified their traditional classroom materials to create special materials for this course – online activities, videos, PPT lectures, self-assessments, discussion boards.  The web labs and tests are still done in person, on campus. Their pilot study of the course didn’t look good – poor retention and poor evaluations. The student perception was that this hybrid class would be “easier” so they had to work hard, right at the front, to combat that misunderstanding by placing a strong emphasis on personal discipline and commitment.  After making adjustments (revised PPT slides, use of the MasteringBiology online homework system, and some shifts in their scheduling and logistics) their ratings improved.  It struck me, listening to them, that their innovations and methods would work well for the “flipped classroom” (that still meets F2F) just as well as it would to a distance learning or a hybrid class.

Eric Simon.

I wound up the day in Eric Simon’s session on Miracle Berries.  A short, fun session showing the way miracle berries work to mimic a sweet response. What a terrific add to any teaching on cell signaling.  The active ingredient in the berry (a protein), once locked onto the taste receptor on your tongue, changes shape in the presence of acid and the shape change causes the sensor response (sending the signal to your brain that what you’re tasting is sweet).  I tried it with grapefruit, limes, and sour cream. Incredible.  A few friends, testing their taste with grapefruit:

Sweet or sour?

And now, to collapse.  What a day.

NABT 2012: Day 2

Welcome to the Dallas NABT.

I started the day with Eli Meir’s (from SimBio) Mitosis Explored and Meiosis Explored, new tutorial/simulation products that lead students through videos, text, and animations to learn about mitosis and meiosis and then allows them to experiment with simulations where they determine the steps, intervene with chemical agents, investigate mechanisms, and assess themselves. They also showed their EcoBeaker simulations and talked about new ones in the works – very robust and interesting teaching tools.

Diane Sweeney

From there I divided my time between a Diane Sweeney/Eileen Gregory session on Assigning Online Homework and an interesting session on integrating sustainability questions into STEM teaching, with Susan Musante from AIBS.  Eileen and Diane did a great job of talking about the way that they use the MasteringBiology online homework system (from Pearson) with their students. They stressed the importance of tweaking the system so that students get points for their effort, points taken away for late submissions, and extra credit to urge them along with the assignments get tough. Since Eileen teaches a college biology course and Diane teaches AP Biology, it was particularly interesting to see them present together and note similarities between their experiences and insights.

College Board Symposium

After lunch I sat in on the College Board Symposium where Sharon Radford, Gordon Uno and Mitch Price (from ETS) talked about the new curriculum, how to write questions for the new exam, and how to design instruction for the revised course.  It was interesting and helpful – particularly to see the way assessment items are being/will be written.  If I have it right, it basically boils down to identifying a Science Practice, select an Essential Knowledge that you are working with, and then find an appropriate Learning Objective that maps with those two up.  The key is that students will be tested on what they can do, to infer what they understand. Mitch Price showed this excel spreadsheet that maps the SPs, EKs and LOs in a handy way:

Sample grid.

Kirsten Milks and Stephen Traphagen

Next up was a fabulous session called How Do We Know? from Kirstin Milks and Stephen Traphagen (both new-to-teaching).  They led us on a wild and exuberant ride through a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework.  We worked in small groups to evaluate actual students responses to assessment items, identifying the students’ answers as “claim”, “evidence” or “reasoning” and then comparing our determinations with those from the other groups.  Interesting to see the variation and how important it was to clearly define what we mean by these terms.  A “claim” being what is this about.  ”Evidence” is how do you believe it and why?  ”Reasoning” is about interpreting what does the evidence mean, connecting the dots, and tying the claim to the evidence.  Very interesting and, I would think, helpful to do with students.

Then a terrific session from BSCS called Understanding the Science of Type 2 Diabetes.  Good activities, great data, and lots of good discussion with April Gardner and Anne Westbrook.

At 4:00 the exhibit hall opened and there was lots of chaos and fun as we prowled the booths, tasted appetizers, and enjoyed a few free drinks on the NABT. Highlights of the cocktail hour?  Two young biology teachers, one showing the other how to work a lasso and  a biology teacher who had Charles Darwin’s “I think…” diagram tattooed on her lower leg.  Wow.  Now that’s dedication.

Showing her dedication.

Learning to lasso

NABT and the Power of Stories

New HHMI Short FIlm

Opening night at the National Association of Biology Teacher’s (NABT) meeting in Dallas, Texas.  This is the annual meeting of middle, high, and college biology teachers who come together to exchange ideas, share insights, and improve the quality of biology teaching and learning.  I love this meeting – so many good people and ideas.

The meeting opened with a welcome reception and a special event –  HHMI Night at the Movies.  For the second year in a row, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has kicked off the conference with a red carpet screening (complete with popcorn) of new short films that tell amazing biology stories.  Sean Carroll, VP for Science Education at HHMI and author of Into the Jungle, introduced the evening, and the film, with a reminder that it is the stories of science that compell and bind us.

This year’s film is called The Day the Mesozoic Died.  It tells the remarkable story of one science’s most compelling mysteries –  what happened to the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period?  The 30-minute film showcases the work of geologists Walter Alvarez and Jan Smit, as they piece together the evidence to support the Alvarez Impact hypothesis  - that a huge asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction of foraminifera, plants, and animals – including the dinosaurs.  The movie was excellent – science storytelling at its best with terrific cinematography, a compelling storyline, clear writing with just the right amount of detail.

A talk with the film’s producers, Sean Carroll and Dennis Liu.

After the screening, Sean Carroll and Dennis Liu, Program Director of HHMI’s Public Education Initiatives (and the man behind HHMI’s annual Holiday Lecture Series), took questions and comments from the audience.  Each NABT participant was given a copy of the DVD to take back to their classrooms.  Thank you, HHMI – very nicely done.

You can watch the movie online here:  The Day the Mesozoic Died.