Completing a 2-year independent study, STEMscopes™ has set itself apart from competitors.  Over 6,000 eighth graders across more than 35 classrooms in 12 different schools lent their high-stakes test data to the study.  Results were clear:  classrooms with STEMscopes™ demonstrated a significantly higher probability of success on state science exams even after variables such as English language proficiency, socioeconomic status, and different teachers were accounted for.  To read more about the study, see the results in detail, and understand how variables were controlled for, click here.

The implications of this study are both immediate and profound.  Using STEMscopes™ with fidelity to inquiry-based learning produces powerful results.  The power of STEMscopes™ is a credit to the teachers of Texas who write it and our users who continually voice concerns and suggestions to improve STEMscopes™ for all.  We hope all of you who have contributed to its development from writing complex PBLs to clicking the in-site feedback button share in our happiness and feel not only pride in the curriculum you’ve helped build but also in your abilities as an educator. 

STEMscopes™ also enjoyed qualitative success this past Friday with a visit from 23 Chinese high school principals from the Haidian District of Beijing.  The group completed a tour of American universities and schools with Rice Digital Learning and Scholarship (RDLS), the overarching organization of STEMscopes™.  RDLS piqued their interest as a forerunner in the field of digital learning – it was a singular privilege to have delegates from overseas come learn about integrating RDLS’ research, practices, and products such as STEMscopes™ into their own education systems.  To learn more about the Chinese delegation’s visit, click here.

When you first hear the words “chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE),” you might dismiss it as a mouthful of healthcare jargon without any real personal significance.  But if you or your loved ones have a history of playing impact sports like football, you may want to take notice.  CTE describes a recently documented disease common to veteran football players.  Wait…does football cause disease?  No, this isn’t something picked up from exposure to a communal locker room, but rather the accumulation of thousands of blows to the head.  CTE can cause memory loss, depression, dementia, and difficulty performing mental tasks; often these symptoms don’t appear until years after a football player has stopped playing.  To understand the science behind CTE and some wild suggestions to help prevent it, let’s take a quick look at the history of football helmets.

Football helmets made their debut in the early 1900s with the innovation of hardened leather.  Debate remains over who was the actual inventor of the football helmet because they were initially optional in professional games and few players wore them.  It slowly became common to wear helmets because they provided some protection; the thick leather pads were designed to blunt blows on the forehead while cushioning the ears and rest of the skull.  A mix between boxing headgear and wrestling ear guards provides a good visualization of the original football helmets.

In 1938, the Riddle Company completely changed football when they introduced plastic helmets.  The Riddle Company had made a bet (not a scientific experiment) that plastic helmets would be safer than their leather cousins.  Meanwhile, the NFL was making its own changes:  by the mid-1940s, players were required to wear helmets.  A few years later, players made the transition from their leather helmets to those from Riddle Company made of plastic.  Nowadays, most of us would be stunned to see someone playing football without a helmet – what if they bumped heads?  The irony is that maybe plastic helmets did not make the game safer as Riddle Company had intended.

If plastic helmets are supposed to make football safer, some might question why more and more players are being diagnosed with CTE.  One reason is that, until a decade ago, we did not have the medical expertise and equipment to diagnose the disease.  It is possible that a lot of players actually had it but were unaware.  Nutrition science and sports training have come a long way since the 1900s; football players today are often bigger and stronger than their 1900s counterparts.  Bigger and stronger = more force from tackling.  The last reason is more complicated:  the way football was played changed with the arrival of plastic helmets.  Football players can get a false sense of safety while their heads are tucked in a big plastic dome.  Fueled by competitiveness, players tackle their opposition and sometimes clash helmets with well over half a ton of force, according to professor Timothy Gay of University of Nebraska, author of The Physics of Football.  In severe cases, these impacts cause concussions by making the brain bounce around in the skull.  Buildup of trauma like this over time causes CTE.

What, then, is the solution?  Should football helmets disappear tomorrow?  The field is divided.  “Some people have advocated for years to take the helmet off, take the face mask off.  That’ll change the game dramatically,” said Fred Mueller, University of North Carolina professor studying brain injuries.  Helmets were originally intended to prevent catastrophic head injuries like cracked skulls and broken jaws, concussions and resultant CTE that at the time were not understood.  Others say that the solution lies in improving current helmets. Riddle Company, for example, has gone a long way in doing so since its prototypes add shock absorbing facemasks and feature inflatable padding zones.  Still, many neurosurgeons agree that in order to really prevent concussions and CTE, helmets just need to be a whole lot bigger to fit in more padding.   An entirely different approach would be to change the rules of football all together.  But what would football be without tackling? 

TEKS:  3.6B, 4.6D, 5.6D, 7.12B, 8.6C

“1080p” may soon be a thing of the past as “4K” takes hold.  If you just started sweating, don’t worry – you’re not back in calculus class.  In fact, these numbers and figures hit much closer to home than you think.  These figures refer to TV resolution, which may undergo a transformation with the arrival of 4K resolution in the next few years.  This transition may be as big as when HDTV arrived more recently.  Before we make that transition and drool over the ultra-realistic images on our brand new flat screens, maybe we should understand TVs as they stand today. 

“LED/LCD” displays (the same types of screens you find in many handheld devices like a smartphone) are commonplace today.  First of all, let’s define two terms:

LED:  Light emitting diode, or tiny bulbs that don’t use a filament to light up, making them last far longer than incandescent bulbs (traditionallight bulbs).

LCD:  Liquid crystal display, or a series of moving crystals that change shape to create different colors when white light shines through them.

Whether a TV at Best Buy or Wal-Mart is called an LED or LCD TV, both work in very similar ways.  Both rely on using white light to generate the colors seen on a television screen – think about a prism splitting the sun’s white light into a rainbow of colors.  The difference lies in how they make this white light. 

LCD TVs rely on a group of substances called liquid crystals that were discovered in 1888 by Austrian chemist Friedrich Reinitzer.  Atoms in these crystals can move like liquids but maintain a neat, ordered structure like a solid.   The liquid crystals used in a TV or computer screen are transparent and will react to electricity by unwinding.  In an LCD TV, liquid crystals are sandwiched between two layers of glass that are surrounded by electrodes (conductors that can control the movement of electricity) and polarizing filters (filters that can block light or let it pass through); this sandwich is called a subpixel.  Subpixels are grouped into bundles of three called a pixel (3 subpixles = 1 pixel).  Each subpixel has a red, green, or blue film so that it displays that color when white light shines through it.  A computer screen, phone, or TV can easily have thousands of pixels.

A processor inside the LCD TV increases or decreases the amount of electricity that reaches each twisted liquid crystal inside the subpixel.  As the processor sends more electricity to a certain subpixel, the liquid crystal unwinds.  When it unwinds, less light passes through the polarizing filters.  The result is that that subpixel’s color gets dimmer (for example, more electricity to the green subpixel means that the entire pixel would look more red + blue, or purple, since there is hardly any green).  With more electricity, that pixel can become completely black as all the subpixel’s liquid crystals unwind.  By carefully controlling the flow of electricity to each subpixel, each pixel can display a different color and thus show a whole image on the screen.  If no electricity is sent to the electrodes of a pixel, all three subpixels will shine their colors and show white.

It is important to realize that the pixels do not make light.  They just let light pass through them in different ways to change the color of the light moving through.  The light actually comes from the back of the TV.  Here is where we get the difference between an “LED TV” and an “LCD TV.”  LCD TVs use fluorescent tubes, much like the ones in classroom ceilings, to make white light that passes through the pixels to show the colors seen on the TV screen.  LED TVs, on the other hand, use LEDs to make white light that passes through the pixels to make all the colors you see when watching your favorite show or playing a game on the computer.  Both use liquid crystals.  Both have pixels.  The difference is just how they make their white light.  That means that LED TVs are really just LED-lit LCD TVs. 

So what about that 4K TV?  Pixels are always getting smaller – this means that you can cram more of them onto a screen.  The basic technology of LED/LCD screens is not going to change anytime soon.  On a 4K screen, there will be literally thousands more pixels in a smaller area than ever before.  That means images will be sharper and more realistic than before.  Still, don’t get your hopes up about having a TV marathon with your new 4K display. Until they become easier to make, 4K televisions will be much more expensive than their currently available LED/LCD cousins.

TEKS:  5.6A, 6.9C, P.7AB, P.7D

Hot off the presses, STEMscopes™ now has K-12 science TEKS tracker posters ready for your download.  With the addition of our biology, chemistry, and physics posters, all of our trackers have undergone stylistic changes to make them even better for you and your students.  These posters are great for use as whole class mastery trackers, quick visual TEKS reminders, and individual student "how am I doing?" trackers.  

Our hope is that these empower your students to take ownership over their grades and learning in a very visual way.  Students can easily see what reporting categories and specific TEKS they are weak in.  At the same time, your pupils can easily compare and help each other by being self-assured that they are masters in a given objective.  

You can download these freebies on our resources page here or by visiting our Pinterest.  Print them out, share them, blow them up into perfect classroom posters - students will love them and you'll love how they foster student-centered learning.

STEMscopes™ analytics is now available!  We're unveiling our administrator-level analytics this week.  Three different reports - daily usage, school usage, and scope usage - are accessible for all STEMscopes™ users tagged as the administrator in that user’s account.  These three reports will allow school leaders to understand how STEMscopes™ is being used across campuses in their districts.  A dedicated analytics system for teachers will be released next week, allowing teachers to view student progress towards TEKS mastery.  

Our hope is that analytics will foment deep conversations between instructional leaders and school leaders, allowing them to improve teaching practices and school support.  Consequently, administrator-level analytics does not quantify individual teacher usage of STEMscopes™ components because we envision teachers and administrators having conversations of how the program is used. We expect proficient users of the analytics system will be able easily identify strengths and growth areas leading to conscientious professional development decisions.  Above all, we know that analytics will help improve student achievement by allowing users to refine instructional practices and target individual students with the content at the level they need.

To learn more about STEMscopes™ analytics, visit www.stemscopes.com/analytics.  

Up there in the sky…it's a bird!  It's a plane!  No, it's an asteroid!  On February 15th, 2013 a 150-foot wide asteroid named 2012 DA14 will graze the Earth.  In fact, it will pass so close to Earth that it will be closer to the atmosphere than some of our satellites.  If Hollywood were in charge of this asteroid, it would likely follow suit of movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact where Earth's leaders bravely send a salvo of nuclear weapons to intercept and destroy the asteroid before it hits our planet, or hire an elite team to land on the asteroid and plant an explosive on it.  

Ed Lu, a former NASA astronaut, sees things a little differently.  He founded the B612 Foundation, an organization whose purpose is to discover asteroids that can threaten our world and act to prevent a potential disaster.  Lu's fears are not mile-wide asteroids, the sort of which likely ended the dinosaurs’ reign on Earth 66 million years ago, but smaller ones like 2012 DA14.   Even a small asteroid the size of DA14 would generate enough force on impact to destroy a city the size of Austin.  Its damage would spread even further by blanketing a large part of the sky with dust, blocking sunlight and killing plants if the cloud persisted long enough.  An asteroid of this size was responsible for a 1,000 square mile swath of destruction in the Tunguska River region of Siberia in 1908.  

Astronomers estimate that there could be as many as one million 2012 DA14-sized asteroids in our solar system.  Many of these are the remains of condensed gases from our solar system's formation that lacked enough gravity to pull together and form another planet.  Lu was motivated to form the B612 Foundation because professional and hobbyist astronomers have only located and identified about 10,000, or 1%, of these asteroids.  That leaves 99% unaccounted for and potentially dangerous to us in the years to come.

What if we manage to identify and track an asteroid on a collision course with Earth?  What could we do?  Lu doesn't agree that trying to blow up an asteroid is the best solution.  The two issues with trying to do so are the difficulty of hitting a moving target (imagine hitting a moving baseball midair with a marble from 100 feet away) and the fear that we may shatter the asteroid in multiple pieces that would rain down on our planet, still causing damage.

Lu suggests a far simpler solution:  send a robot to land on the asteroid and nudge it out of the way over years using a small rocket.  This plan is a perfect solution if we have enough advance notice that the asteroid is approaching.  In fact, if we had enough warning, we could even send a robot massive enough that with gravity alone would attract and slowly alter the path of the asteroid away from the Earth.  Regardless of how we protect ourselves in the future, one thing is sure:  it's only a matter of time until an asteroid like 2012 DA14 or larger finds its way to Earth.  What other ways do you think humanity could protect itself from future asteroids?

TEKS:  K.8C, 1.8B, 2.8D, 6.11A, 8.8A

Last week, we received a visit from Dr. Daryl Greenfield from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Greenfield conducts educational research with preschool children and recently has focused on the area of preschool science.  Some people wonder if preschool children (ages 3-5) are even capable of learning science. In his research, Dr. Greenfield has found not only that preschool children CAN learn science, but also that introducing young children to science is CRITICAL for their future science learning.

What does science look like in preschool? Dr. Greenfield says that science draws on young children’s natural curiosity about their world. Teachers can capitalize on children’s natural curiosity and guide them through the scientific method to help them explore and learn about their world. Through hands-on activities, children learn to ask meaningful questions, draw upon their existing knowledge about their questions, design experiments for how to answer their questions, make predictions about what might happen, and draw conclusions from their findings. Children are not just learning facts about science; they are learning the “process” of science and a set of critical thinking skills that will help them not only in their future science learning but learning in other areas as well.

What about the rest of STEM? When it comes to technology, have you ever seen a preschooler with an iPad? In today’s world, young children are already being exposed to technology. Through purposeful and developmentally appropriate strategies, there is no reason why technology cannot be utilized in preschool classrooms. Fortunately, early math is already an important part of almost all preschool curricula.

It may be more difficult to convince people that there is a place for engineering in preschool. However, as Dr. Greenfield points out, “What are preschool children’s two favorite things to do? Learning about their world and building stuff. Those are science and engineering.” In fact, Dr. Greenfield has just begun a project partnering with groups at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, the National Institute for Early Education Research, and the University of Northern Iowa are to create an integrative science and engineering curriculum specifically for use in preschool classrooms. Usually, engineering activities in preschool involve experimenting and constructing with simple objects. Through these activities, young children can learn important skills such as how to problem-solve through trial and error and how to be flexible in their approaches to different problems.

Despite these advancements in our understanding of the opportunity for STEM learning in preschool, there are still a limited number of preschool science curricula available, particularly curricula that have been proven to be effective. In his research, Dr. Greenfield has found that preschool teachers do not feel prepared to teach science. There is little support (e.g., professional development) for STEM instruction in preschool. However, Dr. Greenfield and other researchers and educators throughout the country are paving the way for exposing our youngest students to STEM education.

Scientists and engineers are constantly researching ways to sustainably power the resources we use each day.  When it comes to generating electricity, we typically think of the usual suspects:  solar power, wind turbines, coal plants, and hydroelectric dams.  In reality, a plethora of other ways exists to power our televisions, lights, and the countless electronics we use every day.  One of the most creative methods of generating renewable energy is the solar power tower, which is beginning to take root as a viable power source.

The solar power tower works on an amazingly simple principle:  reflected sunlight.  Imagine driving across a dry, deserted landscape when, in the distance, you see a looming tower, brilliantly lit by the confluence of dozens of visible sunrays.  This is the sight you would encounter as you approached the PS10 Solar Power Tower in Seville, Spain.  Completed in 2006, the PS10 SPT is relatively small compared to two new towers being built this year in California and Nevada.  SPTs use an array of repositionable mirrors called heliostats to reflect the sun’s light on a central collector tower.  Unlike solar panels, the mirrors do not generate electricity but rather focus sunlight on the collector tower, effectively heating it.  Inside the collector tower is a large pipe carrying water to and from a reservoir.  As the water inside the tower heats up – think of a giant cooking pot – the thermal energy causes the water to change from liquid to gas, or water vapor in this case, at a temperature over 500 degrees Celsius.  Steam is less dense than air, causing it to rise.  As it rises, it forces its way through the pipe and through a turbine.  The movement of the steam spins a turbine connected to a generator, generating electricity.  The steam eventually cools as it travels and is captured, condensed, and fed back into the reservoir as liquid water, which then takes its next trip through the collector tower’s pipe system.  In sum, thermal energy is changed to kinetic energy in the form of moving water vapor, which is then changed to electrical energy for daily consumption.

Simple?  Surprisingly yes, although SPTs are not without problems.  One of the biggest problems is that the collector tower and heliostats can get so hot that they crack and crumble from exposure to too much heat.  Engineers have attacked this problem by building in small channels in the mirrors and collector tower that allow air (or in some cases, pumped water) to flow around the structures to cool the materials.  Still, another problem lies in getting water to the collector tower’s reservoir.  SPTs are constructed in sunny areas so that they can maximize the amount of electricity they produce.  Many times, these sunny areas are arid, or extremely dry.  To get water, expensive wells must be dug or a costly pipe system must be installed to bring the water from somewhere else.  This brings up another problem:  what happens if the sun is not shining?  Materials engineers and chemists have used innovative molten salts as a kind of battery in SPTs to still generate electricity on cloudy days or at night.  These materials can absorb a lot of heat without turning into a gas and can remain hot for hours.  The result is that they can store heat on sunny days and then evaporate the central tower’s reservoir to make steam when electricity is needed in the absence of sunlight.

By now you might think that an SPT might be more trouble than it is worth.  But remember that SPTs can generate large amounts of electricity for their relatively low construction costs when compared to coal and nuclear power plants.  The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (http://ivanpahsolar.com/) being built in California’s Mojave Desert is planned to generate an average of 377 megawatts of electricity per day (compare that to a typical, 80-foot wind turbine that produces an average of 1.5 megawatts per day).  That is enough renewable power for more than 140,000 homes per year with an added benefit of less environmental impact than hydroelectric dams or wind turbines.  As the technology improves, SPTs will become cheaper and easier to build, making it a technology to look for in the future. 

TEKS:​  3.6A, 4.6A, 5.6A, 5.7C, 6.9C, P.6EF

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The current subscriptions for all adopted supplemental science products are scheduled to expire at the end of the 2012–2013 school year. To ensure these products remain available for schools until new science materials become available, a one-year contract extension has been offered to each publisher of adopted supplemental science materials.  During this period, schools may elect to adopt a product different from their previous adoption.

To have access to adopted supplemental science materials for the 2013–2014 school year, each district and charter school may submit a requisition for a one-year subscription through EMAT. For the upcoming school year, the price of each product will be adjusted to reflect a one-year subscription.  New one-year pricing will be available when EMAT re-opens June 12, 2013.

Supplemental science materials are available for grades 5–8, biology, chemistry, Integrated Physics and Chemistry, and physics. New science products for all courses in grades K–12 are scheduled for adoption in November 2013 and implementation in the 2014–2015 school year.

Please contact the Instructional Materials and Educational Technology division at 512-463-9601 or email instructional.materials@tea.state.tx.us if you have any questions.

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A full stomach with nothing to eat?  Marine scientists have found an organism that can answer that question with a resounding “yes!”  Discovered in 2008, Elysia cholorotica is a solar powered sea slug that resembles a snail without its shell.  This solar slug roams the Eastern coast of the United States in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.  Dr. Mary Rumpho, a professor of biochemistry at Maine University’s School of Marine Sciences, discovered how this slug manages to feed without having to eat – the secret is stolen genes.

When we think of photosynthesis, most of us conjure up an image of a plant cell brimming with chloroplasts, a green colored cell structure designed to capture the sun’s energy.  Plants are capable of harnessing the sun’s energy to create glucose, a sugar that other cell structures called mitochondria use to power all physical and mental behaviors.  Though plant cells always contain chloroplasts, animal cells do not possess these structures, and animals must eat to gain glucose.  When E. cholorotica hatches from an egg it initially eats a diet of algae, which, although we most often see as a green film on aquariums glass is one of the most widespread plants on the planet.

E. cholorotica spends the first two weeks of life munching on algae, which when digested turns into miniature power plants, producing energy that travels through the slug’s semi-translucent body when hit by sunlight.  Still, Dr. Rumpho was puzzled.  When humans eat plants, the chloroplasts inside of it will not start to work inside our bodies.  If that were true, after enjoying a few mixed green salads, we would never have to eat again, as chloroplasts would find their way into our cells and churn out energy when sunlight struck our skin. 

The source of the problem is that chloroplasts cannot sustain themselves without the nucleus of the plant cell to which they belong.  Chloroplasts have their own DNA – about 10% of it is within the chloroplast.  The rest of it is inside the nucleus of the plant cell in which they reside.  Because the algae cells are digested when the slug eats them, how could the chloroplasts still have access to the rest of their nucleus-bound DNA?

Dr. Rumpho and her team are still investigating how this is possible.  They have hypothesized that through a process called kleptoplasty the slugs are able to add new segments of DNA to their own existing DNA.  Essentially, the algae’s DNA that codes for making, maintaining, and using chloroplast is extracted in digestion and added to the slug’s animal DNA.  Kleptoplasty would be an adaptation in and of itself – our DNA does not have any genes that allow incorporation of foreign DNA into it.  The possibility also exists that this process is facilitated by some yet unidentified virus that can “snip” out those particular pieces of DNA (genes) – this is reasonable given that we use viruses to add new genes to crops like corn in order to change how the corn grows and functions.  Regardless, it appears that the ability to use chloroplasts inside of the slug’s cells is passed from parent to offspring, making it an inherited trait rather an than acquired one.

It is unlikely that humans will be able to enjoy the benefits of chloroplasts anytime soon.  DNA does not often jump from one species to another.  Still, there are a few cases where gene jumping has occurred outside of E. cholorotica.  The problem with migrating DNA from one species to another is that almost always, the foreign DNA does not perform the function in its host species, but rather becomes garbled genetic code that does nothing.  This makes E. cholorotica unique – its adaptation not only confers upon it an impressive ability but also seems to have occurred by mysterious means.

TEKS:  3.10AB, 4.10AB, 5.10AB, 7.12D, B.4C, B.6AB, B.9B

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STEMscopes™ is constantly improving!  Our latest additions include PBLs, Web Surfing Science, and Math Connections for grades K-2.  Thanks to dedicated user feedback, we understood that early elementary teachers wanted to bring these elements to their burgeoning learners.​  As you begin to integrate these new pieces into your teaching, here are a few tips on how to maximize their use:

• Problem Based Learning - PBLs are king of the mountain when it comes to real world, thought-provoking teaching techniques.  Our PBLs necessitate student exploration into how science touches their everyday lives.  Perfect for both advanced students (pushing thinking into the upper Bloom's) and those in need of intervention (developing a meaningful context to what they might not have grasped in whole group instruction).  The best part: PBLs are an ideal home-to-school connection for parents eager to take the science classroom home for their kids; did we mention it's in Spanish and English?

• Web Surfing Science ​- no amount of computer time can replace hands-on, inquiry based learning.  Still, we recognize that students learn differently.  Web Surfing Science allows you to reach tech savvy students who want to take the learning a step further.  Students can navigate the web at home or as a workstation, learning the ins and outs of a topic.  The best part: the assignable, Spanish and English web quests ensure time is spent well and serve as a formative assessment. 

• Math Connections ​- cross-curricular planning can be tough.  Bringing science TEKS and math TEKS together in one activity takes time.  The Math Connections allow you to skip from planning to facilitating a powerful differentiation activity for a small group or workstation. The best part​: Math Connections make a great warm-up, homework, or in-class practice during the math block.

We encourage you to continue submitting your feedback and opinions as we move towards Proclamation 2014 and a new, even more powerful STEMscopes™.  You can send your improvements wish list to stemscopes@rice.edu - we hope to hear from you!  

Drones have been making headlines in the news lately.  From the military to celebrity gossip show, TMZ, it seems that everyone wants a drone.  As a result, drones have received a lot of media attention lately but are often misunderstood.  Drones are simply remote controlled robots.  We are probably most familiar with large, aerial drones, but there are also seafaring ones.  A remote control car even qualifies as a drone.   Today we’re going to focus on the most popular and accessible drone to consumers:  the quadrotor.

Quadrotors, or quadcopters, are among humanity’s oldest flying machines.  In 1922 the massive Jerome-de Bothezat quadrotor (also know as the “Flying Octopus”) was one the first to make several, low-altitude flights (5 meters off the ground).  At the time, enormous, hydrogen-filled blimps were the only flying vehicles.  The Flying Octopus was proof that early inventors could make something fly in an entirely new way by using rotors, or a type or rotating wing.  If quadrotors were among the oldest flying vehicles why have they made a comeback now?  After all, the Flying Octopus had numerous failures:  it was complicated to control, unable to fly long distances because of fuel, and could not reach high speeds due to its weight and lack of power.  Still, in many ways, its design was ahead of its time but the technology needed to make it function as well as its designers had dreamed was lacking.

By controlling the speed of the rotors, the quadrotor can manipulate two forces:  thrust and torque.  Thrust is a directional force.  The spinning of the rotors’ blades creates a downward thrust, making the quadrotor move up into the air.  Torque is a rotational force.  The rotating of the blades causes the entire quadrotor to spin.  To stop this, two rotors spin clockwise and two rotors spin counterclockwise.  This keeps the torque balanced, preventing the quadrotor from spinning clockwise or counterclockwise.

The four independently controlled rotors can adjust the drone’s yaw, or spin/rotate (like a DJ’s turntable), and pitch, or angle upwards/downwards (like nodding your head up and down), by changing the speed at which they spin.  To make the entire quadrotor yaw clockwise or counterclockwise, an opposite pair of rotors needs to spin faster than the other pair.  This allows torque to be stronger in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, which, in turn, spins the entire quadrotor.  In contrast, to make the quadrotor pitch up or down only one rotor needs to spin faster than the other three, causing the side with the faster moving rotor to pitch up and the opposite side to pitch down.  The result is that the whole quadrotor moves in the direction opposite of the side of the faster moving rotor. 

Though a quadrotor’s workings might seem a little complicated, it’s actually much simpler both mechanically and in handling than a helicopter.  Helicopters have only two rotors:  a large horizontal one on top and a small vertical one mounted on the tail.  Though helicopters still rely on controlling thrust and torque, the collaboration between both rotors is a lot more complex to make the helicopter yaw and pitch the way its pilot wants.  This also means that helicopters take a lot more maintenance as their machinery gets worn and damaged more frequently.  Helicopters also cannot maneuver as easily as their quadrotor cousins.  This makes them impracticable for use in tight areas not to mention expensive to construct and maintain.

Thanks to tough, cheap, and light materials like carbon fiber and lighter, more powerful batteries, quadrotors can be bought and made by hobbyists around the world.  As quadrator technology develops further, there will be more opportunities for students to improve their design by studying computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.  It might not be long before a pizza you order for delivery arrives on the back of a quadrotor thanks to a student’s work.

TEKS:  8.6A, 8.6C, P.4C, P.4DE

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Videogames today often have a bad reputation.  If you close your eyes and imagine a typical student’s afterschool day, you might picture an reclusive, rarely-seen-outside-of-her-room child staring unwaveringly at a screen as she plays the latest edition of Toca’s Hair Salon while concerned parents wait on the other side of her door.  In fact, market research giant NPD reports that 91% of children and teens play videogames.  However, although video games are played by the vast majority of students they should not be villainized, as a growing body of research shows that they can give education a big boost by engaging students through the medium they like best.  Nonetheless, many disagree nonetheless, citing that not only do videogames metaphorically “rot the brain” but also induce violent crime.  Yet other studies counter these claims, saying that violent videogames can actually be cathartic, reducing actual stress and violence.  Like most things in life, how something is used determines its impact. 

Curious ourselves about the place of videogames in the classroom, we recently attended the SXSWedu Conference in Austin where we had the chance to hear from several thought leaders in game-based learning (GBL).  From ardent antagonists to faithful followers, there was no shortage of opinions on GBL.  Our hope is that what we learned, will offer you a fresh perspective on what place (if any) videogames can play in your classroom. 

Three of SXSWedu’s most prominent game-based learning figures were Scott Osterweil of MIT’s Education Arcade, Katie Culp of Education Development Center, and Greg Chung of National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.  As three of the field’s giants, they naturally had different perspectives on what GBL should look like.  Keep in mind that none of them are suggesting that we should bring games like World of Warcraft or Halo 4 into the classroom.  Instead, they agreed that the power of GBL is in tailor-making videogames that are applicable to the classroom.

Katie Culp was a strong supporter of metaphorical games; she showed curious onlookers a few still images of an elementary game in which students guide a robot to mix sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide and make energy crystals to continue the game and keep themselves fueled.  If your thoughts jumped to “photosynthesis,” you hit the nail on the head, but the game never brought up the scientific terms you would expect from a in-class lecture.  Culp claims that the power of these games lies in constructing an “intellectual scaffold”.  This scaffold is an allegory to the real world; the game does not actual teach the student the process of photosynthesis but rather provides context for it.  The hope is that students would play these games at home, and the following day, as they did a hands-on experiment, they would begin to make connections to what had happened in the videogame.  “This is like when I had the robot make those crystals; they were the robot’s energy!”  That’s the kind of connection Culp told the audience that an “intellectual scaffold” is designed to produce.  Nonetheless, she openly admitted that it’s virtually impossible to amass data to show that this type of GBL produces measurable gains on standardized tests, but they might holistically improve a student’s thought process.

Greg Chung had a strikingly different view.  Chung upholds that narrow, skill-based “game-ified games” are most likely to be successful both in implementation and in improving student learning outcomes.  With confused expressions, we asked ourselves the same thing:  what is a “game-ified game”?  These are pseudo-games that take dull activities such as vocabulary practice and give them the glitz and glam of a videogame.  In reality, this kind of GBL has no immersive story like Culp’s version – the game is really just a way to do skills practice in an entertaining, lively way.  Chung adopted this view because he knows that the best indicator of whether or not a teacher uses an educational resource is if it measurably improves student success.  Though immersive worlds can be good to develop higher order problem solving, that is not measurable in today’s testing climate and thus not useful.  In some ways, we have to disagree; developing higher order problem solving is necessary, even if a standardized test can verify it.  Chung’s views are nonetheless understandable, and he was not opposed to developing higher-order problem solving abilities.  He just seeks something that also helps kids be successful on the tests that determine how they progress to college. 

Scott Osterweil represented the last thought camp on GBL.  His focus was not on the content of a game but how it is designed to maintain student investment.  Osterweil cited three necessary design features:  1) measurable progress towards completion (this does not mean the students are awarded coins or stars as they progress; rather, students can intrinsically feel they are getting better at playing the game and performing the in-game tasks), 2) bite-sized accomplishments that redirect instead of punish failure, and 3) a game narrative with which students can engage (the game is not a story-on-rails; you can choose to follow different paths).  Above all, Osterweil told the audience that a game should feature academic problem solving, but it has to be sandwiched with authentic, frivolous fun.

So where do we stand on GBL in the classroom?  The camps are divided to say the least. Without saying it, Culp, Chung, and Osterweil would all agree that the power of small group teaching, hands-on learning, and social interaction are critical to authentic learning.  GBL represents not a fundamental shift in how the classroom is organized, but rather a change in the medium through which content can be delivered to students.  Nevertheless, no game (yet) enables students to work collaboratively to solve a problem that they personally identify, research, and solve through application of the scientific method.  One fact is certain, technology is rapidly advancing, and the role of GBL is likely to take on new forms as access to more reliable Internet and mobile device services become increasingly available for schools.

Submissions are in and the judges have spoken! We have our SciFiWri winners: 4th grade student, Luis Guillermo, of El Paso ISD and 7th grader, Nicholas Garza, of United Independent School District. Congratulations to both of you! Their creative essays, "Soccer Time Travel", an inspiring journey that connects two generations, and "Project Sunburn", a gritting story centered on an post-apocalyptic world, are reproduced below for your reading pleasure.

Soccer Time Travel
by Luis Guillermo (sponsoring teacher: Emily Delgado)

Walking into my basement I noticed a soccer ball in a glass case, but I never knew just a black and white ball would change my life and lead me to a great adventure...

I've heard some stories about my great-grandfather, but I had a feeling he was special. I slowly went down to the basement. The walls of the underground place seemed old, rusty, and the walls also had pictures. In the middle was a stand holding an old soccer ball. It said "Guillermo". As I got closer I noticed the detail. I gently picked up the glass and put it on the ground. A golden ticket was on the bottom of the ball. I held the ticket in one hand and the ball on the other. A shiver went down my spine as everything started to disappear. I appeared in a place with a few vintage cars. I realized I was about 60 years behind. "WOW, I just time traveled," I whispered to myself. I noticed the same golden ticket in my hand. I came across a king size amount of people going to one place. I asked a man, "Where are you going?"

"To watch the best soccer player play in the world cup and his name is Guillermo Hernandez," he kindly answered. The last name sounded familiar. I hurried to the cashier and gave her the golden ticket. Entering the stadium, I felt special for being in the front row seat. The crowd cheered from end to end. The grass was as green as a frog. Apparently, a player from the team walked to me and offered me to go with the team. I noticed his jersey said "Hernandez". Near half time there was a goal of Guillermo Hernandez. They were soon to penalties. It was Guillermo's turn to shoot.

He sprinted to me and questioned, "Want to shoot?" 

"Me?" I said pointing my finger to myself. He nodded yes. I bolted to the ball. As I got closer I noticed the same detail of the ball in the basement. A grin came from ear to ear when I noticed he was my great-grandfather. 1000 eyes stared at me. I took a step back and shot.

"GOAL!" the crowd shouted. I picked up the ball and a shiver went down my spin as I went home.

Project Sunburn
by Nicholas Garza (sponsoring teacher: Dora Garcia)

On January 25, a group of soldiers ascended to the surface. They were underground for almost a year with diminishing food and supplies. They desperately searched the surface for a food source. All they saw was a desolate wasteland slowly rotting away. Sergeant Smith observed while standing on top of a toppled car and reminisced on what a great city this used to be before the explosion. The rest of his troops were on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. As they scouted the area, one of his troops heard a scraping noise from a building not too far away. They thought little of it at the time. This was a choice they would soon regret.

As the sun started to set, the Sergeant along with the rest of the troops started to make their way back to home base. While on their way back, they heard a thunderous growl and a hiss. The troops had their guns ready. The growling came from an abandoned shopping mall. The troops peered into the darkness and saw a pair of red eyes staring back. Immediately, they fired rounds of bullets into the building. They heard screams of agony coming from inside. They thought the creature was dead. Then all went silent. All of a sudden, a pack of hideous disfigured humanoid creatures leapt out of the windows and charged at the soldiers. The humanoids had gaping jaws and hungry looks in their eyes. The creatures were incredibly fast. The creatures leapt into the air and onto the troops. They bit into their flesh with a violent swaying motion while ripping chunks out of them. As the creatures made their kill, the rest of the pack joined in on the meal. Unfortunately some of the troops weren’t fast enough, but some of the troops did manage to get away. The Sergeant and his troops entered the underground base drenched in sweat. The first thing Smith did was to check on Dr. Williams. He entered a room where he found the doctor writing notes and formulas for a weapon. "What are you working on?" Smith asked. 

"Some formulas for a bomb," said Williams. 

"What, are you crazy?" exclaimed Smith. 

"What's the problem Smith?"

"The problem is that the mutations were caused by the radiation!"

"Hear me out Smith," said Williams. "My theory suggests that the radiation in this bomb will overpower the mutants to the point of extinction."

"Doctor, the bomb is what got us into this mess in the first place. Don't you remember the wartimes? The times when planes circled the skies, the clouds were black, and the cities were in ruins.”

"I really think I could be onto something."

"Close the project," said Smith.

"But then how would we fight back?" said Williams. Smith sighed and then spoke.

“There is another option. Come with me." The Sergeant led Dr. Williams down a dimly lit hall that led to a thick steel door. The Sergeant punched in a code of letters and numbers. The door slowly slid open. Inside were strange devices, highly advanced missiles, and biological weapons. As they walked through the room, the Sergeant explained what all the devices were. Smith explained that during the conflict there was a deep science division that worked for the U.S. Military. The division manufactured top-secret weapons to help win the war. "Unfortunately, they also built the weapon that led to our demise," said Smith. 

They stepped right in front of what looked like a giant hi-tech cannon facing up towards the ceiling on an industrial tripod. "This is project Sunburn. This project was specifically made to beam an intense laser up into the ozone layer causing the sun's guided ray's to burn a hole which could then be used to demolish anything in its path. I think that if we can aim it at just the right angle, we can cause a hole big enough to burn every single freak out there. I already have plans on where to place the canon," said Smith.

Six months later, the Sergeant and the troops positioned the canon and crossed their fingers. There was a bright flash and project Sunburn started.

SciFiWri is a science-fiction writing contest for 4th and 7th graders sponsored by STEMscopes™ to help students prepared for the writing STAAR™ in a fun, creative way with prizes for both students and sponsoring teachers. If you missed SciFiWri this year, get your creative gears in motion for our second-ever SciFiWri Contest in early 2014!

You may have heard of acid rain, but what about ocean acidification?  Marine biologists, chemical engineers, and oceanographers all have something to say about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on our oceans.  Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has created vast amounts of carbon dioxide as a byproduct, or secondary (sometimes unintentional) product, of making various chemicals such as plastics, driving our cars, and burning coal to make electricity.  Carbon dioxide is not harmful in low quantities; in fact, plants rely on carbon dioxide during photosynthesis to make gluccose and oxygen for us as a byproduct.  Nonetheless, CO2 emissions have been steadily on the rise as world populations grow.  One of the main places much of the carbon dioxide gets deposited is in Earth’s oceans because it reacts with seawater.  As CO2 levels accumulate in the ocean, the effects are starting to be noticed by fishermen and seafood lovers across the country.

Crustaceans are a “subphylum” of the phylum arthropoda.  Like arthropods, crustaceans are invertebrates that posses a segmented body and hard exoskeleton made from calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a natural occurring substance found in rock and dissolved throughout seawater.  Over 67,000 species of crustaceans have been identified that range from shrimp and crayfish to barnacles and crab.  Crustaceans grow by molting, or casting off, their exoskeletons and forming new, larger exoskeletons.  As carbon dioxide levels increase in Earth’s oceans, crustaceans seem to be thriving and growing larger.  Conversely, other animals such as corals, scallops, and oysters with calcium carbonate exoskeletons that do not molt are beginning to suffer.  “Higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing oysters to grow slower, and their predators – such as blue crabs – to grow faster,” said Justin Baker Ries, a marine biologist of the University of North Carolina in an interview with The Washington Post.  Why then are we seeing carbon dioxide harm one group but help another?  To understand this we need to look out exactly how carbon dioxide changes our oceans.

Driving down the street hardly seems detrimental to oyster populations, but it has a measurable effect.  As our cars speed down a street, they emit CO2, a byproduct of burning gasoline needed to drive the cylinders that make the wheels turn.  This CO2 gets added to Earth’s atmosphere and can eventually travel to the surface of the ocean.  When carbon dioxide meets seawater, a chemical reaction occurs – the CO2 dissolves in seawater causing a drop in pH, a measurement of the concentration of hydrogen ions (H+).  The more hydrogen ions are present, the lower the pH is, the more acidic a substance is.  Carbon dioxide leads to an increase in acidity because H2O + CO2 form CO32- + 2H+.  Essentially, every molecule of carbon dioxide that dissolves in water forms two hydrogen ions, which contributes to increased ocean acidity by lowering pH.  It’s estimated that since the start of the Industrial Revolution and the present, pH has dropped (lower pH indicates higher acidity) by 11%.  How then does this connect back to ocean life?

Calcium carbonate, the substance oysters, crabs, and similar animals use to make their exoskeletons, is easily weathered by acids.  As a result, animals that cannot molt their exoskeletons have weaker “shells” than they previously had as they age.  Crabs, who benefit from being able to molt, can cast of their shell as the acidic seawater weathers it and form a new exoskeleton while enjoying “softer” prey.  Thus, as ocean acidity increases, crustaceans are becoming more prolific, or plentiful and widespread, and larger because they will molt more frequently in addition to having an easier time hunting their prey.  These consequences effect the seafood industry of the United States and the world.  You would expect that as oyster quality decreases and their numbers decline, the prices for a dozen oysters on the half shell will dramatically increase.  Unsurprisingly, a few states, such as Maryland that relies heavily on the fishing industry, have poured millions of dollars into helping and preserving current oyster populations.  Don’t be surprised then if next time you order oysters, your order is disappointing – you should have gone with the crab cakes instead. 

Picture this classroom:  16 tech-savvy students collaborate online using various teacher selected resources to complete group projects, 16 eager learners engage with the class’s teacher as she leads them in direct instruction, and another 16 pupils use adaptive digital content to self-pace themselves on the content they have yet to master.  Adding up the numbers, you get a high school classroom with a whopping 48 students!  Judy Burton, President and CEO Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, painted this picture for us this past week on an Education Week webinar on blended learning.

Blended learning takes a lot of forms – in general though, blended learning involves personalized learning through a tech-based medium.  The challenge to blended learning is in the implementation.  Burton opened Alliance College-Ready Public Schools as a charter in 2004 with Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School in the heart of Los Angeles.  Populated by one of Los Angeles’s most underserved communities where 22% of students are ELL and 95% qualify for free/reduced lunch, Burton has made impressive gains; 95% of the students go on to college.  It was not until 2010 though that Alliance launched the BLAST (Blended Learning for Alliance School Transformation) Project at two high schools, which has now expanded to seven of the schools system’s campus. 

A day in the lift of students in the BLAST model is intense.  School runs from a fairly traditional 7:45 AM to 3:30 PM with tutoring as needed until 5:30 PM.  The real difference lies in how classes are scheduled and organized.  Students arrive to school, check out laptops, and immediately go into two, 120 minute block scheduled classes that end with a dedicated online learning lab where students either do independent, elective studies or credit recovery.  If you walked into the classroom, you’d find 48 students rotating, 40 minutes at-a-time between the three groups alluded to in the beginning. 

Burton’s system has two principal effects.  The first is readily apparent - students enjoy a fast-paced, engaging environment where they learn not only with computers and direct teaching but also in three settings:  teacher time, peer-to-peer time, and independent times.  This is a perfect mirror for the ubiquitous I do à we do à you do model of teaching but in a fresh, innovative way.  The second effect is not as apparent on first glance.  Keeping all this technology up to speed and working smoothly is expensive for any district.  By leveraging large class sizes that mix independent and teacher-driven instruction, Alliance schools can serve a bigger population while keeping operational costs low. 

Burton shared that the BLAST model might have initially met some resistance – parents can get a little upset at the idea of such large classes, especially if they were taught in a more traditional setting.  Additionally, as teachers have adjusted to the new setting, significantly more planning and prep time has been required to fluidly integrate all three groups of the class and prevent lessons from feeling compartmentalized.  Burton’s wish list includes a full-time, onsite coach to help with program implementation and IT support; she acknowledge that despite the cost it would be much more impactful than sporadic professional development.  Despite some challenges, the successes have been immense.  Since implementation of the BLAST Project, students are more engaged, data can be mined from multiple resources to give a more holistic picture of student gains and needs, and teachers feel empowered as they develop signature practices for these 21st-century classrooms. 

As we move into 2014, Alliance plans to two additional BLAST schools.  To learn more about Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and the BLAST project, visit http://www.laalliance.org.  

Maria Montessori once said, “never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”  At their core, Socratic circles are simple things, but their effects are complex.  Montessori’s message was simple:  if a child feels capable, the teacher (or parent, friend, colleague, etc.) need do nothing more.  Once that child feels unable to do something, then intervention is justified.  The secret of Socratic circles is in making children trust that they are able to do more than they previously thought possible.  Once mastered, Socratic circles allow students to grasp information more deeply through peer-to-peer learning while teaching a critical life skill that often goes unaddressed:  effective dialog.

It takes time and repeated effort to make Socratic circles functional in class.  When they do begin to work, a sense of equity and community arise, students take ownership of their learning, and teachers find great pleasure in shifting from classroom Authority to authoritative peer.  Effective use of wait time, both prepared and Bloom’s scaled questions, and refraining from commenting to let students do the talking are musts to make Socratic circles work like a well-oiled machine.   Too much structure and students will not be invested in bouncing thoughts around the circle.  Too little structure and the conversation will degrade into frivolity, defeating the learning goals of the circle. 

The seed that makes a Socratic circle possible is a shared experience.  In the video above (Lara Arch at NSTA), the participants had all read an article prior to beginning their talk – this gave context to answering the question, “what is science?” allowing the group to hone their thoughts.  Similarly, students need to have read an essay, performed an investigation, watched a video, etc., prior to participating.  As more and more students add to the Socratic circle, it becomes increasingly likely that they will complete the pre-work so that they can be meaningful contributors.  At the end of most Socratic Circles, teachers should pause to have a “meta-discussion” about what rules, procedures, or standards should be implemented to make the next one better – these comments should be student driven and teacher moderated. 

We often hear of 21st-century skills as something radically different from “20th-century skills.”  Socratic circles hit the mark for both.  21st-century skills are, in effect, the same as 20th-century skills  - with new tools.  The skills are ultimately the same but the medium has changed.  We have swapped paper spreadsheets with MS Excel, pencils with keyboards, and math workbooks with apps, but, in the end, the same skills are being communicated.  Socratic circles are really a life skill – the ability to speak in a group, feed and comment on one another’s thoughts, and meaningfully contribute in order to have shared understanding are very old.  Participating in a Socratic circle isn’t a 20th-century or even 21st-century skill; it’s a life skill.  Ultimately, Socratic circles are a fantastic way to engage students in real discourse that will undoubtedly last into 22nd-century and beyond – we just need to set aside the time to teach students how to be part of them.

Recently our research team had the opportunity to attend the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.  Engineering in education was a big part of the conversation, and with the NGSS newly released and our upcoming engineering connections, we couldn’t resist sharing their thoughts.

What do you picture when you hear the word scientist or engineer?  Crazy hair, glasses, and perhaps a lab coat loosely hung on scrawny shoulders for the former; blue overalls with a hardhat and a wrench in hand for the later.  Needless to say, our students often have “mediasized” images of two of the vital-to-the-nation’s-success careers.  When students are asked to draw one of these professionals, stereotypes quickly appear – students almost never draw themselves.  Could it be because they do not picture themselves in a lab coat with crazy hair?  Presenters at NARST saw things a little differently:  we need to teach students that they to can be engineers and scientists.  Racially diverse role models with a focus on making science and engineering cool would make a huge difference in attracting students.  Even more important, students need to actually experience science and engineering in the classroom so that the fields feel approachable and fun.

It can be challenging to teach students to think like an engineer when most curricula do not include any engineering standards.  Furthermore, engineering can be tough if you jump to thinking of it as designing aircraft or bridges.  Maya Israel of the University of Illinois and both Kathie Maynard and Shelly Micham of the University of Cincinnati led sessions at NARST championing the idea of engineering in the classroom.  In fact, engineering can be used as an instructional practice to promote scientific inquiry and literacy.  The understandings we develop through science become our problem solving tools to tackle engineering problems.

The problem is that there is a lack of research on how to best implement engineering as an instructional strategy.  For example, how structured it should be versus how open it should be is a contentious issue.  To tackle the problem, Israel, Maynard, and Micham launched a project aimed at understanding how to effectively integrate engineering design into upper elementary classrooms that serve low-income, at risk students.  They discovered that although the teachers were able to implement engineering design in the classroom by making connections to science content, students’ lives, and helping scaffold student inquiry, engineering experiences simply did not happen often enough.  As a result, they concluded that more work needs to be done to help teachers to maximize the potential within engineering design, particularly when it comes to how to handle learner variability, explicitly model critical thinking skills, and connect the activities in the classroom to real life engineering challenges and engineers.

It is important to teach students how to do and think as engineers and not just teach about engineering.  That can be a simple as understanding that hands-on problem solving is engineering.  As adults we engineer solutions to everyday problems:  how should I navigate the grocery store to beat the growing checkout lines out?  Traffic engineers handle very similar problems and apply their knowledge of science (both behavioral and automotive) to solving the problem.  Much like the revolution of teaching reading in context, engineering is teaching science in context.  If we can grasp effective simulations, problems, and experiences that use engineering to teach a scientific concept, our students will likely learn more deeply and be more engaged.  For now, we all are the researchers for how engineering in the classroom will play out.  So go ahead, tackle the problem by letting your students voice how they would like get involved with engineering and then engineer a project to let them explore it.

Taking out the trash tonight?  We can agree it’s an easily done yet annoying daily chore.  On the other hand, “taking out the trash” in space is a huge undertaking, and we’re overdue for a cleanup.  Space debris – also called orbital debris, space junk, or space waste – is a danger not only to future, manned space travel but also represents a costly hazard for satellites.  Currently, almost 20,000 pieces of space debris larger than five centimeters (about the size of a paperclip) are tracked with another 300,000 pieces smaller than one centimeter (the size of a new eraser on the end of your pencil).  These orbiting pieces of junk include flecks of paint, tiny meteors, pieces of old satellites, micrometeoroids, and components of spent rockets once used to propel the space shuttle and other vehicles into space.  You might be asking yourself, “what danger could these tiny particles pose?” 

Space debris travels at tremendous velocities; many particles travel in excess of 15,000 mph!  At these speeds, even a grain of sand has as the ability to punch a hole through a steel plate, and space debris tends to be even larger.  In comparison, the average bullet travels at only 2,000 mph.   An upcoming Warner Bros. Picture Group movie, Gravity (view trailer), hints at just how terrifying space debris can be.  One collision causes a chain reaction of more and more things breaking up and becoming space waste.  So far, space debris has caused few problems, but in 2009 a private communications satellite named Iridium 33 destroyed itself and a Russian military satellite named Kosmos-2251 as they collided.  Their collision mangled and destroyed the satellites, adding to thousands of pounds of already existing space debris.  Scientist fear that as collisions become more frequent, future journeys to Mars or present-day spacewalks could be in jeopardy as spacecraft get punctured and destroyed by space debris.  Furthermore, present day satellites have little to no shielding.  As space debris collides with our satellites, not only will billions of dollars be spent on repairs but also telephone communications, television broadcasts, weather forecasts, and mapping systems may stop working as satellites are damaged beyond repair.

Options on how to deal with space waste are expensive, “but one has to compare the costs of what we are investing to solve the problem as compared to losing the infrastructure that we have in orbit,” said Heiner Klinkrad, a European Space Agency expert on space debris.  Klinkrad suggests that if we do not address the issue of space debris, we will pay far more in replacing lost satellites, spacecraft, and potential lost human lives than we would by creating something to address the problem.  A few ideas have been proposed from simple to wild.  The International Space Station (ISS), for example, protects its more vital areas and crew sections with a type of layering on its hull called a “whipple shield” invented by Fred Whipple over 50 years ago.  Though there are many variations of the whipple shield on the ISS, the basic idea is to use a “bumper” attached on the spacecraft’s outer wall to spread out the force of impact across the inner wall to reduce damage.  Still, the whipple shield is bulky and costly to transport because it adds a lot of mass to the carrier, meaning more fuel is needed to lift it out of Earth’s atmosphere.

Some of the more radical ways to “take out” space debris include ground based lasers that would vaporize smaller orbiting particles (larger particles are too big to be destroyed this way).  Another option involves sending robots into space that latch onto some of the larger pieces and push them into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up.  One solution that has been ruled out is detonating explosives to blow up defunct satellites and large pieces of space junk (see Stopping an Asteroid blog) because it turns one, large avoidable piece into countless tiny, unavoidable pieces.  In 2007, China used a missile to destroy one of their old weather satellites and thousands of new particles spewed out to join clumps of space debris around the Earth.  Scientists and engineers are still looking for the optimal solution.  Regardless of how we solve the orbital debris problem, if it continues unaddressed, the planned mission to Mars and the installation of new satellites may become too costly to justify.

TEKS:  6.11C, 7.9B, P.6C/D

Dr. Carlos Monroy, STEMscopes™ Web Developer, recently returned from the 3rd International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium.  Dr. Monroy presented “STEMscopes: Contextualizing Learning Analytics in a K-12 Science Curriculum,” a peer-reviewed paper co-authored by Carlos Monroy, Ph.D., Reid Whiatker, Ph.D., and Virginia Snodgrass-Rangel, Ph.D.  The presentation elaborated on five distinct areas in which STEMscopes conducts analytics: 

1. teaching practices/professional development
2. curriculum development and design
3. STEMscopes usage
4. data mining techniques
5. personalized learning

Following his talk, Dr. Monroy received high praise from the Next Tell project, a European Commission endeavor that works with teachers and students to support the creation of 21st century classrooms in the European Union.  The paper has since been published by the ACM Press (New York) and can be viewed at dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2460339.

Dr. Monroy’s European sojourn also brought him to the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy.  Invited by the Depeartment of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, Dr. Monroy’s discussion, “Why Statistics Matter in Learning Analytics:  the Case of STEMscopes,” further highlighted the power of robust analytics systems in K-12 education.  The presentation aimed to emphasize the role of teachers, principals, and students in contextualizing analytics data in order to enhance STEMscopes usability and features based on the data gleamed and direct user feedback.  Attending professors were anxious to cross-pollinate ideas with Dr. Monroy, resulting in plans for STEMscopes to adopt an open source data-mining platform named Pentaho to aid in improving the pedagogical framework and overall curriculum design.

To learn more about STEMscopes analytics and their use to enhance student achievement visit stemscopes.com/analytics.