When it comes to kids' hands-on science activities I'm like a well-seasoned cookbook author. It's hard for me to find a procedure I haven't seen before in some incarnation or other. I own a library of kids' activity books going back to the 19th century. I've scoured children's magazines and the internet collecting files of printouts for future use. And of course there is my own extensive experience of prowling up and down supermarket aisles looking for products that could reveal some scientific principle other than the consumer purposes they are designed to meet. Often, at schools, kids will share the science tricks they know with me. So far, thousands of tricks later, there have been no surprises. So when I come across something simple to do and very revealing about a familiar subject that I have never known before, it is a true "Eureka!" experience, which I figure is worth the price of the book. Here are a few of them.
While researching one of my newest books, Your Body Battles a Cold, I was speaking to a children's cold researcher, Dr. Birgit Winther, at the University of Virginia. She told me that the nose is like a computer. If you breathe down on a mirror, your nostrils will leave two circles of condensation, one larger than the other. That's because one nostril is dominant and taking in more air than the other one. If you do this several hours later, the other nostril will be dominant. In other words your nostrils take turns, alternating the one that takes in the most air and you don't even know it! On the day I learned this delightful factoid I happened to have a dentist appointment. I excitedly shared my discovery with my dentist. She was equally delighted to learn it because she looks at people's nostrils all that time and had noticed the discrepancy in size. Now she knew why.
Whenever possible I've learned there is nothing like first-hand research. So I visited a Herr's potato chip factory while researching Junk Food. Proper packaging is the secret to giving potato chips a shelf life. Chips must be protected from light and oxygen (there's an obvious experiment here to prove this) so they are sold in foil-lined light-proof bags filled with nitrogen gas, which also cushions them against breakage. "Aha!" I inferred. Since nitrogen doesn't support combustion I figured that you can extinguish a flame with a bag of potato chips. The procedure for doing this is in the book.
Interviewing scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, I discovered that you can taste hot peppers with your wrist! Here's a video I made to prove it. Here's another video to prove that you can toast a marshmallow with a nut. And here's one that shows the difference between regular and diet sodas as measured by density. Most of the time I don't include the scientific explanations in the videos but in this last one, I thought I could take one small step in fighting childhood obesity by explaining the difference in density between diet and regular sodas. In fact, my book We DareYou! is full of such discoveries along with their scientific explanations.
The great joy in my work is stumbling across new insights about the nitty-gritty of daily life that most people never stop to think about. There are more of these unique discoveries in my books than I can count. I love that I can share them with my readers and I hope my writing conveys my enthusiasm with the implicit invitation: "You gotta try this!"
This past week I attended an international education convention. There were 63 keynote presentations and 370 sessions from 62 countries. How many different people attended for at least part of the week? 15,028! The total number of session hours (people attending X time in session) -- 8,372! I met a scientist who studies polar bears with a webcam showing two males frolicking in real time as he spoke! I attended sessions by prominent educators with global themes, leaders in their fields. I met some new people who share interests with me. And I did all of this without leaving my home!!!!! How? It was the first online conference of its kind -- The Global Education Conference -- and it is a glimpse into the future.
All you needed to attend was a computer and access to the Internet. The platform for the conference was Elluminate, which allows individual attendees to participate in the sessions and, best of all, recorded all of them. So if you want to know what you missed, you can look up the recordings on the Global Ed Web site and sit in on some of the sessions. Staging this conference was an enormous undertaking, the brainchild of Steve Hargadon and Lucy Gray. They produced the conference with the help of over ninety partner organizations and 219 volunteer moderators. Amazingly, it was FREE!
My fledgling company, Ink Think Tank, participated in this conference. Our mission is to bring the joy of learning back to the classroom through the use of creative nonfiction. (Since the sessions were recorded and are available online I'm hyperlinking to them in the next sentences.) Two of my colleagues, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent and April Pulley Sayre, discussed how, in nature, "Everything Is Connected," and that nature is resilient after damage by humans. This was a nice follow-up to Steven Amstrup's earlier session describing the plight of the polar bears that are the "canary in the coal mine" alerting us to the perils of global warming. And if you're interested in what education needs for the future, I strongly recommend tuning into the presentation of Dr. Howie DiBlasi speaking on Education, Innovation and Creativity. [Note: to view these sessions you have to download Elluminate software, which runs on Java. If your cookies are blocked, it will ask you to allow it to be downloaded. I had no problem doing this repeatedly. Also, it takes a few minutes to load a session.] The conference Web site is up permanently, and if you click on the "Sessions" on the homepage you can see the threads and descriptions to find sessions that interest you. Then you can go to the Recordings page to listen. Not only will you hear some terrific people but you'll become familiar with the possibilities of Web 2.0 for professional development and for students.
At the beginning of each session the moderator put up a graphic of a map of the world. We could each put a dot on the map to show where we lived. It was extraordinary to watch flashing dots appear all over the world and to be able to hear people speak in real time as if they were in the room with you. As you might imagine, a lot of the sessions were on technology and on collaboration between people all over the globe. It was about possibilities that still have to develop. This kind of interactive global communication technology is a tool and we have yet to see what its impact will be. I make no predictions, but if history has taught us anything it's this: Advances in technology do not end war or poverty or ignorance by themselves, and they can also be used to the detriment of the human race and the planet. But they don't go away. Once the genie is out of the bottle, only those who participate have any influence on its use.
"The notion of emptiness generates passion," wrote the great poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). When I first came across this line, many years ago, it occurred to me that the word "notion" is most significant. "Notion" means that you've had a taste, a vision, an inkling, a snippet of something -- enough to alert you to its possibilities and whet your appetite for more.
I was quite young when I had my first taste of passion. From my earliest childhood, my parents read to me, and I saw that books were full of possibilities. But since I couldn't yet read, I had to pester them to read to me, which they often didn't have time for. I remember being 4 years old and looking out a high-rise window over the myriad signs that decorated New York City rooftops. My companion was an 8-year-old girl named Brucia. "Can you read everything you see?" I asked her wistfully. When she assured me she could, I remember wondering if I would ever reach that point where I could read everything I saw. (Here is the "emptiness" of Roethke's line.) Then I could get into books anytime I wanted without being dependent on my parents. So in my determined way, I pestered adults for help and taught myself to read.
When I was 8, we made papier mache finger puppets in class. Mine was of my father, featuring short lengths of yarn pasted vertically around his head as a frame for his baldpate. I received a lot of praise for my cleverness. Over the weekend a mouse in the classroom came and ate the nose off my puppet, leaving behind a disfiguring hole. (The paste was an edible mix of flour and water.) My teacher was worried about my reaction. How would I feel about having my work so unforgivingly destroyed? Much to her surprise, for me it was no big deal. Even at that tender age I realized that the puppet itself didn't matter. I could always make another, and no one could take that ability away from me. That same year my favorite doll fell off the bed onto her nose and it, too, was irrevocably marred. I was inconsolable and vowed to myself that I would never invest so much emotional energy into a possession. The loss was too hard to bear. Acquiring skills and creating new things thus became my passions.
Passion can be described as a feeling, but it manifests itself in the world as behavior, strong behavior that recurs frequently despite obstacles, setbacks, and long periods without obvious feedback. Passionate people are often unreasonable; they persist in spite of off-putting events or lack of approbation and support that might make others quit. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him. The unreasonable man persists in his attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (George Bernard Shaw, 1903 play "Man and Superman.") [GBS was a misogynist so he was not about to include women in such a profound statement.] Behaviorists know that strength of behavior is built with payoffs that are highly intermittent and might only be perceived as a reward by the individual exhibiting the behavior. The well-struck tennis ball becomes its own reward and is a first step in the learning curve of a potential champion. Hitting the ball in a racket's "sweet spot" feels good. But the pursuit of a world-class trophy requires a commitment and a faith in one's own abilities that defies the inevitable (reasonable) naysayers who know that the odds of reaching this pinnacle are extremely long. "Invictus" is one of my new favorite films. It depicts an unreasonable Nelson Mandela, played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman, who believed that he could unite his post-apartheid nation if only the rugby team, the Springboks, could do the impossible and win the World Cup. He had formidable strikes against
pulling this off -- the team itself was an underdog that didn't believe itself capable of such a feat, and the newly empowered black citizens of the "newly christened Rainbow Nation, South Africa" hated everything that stood for their former Afrikaner oppressors, especially this team. They were certainly not about to root for it. Mandela said, "It always seems impossible until it's done."
It seems as if the world of education is afraid of passion. It's even afraid of the word "passion." Currently, we could claim that teaching to the test is fostering apathy, the exact opposite of passion, in both teachers and students. Passion produces unlikely results. My own passions have led me to an improbable career as an author and speaker and now a founder of a new business (www.inkthinktank.com) that uses technology to tap into the passions of other award-winning nonfiction authors for the benefit of teachers and students. We authors work against all odds creating works of literature to engage, inform and inspire children about the real world. The intent for our books is not radical. If we want kids to learn and think about the real world and develop a passion for learning, why not give them great reading material? Yet our books are not in most classrooms where they can do the most good. My problem: What can I do to change this small part of the educational landscape? The answer: Whatever it takes.
Ever write some material you thought was a natural for the movies? What writer hasn't? I have long thought that my best-selling books of tricks and stunts based on science ("Bet You Can't!, Bet You Can!" etc.) were an entertaining way to introduce science to kids and to the public. I thought that the material was a natural for film or video. Over the years I had buttonholed television executives and written several proposals for kids' science shows. I had been encouraged from time to time by interested parties, but the money never changed hands, at least when it came to videos. I was no stranger to thinking visually. Early in my career I starred in my own cable show, "The Science Game," and wrote and performed in 23 half-hours of video. Later I did a stint as one of the original staff writers for "Good Morning America" where I produced spots and made editing decisions. I didn't do the physical cutting and splicing of footage, but only a writer could determine what material could be used. So the idea of using my own material for the small screen always hovered in the back of my mind.
A few of years ago, I was approached by Skyhorse Publishing Company to create a new and very large book out of those five popular and now just-out-of-print books that I had co-authored with Kathy Darling. We had had a hilarious time writing the books and we had included many activities that were quite unusual. And the collaboration produced a higher octane writing that won us many awards. The editor had called me and said, "I loved these books when I was a kid," (which certifies me as a senior citizen.) We struck the deal and "We Dare You! Hundreds Of Fun Science Bets, Challenges, And Experiments You Can Do At Home" was released for sale.
Reworking this tried and true material for the new book started me thinking about making videos again. How about creating short (under 2 minutes each) videos of kids doing these tricks and make them available to everyone on my Web site? How about inviting others to participate in making videos from my book? Modern technology has leveled the playing field. I no longer needed an investor or a videographer. I would learn how to make the videos myself! It was now possible for me to do it all: write videos, shoot them, edit them, narrate the voice-over, add music, and publish them on my Web site. The fact that I was coming from a dead start, that I had never even held a video camera could not be a deterrent. I know from experience that the steepness of a learning curve is best faced one step at a time. So I plunged right in.
I invested in a digital camcorder and a MacBook Pro. I took lessons from One-to-One at the Apple store. And over the past couple of years I have edited videos that others sent me and that I directed via videoconferencing. How'd I do? Check them out! If you'd like to contribute to the We Dare You! video project, all the information about participation is on my Web site: www.vickicobb.com
Was this journey to teach an old dog new tricks worth it? Here's the breakdown: Handycam and tripod: $400. MacBook Pro and additional software: $4000. The joy of creating and publishing videos of my work without depending on anyone else: Priceless!
The other day I saw a vision of the future of education and it looks nothing like school as we know it. I attended Tech Forum in Tarrytown, NY, sponsored by Tech & Learning, showcasing technology in education. It was a small conference, maybe 200 people, but the implications are HUGE. It is now dramatically clear to me that education must be repurposed to produce lifelong learners, not just people who can read and write and pass assessment tests. In other words, each child has to learn how he/she learns best and that the learning process has its own rewards. I, personally, am the product of a visionary elementary school that I attended in the 1940s. It was/is the mission of my school, the Little Red School House, in Greenwich Village, NYC: "...to educate students to become independent thinkers and lifelong learners and to pursue academic excellence and achievement in a context of respect for others and service to the community." I believe that they succeeded with me and, as a product of that philosophy today, I am in the unique position to describe its outcome more than sixty years later, which may be of value to educators today.
How kids will learn in the future will look very much like the kind of learning I do today. As an experienced autodidact, my learning is self-directed. The role of teachers in the future will be to guide/coach their students in activities similar to those I pick for myself. In the past three years I have been on several of the steepest learning curves I've ever encountered in a lifetime of one new project after another. One example: I learned how to be a videographer from a dead start of never even holding a camcorder. User-friendly technology -- a point-and-shoot camcorder and the Apple iMovie video editing program -- made it possible for me to learn the mechanics of a sophisticated art form without years of apprenticeship. Even more significant was the brilliant tutorial service, One-to-One, offered by my local Apple store. Add to that my self-knowledge that I learn best by plunging in with total immersion. I learn by doing, and the inevitable tear-out-my-hair mistakes and stumbling blocks are simply part of the learning process. In these very recent months and years, I have also learned how to engage in and track online conversations, use social networking, blog and, best of all, start my own innovative education company involving technology. (More to come on this in future posts.) My personal renaissance has made this time in my life, the beginning of my eighth decade, the most exciting and meaningful. I'm being used to my fullest, which is amazingly renewing. I feel as empowered and energized as I did in sixth grade, the best year of my childhood (and my last year at Little Red). I loved school so much that my profession as an author of children's science books has been my way of recreating elementary school for myself in perpetuity and sharing the fun with other kids. There's nothing like making a discovery -- either about the world or about oneself -- to generate love of learning.
Learning new things and instantly applying them is the most thrilling and joyous way to live life and it is now available to our children in the coming tsunami of the digital revolution. It shows up in their natural affinity for all the interactive digital devices at their disposal. Children are learning more than they ever have before (whether or not schools are involved) although we adults may have less control over what they are learning. If we want to guide this learning, we adults must be exemplars of lifelong learning. We either join this digital revolution and help direct its course or we will be pushed aside. We have to use technology to enhance our hard-won academic skills and to pass them on to the next generation. We have to change how we judge our students, not by their performance on an assessment test that purports to measure what they already know, but by how well they can learn something new. Like it or not, this is the paradigm shift that is going to engulf us. We ignore it at our peril. Having plunged in myself, I see its thrilling possibilities. At this point in my life, I am excited about the future although (sigh!) I haven't got another sixty years to see what happens.
When it comes to kids' hands-on science activities I'm like a well-seasoned cookbook author. It's hard for me to find a procedure I haven't seen before in some incarnation or other. I own a library of kids' activity books going back to the 19th century. I've scoured children's magazines and the internet collecting files of printouts for future use. And of course there is my own extensive experience of prowling up and down supermarket aisles looking for products that could reveal some scientific principle other than the consumer purposes they are designed to meet. Often, at schools, kids will share the science tricks they know with me. So far, thousands of tricks later, there have been no surprises. So when I come across something simple to do and very revealing about a familiar subject that I have never known before, it is a true "Eureka!" experience, which I figure is worth the price of the book. Here are a few of them.
This past week I attended an international education convention. There were 63 keynote presentations and 370 sessions from 62 countries. How many different people attended for at least part of the week? 15,028! The total number of session hours (people attending X time in session) -- 8,372! I met a scientist who studies polar bears with a webcam showing two males frolicking in real time as he spoke! I attended sessions by prominent educators with global themes, leaders in their fields. I met some new people who share interests with me. And I did all of this without leaving my home!!!!! How? It was the first online conference of its kind -- 
The other day I saw a vision of the future of education and it looks nothing like school as we know it. I attended Tech Forum in Tarrytown, NY, sponsored by