SOTU Bingo

Hi all,

The Alliance for Excellent Education has become one of my favorite education groups in Washington. I have attended several of their panel discussions and have come away with thoughts to chew on and impressed by the caliber of speakers they gather. Yesterday I attended one which explored using the NYC models as a way to formulate federal policy to combat the nation's chronically failing schools. You may recall that Johns Hopkins came out with a list of the 2000 worst high schools in the US based on graduation rates, the so-called "drop out factories". A woman from Hopkins opened the panel talking about different ways to look at states with failing schools. 17 states produce 70% of the drop outs, an overwhelming majority of whom are black, Latino and poor. No real surprises there. The panel went on to look specifically at NYC's approaches to rehabing or closing schools, opening smaller schools and charters. An interesting discussion with much of the talk revolving around the ability to use data to drive instruction. There was a school in NYC which had 1200 freshmen in a school of 1700 students; the dropout rate was that problematic. Even when I was teaching at Logan the drop out rate didn't come close to that. It was disheartening. The chancellor for NYC schools did have an inspiring comment when he challenged adults in the system to think what percent of the city's schools would they send their own children to? And then, whose children should go to the rest? Until all adults would send their own children to any school in the city, their work is not done. An honorable goal.

Today I received an email from the same group with some follow up articles. I'll share one tomorrow on the economic impact of drop outs. For today I will leave you with a humorous bit to be used during tomorrow night's State of the Union Address: SOTU Bingo!! Print out various versions for you and your friends and have some fun with it!! Enjoy.

SOTU Bingo Returns: How Much Will President Obama Discuss Education in His January 27 State of the Union Address?

On January 27 at 9:00 p.m., President Obama will give his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and millions watching at home. With the nation shedding more than eight million jobs since the Great Recession began in December 2007, the economy and job creation topics are expected to occupy a great deal of Obama’s speech. The president is also expected to address the prospects of health care reform—especially in light of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the January 19 special election in Massachusetts, which eliminated Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

Obama is expected to touch on the budget deficit, reform of the financial industry, energy, immigration, and education—all of which are likely to be framed around a plan to rebuild the economy. But how much will Obama say about education? The president could use the State of the Union address to outline his plan for reforming the nation’s education system and reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

Race to the Top, a competitive grant program designed to reward states that are aggressively pursuing reforms, also figures to receive mention during the State of the Union address. In a speech earlier this month at Graham Road Elementary School in Virginia, Obama announced that he would request an increase of $1.35 billion for Race to the Top in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget, which is scheduled to be released on February 1.

To help viewers keep track of these and other topics during the State of the Union address, the Alliance for Excellent Education has brought back its popular State of the Union bingo cards, which are available for download athttp://www.all4ed.org/publication_material/SOTUBingo2010.

By for now.

-J

Hi all,

I spent the day over at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) again today. And I'll be there much of the day tomorrow too. We, the Einstein Fellows, were invited over to participate in the semi-annual meeting of the Teacher Advisory Council (TAC). It's a group of teachers pulled together by the NAS to convene for comment about educational matters. Jay, the gentleman from the NAS who seems to oversee the council spoke at length of the importance in having the voices of actual practitioners, experienced educators to speak to policy wonks in Washington DC about the reality of what is going on in classrooms across the country and how policies developed in DC may or may not have relevance or impact once they trickle down to the classroom. It was nice to hear such an affirmation about why we are here, both the TAC and Einstein Fellows, from the group set up by president Lincoln to be the advisors to congress and federal agencies on a whole variety of matters and consists of an amazing group of peer selected scientists, engineers, doctors, etc.

There was much discussion about the Common Core Standards and what that may mean for equity in education. As you may recall one of the first things I wrote about back in September was that the federal government cannot legislate what is taught in classrooms. 10th Amendment says so. The way the gov't has become involved is through equity and equality issues. Title 9 and Title I as prime examples.

The Common Core Standards seem like an end run around the 10th amendment in that they are being developed by the council of chief state school officers and the national governors ...group. Most states have signed on and are participating in their development. And now the federal government has used them as a carrot for states to 'get on board' and sign off on them by August for Race to the Top money. You may have read about President Obama coming to a local VA school to announce another 1.5B in additional Race to the Top funding to make the pot sweeter. Folks are wondering why the push to rush the Common Core Standards through the process of development, review, revision and finalization but it comes down to the need to have them in place by August so that states which are chosen can get their RTTT $$ before the federal fiscal year is up. $ has to be 'out the door' as far as the Feds are concerned by the end of September.

It was an interesting discussion this morning about the typical development of a Framework, moving on to the development of standards which eventually leads to curriculum and the implementation of actual lesson plans. The NAS recently finished a revise of Math Standards and has begun work on new Science Standards. A rep from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics talked for a while about the Core Standards and their (NCTM) new approach to high school math and a focus on "Sense Making and Reasoning" as a cross cutting effort for meaningful connections for students in math. Something the teachers brought up this morning was an interesting question for the NAS, NCTM and the reps from National Science Teachers Assoc (NSTA), one that none of them had considered. And that is why the TAC exists and why the Einstein Fellows were asked to join the conversations. The question was whether or not science standards had been considered in the creation of the new math standards, and vice versa for the adoption of new science standards. Most science teachers do a fair amount of using or teaching math ranging from lesser amounts in life science up to a whole lot in physics courses. Much head scratching ensued and many notes were scribbled down.

Throughout the day a whole host of folks presented to us. The College Board talked about the revamp of the AP curriculum and solicited input. An NAS fellow in charge of convening a roundtable on Climate Change Education presented and asked for effective ways to infuse it into public education, methods which might work and what to avoid. Another group presented about the use of gaming and simulations and research that shows how gaming can be an effective means of student learning and even assessment. I am increasingly becoming intrigued by something called "second life". It's a virtual world, one in which you can 'live', create commerce and design...whatever you want. A tech geek colleague at work (@ DOE) has offered to take me there for a tour. There's a group working to use a bit of that to do some high level virtual training and education and, well, frankly I'm finding my curiousity piqued as to whether it might be a viable tool for use in classroom education. Think of the virtual ecosystems that might be created for analysis!!

One very interesting group to present to us today is a called the Science and Entertainment Exchange. It's a group which pairs scientists with Hollywood in an effort to bring about a more science literate public. They create these 'salons' where a director will invite 'friends' to come over and a couple of top level scientists will give short talks about their specialty and then breakout sessions and discussions will ensue. They have been up to some interesting things including consultation for "The Big Bang Theory" and "Numb3rs". Apparently the creators of BBT were going to have the physicists wear lab coats because that's the stereotype they imagined. This Science and Entertainment Exchange was able to connect the writers with actual theoretical physicists and the writers were amused, if not shocked to find out that they hang out and do their thinking in shorts and t-shirts. I have even heard that there's a guy who personally checks each and every equation written on the white board in their apartment.

Another full day is scheduled for tomorrow and I'm excited to head back over. I thanked Jay at the close of today's events for having us over to participate. He turned it around and thanked us, the Einstein Fellows for coming over and lending our voices to their conversations. It's been a pleasure to find venues where our classroom experience is valued and ears are open and listening to learn about what we have to say.

That's all for this evening.

ciao,

-J

Energy Under a Microscope

Hi all,

It's a snowy day in Chicago, but we made it here for the holidays and hopefully things A) leave us with a white Christmas and then B) clear up before I head back to work in DC on Monday. This morning Miss B and I bundled up for a sledding attempt. The hill was just right but the wind and cold truncated our outing. We did have fun following tracks in the yard, something B has become fond of. If you know the children's book "Who Pooped In the Park" you'll get the idea. While we didn't see any squirrels or bunnies we found lots of evidence. We even found some evidence of #1 and #2 so we agreed that we'd 'seen' lots of animals. Good times with my little girl. Just now B & I made cookies, so with the smell of triple chocolate/coffee cookies wafting up from downstairs and the sight of softly falling snow out the window I want to continue with my tour of NREL last week. I believe I left off with the Wednesday afternoon solar tour.
Thursday was all about the VIP tour of the lab.
It began with Todd showing me his domain at NREL, the entire microscopy lab. He works on biofuels, mainly the conversion of biomass to ethanol. There are all manner of crops and farming leftovers that can be converted to ethanol. If you will remember your biology 101 lessons (for those of you who've taken bio, that is, Dad!) you know that plants have no bones but are 'solid' because of the cell wall surrounding each cell. You might even remember that plants' cell walls are made up of cellulose and that cellulose is simply a loooooooong chain of glucose molecules. Feed that sugar to yeast and "Ta-DA!!", you get ethanol. Trouble is, that cellulose is a tough nut to crack. The term I heard repeatedly from various scientists in the biofuels division was "recalcitrant cellulose".
So the microscopy lab works on figuring out the exact 'landscape' of cellulose in crops ranging from poplar trees to begasse (left overs from pressing the sugar from sugarcane) to corn stover (everything of the corn plant save the cob and kernels). They also use the fabulous microscopes to figure out the structure of the various enzymes they isolate which break down cellulose. The AFM - atomic force microscope was particulary interesting. Imagine a REALLY small needle they can 'drag' across the surface of say, cellulose. This sends signals to the computer to create a surface map of the structure. And to make it cooler still, they can tag the end of the needle with an enzyme. The needle now not only reveals the 3-D surface but also reacts with specific chemicals as it drags across the surface yielding a biochemical facet to that map.
I was shown how they prep samples for use in the electron microscopes. When we walked into the neighboring room I did a little geeky happy dance and said "ooh, an SEM. I used one of those in my research last summer". Todd noted this and when we sat down to look at some corn stover under the scope he let me drive. Really. It was like learning to drive on a '73 Honda Civic hatchback and then having someone offer to let you drive their Maserati. It ranks up there with the time in Peace Corps when the pilot, busy with paperwork told me I could fly a while as we cruised over the jungle on the way back to my site. Good times. As a quick 411, and SEM is used to look at surfaces while a the TEM (transmission electron microscope) looks "inside" a cell, or??. So I got to zoom in on the corn stover down to the point where we were looking at the pores which lead inside a cell. Never ceases to amaze me the worlds revealed through microscopy.
Okay, I've gone on long enough for now and will continue with more tour highlights next time, including the "brewmeister" and melting bricks. I hope you all are enjoying preparations for the holidays with cookies, friends and family all around.
-J

Solar lab tour

On Wednesday afternoon when the day’s meetings had finished I began my tour of NREL. A wonderfully pleasant woman was showing me around and handing me off from one scientist to another. I asked what her role is, what she does at NREL. “Oh, I arrange tours for all tour groups and VIPs”. I did a casual look over my shoulder to realize that I was a group of one or a VIP. I prefer to look at it as the latter and was treated very much that way. J
One of the larger programs at NREL is the solar research. I was given a tour of several labs doing cutting edge research on all sorts of solar cells. One benefit of being a ‘group of one’ is that I was free to ask questions about any point of interest and many who know me won’t find that hard to imagine. Having spent the past two summers doing research on organic solar cells as part of another fellowship I knew enough to engage with the scientists, somewhat, and to avoid too much of that nodding and “uh-huh,” response feeling I get when I hang out with many physical scientists. Yet many assumptions I had about solar cells were quickly dispelled. I was feeling sassy that I was able to quote (loosely) a paper from the 60’s which set the upper level of efficiency for solar cells at +/- 35%. “No,” I was told, and shown a model, “we have made one with a 45% efficiency” followed by an explanation of what Shockley had not anticipated in his seminal paper. Ok. Pretty cool stuff but one of those things that involves the use of some pretty toxic material to manufacture. I also had my notion of silicon solar cells being rather expensive, needing years and years to recover the energy used to make them before they produce “free” energy. It’s been cut way down with new design methods.
I walked into the second lab to the sounds of Jimmy Buffett filling a large lab which looked much more like a ‘shop class’ but with really nice stainless steel equipment. A friendly scientist who looked as though he could as easily be a forestry professor as a top end solar research scientist at a cutting edge national lab. The cool toy designed in this shop is a vacuum chamber on wheels that allows the researchers to move a solar cell from one piece of test equipment to another without bringing the solar cell into ambient air (and pressure) which can change the surface or composition being designed/tested. Way cool toy.
During the tour I got to see a fancy ink jet printer, one that can ‘print’ a solar cell onto, well, anything you might conceive. Don’t think the typical solar cell mounted on a roof or the one that powers your calculator. Think –dye absorbs light, metal moves electrons- and you’re headed in the right direction. They can print such a mixture onto surfaces to make the windows of your house into solar cells, so long as they are hooked up to a device to accept those electrons. There are probably umpteen errors in this explanation but you get the idea. I asked if you could print it onto a t-shirt. Answer: sure. Wouldn’t be efficient but t-shirts don’t last that long anyway…. How cool would that be?
Next up: brewer turned biofuel researcher and mega-wind towers.

Mile High

Hi all,
Tuesday morning, long before dawn I left for airport on what, at age 39 is my very first 'business trip'. Thus far I will chalk it up in the 'success' category. I was concerned about flying in December but amazingly I managed to change planes in Chicago and fly out here Denver all without a single flake of snow. And the weather looks as though it will cooperate flying back east this weekend. Fingers crossed.
I am out here just west of Denver in Golden CO not to visit Coors brewing but for meetings at and a tour of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and the National Wind Technology Center. The Department of Energy operates 17 national research laboratories across the country, places like Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Savannah River, etc. Most of them are run out of the Office of Science at DOE. My office, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has but one and that is NREL.
The business end of my trip began shortly after I landed. I drove promptly to Lakewood high school to visit with a teacher there who has developed and is teaching, full time, a sustainable energy curriculum. It is a regular high school that has managed to hold onto its shop classes. And the shop classes are updated to include CAD, electronics and engineering in addition to carpentry and metal shop standards. While his curriculum does include Project Lead the Way, an excellent engineering program available to middle and high schools, he has infused that curriculum into his energy courses. Students all begin by taking an intro renewable energy class which covers 1. Our Current Energy Picture, 2. Intro to Energy, 3. Energy Efficiency & Conservation and then into solar and wind power. We had a wonderful conversation about energy illiteracy and the power of this class (pun intended?) to change that. For instance: many people know that turning off a light when not in use will save energy. Yet few people really understand that at the other end of that switch is a fire burning, likely fueled by coal in this country and that the energy released in that fire is going to create that electricity. Shut off the light and the fire can dim too. And the kicker is that 2/3 of the energy released in burning that coal never makes it to your light bulb but is lost as heat in the power plant or in resistance getting to your home.
Once students have passed the intro course they can take Sustainable Energy 2, SE 3, and Design Technology. Students learn about weatherization techniques, HVAC, Fuels and power, Hydrogen power, biodiesel, ethanol and electricity. In the design course they learn basic principles of engineering and have to solve all sorts of basic engineering problems and build things. In the second year they can also take a process technology course in which they learn all about and participate in the process of identifying a problem/need, brainstorming solutions, prioritizing and doing cost (energy/time/$) analysis for various solutions on up to product design and deployment. Very cool. For both the Design and Process course students can get dual enrollment credit at Red Rocks community college. If they choose to head there after high school they can get an associates in wind or solar installation, etc in less time in that they are ahead of the game. Some students also transfer after Red Rocks over to the Colorado School of Mines to pursue an engineering degree. Some interesting things in the courses Matt teaches are 1) that it's at least 40% girls and he says they are way more methodical in design and process than the boys, 2) given the PLTW rigor of the engineering element it attracts many academically minded students as well as the more 'hands on tinkering - less academically motivated' students. He says they have a lot to offer each other throughout the course.
My next step is to figure out how this curriculum can be replicated at high schools far and wide in order to educate the masses about energy and to use the energy conversation as a means to teach engineering - an instant relevance for students in learning and applying the math and science they are already learning.
More soon. Next up: touring the renewable energy labs. Highlights to include Jimmy Buffett, tinfoil, 45% efficient solar panels, solar t-shirts and more!!

Of Astronauts, First Ladies and Space Walks...

Good evening all,

It has been another busy week here in the Nation's Capital for me. I left you last time with promises of astronauts and the First Lady, so I'll pick up there. I wrote about giving a talk to the 'pre-college' students at the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers' national conference last Friday. I appreciated the reference to these teens as 'pre-college' and not as 'high schoolers'. Nuance perhaps, but it was part of a larger message to these youths from SHPE: You CAN finish high school. You WILL go on to college. You CAN pursue a degree in engineering and REALLY achieve.

As a crowning jewel to the conference they had a gala dinner. $75 per adult if you were to buy a ticket. Thankfully for Pia and I, the DOE, well the office which hooked me up with SHPE has a relationship with them and we (DOE) had our own table up front for the dinner and awards ceremony. Pia and I got dressed up best we could and went to attend the gala at which Michelle Obama had been invited to speak. I'm learning the distinction of 'invited' and 'accepted'. She didn't attend but the key note speaker sure made up for it. Jose Hernandez gave a rousing inspirational speech, complete with a 25 minute DVD which he narrated for us. Sr Hernandez just returned from space on 11Sept'09 where he spent 14 days in space, docking with the international space station to resupply and swap crew members. What made the talk even more inspirational was that he is a first generation American, born to Mexican migrant workers. He didn't speak English until he was twelve because, as with many migrants, he attended 3 or 4 schools per year as the family moved around. And yet, even after being denied six times for NASA's astronaut training school after MANY years of preparation, he kept applying. And now he's been to space and back and was able to honestly say to the crowd of hispanic students in the audience, "si, se puede!!".

So I didn't get to see the First Lady last Friday, but I didn't even have to wait for another week to go by to get another opportunity. She was at the DOE today. I knew she was coming and tried to get tickets to get into the auditorium to see her speak. She and Secretary Chu hosted two teams of local middle school kids for a practice round of Science Bowl. (http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/nsb/default.htm) The First Lady was there to promote the Science Bowl as an exemplary program to promote science and education. So I couldn't get in. The SB is put on by the Office of Science, an office with which I have a lot of connection (see last week's post) and even the two other Fellows in that office who WORK on SB couldn't get in, although one got to play the First Lady at the dry run with the middle schoolers before they did the SB practice with the First Lady and Dr. Chu.

I settled on going to the cafeteria to watch it on the big screen, and did that ever pay off. I ate lunch, got a good seat up close to the TVs and was working on my crossword hoping the rumors I'd heard would be true. Indeed, the swarm of Secret Service men and women in our otherwise droll cafeteria and one half being blocked off with a group setting up a diaz and mic made me hopeful. Sure enough, before she was scheduled to go downstairs to the auditorium she made a stop into the cafeteria to give us a few words. She said something about enjoying 'overflow crowds' more than main events sometimes and that got a good cheer. Then, realizing we were all set up to watch her talk on the TVs she cut her comments short and dashed down off the diaz to the crowd where she started at one end and went completely down the line shaking everyone's hand she could reach. She exchanged words with some and looked everyone in the eye. I got to shake the First Lady's hand and share a smile. Way cool. She's tall, elegant, composed and energetic. She's the First Lady!! The whole building was abuzz all afternoon.

Proof? You want proof? While I have photos I took with my cellphone I won't embarrass myself by posting any. It's a small, basic phone and while I new that I had to try to take a photo or two to show Pia, I won't share with the cyberworld. Have you seen photos of the famed Nessie of Loch Ness? Then you've seen my photos of the First Lady. Back lit, crappy phone camera, dark dress, all on a dark background. You get the idea. But shake her hand and share a smile with her I did.

To leave you with today I will share two quick things. One is an Op Ed by Secretary Chu which I found interesting and I hope you will too: http://www.energy.gov/news2009/8238.htm

The second thing is a bit of fun if you have the time. NASA has just launched their free Space Walk video game based on actual shuttle and ISS missions. It is looking pretty cool and I can see being up late tonight trying to do a space walk around the ISS. Enjoy! http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/3d_resources/station_spacewalk_game.html

ciao,

Back in the Saddle

I biked to work today. So happy! 34 minutes. You know those motivational posters that show a river with mist rising off of it and a team doing crew through that mist, their oar dips the only ripples on the water? Yeah, so when I got down to the Mount Vernon trail which runs along the Potomac that's what I saw. Gorgeous. Full moon behind me and the light coming up behind the capital. A good ride indeed.

Why the break in riding? I wear a suit daily, so it was the recent acquisition of a garment bag panier for my bike that has made riding again a possibility. That, and joining the gym at work so I can shower and shave on that end. The bag gets maybe an 8 on it's ability to keep my suit and shirt wrinkle free. I have yet to score it on the "keepin' it dry" scale. Hopefully nothing lower than a ten there. I can handle a few wrinkles; a wet suit won't do.

Beyond biking, what's new? Last week was rather busy. The Office of Science had all of the Education Directors from all 17 of DOE's National Labs in town for a two day conference about all of the programs they offer (there are programs for under grads and grads, pre service teachers, teachers [like what I did up at Lawrence Berkeley for two summers], faculty and student teams [usually from colleges that don't have the research facilities], etc. The directors reported about their programs, they heard presentations about changes in funding and requirements for the programs, etc. It was...informative for me. And I got the chance to connect with Ed Director for NREL. Again, the National Renewable Energy Lab is EERE's research lab based out in Golden CO. I ended up having a lovely two+ hour lunch with her on Thursday about all of the programs she's running and she adds to the list of invites I've received to go visit. I think it's going to happen in mid-December. Perhaps not the best time to visit the greater Denver area, but it's a scheduling thing. I am hoping for not only a killer behind the scenes tour of NREL and the neighboring National Wind Technology Center (I am hoping to be able to go UP inside a wind turbine for a looksee...stories I've heard sound great!) but I am looking forward to talking about a wealth of partnerships in which we (EERE & NREL) could/should be involved. I have now been in too many meetings where it seems like just the right tweaking of this program or that with a bit of participation from NREL could really leverage the lab's technical abilities and wealth of brilliant scientists to turn on some students to science and engineering. I'm hopeful, and encouraged by all of the enthusiasm with which I've been greeted flowing from NREL.

Also keeping me busy last week was a talk I gave at the SHPE conference on Friday. I was asked to do this by some folks in the Office of Science (are you sensing a strong connection between my position and the office of Science??). I was glad to oblige but all I was given was that I would be speaking to some high school students and would I talk about careers in science. Details were vague in coming so I centered my hour talk (ppt) on the DOE's national labs, specifically NREL and the cool engineering/science jobs they could have discovering the 'next best thing' or solving the climate change crisis or creating a new electric car, etc. All through the talk my message was 'this could be you'.

I closed with a survey I had seen recently that asked Americans if they could knew a living scientist or could name one. 65% said no. Another 18% said yes, but were wrong in their answer (Einstein, for instance, is no longer living). That's 83% who don't know a living scientist. I told them I wanted THEM to be that scientist their mothers, cousins, sons and brothers could point to when asked that question. And in the mean time, I re-introduced myself and said "you know a scientist". They clapped. It was cute. It was even cuter at the end when half a dozen or more came up to meet me and asked if they could have their picture taken with me. How cute!! The topper was a young man who waited outside the room to ask me in a quieter space if it would be okay, given that I was talking about becoming an engineer, if he just majored in physics in college. "Yeah, that should be alright".

Stay tuned for tales of Astronauts and the First Lady!!

ciao