Educational CyberPlayGround K-12 Newsletter

Happy Science Reading for today

<Karen>


1)
PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT
New for 2008   "Raptors in the City"
TECHNOLOGY CONNECTS KIDS WITH NATURE
 
How do you catch a glimpse of the fastest creature on earth?  Go online!  "Raptors in the City" is a real-time, inquiry-based science and technology program that stars the peregrine falcon.  The peregrine has recovered from near extinction and was removed from the List of Endangered Species in 1999, one of the great success stories in the field of wildlife conservation. 
 
This is a picture of a female peregrine falcon at the "Raptors in the City" program's study nestsite.  She is perched atop a "FalconCam" that broadcasts the nesting drama live on the internet courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  Her nestbox is on a 12th floor window ledge, in the right background.
 
The online portion of Raptors in the City guides children through nesting season (roughly late February to June) as they watch the still rare falcons live via cameras mounted on a skyscraper.  The curriculum supports one semester of study, and students learn environmental, biological, and technological lessons, as well as research skills, tied to national science and technology standards.  Curriculum materials and books for falcon study are available at low cost.  It's easy - no software to install.  
 
Nesting season (and the Raptors in the City program) begins in late February 2008. 
 
To subscribe to the free "Falcon Flash" e-newsletter, weekly bulletins and pictures from the program's study nestsite during nesting season, reply to this message with "subscribe" in the subject.  
 
For more information visit: www.raptorsinthecity.org
 
Raptors in the City is a featured link on NationalGeographic.com's "Geography Action!"  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geographyaction/habitats/cities_suburbs.html
 
Photos are courtesy of Scott Wright, volunteer peregrine nest monitor.
 
Contact person:
Deborah Mathies
Norwalk, Connecticut
(203) 831-0855
raptors@optonline.net

2)
NASA Science News for December 11, 2007
NASA's fleet of THEMIS satellites has made some surprising new discoveries about outbursts of Northern Lights and the source of their power. Findings include giant magnetic ropes that connect Earth to the Sun and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11dec_themis.htm?list111411

3)
NASA Opportunities for Undergraduate Students


Applications Available for NASA Undergraduate Student Research Program Summer 2008 Internship Session
NASA’s Undergraduate Student Research Program is currently accepting applications for 10-week summer 2008 internships. These internships offer students the opportunity to work alongside NASA scientists and engineers at NASA's centers, laboratories and test facilities.
Applicants must be U.S. college sophomores, juniors or seniors with majors or course work concentration in engineering, mathematics, computer science, or physical or life sciences. Applicants must be U.S. citizens.
The application deadline for the summer 2008 session is Jan. 31, 2008.

For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/programs/Undergraduate_Student_Research_Project.html

 

Apply Now for MUST Scholarships

The Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology Project, funded by NASA, is a joint partnership between the Hispanic College Fund, the United Negro College Fund Special Programs and the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers.

MUST awards scholarships and internships to undergraduate students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as STEM fields. The MUST Project is open to all undergraduate students and is particularly focused on engaging students from underserved and underrepresented groups to enter STEM fields.

Each year, the MUST Project supports approximately 100 undergraduate students with a one-year competitive scholarship of up to one-half of tuition, not to exceed $10,000. Students who maintain the required minimum grade point average will be eligible for a paid internship at a NASA center or other research facility. Additionally, students will benefit year-round from tutoring, lecture series and mentoring from STEM faculty and peers.

The application period closes on Feb. 1, 2008. For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/programs/Motivating_Undergraduates_Science_Technology.html



4)
NOVA presents "Missing in MiG Alley"
Broadcast: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes
(NOVA airs on PBS at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Check your local listings as
broadcast dates and times may vary. This program can be used up to
one year after it is recorded off the air.)

Watch the Program
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes/program.html
Watch the entire program online after the broadcast date.
(Quicktime or Windows Media required.) (Grades 6-8, 9-12)

All About G Forces
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes/gforces.html
Learn about gravity forces and their impact and effect on the
human body. (Grades 6-8, 9-12)

Bringing Home MIAs
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes/mias.html
Find out about U.S. efforts to identify, bring back, and inter
all American personnel lost since World War II.
(Grades 6-8, 9-12)

MiG vs Sabre Anatomy
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes/anatomy.html
See how the Soviet MiG-15bis and the American F-86 Sabre compare
in this interactive. (Flash plug-in required.) (Grades 6-8, 9-12)

Outfitting a Fighter Pilot
http://www.pbs.org/nova/warplanes/pilot.html
Take a close look in this interactive at the clothing and
equipment essential to a fighter pilot. (Flash plug-in required;
printable version available.) (Grades 6-8, 9-12)

Teacher's Guide

In this classroom activity, students research the technological
advances, tactical strategies, and roles aircraft have played in
the United States' five major international conflicts of the 20th
century. (Grades 6-8, 9-12)

Program Transcript
http://www.pbs.org/nova/transcripts/3418_warplane.html
The site includes a complete narration for this program.

5)
Geminid Meteor  Shower--Full Coverage
Space Weather News for Dec. 12, 2007
Earth has entered a stream of dusty debris from asteroid 3200 Phaethon and, as a result, the annual Geminid meteor shower is underway.  Sky watchers around the world are reporting a slow drizzle of late-night meteors at least as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper. The best is yet to come: Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Friday, Dec. 14th.  No matter where you live, watch the sky between local midnight and dawn; people outdoors before sunrise on Friday could see dozens to hundreds of shooting stars. Depending on the details of Earth's encounter with Phaethon's debris stream, the shower could continue into the weekend as well.


6)
Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, wants scholars to stop keeping their research materials to themselves. Just about every academic has notes, photographs, digital scans of research documents, and plenty of other data on their hard drives, he says, but they rarely share anything beyond what makes it into their final books or journal articles. Why not upload such material to a shared online database for other scholars to draw from? The center announced yesterday that it will work with the nonprofit Internet Archive to create just such a database -- and to build tools to make it easy for professors to add their personal research files. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $514,000 to the center to support the effort, and gave more than $700,000 more to the Internet Archive for the project as well. "It's pooling together all of these resources that scholars have and putting them in one place where they can be found," said Mr. Cohen, in an interview Wednesday. He said he hoped the system would be ready by the summer. The upload tool will be attached to the center's popular Web-browser plug-in, Zotero. That plug-in software helps scholars organize online research documents, including links to Web sites and online journal articles. Mr. Cohen likes to say that Zotero "is like iTunes for your reference," referring to the popular software by Apple used to organize personal music libraries. The Zotero software has been downloaded more than a million times since it was released last fall, he says. Previous efforts have tried to spur professors to share their notes and research documents in online archives, but they have failed to gather a critical mass. Librarians promoting the use of institutional repositories of journal articles, for instance, have mused aloud that the databases could be used for research notes, but in many cases officials have had trouble getting professors to share copies of their published journal articles in the databases -- much less other material. Mr. Cohen said that the key to his plan was ease of use. Many professors are using the Zotero software already, he said, and the upload will take place with just a few clicks. Plus, adding materials might enhance a scholar's reputation, since his or her name will remain attached to the contribution. Materials in the archive should be easy enough to find, since the Internet Archive, where the materials will be posted, is already popular online. The Internet Archive is also promising an added incentive to make scholars share. For researchers who upload scanned files of books or other documents, the archive will perform a full-text conversion and e-mail back a text document that can be easily searched (picture files of documents are not usually searchable). Mr. Cohen hopes to use the system to post extensive notes he took while he was researching a book on George Boole, the inventor of Boolean algebra. For that research, he flew to Cork, Ireland, and read every letter written by the mathematics pioneer. "I actually have a hard drive full of stuff," he said. --Jeffrey R. Young


7)
HISTORY OF THE INTERNET
John Seely Brown was a computer enthusiast since before most people knew what personal computers were. HIs work as former director of the Xerox Corporation's famed Palo Alto Research Center landed him in the computer Industry Hall of Fame. I sat down with Mr. Brown at a recent event celebrating the history of NSFNet, a precursor of today's Internet, and recorded this podcast interview, in which he talks about how computer networks -- and now Web 2.0 -- are radically changing education. --Jeffrey R. Young