Watch Student Science Experiments Conducted on the International Space Station at 10:30 AM EDT

in Astronomy, K-12, Science | September 13th, 2012

When YouTube Space Lab launched a com­pe­ti­tion call­ing for exper­i­ments to be con­duct­ed aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, thou­sands of high school stu­dents around the world respond­ed. The two win­ning exper­i­ments will be per­formed live Thurs­day at 7:30am PDT / 9:30am CDT / 10:30am EDT / 3:30pm BST / 4:30pm CEST. Back on Earth, we can watch astro­naut Suni­ta Williams live in the micro­grav­i­ty cap­sule as she puts the exper­i­ments to the test.

Stu­dents sub­mit­ted short videos explain­ing the sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments they hoped to see test­ed aboard the space sta­tion. One of the win­ning pro­pos­als, from Amr Mohamed of Egypt, asks whether zebra spi­ders, which jump on their prey, will be able to catch their food in their usu­al way in micro­grav­i­ty. The oth­er exper­i­ment, from Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma of Michi­gan, asks whether the growth of bac­te­ria deliv­ered into space will slow down when cer­tain com­pounds are added.

YouTube view­ers helped choose the win­ners from a pool of six semi-final­ists. Then mate­ri­als need­ed to con­duct the two win­ning exper­i­ments were packed into a rock­et and sent up to the space sta­tion, 250 miles above the Earth.

Watch live as Williams observes bac­te­ria and hun­gry zebra spi­ders in micro­grav­i­ty. Will the spi­ders fig­ure out a new way to hunt?

Kate Rix is a free­lance writer in Oak­land. See more of her work at .

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Kids Record Audio Tours of NY’s Museum of Modern Art (with Some Silly Results)

in Art, K-12, Museums | September 11th, 2012

In an ear­ly, abortive flir­ta­tion with art school, I learned the tech­nique of saun­ter­ing around a gallery, look­ing alter­nate­ly bored and engrossed in what­ev­er hap­pened to be on the walls, the floor, the ceil­ing, nev­er com­mit­ting to any emo­tion, espe­cial­ly one that might betray my absolute befud­dle­ment with a good bit of mod­ern art. I’m hap­py to look back on that younger self and call him a pre­ten­tious dilet­tante, and hap­pi­er now that I’m old enough not to care if some­one knows that I’m con­fused, irri­tat­ed, or gen­uine­ly bored with some exper­i­men­tal piece that defies my lim­it­ed aes­thet­ic cat­e­gories. One of the things I antic­i­pate most as the father to an already wry and curi­ous one-year-old is hear­ing her unschooled reac­tions to some art­work I once fetishized but nev­er real­ly “got,” since there can often be no bet­ter means of deflat­ing the pompous auras sur­round­ing high cul­ture than let­ting kids have an irrev­er­ent, uncen­sored go at it.

Per­haps this is why Audio Tour Hack decid­ed to har­ness the unvar­nished truths con­tained in “darn­d­est things” with their unau­tho­rized gallery tour enti­tled MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed (short pre­view above). The “hack,” a clever update on often staid and monot­o­ne gallery audio tours, fea­tures “experts” from kinder­garten to fifth grade pass­ing judg­ment on the work of mod­ern art stars like Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Roy Licht­en­stein. Unadul­ter­at­ed by faux sophis­ti­ca­tion and oner­ous over-edu­cat­ed ref­er­en­tial­i­ty? Yes. A tad bid too cutesy? Per­haps. But even so, still a fun idea, with lots of silli­ness (and if it gets kids inter­est­ed in art, all the bet­ter). At times, the kid crit­ics even drop a bit of adult know­ing­ness into their “any­one could have done this” assess­ment of, say, Jack­son Pol­lack (whom one kid accus­es of “just want­i­ng a lot of mon­ey”). MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed refers to a per­ma­nent exhib­it and instal­la­tion of paint­ing and sculp­ture on the New York Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s fourth floor. The tour takes in thir­ty pieces of art, each accom­pa­nied by audio com­men­tary from the kid crit­ics. Vis­it the Audio Tour Hack web­site to lis­ten to the com­men­tary online and see some delight­ful pic­tures of the “unadul­ter­at­ed” com­men­ta­tors.

Cor­rec­tion 9/18/12: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post stat­ed that MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed was cre­at­ed by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. It was not, nor is Audio Tour Hack affil­i­at­ed with MoMA in any way. You can find links to MoMA’s own audio tours (includ­ing tours for kids) here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Says Creationism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

in Education, K-12, Science | August 27th, 2012

Bill Nye will tell you that he’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s out there try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” From 1993 to 1998, Nye host­ed Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, a Disney/PBS chil­dren’s sci­ence show that won 18 Emmys along the way. A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has also pre­sent­ed shows on the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel and oth­er media out­lets.

If you’re famil­iar with Bill Nye, you’ll know that he’s not exact­ly an in-your-face kind of sci­en­tist. He’s no Richard Dawkins. Nye is mild-man­nered, affa­ble and wears a bow tie. But, like Dawkins, he’ll tell you that if you deny evo­lu­tion, you’re not liv­ing in the world of basic facts. And if you teach cre­ation­ism to kids, you’re not prepar­ing them to com­pete in a world where sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy means every­thing. That bodes ill for your kids in par­tic­u­lar, and for Amer­i­ca’s future more gen­er­al­ly.

Now you might be inclined to say that Amer­i­ca has always had cre­ation­ists, and that did­n’t stop the coun­try from becom­ing an eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary super­pow­er. Per­haps that’s true. But you need to recall this. Amer­i­ca reached its zenith when every oth­er pow­er had blown them­selves to smithereens. We were the only game in town. And it almost did­n’t mat­ter what we thought, or how much we thought. We just need­ed to show up to work. Nowa­days, we don’t have that lux­u­ry. We face stiff com­pe­ti­tion from ambi­tious nations that take sci­ence and edu­ca­tion seri­ous­ly. A coun­try that scoffs at sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing, that dis­miss­es it all as “elit­ist,”  has only one way to go, and that’s down. God help us.

You can find more clips from Nye’s talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

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Salman Khan Returns to MIT, Gives Commencement Speech, Likens School to Hogwarts

in Graduation Speech, K-12, MIT | June 19th, 2012


This week, Salman Khan returned to his alma mater, MIT, to deliv­er the com­mence­ment speech to the 2012 grad­u­ates. As you know, MIT helped spark the open edu­ca­tion move­ment when it launched its Open­Course­Ware site in 2002. A decade lat­er, the uni­ver­si­ty has placed mate­ri­als for 2100 cours­es online (find many high­light­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es). So it’s fit­ting that the new face of open edu­ca­tion would deliv­er the big speech.

The talk is a bit inward­ly focused, a cel­e­bra­tion of MIT and its Hog­warts qual­i­ties. But the lat­ter half gets to Khan’s phi­los­o­phy of life, his recipe for liv­ing well in the world. It boils down to 1) being pos­i­tive and smil­ing when in doubt, 2) sur­ren­der­ing your ego dur­ing times of con­flict, 3) lis­ten­ing to oth­ers, 4) down­play­ing mate­r­i­al con­cerns and focus­ing on health and rela­tion­ships, and 5) using a num­ber of thought exper­i­ments to gain per­spec­tive on life. Those he explains along the way.…

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Do Khan Academy Videos Promote “Meaningful Learning”?

in K-12, Video - Science | June 18th, 2012

If you ever won­dered whether pro­fes­sion­al sci­en­tists are skep­ti­cal about some of the incred­i­bly fun, attrac­tive and brief online videos that pur­port to explain sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples in a few min­utes, you’d be right.

Derek Muller com­plet­ed his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion by research­ing the ques­tion of what makes for effec­tive mul­ti­me­dia to teach physics. Muller curates the sci­ence blog Ver­i­ta­si­um and received his Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney in 2008.

It’s no small irony that Muller’s argu­ment, that online instruc­tion­al videos don’t work, has reached its biggest audi­ence in the form of an online video. He launch­es right in, lec­ture style, with a gen­tle attack on the Khan Acad­e­my, which has famous­ly flood­ed the Inter­net with free instruc­tion­al videos on every sub­ject from arith­metic to finance.

While prais­ing the academy’s founder, Salman Khan, for his teach­ing and speak­ing tal­ent, Muller con­tends that stu­dents actu­al­ly don’t learn any­thing from sci­ence videos in gen­er­al.

In exper­i­ments, he asked sub­jects to describe the force act­ing upon a ball when a jug­gler toss­es it into the air. Then he showed them a short video that explained grav­i­ta­tion­al force.

In tests tak­en after watch­ing the video, sub­jects pro­vid­ed essen­tial­ly the same descrip­tion as before. Sub­jects said they didn’t pay atten­tion to the video because they thought they already knew the answer. If any­thing, the video only made them more con­fi­dent about their own ideas.

Sci­ence instruc­tion­al videos, Muller argues, shouldn’t just explain cor­rect infor­ma­tion, but should tack­le mis­con­cep­tions as well. He prac­tices this approach in his own work, like this film about weight­less­ness in the space sta­tion. Hav­ing to work hard­er to think through why an idea is wrong, he says, is just as impor­tant as being told what’s right.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Winner at Alan Alda’s Science Video Competition

in Animation, Education, K-12, Video - Science | June 8th, 2012

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the ques­tion, his teacher replied, “Oxy­da­tion.”

Unsat­is­fied and still curi­ous, Alda went on to help cre­ate the Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Cen­ter issued the Flame Chal­lenge, invit­ing all com­ers to take a stab at explain­ing what a flame is. The only require­ment: Make your expla­na­tion clear, and inter­est­ing, to an 11-year-old.

Sci­en­tists from all over the world sent in entries – some were just one sen­tence (one actu­al­ly stat­ed, “A flame is oxi­da­tion.” Come on!). Anoth­er was a 37-page writ­ten expla­na­tion. After judg­ing the entries (all of which were pre-screened by sci­en­tists for accu­ra­cy), class­rooms of 11-year-olds declared a win­ner: an ani­mat­ed video by Ben Ames, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in quan­tum optics.

In the sev­en-and-a-half minute video, the con­ge­nial voice of a sci­en­tist (Ames) explains a flame to a beard­ed man chained in hell.

“See that fire over there?” Ames asks. “Have you ever real­ly won­dered what the flames are from that fire? I mean look at all those col­ors!”

He goes on charm­ing­ly to describe the process, with­out avoid­ing big words that kids actu­al­ly seem to love: when atoms (car­bon and hydro­gen) react to heat and change form, that’s pyrol­y­sis. That chem­i­cal reac­tion radi­ates light: chemi­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then the changed car­bon and hydro­gen inter­act with oxy­gen and that’s—you guessed it—oxi­da­tion.

But 11-year-olds love music too, right? Ames wraps it up with a song:

The fuel los­es mass, it turns to gas

Before the next change through, some atoms shine blue

When the process is com­plete, it gives off heat

Extra car­bon will glow—red, orange, yel­low.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based edu­ca­tion writer.

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“Good Chemistry” Explains Chemical Bonds with Cutout Animation and Teenage Romance

in Chemistry, K-12, Video - Science | May 31st, 2012

Love, or the promise of it, sells clothes, cologne and many a com­pact disc—but who’d think love could sell chem­istry? Six­teen-year-old Eli Ciri­no did, and was he ever right. The tenth grad­er sub­mit­ted an extra cred­it video for his chem­istry class and what he got was prob­a­bly way more than he bar­gained for. Good Chem­istry explains chem­i­cal bonds using con­struc­tion paper ani­ma­tion of pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ions and cova­lent bonds set against an orig­i­nal song sung by Ciri­no. It’s all edit­ed togeth­er with images of a cute cou­ple reach­ing out and clasp­ing hands. A sam­ple of Cirino’s lyrics: “We always on the look­out for a part­ner­ship, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive you get the drift.” It’s catchy and sweet, to the tune of more than 290,000 views on YouTube by the end of the day Wednes­day. Extra cred­it for Ciri­no for bring­ing the video in at pi-time: three min­utes, four­teen sec­onds.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lancer. Find more of her work at .

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Morgan Freeman Teaches Kids to Read in Vintage Electric Company Footage from 1971

in Education, K-12, Television | May 17th, 2012

Every actor has to start some­where, and Mor­gan Free­man (Dri­ving Miss Daisy, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, and Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby) could have done worse than join­ing the cast of The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, the PBS chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion series that aired from 1971 to 1977. The orig­i­nal cast includ­ed Bill Cos­by and Rita Moreno (not bad com­pa­ny), and the ver­sa­tile Free­man played a series of char­ac­ters: “Mel Mounds,” “Vin­cent the Veg­etable Vam­pire,” and then, of course, Easy Read­er. If you’re of my gen­er­a­tion, you might rec­og­nize his theme song above. Below, we show you Easy Read­er (a pun on the 1969 film Easy Rid­er) in action, teach­ing kids to read in his effort­less­ly cool, hip­ster way. H/T Metafil­ter

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