ASU’s Ask A Biologist website wins prestigious SPORE prize

		IMAGE: Charles Kazilek is a winner of the SPORE prize for online educational innovation. Click here for more information.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has chosen Arizona State University's "Ask A Biologist," an online resource for children's science education, to receive the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, or SPORE, award.

The prize, established to "encourage innovation and excellence in education, as well as the use of high-quality online resources by students, teachers, and the public," recognizes the website's creative content and its developer, Charles Kazilek, director of technology integration and outreach in ASU's School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

What set Arizona's Ask A Biologist apart? Reading interventionist Joan Howell with the Phoenix Elementary School District, a teacher for 20 years, says that it is Kazilek. "Charles simply knows how to connect with children," she says. "He has combined science and art and created a wonderful vehicle for learning. It keeps you aware of the Web, it's something local, it shows that ASU is a leading institution and it's infectious. We are very thankful at our school and in our district. He has opened up a world of possibility."

Kazilek's virtual world is kaleidoscopic, encompassing coloring pages, image and zoom galleries, games, stories, science career pages, teacher's resources, experiments, and language translations into Spanish and French. Entrancing more than a million visitors a year from across the globe, favorite offerings from amongst the 2,500 pages of content are the Ugly Bug contest and the Ask A Biologist's podcast, which injects children's voices, as co-hosts, in the website's audioprogramming (http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/watch_listen).

"The Ugly Bug contest teaches kindergarteners to sixth graders how to look at things closely," says Howell. "The details of the bugs inspire all sorts of questions. It's a wonderful skill for children to develop. They don't even realize that they are learning."

The numbers are telling: more than 10,735 votes have been cast to determine 2010's ugliest bug since it debuted on Oct. 31. Locked in battle are top contenders, the assassin bug and yellow dragonfly (http://askabiologist.asu.edu/activities/ubc).

Inspiration for the unusual comes easily to Kazilek, a double-ASU alumnus with a bachelor's degree in fine arts and a master of natural sciences degree, an avid photographer and aficionado of microcomputers and microscopy. Kazilek embraces the world, its challenges and puzzles with the same questioning approach as his charges.


Kazilek credits the perplexed public with much of the website's content development. "The Q&A feature has been one of the greatest tools for developing content for Ask A Biologist," he says. "It is our barometer to measure what topics and concepts excite interest, are fresh and intriguing and might be important to add to the website."

Besides showing that science is fun and answering more than 25,000 biology questions from children, teachers and parents in the last decade, Kazilek has also actively pursued building connections with the public he serves. In one year alone, he met face-to-face with 1,600 educators and nearly 1,000 K-12 students in Arizona, Washington, D.C, Indiana, and Texas.

Kazilek has likewise worked to expand his online partnerships, which have broadened his ability to expand online access to science learning. The more than 150 contributors involved in Ask A Biologist, including scientists, artists and experts from ASU and other learning institutions in the United States, such as Harvard and MIT, have grown to embrace the talents of volunteers from Panama, Columbia, India, France, England and Canada. Kazilek has also worked to bring other virtual technologies into K-12 classrooms to expand real-time access of youth to scientists at ASU and the Smithsonian Institution.

Laura Martin, director of science interpretation with the Arizona Science Center, points out that she and her staff can "refer students, teachers and families to his exceptional resources knowing that they offer good science, good pedagogy and up-to-date modes of access."

Martin is also quick to acknowledge Kazilek's enthusiasm, energy, generosity and "the creativity that has been invaluable to many of our own science center projects."

ASU and Kazilek join 11 other awardees selected in 2010 from entries from the United States and abroad. Other institutions recognized by the AAAS include Baylor College of Medicine, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University and the universities of Utah, Washington and Johannesburg, South Africa. A complete list of winners and their essays can be found at http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/spore.

AAAS, who publishes the journal Science, created the SPORE competition to recognize that "being an outstanding science educator is as valuable to society as being an exceptional research scientist."
ASU and the School of Life Sciences have offered fertile ground for Kazilek's development of Ask A Biologist, the launch of a podcast series and other innovative educational approaches. Robert Page, dean of the School of Life Sciences, says "We, as a public institution, have a responsibility to reach out and make what we do accessible and relevant. Ask a Biologist is premier example of how we can and should engage the public in understanding what we do as scientists and the world around us."

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To learn more about Ask A Biologist, which is part of the National Science Digital Library, and which is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation: http://askabiologist.asu.edu.

Maybe this is the kinda thing we need more of?

V for Vendetta hacker broadcasts video at Washington State University

An anonymous hacker who calls himself "V" hijacked the projector systems in more than two dozen classrooms at Washington State University (WSU) last week. The hacker asked students to stand up to administrators and then invited them to meet on November Fifth, in one year, to take action on campus.

 In V for Vendetta, V broadcasts a video message calling the British public to take action on November 5. "Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November."  According to Wikipedia, November Fifth commemorates the anniversary of when Guy Fawkes's tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I.

According to WSU 1812 on Facebook, Google offered the hacker a job. Will the hacker's video have any lasting impact at the university or be remembered as only a prank? We'll find out what happens next November Fifth.

Axis of Depression

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: November 18, 2010

What do the government of China, the government of Germany and the  Republican Party have in common? They’re all trying to bully the Federal  Reserve into calling off its efforts to create jobs. And the motives of  all three are highly suspect.........

So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke  and his colleagues were clearly caught by surprise, but the budget  expert Stan Collender predicted it all. Back in August, he warned Mr.  Bernanke that “with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as  the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions  taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In  short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is  that they might succeed.

Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics  are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason  for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and  Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy  to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.

And if Mr. Bernanke gives in to their bullying, they may all get their wish.       

Axis of Depression

What do the government of China, the government of Germany and the Republican Party have in common? They’re all trying to bully the Federal Reserve into calling off its efforts to create jobs. And the motives of all three are highly suspect.........

So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues were clearly caught by surprise, but the budget expert Stan Collender predicted it all. Back in August, he warned Mr. Bernanke that “with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.

Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House. 

And if Mr. Bernanke gives in to their bullying, they may all get their wish.

Thanks to one of my favorite students, Janae Mycah!

I hate to put her on blast, 'cause she might be embarresed, but I wanted to thanks my favorite 1st Period student, Janae Mycah, for her excellent comments and her extra effort in visiting the blog and actually reading what I write!

You go girl! You will be rewarded, both in your grade, and in heaven too!

JG

More on Carl Sagan's Birthday....and a Pale Blue Dot...

The Voyager 1 satellite was launched in 1977. Carl Sagan had pushed for Voyager to take a photograph of the Earth when it reached the edge of the solar system. In February of 1990, having completed its primary mission, the spacecraft was directed by NASA to turn around to photograph the planets of the Solar System. One image Voyager returned was of Earth, showing up as a "pale blue dot" in the grainy photograph at the bottom. This image shows the earth at almost four billion miles away.

In the book  (Pale Blue Dot), Sagan related his thoughts on a deeper meaning of the photograph:

    From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.