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| More than 1,700 students attended the San Diego Science Alliance’s fourth San Diego County Educational Technology Fair on Wednesday, February 21, 2001 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Students from 37 high schools and 10 school districts in the region connected with high-tech and science-related exhibitors from 40 regional companies and organizations as they showcased current and future technologies through interactive displays. In addition to corporate exhibitors, students had the opportunity to meet Congressional Representatives Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Susan Davis, and discuss their roles in the growth of San Diego as a leader in high-tech industries. San Diego Science Alliance Board members and member companies brought the event together through close coordination by Chairperson Judi Berlin, TRW Avionics Systems Division. Judi is in her fourth year of service to the event, and took over the role of Chairperson in midstream. Nancy Taylor, San Diego County Office of Education, and Kim Bess, |
San Diego City Schools, coordinated school involvement and transportation, and developed and compiled the education support packets that were distributed to all participating teachers. Other contributors also played a valuable role in ensuring a successful event. InFocus Corporation, through the coordination of Carol Brnich, provided exhibitor refreshments on the day of the event. Hewlett Packard provided printing services, including exhibitor and school posters, as well as duplication services for event materials. Lisa Briggs, Pacific Bell, is the San Diego Science Alliance’s Communications Chair and coordinated distribution of public relations materials to the media. She also secured January’s Teacher Orientation keynote speaker, Rory Devine from KNSD 7/39. Carol Danielson, General Atomics, returned to this year’s event and contributed support to event set-up as well as help during the event. Special thanks are extended to Jim Ritchey from Congressman Cunningham’s office |
and Elizabeth Basinet, Barrett Resource Group. Jim, in his fourth year of service to the event, coordinated all of the involvement of the region’s congressional representatives in the Educational Technology Fair, and provided support for the logistics needed for the set-up of the event. Liz developed and instituted a Public and Media Relations plan and managed the media on the day of the event.
"The success of this year’s Educational Technology Fair is due to the dedication and hard work by the small, but devoted committee that Judi [Berlin] chaired. The involvement of local schools and the response from business and community leaders was remarkable, as were the donations made by our sponsors," said Patricia Winter, San Diego Science Alliance Executive Director. "The Committee also extends appreciation to the staff representatives from the region’s congressional offices for their support to the event." |
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| Science Learning Goes the Distance |
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| The PISCES (Partnerships Involving the Scientific Community in Elementary Schools) Project has experienced exceptional growth in its first full year of implementation. More than 40 teachers in 9 districts in San Diego County are partnering for science instruction with university students from San Diego State University, SIO/UCSD, and CSU San Marcos. One of the most exciting events of the year was receiving the Legoland Partners in Education Award in November 2000. The PISCES Project proposed a plan to offer field learning experiences |
to participating PISCES classrooms. The Legoland award makes it possible for teachers and their Science Corps university partners to plan and implement field learning experiences for K–8 students that relate to the standards-based science programs. Five classrooms have already taken advantage of the opportunity to conduct field studies at the San Elijo Lagoon and on the Marine Science Floating Lab. Log on to the PISCES web site "scrapbook" (www.sdsa.org) to view the results of the field investigations that classrooms from Ada Harris Elementary and Beaumont Elementary conducted. |
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| Adventures in the Arctic—PISCES Expedition |
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| Can you imagine the northernmost point of land on the North American Continent? It is on the Arctic Ocean and is actually inhabited by approximately 4,500 people. In January, Barrow, Alaska was the destination of a team of PISCES Science Corps and project staff to conduct a Global Change Institute with local school children, Inupiat Elders, and scientists. As part of the National Science Foundation funded PISCES Project, a link to the community in Barrow was established over the past year and involves the local schools there. Barrow is the location of the NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostic Lab where Dr. Walter Oechel, PISCES Principal Investigator, conducts research on CO2 flux. Building on his established relationships with the scientific community and other community members in Barrow, the PISCES Project has been establishing partnerships with the local schools for enhanced science programs. During a summer school session in May–June 2000, Ale Rios, a Science Corps member, traveled to Barrow to partner with elementary teachers for science instruction. During that time she also began a project at the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow to build an exhibit demonstrating the understanding of climate change from both a scientific perspective and the traditional knowledge of the Inupiat people. This led to plans to conduct a Global Change Institute in January 2001 involving scientists, Inupiat elders, and school children asking questions about climate and weather. PISCES Science Corps members, Maggie Reinbold and Alejandra Rios, traveled to Barrow on January 4th to partner with teachers there. The lessons they taught included topics such as weather patterns, water cycle, ecology of the Arctic, greenhouse effect, and climate change indicators. These learning experiences generated enthusiasm and interest on the part of the students to ask questions of the elders and scientists. At the conclusion of two weeks of class activities, Dr. Oechel visited classes and gave a talk on what his research group has found regarding climate change and the impact on Arctic regions. Students also had an opportunity to ask Glen Kinoshita, a Masters Degree student in ecology at SDSU, questions regarding the research he is conducting in the Arctic. |
On January 22–23 PISCES Co-Principal Investigators, Nancy Taylor and Cheryl Mason, facilitated the Global Change Institute at Ipalook Elementary School and at Hopson Middle School with students in grades 2–6. Six Inupiat elders, along with Dan Enders, a scientist from NOAA CMDL, Richard Glenn, local scientist and native Inupiat, and Ron Browers, Director of the Inupiat Heritage Center, participated in the discussion. The discussions that ensued were a mixture of scientific findings correlated with stories of changes that have been noticed by the Inupiat people during their traditional practices of whaling, seal hunting, and summer fishing. One elder lamented the warmer temperatures in ice cellars over the past few years where food is traditionally stored in the ice cellars dug into the permafrost. This observation correlated with the rising temperatures recorded annually in the Arctic. The Global Change Institute 2001 was broadcast point to point as a video conference to the San Diego County Office of Education where the signal was then transmitted to San Diego area PISCES schools via the ITFS system. Local students were able to observe the Institute and hear the stories told by scientists and Inupiat Elders. As a result of this work, regular meetings between the elders of the Barrow community and local children will be occurring at Hopson Middle School. Additionally, the PISCES Project will continue to encourage exchanges of university students between the North Slope of Alaska and San Diego, and is exploring options to have K–8 teachers participate in exchanges.
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| BIOCOM’s Second Annual Nobel Laureate Dinner |
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| Ten San Diego city and county high school students, along with their science teachers, attended BIOCOM’s Second Annual Nobel Laureate Dinner, held on December 16, 2000 at the Hotel Del Coronado. The students and teachers attended a formal dinner and had the opportunity to meet five Nobel Laureates. Students received their invitations based on the quality of the essays they wrote describing why they want to be a scientist. Essays were received from 43 students at 17 high schools, and the selection committee decided to select only one winning student (and his/her teacher) per school so that the 10 winners were from 10 different schools. | The winning students and their teachers were from Crawford High, El Capitan High, La Costa Canyon High, La Jolla High, Lincoln Prep High, Mount Carmel High, Point Loma High, Poway High, Scripps Ranch High, and Valhalla High. The Nobel Laureate Dinner was a unique event in that it brought together San Diego’s Swedish community with the leaders of academia and the life sciences industry. The focus of the event was to celebrate the seven Nobel Laureates who live in San Diego County; this is more than any other city in the nation and possibly the world. The Nobel Laureates who attended the |
dinner were: Gerald Edelman, Neurosciences Institute; Roger Guillemin, Salk Institute; and Kary Mullis and George Palade, UCSD School of Medicine. BIOCOM and The Dow Chemical Company, along with IDEC, Mentus, and Gen-Probe, were the main sponsors for the attendance of the students and their teachers. The San Diego Science Alliance, represented by Patricia Winter on the planning committee, provided the vehicle to reach teachers throughout San Diego so their students could apply for this exciting opportunity. Click here to view a group photo from the event. |
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| Our Other Jobs Are in Optics by Jim Menders, President, Optical Society of San Diego |
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| The Optical Society of San Diego is a treasure trove of educational outreach volunteers. We are a local chapter of the Optical Society of America (OSA), an international professional society for optical scientists and engineers. Our members range from those who work on eyeglasses to those who work on fiber optics. Many of us can’t seem to shed our enthusiasm for the science of light even outside the workplace, and we have found that spreading the gospel of optics through educational outreach is a nice outlet for us, not to mention a boost to the science curriculum. Since few of us have much time to spend away from our day jobs, we tend to focus our limited time on teachers, rather than students, in the hope that the teachers will multiply our efforts by a factor equal to the average class size. Our listing in the Science Alliance Resource Guide is part of our campaign to get the attention of science teachers. We offer teachers access to our growing collection of optics lab and demonstration equipment (contact me for information). Once a year, we dedicate one of our monthly meetings (usually in June) to an optics workshop for science teachers, in which we trade attendance for free pizza. Our turnouts have been satisfying. |
One exception to our focus on teachers has been our participation in the Greater San Diego Science Fair. We offer awards for the best optics-oriented projects. Under the sponsorship of Melles Griot, a local laser manufacturer, we award cash prizes to winning students, and lasers to their teacher-advisors. An important impetus behind our on-going efforts has been the support of the Optical Society of America. The Society is dedicated to the support of optics educational outreach, and proves it by offering annual "activity grants" of up to $1,000 each year to chapters for outreach. Our chapter has consistently won activity grants, and this year’s grant will buy equipment for SDSU physics majors to put on workshops in K–12 classrooms. In prior years, we used the grants to buy student lab kits and demonstration kits to loan to teachers. We usually hold a workshop at the annual San Diego Science Educator Association Conference to show off the demonstrations, and advertise that they are available for loan. This year we will present a workshop about optics demonstrations with an overhead projector at the conference on Saturday, March 10th at 9:30 a.m. |
We are now in the planning stages of our biggest outreach event yet—a full-day workshop at the 2002 National Science Teachers Association convention to be held here in San Diego, featuring optic’s best educators. This event will be underwritten by the OSA and managed by us. With an attendance of tens of thousands of science teachers from all over the country, this workshop is likely to garner a large audience. Undoubtedly, the conference (and the workshop) will draw many teachers from San Diego and its environs, who won’t have the travel expense to pay. Provincially speaking, this will be a fantastic opportunity for San Diego’s science teachers to participate in a world class optics workshop. To be added to our e-announcement distribution, or to borrow our equipment, contact Jim Menders at jmenders@ipitek.com or (760) 930-2220 x3438. For a schedule of the OSSD’s meetings, including our annual science teacher workshop, check out our web site at www.ossd.org. Contact Professor Matt Anderson at matt@sciences.sdsu.edu for information about K–12 optics workshops. |
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| Airway Management in Space | |
| What if a researcher could come to your classroom and excite your students about mathematics and science? What would you say if someone was able to come to your classroom and talk about what it is like to experience zero gravity? This is possible since we WANT to come to your classroom and tell your students about our experiences while doing research at NASA. We are a team of undergraduate students, called AMiS (Airway Management in Space), from various universities who are participating in the reduced gravity student flight opportunities program for NASA under the umbrella of the California Space Institutes student-mentor model. We know from first hand experience what it is like to propose, develop, conduct, analyze, share, and publish our research. |
We offer unique insights about the applications and uses of mathematics and science, and our animated enthusiasm will spark the interests of your students. Through video and verbal presentations, our experiences in the KC-135, a.k.a. "the vomit comet," will allow students to see first hand that science IS fun. Teachers may contact our team via e-mail at jovimedic@aol.com for information on our presentation or how their class can participate in the space program. |
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