2006 Congressional Black Caucus Education Braintrust: Education Partners Ensuring America's Competitiveness, September 8

The annual Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Education Braintrust Symposium will be held on September 8 in Washington, D.C.  The Symposium, entitled Education Partners Ensuring America's Competitiveness, is a complementary component of the CBC's Annual Legislative Conference, whose theme — Changing Course, Confronting Crisis, Continuing the Legacy — guides events throughout the week of September 6-9, 2006.

Since 1997 the Education Technology Think Tank has collaborated with the Congressional Black Caucus Education Braintrust, chaired by U. S. Congressman Major R. Owens, in the design and coordination of an annual symposium. The Education Technology Think Tank enjoys broad bipartisan support with further support by the White House, numerous federal agencies, major corporations, and professional organizations.

Each year, the Education Braintrust convenes diverse stakeholders from the sectors of public schooling and higher education, private sector, government, and community to:

• celebrate information exchange of research policy and practice;
• highlight exemplary TEC Champion Partnership Programs and Initiatives;
• honor Private-Public Partnerships and Pioneering Leaders who foster 21st Century Learning and Digital Opportunities addressing America's Competitive Challenge; and
• engage and empower youth as NetGeneration of Youth Cyberjournalists through a 2-day NetGeneration of Youth Leadership Academy

NASSMC was a participant and sponsor of the 2005 Congressional Black Caucus Education Braintrust.

For further information, contact Dr. Ronnie B. Lowenstein at 202 262 1729 or rlowenstein@et3online.org.

NASA's 2006 Explorer Schools Sustainability Conference a Success

The 2006 NASA Explorer Schools Sustainability Conference was held July 5-9 in Huntsville, AL. This event allowed the 2004 NES teams to develop strategies to continue and strengthen the process of change initiated as a result of becoming a NASA Explorer School. It also afforded an opportunity for coalition representatives to get to know the NES teams from their state and to advise and inform planning for sustainable improvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

More than 50 representatives from state coalitions, offices of the state science and mathematics supervisor, Space Grant, and national STEM organizations were on hand to work one-on-one with the NASA Explorer Schools teams (from 50 schools in 34 states) throughout the event. Participants learned about developing partnerships with business and state and local agencies to continue their efforts to transform and enhance STEM instruction. NASA Explorer Schools represent an investment by NASA in the states and communities where they are located. The work begun to assist these schools need not end with the Explorer Schools program. The NES experience can be used as a catalyst for developing a process of continuous improvement. Input and guidance from state coalitions has contributed to improvements in the program.

Sessions were designed with the message of encouraging cultural change within the attendees' organizations in order to seed and foster improvements. Workshops on leadership development, partnership development and grantwriting were led by NASSMC state coalition directors and representatives, as well as leading figures at national STEM organizations.

In a debriefing session, attendees came away with keen insight on how to improve collaborations between the state leaders and the NASA Explorer Schools. For example, they suggest:

1. State business leaders and industry representatives should be made aware of, and become more actively involved in, the work that is taking place at the NASA Explorer Schools. State coalitions can serve to broker that relationship.
2. Given the high turnover of many NES teams, coalitions can offer team-building exercises.
3. There is a need for on-going communications between the NES, school districts and the administrative levels of the state to share successes.
4. The e-Folio tool that NASA Explorer Schools use to track progress can serve to keep state coalition partners up to date.

Mark Your Calendars: The next annual NES Sustainability Conference is planned for July 30-August 3, 2007, pending funding.

NASSMC's NES Partnerships for Sustainability program facilitates assistance by state business, education, policy coalitions to the NES participating schools in the state. Eighteen such formal partnerships have been funded by NASSMC thus far and a new RFP will be issued soon. Partnerships between NASA, the Explorer Schools and the state coalitions have been designed to help participating schools capitalize on the work already begun and to continue to improve.

Results Are In: NASSMC 2006 Board of Directors Election

Thank you for casting your vote in the 2006 NASSMC Board Election. We had an excellent voter turn-out, which is no doubt indicative of your genuine interest in NASSMC. As a result of your votes, Francis Eberle of Maine, Gerry Meisels of Florida, and Jeanne Finstein of West Virginia have been re-elected to new terms, and Sue Neuen of California will join the Board as a new member.

NASSMC thanks these individuals for their willingness to serve NASSMC in this capacity. We are most fortunate that they have agreed to contribute their time and expertise to this organization.

NASSMC's Board of Directors comprises representatives of national corporations, business organizations, foundations, and member coalitions. A list of NASSMC board members, with brief biographical sketches, can be found here.

Convocation on Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing Regions, States, and Cities, September 28

To follow-up on the Rising Above the Gathering Storm report, released earlier this year, the National Academies is hosting a Convocation on Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing Regions, States, and Cities that will take place on September 28th in Washington, D.C.   The purpose of the Convocation is to:

1. Convene leadership of industry, government, research, and education community from all 50 states and the federal government,
2. Share knowledge and encourage leadership of initiatives at the state and local level to strengthen U.S. competitiveness, and
3. Discuss current national proposals to respond to the nation's competitiveness challenge and their implications for states, localities, and regions.   

State and local policymakers; economic development, industry, and business leaders; K-12 teachers and school board members; university and college leaders; researchers, students, unions, foundations, and non-governmental organization representatives will particularly contribute to and benefit from the convocation workshops, state and regional breakout sessions, and general deliberations.  

Registration for the convocation is free and the event is open to the public. For more information and to register, please visit www.nationalacademies.org/gatheringstorm.

From the U.S. Department of Education: Nearly $8 Million for 20 Grants Awarded to Help Recruit, Train, and Retain New Teachers

The Transition to Teaching program supports the recruitment and retention of highly qualified mid-career professionals, including qualified paraprofessionals, and recent college graduates who have not majored in education to teach in high-need schools and districts through the development of new or enhanced alternative routes to certification.

The program provides five-year grants to state and local educational agencies, or for-profit organizations, non-profit organizations, or institutions of higher education collaborating with state or local educational agencies. Grantees develop and implement comprehensive approaches to train, place, and support teacher candidates whom they have recruited into their programs, which must meet relevant State certification or licensing requirements. Grantees then ensure that program participants are placed to teach in high-need schools and districts and support candidates to serve in these placements for at least three years.

Several of this year's projects will focus on recruiting and training math and science teachers to teach in high-need high schools with teacher shortages in those fields. Many projects are also advancing and implementing alternative routes to teacher certification and streamlining hiring systems for teachers entering education through these alternative routes.

More information on the Transition to Teaching program is available here.

A Public Education Primer: Basic (and Sometimes Surprising) Facts about the U.S. Education System

• Who are the students?
• Where are the students?
• Who controls public education?
• How are public schools funded?
• How well are students achieving?
• What is the public school teaching force like?
• What other services do public schools provide?

The full report is available here.

K-12 Students Want More Technology in Mathematics and Science

K-12 students across the U.S. say they'd find mathematics more engaging if teachers infused more technology into their lessons. They also say they want to explore the sciences through technology simulations, field trips, and "CSI"-like problem-solving exercises rather than textbooks.

These are among the insights revealed in the third annual NetDay Speak Up survey sponsored by Dell and BellSouth Foundation. NetDay, a nonprofit organization focused on preparing today's students to be tomorrow's innovators, collected viewpoints from more than 185,000 students and 15,000 teachers from all 50 states in the study, held in fall 2005.

NetDay Speak Up is a national initiative of Project Tomorrow, the new nonprofit organization formed with the merger of NetDay and Project Tomorrow in September 2005. The mission of the new combined organization is to support and promote the effective and appropriate use of science, math and technology resources in K-12 education so that every student has the opportunity to fully participate in today's global economy and community. We are dedicated to preparing today's students to be tomorrow's innovators, leaders and engaged citizens.

Click here for more information.

How to Update Your Coalition Profile Page

Update your NASSMC member coalition profile page text according to the outline:

• Coalition Name
• Contact Information
• Vision & Mission
• Current Activities
• Notable Accomplishments
• Products
• Partners

Please make sure the text is ready to be uploaded and published.

Email the text to Jane George (jgeorge@nassmc.org).

Upcoming Events

• NSB Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, August 3-4
• 2006 Congressional Black Caucus Education Brain Trust Symposium, September 8
• Convocation on Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing Regions, States, and Cities, September 28
• 2006 Business Education Network Summit, October 4-6.
• 2006 International IdeaFestival, October 11-14.
• Idaho Summit, October 20.
• 2006 NSRC National Symposium on Science Education for Key Leaders, October 29-31

Barbarian Science

NASSMC has received a limited quantity of Executive Director Jim McMurtray 1999 book, Barbarian Science. These books will be sold with 100% of the proceeds going to NASSMC's general fund. The $20 cost includes shipping. Published by Town Square Books (the Jackson State University Press), Barbarian Science was originally written for marketing to universities offering courses in the literature of science through the English Departments. It later reached a secondary audience in colleges of education.

This short book (100 pages) is about science literacy in America and the need to make science accessible to the general population. The current national attention toward making science available to a larger population has made the book more timely now than when it was written. Barbarian Science has been used in universities across the country and is still sold in college book stores here and there.

To order Barbarian Science, please send your check, payable to NASSMC, at $20 per copy, to Deborah Jones, National Alliance of State Science and Mathematics Coalitions, 1840 Wilson Blvd., Suite 200 Arlington, VA 22201-3000.

Of Interest...

Two hinges lock into place when the wings extend, securing the plane for takeoff. Images: John MacNeill

+ An idea that just might fly: Even though you’ll park it in your garage, drive it to your nearest airstrip, and pilot it to your destination, don’t think of the Transition as a flying car. Carl Dietrich, the MIT aeronautical-engineering graduate student who is designing the vehicle, prefers the term “roadable aircraft”—meaning a plane that drives, not a car that flies.

+ First delta wing flyer was a reptile: The triangular delta-wing shape found on many modern fighter jets was used by a small reptile to glide between trees 225 million years ago, a new study suggests. Sharovipteryx mirabilis is known from only a single fossil. It was about 8 inches long, weighed less than a tenth of a pound and lived during the late Triassic, a time when the first dinosaurs were still evolving. Scientists knew that S. mirabilis had a membrane stretched across its hind legs, which allowed it to glide, but the exact shape of this membrane and the way it was attached to the animal's body has been debated.

+ Robo-scallop could carry drugs through the body: A device that mimics a sea scallop — propelling itself by alternately sucking and blowing — could one day carry drugs to hard-to-reach parts of the human body. The so-called "roboscallop" consists of a tube a few millimetres long and about 750 microns in diameter that is closed at one end and contains a bubble of air. Submerging the tube in fluid and bombarding it with sound waves causes the bubble to expand and contract, alternately sucking and blowing liquid from one end of the tube. The process generates thrust because fluid enters the tube from a wide angle but is expelled as a narrow jet.

+ New Scientist Instant Expert Guide: Nanotechnology: Imagine a world where microscopic medical implants patrol our arteries, diagnosing ailments and fighting disease; where military battle-suits deflect explosions; where computer chips are no bigger than specks of dust; and where clouds of miniature space probes transmit data from the atmospheres of Mars or Titan. Many incredible claims have been made about the future's nanotechnological applications, but what exactly does nano mean, and why has controversy plagued this emerging technology? Nanotechnology is science and engineering at the scale of atoms and molecules. It is the manipulation and use of materials and devices so tiny that nothing can be built any smaller.

+ Planet-forming disks might put the brakes on stars: Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found evidence that dusty disks of planet-forming material tug on and slow down the young, whirling stars they surround. Young stars are full of energy, spinning around like tops in half a day or less. They would spin even faster, but something puts on the brakes. While scientists had theorized that planet-forming disks might be at least part of the answer, demonstrating this had been hard to do until now.

+ Ancient humans followed rains: Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed. The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland. When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa. The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today.

+ Keck Interferometer virtual tour: Take a 360 degree virtual tour of the W.M. Keck Observatory, home of the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes. The observatory, located atop a dormant volcano 13,600 feet above the Pacific Ocean, is the site of NASA's Keck Interferometer project.

+ Researchers create new organic gel nanomaterials: Researchers have created organic gel nanomaterials that could be used to encapsulate pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic products and to build 3-D biological scaffolds for tissue engineering. Using olive oil and six other liquid solvents, the scientists added a simple enzyme to chemically activate a sugar that changed the liquids to organic gels.

+ Ancient pigment reveals secrets about unusual state of matter: More than 2,000 years ago, craftsmen in China created a fiery-violet pigment from barium-copper silicates that historians now call Han purple. Once prized by artisans for painting such icons as the Xi'an terra cotta warriors, the pigment is now finding new fans in the world of physics and may help guide future research into high-temperature superconductivity, quantum computers and other materials at the forefront of technological research.

Image credit: John M. Sullivan, Technical University of Berlin and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

+ Double soap bubbles: proof positive of optimal geometry: Ask Frank Morgan, a leading researcher in optimal geometry, "What happens when one soap bubble likes another soap bubble?" and he'll answer with effervescent enthusiasm. "They meet to make a double bubble. And they always meet at angles of 120 degrees." Although the question may sound like a riddle, it involves complex mathematics and science. Every time two soap bubbles form a double bubble, they demonstrate the best — or optimal — geometric figure for enclosing two separate volumes of air within the least amount of surface area. It took mathematicians centuries to arrive at the proof, which was announced in 2000. Further research using techniques from that proof could enhance our understanding of the physical properties of structures ranging in size from the nanoscale to the galactic.

+ Spherical micro-robots could explore Mars: Hundreds of robotic spheres that could one day explore planets like Mars are to be tested out by scientists back on Earth. The micro-robots could land on the surface of another planet arranged in a capsule like eggs in a carton. Or they could be dropped onto the planet by a balloon floating above the surface. They would move by rolling and bouncing, powered by artificial muscles that alter their overall shape. Although such a planetary mission may not occur for another 10 years at least, scientists are nearly ready to test the concept. With funding from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, Steven Dubowsky of MIT in the US, and colleagues are developing prototype micro-bots. Lab tests are scheduled for September 2006 and, a year after that, a set of caves in New Mexico will offer a more challenging environment.

+ Predator, prey, parasite: Scientists have discovered that parasites are surprisingly important in food webs. Food webs trace the flow of energy through an ecosystem. They extend the concept of food chains those who-eats-whom sequences to biological communities. Food webs rarely include parasites because of the difficulty in quantifying them by standard ecological methods. Parasites are small and invisible, hidden inside their hosts. However, parasites strongly affect food web structure and parasite links are necessary for measuring ecosystem stability, according to the study.

+ New type of volcano pops up: A series of mysterious eruptions in the western Pacific could be caused by a new type of volcano, a new study suggests. Three processes are responsible for the formation of volcanoes on Earth, according to theories: [1] The planet's tectonic plates, which move around something like broken eggshells on water, can move away from each other, allowing magma to seep up. [2] The plates can also move towards each other, forcing eruptions. [3] Plumes of magma well up from deep inside the Earth. In the July 28 issue of the journal Science, researchers report the discovery of tiny active volcanoes on the Pacific Plate that aren't caused by any of these mechanisms.