A few weeks ago, I blogged about my plans to bring in special guest, bio-chemist Erika Ebbel, to our class. Well, today all three of my classes had the unique experience of having this video conversation with Erika. Erika was profiled on The Secret Life of Scientists which is a wonderful site where students can learn about many different types of science and the real people who live it daily. Additionally, Secret Life of Scientists provides video snippets into the “secret lives” of these brilliant folks allowing students to get a glimpse of the diverse interests and hobbies that even “really smart” people enjoy!

Leading up to our conversation today, I prepared my students by watching Erika’s videos (each one is no more than a few minutes) and having some conversations in class about the context. It was very good for the students to see Erika speak to the fact that she studied very hard and did well in school, continues to study science (and loves it) and entered and won beauty pageants. Perhaps the most interesting to the students was the video, Whiz Kids, where Erika explains how, when she was in 11 years old, she got her idea for a project to see if cells commit suicide when diseased. She got her idea from visiting a crocodile farm where she learned that when crocodiles become fatally wounded, they roll over in the water and commit suicide. She goes on to describe how she set and achieved her goal to conduct this experiment. The challenges she faced with her experiment were not much unlike some of the challenges my students are facing with their own Science Fair experiments. Some of my students are also finding their results to be inconclusive or that the resources they need are not readily available and so they need to change their plans.

This was a great opportunity for my students to ask Erika questions about their projects, science, the beauty pageant or anything really. The students prepared questions and we were ready to go.

Erika graciously agreed to do this video conference with me three times (so that each of my classes could benefit). I didn’t want to consume too much of Erika’s time, so I vetted the questions in advance and only a few students in each class asked their questions.

A couple of highlights:

• Hearing Erika talk about her successes was fascinating, but listening to her talk about the many times she failed was pretty important too. It’s easy to set a goal and get started. It’s also easy to turn away and give up at the first sight of resistance. It is good for my students to see that being successful doesn’t usually come easily.
• Jack speaking about his project on growing crystals and how the paper clips used for weights kept rusting causing the crystals not to grow. He and Erika discussed running more trials and some possible solutions.
• Jordana asking Erika about the diseases she is working on curing.
• Santiago asking Erika about how to measure centipedes without getting bit.
• Eriel wondering what people want to talk to Erika about more; science or the beauty pageants.
• Noah, whose experiment requires exerting the same force on a hovercraft to measure on which surface it will travel the farthest, wanted to know how to make sure he was exerting the same amount of force each time he ran his trials.
• Erika responding to a question about her daily routine. She described how she is in a PhD program and only recently stopped attending classes and taking tests, but now goes to a lab every day. She also described her routine when she has days off and the activities she enjoys doing such as SCUBA diving.

Erika is incredibly engaging and developed a lovely rapport with the students right away. She obliged us with talk of her awards and achievements, but you could tell she was much more comfortable talking about where she/we still needs to go. It’s clear how passionate she is about her work and how much she wants young students to develop the same love for science and math that she’s embraced.

There were many messages to be gleaned from the conversations and I’ll be spending some time next week debriefing with the students and having them work on their own “Secret Life of Students” profiles where they will identify their own areas of expertise to share with others.

I want to thank Erika for spending so much time with me and my students. Additionally, I’d like to thank Tom Miller and Karen Laverty (some behind-the-scenes folks from The Secret Life of Scientists) who helped facilitate this wonderful instructional experience that my students will surely remember always.

Special thanks to Ms. New, university student from FAU, for all her EXTRA help that day!

The Secret Life of Scientists is a web-based program that brings real-world scientists into a different, more personal light. According to the site, even Einstein had a secret life (can you find out what he liked to do?). Below, check out the video of Erika Ebbel, a biochemist. You can also read her blog. Erika is not only a biochemist but she’s also a Beauty Pageant Queen who talks about “butt glue” on her page. Read about Erika on her site and you’ll see that “butt glue” was the most annoying thing about Pagentry. Wow! Who knew that biochemists have time for such things?

I had an opportunity to meet Philippe Cousteau last week as part of a series of events recognizing our district’s outstanding achievement in being on the forefront of using technology for instructional integration and for reaching the milestone of one million digital educational videos on Discovery Streaming. The School District of Palm Beach County is one of only a handful of school systems in the nation, and the first school system in Florida, to reach this milestone. Listening to Mr. Cousteau speak is truly a pleasure as he is engaging and his message of environmental defense is inspiring.

Mr. Cousteau is the 29 year old grandson of Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He continues his grandfather’s legacy by openly speaking and acting on behalf of the environment.

He was kind enough to pose for pictures and sign an autograph for the boys and girls in my 4th grade classes. I was excited to see that wrote “Mrs. Kolbert’s Class, You are the hope of the future. Philippe Cousteau” because we’ve recently learned about ecosystems and the food web, with particular focus on how humans often negatively impact the environment, disrupting the ecosystem and the food web.

Can you explain what he means by “You are the hope of the future?”

Elly is our Blogger of the Week. This post is written “as is” from Elly.

This week in science we talked about matter. Matter takes up space. Even gases take up space. All matter has density. Density is how much matter is in something. All matter has physical properties like color. Once you look into an empty glass again, you see it differently. See if it matters.

In my opinion, matter is quite fascinating. I think it’s interesting because all of the experiments you can do with water and ice.

Speaking of experiments, here’s one you can do:

“Melt Away”

Materials:
empty milk carton
water
freezer
large bowl
salt

Directions:

1. Fill the empty milk carton with water.
2. Put it in the freezer and leave it over night.
3. The next day, takethe ice out and put it in a bowl.
4. Sprinkle on some salt.

What happened? Post it here! Give us some other experiments to do.

Image Source: Albert Einstein (1879-1955). IRC. 2005.
Discovery Education. 7 October 2009

As we prepare to make our Public Service Announcements, our students are in the process of organizing their thoughts and creating Hurricane Preparedness brochures. Last week, I shared some interesting hurricane tracking sites with them and one of them has since become my latest favorite. The day I shared it with my class was also the day we taped our first show of the season for PalmBreezeCAFE (our web and tech local cable TV show). I decided to ditch what I had previously planned and show this site instead. Here I am with co-host, Lee Keller, showing the site from National Geographic.

In addition to the National Geographic site, some other useful sites are:

• Ready Classroom from Discovery Education
• Hurricane Maker (Sun Sentinel)
• FEMA for Kids

In class we are studying hurricanes and my students will begin to create preparedness brochures and Public Service Announcements. I think it will be a great learning opportunity for them to condense all they’ve learned and prepare a few points to share and help others. I’m not sure how familiar they are with PSAs but they most likely will have seen a Safety on the Internet PSA while watching TV. When I was really young, I can remember watching Smokey The Bear tell me that –only “I” could prevent forest fires.– That PSA actually had the unintended consequences of making me feel guilty because I wasn’t in the forest and I wondered who would prevent them if I wasn’t there.

After we spend a few minutes discussing what a PSA is, the students will be divided into small groups, storyboard their ideas, write a brief script and shoot their videos. I own two Flipcams and have asked my students’ parents if they have any they’d be willing to loan us for the project. At some point, I hope to raise some money to buy 5 or 6 for the classroom to do projects such as this.

Below is a PSA some of us might remember. Do you know of any PSAs and if so, what did you learn from them?

View of the shuttle from Boca Raton, FL.

The other morning, Lilly’s dad sent me this picture. It’s a view of the shuttle launch from his home. He took it using a 30 second exposure and a 300mm zoom lens. The picture got me thinking about the space shuttle and how we take for granted all that NASA does. It wasn’t too long ago that there was no space program. It was only 50 years ago that Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.

When most people think of NASA, they usually just think of astronauts walking on the moon or flying in space shuttles. Did you know that NASA’s space programs have helped advance medical technology as well?

There’s a lot you can learn by visiting the NASA site. As a matter of fact, there’s an entire section just for students in grades K-8 with games and homework help, too! After you visit the NASA site, come back here and leave a comment. Did you learn anything new? Did anything surprise you? Did you find anything useful that you can use again in the future?