As part of the Science at Sea experience, I talked about the many benefit of teachers who blog as part of their classroom experience. At one end of the spectrum you have teachers who  are using their school sponsored blogs as a way to effectively communicate with parents or to share classroom assignments with students. On the other end you have very teachers who have found ways to use their blog as a catalyst to get their students (and parents) engaged in the learning process outside of classroom time.

Lisa Heaton uses her blog (www.lisaheaton.com) during her integrated unit on rocketry and literature as her 5th grade GT students read Rocket Boys by Homer Hickham. Lisa found that her students write almost twice as much when they are blogging versus using conventional writing practices. By their very nature, blogs are an interactive forum that encourage students to become engaged in the thoughts and ideas presented by other students in their class. Instead of students merely “pushing” ideas to a teacher to grade, blog posts become a great way for students to agree, disagree or come up with a new idea based on a collaborative learning environment.

You have to check out the Learning in Alaska blog by Colleen Dominguez and Beth Lynch, two phenomenal 5th grade teachers from Houston, Texas who attended Science at Sea. After returning home, Colleen and Beth set-up this website last week and started to share their daily experiences from the cruise through Alaska. Their goal is to have a good foundation established before their students return from summer break. As they share more and more of their experiences with the students, these teachers plan to use the website as a forum to discuss the ecology of Alaska and the best way to conserve our valuable resources.

Do teacher blogs really serve as a catalyst to get students to think more critically, challenge conventional views, bounce around new ideas and debate issues? This anecdotal evidence suggests a positive answer to all of these questions, but what is your experience? Go ahead… get engaged.

It’s not unusual for our office to get a call or two a week from the media about the Mentos Geyser experiment. Most of the inquires focus on how the reaction works or questions about MENTOS myths. When Tom Whipple from the London Times called, his interest in the MENTOS Geyser focused on the vehicle used to popularize the experiment - YouTube. Here’s the interview from the London Times…

A Lesson in Pure Science…from YouTube

Thousands have watched Steve Spangler’s experiments online. He says it’s the ideal teaching tool for science.
Tom Whipple

Steve Spangler was not the first to perform the “Mentos experiment”. It was just that when he did — in his role as a science correspondent on NBC — there was what he refers to as “a perfect storm” of circumstances.

On live TV he put a Mentos mint into a bottle of Diet Coke, waited for a geyser to erupt from the top and watched as the news anchor got soaked. “They tried to fix her hair,” he says, “but it didn’t work.” Crucially, there was also “this little thing called YouTube, that no one knew about”.

The news clip went viral and the original experiment was repeated by thousands of people, many of whom recorded their own innovative variations, from fountain displays to bottle rockets. It was, Spangler says without hubris, the biggest collaboration on a science experiment as well as being excellent home-science fun. “Its popularity now is indicative of telling kids for 20 years: ‘Don’t try this at home’,” he says. But he cautions: “It gets very messy.”

Spangler likes messy experiments. One of his favourites is footage of when he filled a swimming pool with cornstarch and water — producing a non-Newtonian fluid, a little like custard — then got people to walk across. As with custard, the liquid becomes a solid when enough force is applied.

Not all of the scientific clips on YouTube are so exciting. One experiment, shakily shot, is of a candle floating in a dish of water. The candle is slowly covered by a jar, it goes out and then gently — mesmerically — the water rises up the jar. A classic GCSE experiment, it has been watched 320,000 times. Hundreds have commented on it — many wanting to know how it works. And here is the problem of online experiments. The intellectual curiosity is there, but there is no authority to explain what is happening.

Spangler is aware that, while the Mentos eruption may entice people into science, most of those watching are not aware of the science behind it. For the record, at a microscopic level, each Mentos mint is pitted and when dropped into a carbonated drink — containing dissolved CO2 — those pits become nucleation points, causing CO2 to emerge rapidly from solution. “My only regret is I allowed this to turn into a spectacle before I explained it as a science experiment,” he says.

YouTube also includes material to satisfy PhD students. An extraordinary interview with Richard Feynman — the Nobel prize-winning particle physicist — has been posted piecemeal online. For an hour Feynman, who was known by his students as “The Great Explainer”, sits on a chintz sofa and answers questions about science. Despite no publicity, and extremely basic production values, it has been watched tens of thousands of times.

For Spangler, though, it is only just beginning. “We’ve shown that you don’t need a laboratory or PhD to get people excited,” he says. “One of the things I’m struggling with now is trying to get teachers to embrace YouTube as a tool, rather than something they fear.”

Spangler has more than 200 science related video on his YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/stevespanglerscience

The public’s appetite for science far exceeds most TV companies’ appetite for broadcasting it. For instance, a video showing fluid dynamics has been watched 500,000 times. Three dyes are mixed in a clear liquid. Can they be unmixed tinyurl.com/fluid-mechanics

Jill Bolte Taylor’s lecture about strokes has had a million hits. She is a neuroscientist, but the lecture describes her own stroke — as it happened. tinyurl.com/stroke-lecture

The LHC rap, created to explain Geneva’s Large Hadron Collider, works because the physicist performers are aware of how absurd it is. Viewed five million times, the professors have complained that students now use its lyrics in answers to questions tinyurl.com/LHC-rappers

The most impressive variation of the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment is a hundred bottle-long domino rally by two lab-coat wearing “scientists”. Viewed a million times. tinyurl.com/Mento-extreme

I’ll have to admit that my Trash Can Smoke Rings routine is not only a signature staple in my stage show, but it’s become one of my all-time favorite science demos to perform. After presenting my smoke ring routine on the Ellen Show, I received a flood of e-mails with questions about the smoke machine and where to purchase the device. Unfortunately, the cost of a good smoke machine can be a deal breaker for many smoke ring enthusiasts. That’s why I’m hoping you try my latest variation… Smoke Bomb Smoke Rings.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s always fun to stumble across Quirkles videos on YouTube. These fun children’s books support connecting science and literature, which is one of our passions around Steve Spangler Science. This week, Quirkles co-founder Terri Johnson, headed back to Ozarks First KOLR 10 news to show off some of the cool properties of Oobleck… the cornstarch and water quicksand. Terri had a great time getting messy with the KOLR 10 anchor and even made mention of the growing popularity of walking on “water” with the gooey Oobleck. If you are a fan of Spangler Science or the Ellen Degeneres show, you probably remember when I stormed the stage of the Ellen show with a cement truck, a few hundred gallons of water, 2,500 boxes of cornstarch and a very brave audience member, who walked across a giant pool of Oobleck! It’s great to see Terri in her Spangler Science tie dye lab coat playing with the “Zop”!  The set of all 26 wild and wacky Quirkles books can be bought on our site at SteveSpanglerScience.com.

We are honored to periodically host the Carnival of Education. Hats off to our good friend Jane Goodwin for all of her work on the latest Carnival. - editor

Welcome to the Carnival of Education, hosted right here at Steve Spangler Science! As all good teachers well know, the best education is the education that encourages us all to get down and dirty with it: in other words, touch it, feel it, experience it fully.  Connect it with other things you know.  Activate your schema!  Textbooks are good, and full of fascinating and useful information. However, if one student is given a textbook reading assignment and nothing else, and another student is encouraged to get up after reading and APPLY what he just read by putting his/her hands into and on and around smelly, goopy, noisy, exploding, changing, growing things, guess which student is going to remember the lesson best?  Guess which student is going to talk about the lesson at the dinner table that nig?t.  Yeah, that’s what we THOUGHT you’d all say! AWESOME!

Here we go! Let’s walk around the lab and see what we’ve got this week!

Travis A. Wittwer, of Stories from School: Practice Meets Policy, wants to know Why Don’t All Teachers Blog? Travis writes: For me, the act of blogging about my teaching context provides an opportunity to reflect on current issues as well as invite in thoughtful discussion. 

No two people learn in the exact same way, and Nersher of Online MBA Study gives us lots of examples, reasons, and illustrations in his post Adult Students: Learning to Learn.

Joanne Jacobs, always a fine educational contributor to the Carnivals, has a post this week called “Two Students, Two Schools.” It’s an age-old question, isn’t it: what could possibly prevent two equally intelligent high school students from performing equally well?

Over at Green Rising, Vehar Sheth writes about what can happen when students are finally in an environment that allows them to thrive, or at least be enlightened to subjects they would never know about were it not for this program. Their minds are opened and hope is permitted to build inside of them.

Darren, of Right on the Left Coast, has a definite opinion of these statistics: Well-off, high SAT’s: 82% of such 12th graders finish college Well-off, low SAT’s: 52% of such 12th graders finish college Poor, high SAT’s: 44% of such 12th graders finish college

So will all of you.

Over at A Guide To Raising Great Kids, Alejandra Peraza de Halvorssen asks this question: How can we prevent our kids from being exposed to drugs and alcohol? 

Mary Ann Zehr, at Curriculum Matters, believes that most textbooks, particularly history books, leave out a lot of important material, and she encourages teachers and students to critique their textbooks.

What should teachers do in the summertime?  Mister Teacher - himself a fantastic educator - has put together a list over at Learn Me Good! The post is entitled 12 Things Teachers Should Do Over Summer Break, and I especially like #1!

Heidi, Kim, and Laura are themselves writers and teachers, and they like to review nature books. Check out their blog at Wild About Nature.

Ah, the underachieving gifted! So often, they do poorly in school because their minds move differently than most of the other students’ minds, and more often than not, the teachers’ minds, can keep up with. Joep de Graaff has some suggestions on Dancing Crocodile in a post called Gifted But Stupid.

Alvaro Fernandez, at Sharp Brains, wants to know how anybody can take care of his or her brain when every week brings a new barrage of articles and studies which seem to contradict each other?

There’s a lot of teacher dissatisfaction in New York. There’s a very good reason for that, too. Under Assault has a post that will make your hackles rise. Massaging data to support a favorable school governance record has been a trademark of Klein’s chancellorship. In fact, it’s what the Tweed PR team actually do best.

Andrew Short, at Teen College Education, bemoans the fact that our high schools have been taken over by standardized testing at the expense of everything that made education, well, EDUCATION!

The Britannica Blog states its opinion pretty bluntly:  The logic of school choice seems obvious. If parents selected their children’s schools, they would not choose bad ones, so bad schools would not be able to survive. Schools would have to improve or close, just as a store that offers poor service will lose business to a store that offers better service. 

GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) gives us this blurb to make us curious and click on her link:  Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill as we learn in this fascinating and educational video. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko’s tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all. 

Over at Scenes from the Battleground, old andrew writes about Wilful Stupidity. We’ve all seen it in action.  We see it daily.  And yes, he did spell “wilful” correctly!

Siobhan Curious . . .(has) no studies or statistics to support my conviction that teenagers should have more support in dropping out of school if they wish to. But I still believe it.

Jim Wang at Bargaineering has a top ten list of smart student credit rules.

Pat wants us to know that successful inclusion classes do exist!

Kerry Fletcher has some advice for parents who don’t know what to do with all that artwork their children have been bringing home.

Over on Classroom Canada, Victoria Westcott is throwing a party, and you’re all invited!

It’s not the curriculum, it’s us, swears Matthew Needleman of Creating Lifelong Learners.

Jane Goodwin (Mamacita) at Scheiss Weekly shares a list of fifty or more fantastic themed quotations every single Saturday, and last weekend, the theme was Education!  Indulge yourself.

Larry Ferlazzo firmly believes that everyone - student, teacher, citizen - EVERYONE, should be knowledgeable about the protests in Iran.

These days, pretty much every teacher has an e-mail account at school, but a school account isn’t, I hope, the ONLY email account every teacher has!  Jeannie Anderson uses G-mail; what do you use?  Jeannie also shares a list of web resources her classroom couldn’t live without.

Steve Spangler and the gang have been at sea for the past week!  On a huge ship, along with some excellent naturalists and a hundred teachers in warm coats and mittens, they’re studying whales, and dolphins, and waves, and ice, and you name it, if it’s found in the cold ocean waters!  From Alaska to Vancouver, the Science at Sea crew is having a “whale” of a grand time, and you can follow right along on Twitter and Flickr!  also check out the hashtag #SciSea on Twitter!

On a very serious note, Sara sends in two links about the notorious Rubber Room.  The first is an MSNBC article, which paints a picture of lazy teachers lounging and playing cards while still getting their full pay.  This is not an accurate picture, however, for, while there are teachers in the Rubber Room who actually deserve to be fired, the majority of teachers in Rubber Rooms all over the States are there because they ran afoul of an administrator.  The video and commentary on Pissed Off Teacher’s blog are much more accurate.

Hula Doula is sending her two children to a different school next year.  I don’t blame her a bit.

Miss Eyre, guest-blogging at NYC Educator’s blog, has some handy and timely hints for new teachers who will be setting up their classrooms in a few weeks.  Just don’t do anything logical, ‘kay?

Jenny, over at Three Kid Circus, sent her kids to Drama Camp.  Oh, the DRAMA!

Apostrophe Catastrophe is always good for a laugh.  The laughs are painful, because the grammar and spelling pointed out here are painful, but hey.  This time of year, teachers need a good laugh, even if it does hurt.

Over at Not Always Right, we meet once again all the former students who were their year’s “THAT kid,” and guess what: most of them haven’t changed a bit!

That’s it for this week’s Carnival of Education.   A big thanks goes out to everyone who contributed, and another big thanks goes out to all who read, click, and learn.

All of the submissions were wonderful, too *.  I can’t wait to get started reading CAREFULLY!

*Except, of course, for those who tried to slip their businesses, their disgusting plagiarized essays, their real estate ads, their not-very-cleverly-disguised money-making schemes, and their condo rentals into a blog carnival that is supposed to be about EDUCATION.

We’re educators.  We care far too much for our students to fall for any of that nonsense.  Give it up.  The Carnival of Education is about EDUCATION.

Submit your blogposts HERE for next week’s Carnival of Education!

If it’s light at 4:00 a.m. in Alaska, why not try to broadcast live from the ship? We were 70 miles off the coast of Alaska on our way to Sitka when we broadcast this video back to KUSA-TV in Denver via Skype. Huge thanks to MTN Satellite Services and the Carnival Information Systems people for providing the increased bandwidth to broadcast our segment.

It’s not too difficult to fly out of bed in the morning when you know that you’re going to spend part of the day hanging out with sea otters and maybe a few whales. The morning started early for our video crew - Bradley Mayhew and Jeff Brooks - as I knocked on their cabin doors at 3:45 a.m. to get ready to broadcast live back to the NBC affiliate KUSA-TV in Denver from the deck of the ship. Just a few years ago, a three minute broadcast like this would have cost huge amounts of money. Thanks to tools like Skype, it’s possible to broadcast for almost anywhere - 70 miles off the coast of Alaska for today’s broadcast. Huge props to MTN Satellite Services for providing the increased bandwidth to broadcast our segment.

When you think of a classroom, I’ll bet the deck of a cruise liner overlooking glaciers doesn’t come to mind. Day 3 was a day at sea - traveling from Anchorage to Sitka - but we started the morning at 5:00 a.m. on the deck with John Scheerens to learn about the science of glaciers. We learned about the famous “Harriman Expedition” that discovered College Fjord and named many of the glaciers. The video below will give you a brief look at the day’s activities including our mandatory safety drill. Our friend Vlad seems to be making a cameo in each video… go figure.

In an interview with NBC affiliate KUSA-TV in the early morning, I renamed many of the glaciers to make the hometown folks in Colorado happy (University of Colorado Glacier, Colorado State University Glacier, Arapahoe Community College Glacier, you get the idea).

After breakfast, we started our Science at Sea Lecture Series with The Natural History of Alaska and the Inside Passage. We were introduced to the natural history process of coastal Alaska, including basic geological constructs, weather patterns, glaciers, flora & fauna and ocean process. John’s lecture brought together the basic constructs of the incredibly complex natural history systems which intertwine to make coastal Alaska and British Columbia look and act the way they do.

Our second seminar was Rivers of Ice - How Glaciers Work. Both of our naturalists, John Scheerens and Michele Morris, shared details of how glaciers form, how they move, terminology and why glaciers are so important to climatologists. Neither lecturer escaped questions about global warming and the issues surrounding this hot topic.

We’re on our way to Sitka, Alaska!

We kicked off the day with registration followed by the first Science at Sea lecture - Welcome to Alaska. After a few ice breakers and meet-and-greet activities, our naturalist, John Scheerens, welcomed everyone with a overview of the experience. After lunch, it was time to load the buses and head to Whittier to board the Carnival Spirit. As you’ll see in the video, Brian Firooz was a trouble maker during the bus loading process… and the bus driver set him straight.

I always know that the Spangler Science Product Development Team is going to hit a home run… but I was especially excited when they told me that we were going to have green Solar Beads available for the first time and as the only supplier on the internet.  Maybe I went a little overboard suggesting that we find beads that match the colors for every holiday, but, really, who wouldn’t want UV Beads that turn black for Halloween?  At any rate, we compromised and came up with some really exciting new kits that you can expect to see coming to SteveSpanglerScience.com in the near future.  In the meantime, check out the video below to see what all the buzz is about for these amazing learning tools and check out some of my favorite Energy Bead experiments.

After two years of planning, we were all ready to kick-off our first day of Science at Sea. Even though it was a day of travel for almost everyone, there was still an opportunity to have fun.

Learn more about Science at Sea

Just a quick post before the plane leaves from Denver to Anchorage to meet up with 100 teachers from all over the country (and three teachers from Germany). If you’re wondering if there’s going to be any learning taking place, take a look at our program.

Download the Science at Sea Program

It’s an e-mail that probably showed up in your inbox… Create an Exploding Drink! The prank is based on the widely known phenomenon of dropping MENTOS® chewy mints into soda to create an erupting geyser. Instead of just dropping the Mentos into soda, the pranksters suggest freezing a Mento in the middle of an ice cube. Serve your friend a refreshing soda drink and garnish with the tainted ice cubes. When the ice cube melts, the Mento is exposed and the soda erupts everywhere.

Great idea, right? I first saw the article in WIRED and blog sites like BoingBoing.net were quick to pick it up. Here’s the amazing part… there are literally hundreds and hundreds of comments about why it should or shouldn’t work, but up until today, I had yet to read about anyone who had actually tried it. If you really understand the science behind the physical reaction of releasing all of the carbon dioxide in the soda, you might guess that this is all a big hoax (not the first science experiment hoax we’ve seen in our inboxes).

As a professional speaker, I’ve learned over the years the importance of a good introduction and how detrimental a bad intro can be to the start of even a good presentation. We’ve all probably been in an audience and experienced an introduction that is in itself a mini-speech. These are the intros that go on and on forever for the sake of… who knows. In extreme cases, the audience begins to grow restless… some want to throw things while others begin chanting, “Hey, we didn’t come to hear you!” The bottom line is that a speaker’s introduction plays a huge role in how the speaker is perceived by the audience (before the speaker ever steps onto the platform). In contrast, a great introduction is worth its weight in gold - long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting (there’s a joke here, but not in this forum).

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking to the Colorado Chapter of the National Speakers Association (NSA Colorado) and I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction from Glenn Thayer. Sidebar… speaking to a group of professional speakers is nerve-racking but they’re the greatest audiences in the world because they get it. Glenn Thayer is a professional master of ceremonies, a voice talent and all around nice guy. When you listen to his recorded introduction, you’ll see why he’s constantly asked to record greeting messages on everyone’s cell phone. If you need a true pro whose job it is to make you look good, you need to learn more about Glenn Thayer.

Listen to this cool introduction…

Here are a few tips on how to write or present a great introduction…

1. Use the KISS principle - Keep It Short and Simple. Use the introduction to help the audience learn a little bit about the speaker and to tease the audience to make them want to learn more from the speaker.
2. If the speaker gives you an introduction, PLEASE USE IT. Professional speakers all know the importance of a good introduction and they spend a tremendous amount of time fretting over each and every word.
3. Don’t add your own materials to a speaker’s introduction. Check with the speaker before you add your own material to his or her introduction. The funny story or anecdote may or may not help the speaker establish rapport with the audience. If the speaker wrote it, use it.
4. If the speaker did not provide you with an introduction, write your own… but don’t just “wing it.” If is speaker is an amateur or doesn’t have an intro, it’s your job as the master of ceremonies to write your own. Take a minute to interview the speaker with just a few questions you think might be interesting to the audience. Remember, shorter is better when it comes to an introduction.
5. Remember the job of the emcee… warm up the audience, make sure the audience is in a good mood and make the speaker or entertainer look great.

Learn more about my interactive keynote presentations and hands-on science workshops for teachers by visiting our website or watch the short video below to see first hand how to use Flying Potatoes and Exploding Soda to Create Unforgettable Learning Experiences.

At the beginning of May, we asked you to nominate your favorite science teacher for our Teacher Appreciation Award.  The entries came pouring in, and we are excited to spotlight our winners.  Huge thanks to everyone who participated!  We found some truly remarkable teachers out there and we are excited to feature them here… and each of our winners gets a $35 gift certificate to use at SteveSpanglerScience.com!

Shanna Adams

Nominated by Dana Stone - Mrs Adams is a first grade teacher…but she doesn’t treat her kids like “just” first graders.  She will work on a subject throughout the week and then EVERY Friday is Fun Friday. They put the principles to work in cool science projects.  She has had the class outside working on a car to learn simple machines (pulleys, etc).  They have cooked to emphasis the states of matter and how they change in relationship to heat.  They have played with dry ice and other cool items.   I suspect she gets a lot of ideas from you!  She has made my son love science so much that he begged to have a science birthday party…talk about a great influence!

Hi I’m Mrs. Shanna Adams and I teach 1st grade at Brookhaven Elementary in Killeen, Tx.  I love what I do because of the excitement that I see as the students gain an understanding of the world around them.  It is important for the young students to have exposure to the stands of science.  They have a natural curiosity that needs to be encouraged so that they will continue to have a desire to learn and explore the world around them.  I like to do a lot of hands on activities so that they will experience the various science concepts that may lead them into a Science career when they grow up.  Science is a field that doesn’t get enough attention at the elementary school and I want that to change and to be able to show other that you can do things with the younger students that are fun and help them learn about different science concepts.

Ann Collet

Nominated By Ellen Peterson- Science is a state tested subject for 5th graders in Virginia and they cover so much material that hands-on activities and demonstrations fall by the wayside in most classrooms.  Not Ann’s! She makes sure that every student (she teaches Science to 2 different classes) in her classes touches science by setting up lab experiences 1-2 times per week.  What is so special about her is that she has convinced her students that Science is fun and exciting.  She gives a monthly Science birthday party.  Each child who has a birthday within the month gets to lead an experiment that reinforces concepts they’ve got to know for the test!  Kids can chose the experiment or a treat and the kids ALWAYS choose the experiment.  She posts the pictures on the wall outside of her classroom so everyone who passes by can see the work they’ve accomplished!

My first memory of taking a science class was when I was in junior high school, and I was terrified!  Science must be hard, or we would have studied it in elementary school.
I could not have been more wrong.

As a teacher, my goal is to take the fear out of science.  I simplify the content first, explain how the science happens, and then the students see or hear science in action by doing experiments or other hands-on activities.

We have a lot of giggles along the way!

Bhava Rawal

Nominated by Steffany Ascencio - Ms. Rawal provides us innovative science projects. We learn science concepts through innovative labs and projects. Ms. Rawal is very dedicated to her work. She buys all the projects and lab materials for us and prepared everything before we come to class. Ms. Rawal’s science projects are always cool and very inspiring. We won thing place in science fair among all SBISD schools. Ms. Rawal also runs green club after school.

Ms. Rawal’s class project and green club involves building and using alternative energy resources in a model homes. Through this project we learned about and worked with the different types of energy resources. We also enhance this project by building a model city which incorporates alternate energy resources such as solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, geothermal, hydrogen into the city. In this project, students in each team study the types of alternative energy (i.e. solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and wave energy, hydroelectric, hydrogen, fuel cells, biomass and nuclear energy) to discover how the energy works and produces electricity. Each team analyze the alternative energy type for its advantages, disadvantages, locations for most effective use, percentage of the world that uses this energy and its use in Texas. Each team use the internet and other information resources to discover the latest discoveries and uses of the form of alternative energy that the team is studying. A total of at least twenty citations (e.g. web sites, periodicals, books or expert opinions) must be used. Students build house with bedroom with light, outlet and switch, kitchen with light, outlet and switch, bathroom with light, outlet and switch, living room with outlet, switch and ceiling fan, dining room with outlet, switch, and chandelier, Hallway with two switches and one light, the bedroom, kitchen, hall or bathroom has a second light so that the room has two lights in parallel. All lights in the house will be operated by alternative energy resources. Using these alternate energy sources could result in energy savings of approximately 15% in the model homes that we are building. We also determine the amount of energy used in each home then calculate percentages of energy savings by comparing the original model with alternate resources model.

An advertisement for a solar oven, solar panel, wind mill, hydrodynamic model, solar car, greenhouse, window shield, or foam insulation must be created to help market these alternate energy products to all students who pass by our classroom.

Each team prepares a PowerPoint presentation to use during the oral presentation.
Ms. Rawal teaches AP and Dual Credit chemistry classes. She took us to HCC, Sam Houston State University, NASA; Ms. Rawal worked under USDA grant and prepared us to receive scholarship towards Houston Community College. Thirteen of chemistry students received scholarship last year.

My science acumen has always been in the design, development and implementation of a wide variety of creative labs to make science fun and relevant. In my academic and professional life my students and I pursue and enjoy these activities. Numerous labs bring more fun to my science students who, in turn, utilize these concepts within their academic, technical and community lives.

I believe cool and fun labs, demonstrations, simulations, games, puzzles and dramatic explanations are tools to make students learn factual material more easily than just by memorization. It also stimulates their motivation to learn basic science concepts. Demonstrations and fun labs build creativity in the students:

• Labs like making ice cream helps students learn (viscerally!) that adding a solute to a solvent lowers the freezing point of that solvent.
• Take home crystallization lab improves students’ powers of observation as well as visualization of crystal structure.
• Preparing colorful solution to find different types of solutions
• Determine concentration of compounds in cola.
• Mentos in diet cola to make a fountain.
• Molecular model building to visualize 3D molecular structure.
• Measure calories in foods such as corn puffs.
• Determine percent sugar in gum.
• Determine percent water in popcorn.
• Calculate moles of carbon in pencil lead.
• Jeopardy games with formula questions can help children learn to build chemical formulas.

I strongly believe these activities increase students’ attention span, while connecting them to real life applications. By preparing the students for fun, safe and cool science labs practices, I can build good rapport with my students. I describe a method for teaching science via fun and exciting labs that is much easier, far faster, and more inclusive.  This makes the transition from their actions to their understanding, leaving them able to use the science concepts correctly, easily, quickly.

My chemistry classes also involve a significant amount of teamwork. Several industries where students find employment emphasize the need for a “team player with good interpersonal skills”. For this purpose, I strongly advocate design innovative labs involving student groups, which provide students with vital opportunities to effectively work as a team. These labs are useful learning tools where the students assimilate and implement all the concepts they have learned in the classroom to bring the lab to fruition, write a report and make a final presentation.

On many occasions I have seen student groups allowed to work “independently” as a team without significant supervision. This defeats the basic purpose of initiating group work. The students need mentoring not only in the technical aspects of the labs but also in group interaction and effective teamwork. While the team work and interpersonal skills are acquired through experience, the instructor plays a crucial role in identifying their position within a dynamic group. An instructor should discuss various teamwork-related problems they might encounter and guide them through the process. I try to achieve this by spending significant time with each group. I also mentor individual students, keeping advice within the group.

Typically, science that I try to teach contains not only “strictly factual” elements but has a conceptual or logical component.  Teaching by rote (e.g., telling students what the types of reactions are, or teaching them rules or recipes) makes it more difficult for students to understand or use concepts, so it takes them much longer to learn.

What is required for good teaching is to know how to find the connecting points between the subject matter and what kids know, or could more easily know.  That means being able to know the sorts of things students tend to know in general and being able to ferret out which kids do not know that or what more things some kids might know already.  And it also means knowing your subject matter so well that you can link it in some way to whatever you can find kids already know.  And it means being able to figure out things you could easily teach them that would allow them to make the connection.

Teaching science is a demanding profession–your patience and creativity are constantly challenged and there is always something new to learn . . . and to teach! It’s a good bet that you seldom have enough time or resources to do everything you would like to do to help your students. Yet you consistently share your knowledge, passion and enthusiasm–helping students understand our world, preparing them for the future.

My philosophy as a teacher has always been to maintain the perception that the young minds sitting before me, or standing beside me during a laboratory exercise, are the future citizens of our world. I see my responsibility as a patient guide to my students so that they may grow towards the development of their own independence, as they become the leaders of their generation.

As a teacher of science I have always tried to instill in my own life as well as that of my students that science is an old, familiar, frequently used tool with which to enhance our lives, whether for safety, health issues, environmental issues, or just a clearer understanding of the nature of our shared physical world.

Scott Carswell

Nominated by Nancy Mooney - Scott’s love of science shows each day when he teaches the children.  He is often more excited about the projects/experiments than the kids but his excitement wins the kids over every time.

The past two years we have participated in a science olympiad and Scott has dedicated a lot of time and energy into organizing teams, staying after school so the kids can work together and practice, encouraging them on when things get rough and most of all his love of the children.  That love shines and that is truly what makes him such a wonderful science teacher.

Nominated by Lois Renfro - Mr. C. keeps the children very motivated and eager to learn. He maintains excellent communication with parents, as well.  In the Science Olympiad 2008 at Univ. of Central Florida his 2 teams scored 1st & 2nd overall. Last week in the 2009 Science Olympiad his teams scored 1st & 3rd out of 38 teams!!! It has been an honor for my grandson to have Mr. Carswell for Homeroom and Science this year. He had devoted more time and energy than required and his students have blossomed through his efforts. He is an asset to Brookshire Elementary!

I’ve attached a few pictures from our recent Elementary Science Olympiad Competition.  Our two teams placed first and third, overall, out of 41 teams.  They had a great time.  My educational philosophy on science is pretty simple.

1. The learning has to be meaningful.
2. The students need to be engaged.
3. Science needs to be fun.

I’ve really gotten into the inquiry side of science lately.  I love watching them explore, discuss and work through the many concepts that we cover.  I like to work with students on their common misconceptions.  It’s really fun to watch them work through these misconceptions and discover why their thinking was incorrect.  I feel that it’s very important for the students to do the exploration to identify and correct their misconceptions about science.

Alicia Dean

Nominated by Deborah Riley - Ms. Dean is my son’s 2nd grade teacher and science is her all time favorite subject! Every week she has cool experiments for the kids such as making a working oven out of a shoebox - the kids are loving their hot dogs! This year while teaching the various stages of water, Ms. Dean had an accident with the boiling water. It spilled onto her foot and leg causing 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Safety is #1 for Ms.Dean so she made sure the children were far away during the experiment and kept a brave face the whole time. She lost about a month of work time as she recovered and still may end up with surgery. All the while Ms. Dean continued to develop engaging lesson plans and provide all the materials and detailed instructions needed so her subs could carry out the science teachings for her kids and keep them engaged! Now THAT is commitment and a true passion! I think she should be recognized for her love of science and teaching!

Science should taught as a hands on subject. Students need to be involved in their own learning. They need to experience life cycles of animals through watching the animals actually develop right here, right now, right in front of their own eyes! The students needs to play with liquids, solids and gases to understand the concept of matter. If we tell the kids that they are scientists, they will believe it. They CAN use words like hypothesize, conclusion, hand lens, pipette, polymer, even at a 2nd grade level. They can learn about the sun’s power by creating solar ovens and cooking with them. Children learn by doing. They do not learn just by reading out of a textbook. My kids get excited about science and want to learn more everyday. They love experiments and learn most of their critical thinking skills from hypothesizing and coming to conclusions. A teacher has to be in love with his or her subject in order to pass that passion on to the students. I love to let my kids experiment with polycrystals and see the look on my kid’s faces when they add water to them and see them expand. I love to use my computer microscope and print out the class’ fingerprints at 60x the size of the original. If you make science fun and hands on, the child will learn and will remember. If you let it come from a textbook and do rote worksheets, the students won’t enjoy science as much. I love it and have to share my enthusiasm with my class. An interactive project or hands on experiment is what children need to keep them interested and to progress.  Setting high expectations for children is key in developing the scientific mind of any child. There is always an educational goal in mind in my class, but my children are having fun while learning.

Debbie Harris

Nominated by Margaret Newsom - Every time I see fellow teacher Debbie Harris’ 7th grade class, they seem to be on a mission of discovery.  From solar experiments in the front courtyard, to the lego robotics club that she sponsors for middle school students, to the fact that she uses off periods to visit early childhood classrooms and get the students excited about science - just a few months ago I found her rediscovering gravity with a group of three year olds!  Debbie has organized school wide science events, such as flight day from two years ago.  She brought together a team of middle school students interested in helping to replant trees after Hurricane Ike had come through - her “Gale Force” team studied the effects from the hurricane, and did some replanting and replenishing of the environment.  Year by year, Debbie inspires our students to investigate, and encourages other teachers to incorporate science in their daily lessons and lives.  Debbie’s energy and passion for her subject inspire those around her.

“Over hundreds of years from today
It will not matter
What kind of car I drove
What kind of house I lived in
How much I had in the bank
Or what my clothes looked like
BUT, the world will be a better place
BECAUSE I was important in the life of a child!”
Author Unknown

This sums up my philosophy of education and being a teacher!  I believe that education is about opening up the potential of all and helping them to become the problem-solvers of the future.

I also believe that teaching is a “calling” and I have been called to work with children along their pathway to their future. I want to expose them to lots of Science content, but I mainly want them relating these concepts to the real world through current events and problem-solving. Problems and competitions such as the environmental issues make education relevant to the students. These skills will make them leaders of our world.

This year Houston was hit hard by Hurricane Ike. I created a group called The Gale Force and we set about to replant many of the trees lost to the hurricane. In addition, using my stream table, students flooded New Orleans and then Galveston to demonstrate the effects of the storm surge. Of course, they flooded my room also.

During the astronomy unit, students created an Oprah-like show and had the sun, Earth, and other planets as guests. This was a lot more meaningful (a lot more fun than research papers). I want students making Science part of their life, not just memorizing facts!

Ellen Peterson

Nominated by Karen Barlow - Ellen uses hands-on labs so that science comes alive for our students.  Students remember the objectives and results from her labs long after they leave her classroom.  I will see students in town or in the mall, and they will say “hi” and then, “Remember when we shot off rockets”, or “Remember when we blew the giant bubbles that got stuck in your hair?” or “Remember when we wrapped you in toilet paper?” in Mrs. Peterson’s class?”  They remember the lesson long after they leave us and even though I teach history, Mrs. Peterson gives me many ideas to make my lessons more meaningful - she shared the polyacrylamide spheres with me and my students used them in a lab demonstrating hemispheres of the globe!

Nominated by Byron Peterson - My wife has always been excited about science and making it real and tangible for her students.  Right now, she’s teaching a unit on space.  Being such an abstract concept for so many kids, she’s tried to find a touchable way to demonstrate each of the planets.  It is a demonstration she calls “A Tour of The Planets”.  For each planet, she has borrowed, created, or adapted a demonstration that is appropriate for a unique attribute of that planet.  As the tour proceeds, she acts a tour guide, using photos and a telescope in class to view each photo.  For Saturn, she recently learned that it’s density is less than that of water so using a diet soda/regular soda demonstration of sink or float, she tried to convey to her students that concept of Saturn’s density by showing them, instead of just telling them.  Each planet is highlighted on the tour.  Upon checking the answering machine at home today, a parent left her a message that said, “My child just demonstrated all nine planets to us!”  She was so excited that they “took it home”!  Science is alive in that home and in my wife’s classroom!

I am “that crazy science teacher” that is always setting something on fire or blowing something up.  I am the one the kids point at as they see me in the hallway.  “She sets things on fire on the first day of school!”  “Someone told me she eats a candle in class!”  “They do the coolest stuff in that classroom.”  But more importantly, “I told my parents about that thing we did in class.”  “I taught my brother how inertia works!”  “I don’t know what you do in your classroom, but my daughter just won’t stop talking about it.”  As the students go by my door, they always peek.  They can’t help it.  That’s exactly how I want it.

If I can’t make it real, they probably won’t get it.  That sums up my philosophy of teaching in one sentence or less.  I teach 6thgrade science in Virigina.  Like most states, we test A LOT here.  Science is the one subject that is not tested in 6th grade and I often feel pressured to let science slide in favor of TESTED material.  The material I cover won’t appear on THE TEST until 8thgrade.  On the first day my students enter my classroom, THE TEST is almost 3 years away but it covers material I teach.  If I can’t make it real, make it big (read:  make it explode), there’s no way they will recall it when they need it.  When you couple that with the “push down” curriculum of developmentally inappropriate concepts that my children are expected to underst and it i s such a difficult task to reach my audience.  I HAVE to entertain; I HAVE to invoke their curiosity; I HAVE to recall that sense of wonder that has been TESTED out of them.  Because of that we rarely spend more than 1 day in a row in lecture or notes.  I demonstrate or they explore in a lab experience every concept for which I can manufacture an event.  I want them to ask questions, make connections, and figure out why.  Ultimately, according to the state, my job is prepar ing them for the test.  To me, my job is preparing them to encounter life.  Life doesn’t come at you on a piece of paper with multiple-choice answers.

Michael Buckley didn’t wake up in the morning expecting to touch 50,000 volts of electricity, but he did… and here’s why

As the first exclusive supplier of the Quirkles books, I was interested to see that Quirkles co-founder Terri Johnson was taking her science experiments to the airwaves… with a distinctively Spangler flair.  Donning her Steve Spangler Science tie dye lab coat, Terri entertains viewers of the Ozarks First morning newscast.  Terri’s latest appearance featured our Floating Beach Ball and Flying Toilet Paper experiment.  Terri thoroughly surprised the news anchor when toilet paper was sent flying through the studio using the classic leaf blower trick.  It’s great to see fellow scientists spreading the idea of making science fun throughout the country and it’s an honor to see that they are being inspired by our experiments.

Although not mentioned in the video, the set of all 26 Quirkles books can be purchased from our website.  The Quirkles combine scientific concepts and experiments with phonetics and language basics.

It’s true that I find some of my best experiment inspiration in the hardware store. My team often likes to tell the story about spending five hours at Home Depot before a conference in Atlanta… don’t believe everything you hear. This Teflon Tape experiment is one of my favorites because young scientists get to use a pretty common household material to make their own secret messages. Check out the video below, then read the experiment for the whole story.

It’s my favorite teacher training of the entire year - Science in the Rockies. It’s a three-day workshop held in the foothills just outside of Denver. The dates for this year’s workshop are July 8-10, 2009. The training typically attracts 150-200 elementary and middle school teachers who are looking for unique ways to make science more exciting and meaningful in their classrooms. At the core of the workshop is learning strategies and better practices for integrating science into an educator’s daily teaching routine.

You can learn more about this great teacher training experiment by visiting the Science in the Rockies registration page. There you’ll find information about the science curriculum, travel and expenses, last year’s buzz and frequently asked questions.

Here’s what happened last year at Science in the Rockies…

Behind the scenes at the 2008 workshop - listen to what teachers are doing with what they learned at Science in the Rockies.

Colorado has been home to this special science teacher training science 1991 when it was called the National Hands-on Science Institute. The campus of Regis University was the original home of this hands-on science workshop for teachers with Dr. Jim Giulianelli in the center ring. Many things have changed over the years in terms of professional staff development for elementary and middle school teachers, but getting students excited about science continues to be important to so many educators. Find Science in the Rockies registration information here.

No more information is necessary… it’s just a polka dot suitcase. Wonder what’s inside?