What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Winner at Alan Alda’s Science Video Competition

in Animation, Education, K-12, Video - Science | June 8th, 2012

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the ques­tion, his teacher replied, “Oxy­da­tion.”

Unsat­is­fied and still curi­ous, Alda went on to help cre­ate the Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Cen­ter issued the Flame Chal­lenge, invit­ing all com­ers to take a stab at explain­ing what a flame is. The only require­ment: Make your expla­na­tion clear, and inter­est­ing, to an 11-year-old.

Sci­en­tists from all over the world sent in entries – some were just one sen­tence (one actu­al­ly stat­ed, “A flame is oxi­da­tion.” Come on!). Anoth­er was a 37-page writ­ten expla­na­tion. After judg­ing the entries (all of which were pre-screened by sci­en­tists for accu­ra­cy), class­rooms of 11-year-olds declared a win­ner: an ani­mat­ed video by Ben Ames, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in quan­tum optics.

In the sev­en-and-a-half minute video, the con­ge­nial voice of a sci­en­tist (Ames) explains a flame to a beard­ed man chained in hell.

“See that fire over there?” Ames asks. “Have you ever real­ly won­dered what the flames are from that fire? I mean look at all those col­ors!”

He goes on charm­ing­ly to describe the process, with­out avoid­ing big words that kids actu­al­ly seem to love: when atoms (car­bon and hydro­gen) react to heat and change form, that’s pyrol­y­sis. That chem­i­cal reac­tion radi­ates light: chemi­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then the changed car­bon and hydro­gen inter­act with oxy­gen and that’s—you guessed it—oxi­da­tion.

But 11-year-olds love music too, right? Ames wraps it up with a song:

The fuel los­es mass, it turns to gas

Before the next change through, some atoms shine blue

When the process is com­plete, it gives off heat

Extra car­bon will glow—red, orange, yel­low.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based edu­ca­tion writer.

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Robert Penn Warren Archive Brings Early Civil Rights to Life

in Education, History, Law, Politics | June 5th, 2012

While an under­grad­u­ate at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ten­nessee, writer Robert Penn War­ren began writ­ing about the south and its tur­bu­lent racial his­to­ry. He trav­eled through­out the Unit­ed States and inter­viewed men and women involved with the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, record­ing each con­ver­sa­tion on a reel-to-reel tape recorder—a project that result­ed in the 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro? This month, Van­der­bilt University’s Robert Penn War­ren Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties makes a full dig­i­tal record avail­able of Warren’s research for the book—an impres­sive and well-con­struct­ed col­lec­tion of inter­views with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures includ­ing Ralph Elli­son, James Bald­win and Mal­colm X. The rich­ness of the site is its con­nec­tive design. Each inter­view is tagged by top­ic, includ­ing a subject’s link to broad­er issues or to oth­er inter­vie­wees, mak­ing evi­dent through user expe­ri­ence the com­plex nature of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. A search for the NAACP, for exam­ple, yields mul­ti­ple inter­views fea­tur­ing dif­fer­ent points of view on the organization’s for­ma­tion along with PDFs of orig­i­nal let­ters and the search­able text of news­pa­per arti­cles about ear­ly NAACP demon­stra­tions. But the site’s audio offer­ings are its most pow­er­ful assets.

The mate­r­i­al offers a potent por­trait of a his­tor­i­cal moment and is rich with ref­er­ences to pol­i­tics, art and spe­cif­ic con­flicts over inte­gra­tion. The group inter­views with uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and pro­test­ers are worth a lis­ten, both for the con­tent and for the ear­ly 1960s group dynam­ics. When War­ren inter­views men and women togeth­er, men tend to speak first and at most length. But the views expressed are fas­ci­nat­ing, as in one case when a female sit-in par­tic­i­pant gives her opin­ion about assim­i­la­tion.

“My first reac­tion of course would be, think­ing of Socrates: Know thy­self. We do face the prob­lem of amal­ga­ma­tion into the whole of Amer­i­can life, being Amer­i­cans first, say, or being what I would like to term Negro Amer­i­cans or Black Amer­i­cans. I think that we as black men have an oblig­a­tion to know our­selves as black men and be proud of what we are, and con­tribute to Amer­i­ca what we could actu­al­ly offer to this cul­ture.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land based writer. See more of her work at .

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights (1963)

MLK’s Omi­nous Final Speech

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Adam Savage (Host of Mythbusters) Tells Sarah Lawrence Grads to Think Broadly … and Don’t Work for Fools

in Education, Life | May 20th, 2012

Adam Sav­age was born in New York City, not far from Sarah Lawrence Col­lege, the lib­er­al arts school where he deliv­ered the com­mence­ment speech this past week­end. Sav­age nev­er went to Sarah Lawrence. Nor did he fin­ish his own degree at NYU. But he had plen­ty to tell the grad­u­at­ing class. On his own web site, Sav­age calls him­self “a mak­er of things.” As a kid, he made his own toys. As a young adult, he began exper­i­ment­ing with spe­cial effects for films, then served stints as an “ani­ma­tor, graph­ic design­er, rig­ger, stage and inte­ri­or design­er, car­pen­ter, scenic painter, welder, actor, writer, and tele­vi­sion host.” (Per­haps you have seen his pop­u­lar Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel show, Myth­busters.) In short, Sav­age is a “col­lec­tor of skills, a poly­math. How did he get this way? By cast­ing his intel­lec­tu­al net wide­ly and by con­tin­u­ing to learn through­out life — which is pret­ty much what we’re all about here. There’s a lot of good advice in this short, feel-good speech. Some of my favorite bits include:

“Don’t work for fools. It’s not worth it. Get­ting paid less to work for peo­ple you like and believe in is much bet­ter for you (and your career) in the long run.”

“Stay obsessed. That thing you can’t stop think­ing about? Keep indulging it. Obses­sion is the bet­ter part of suc­cess. You will be great at the things that you can’t not do.”

“F. Scott Fitzger­ald wrote The Great Gats­by and is one of our nation­al trea­sures. A true giant of writing.The sil­li­est thing he ever wrote is the quote, “There are no sec­ond acts in Amer­i­can lives.” This is insane. If there’s one thing that typ­i­fies the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence it is that rein­ven­tion and rebirth are intrin­sic to it. Ray­mond Chan­dler did­n’t write a sin­gle word of any con­se­quence until his 40s. Julia Child learned to cook at 40! Clint East­wood direct­ed his first film at 41. Don’t be afraid to be a late bloomer. Repeat­ed­ly.”

Good thoughts, all of them. You can find the full tran­script here. H/T @opedr

More Com­mence­ment Speech­es: 

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

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Morgan Freeman Teaches Kids to Read in Vintage Electric Company Footage from 1971

in Education, K-12, Television | May 17th, 2012

Every actor has to start some­where, and Mor­gan Free­man (Dri­ving Miss Daisy, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, and Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby) could have done worse than join­ing the cast of The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, the PBS chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion series that aired from 1971 to 1977. The orig­i­nal cast includ­ed Bill Cos­by and Rita Moreno (not bad com­pa­ny), and the ver­sa­tile Free­man played a series of char­ac­ters: “Mel Mounds,” “Vin­cent the Veg­etable Vam­pire,” and then, of course, Easy Read­er. If you’re of my gen­er­a­tion, you might rec­og­nize his theme song above. Below, we show you Easy Read­er (a pun on the 1969 film Easy Rid­er) in action, teach­ing kids to read in his effort­less­ly cool, hip­ster way. H/T Metafil­ter

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Why the University System, as We Know It, Won’t Last .… and What’s Coming Next

in Education | May 14th, 2012

It’s easy to sell books and oth­er com­modi­ties on the web. It’s not easy to deliv­er a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. But two con­verg­ing trends point toward a future when we will see the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty give way to an online alter­na­tive — some­thing I was­n’t will­ing to bank on two years ago. First, Sil­i­con Val­ley is final­ly focus­ing on e‑learning. Udac­i­ty, Cours­era, Kahn Acad­e­my, EdX — they’re all look­ing to lift e‑learning out of a long peri­od of stag­na­tion. And, sec­ond, times are tough, and the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem does­n’t care enough about man­ag­ing costs, while wrong­ly assum­ing that it has a cap­tive audi­ence.

This week­end, The New York Times took a good look at the financ­ing of a col­lege edu­ca­tion and high­light­ed a few stag­ger­ing data points.

  • The U.S. has racked up more than $1 tril­lion in stu­dent loans.
  • Today 94 per­cent of stu­dents earn­ing a bachelor’s degree take out loans — up from 45 per­cent in 1993.
  • It’s esti­mat­ed that the “aver­age debt [per stu­dent] in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 per­cent owing more than $54,000 and 3 per­cent more than $100,000.”
  • “Pay­ments are being made on just 38 per­cent of the bal­ance of fed­er­al stu­dent loans, down from 46 per­cent five years ago.”
  • Final­ly, state fund­ing of edu­ca­tion is going down, and tuition is going up, which means that the fig­ures above will just get worse.

You don’t need me to spell things out. Pay­ing for a col­lege edu­ca­tion is get­ting unsus­tain­able, so much so that many expect a cri­sis in the col­lege loan mar­ket in the com­ing years. And then you con­sid­er this. Many uni­ver­si­ties seem indif­fer­ent to the dif­fi­cul­ties stu­dents face, if they’re not inten­tion­al­ly exac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem. At one point in the Times arti­cle, E. Gor­don Gee, the pres­i­dent of Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, goes on record say­ing, “I read­i­ly admit it … I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have giv­en sig­nif­i­cant thought to the impact of col­lege costs on fam­i­lies.” Now lis­ten to the lat­est episode of Plan­et Mon­ey, The Real Price of Col­lege (audio), which under­scores a more galling fact — many col­leges think that they gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage if they have a high stick­er price. For many schools, low­er tuition is a sign of weak­ness, not strength.

Uni­ver­si­ties can behave this way because they think they have a cap­tive audi­ence. Because col­lege grads still earn con­sid­er­ably more than high school grads, col­leges assume that stu­dents will keep enrolling. But what will hap­pen when cash-strapped stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with a viable alter­na­tive? It may take 10 to 20 years, but I would­n’t be sur­prised if a new breed of school emerges, schools that throw away the four year mod­el (and the human­i­ties too) and offer stu­dents a very tar­get­ed online edu­ca­tion in “prac­ti­cal” fields — from account­ing to cod­ing to nurs­ing to law and busi­ness — at a dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er cost. Here, the edu­ca­tion cycle gets short­ened to per­haps two years, and then stu­dents get cre­den­tialed (maybe by a trust­ed third-par­ty provider) and go to work, only to return lat­er in their careers to take more cours­es in spe­cial­ized areas. This mod­el will require the right tech­nol­o­gy plat­form (some­thing that will get worked out fair­ly soon) and a change in the expec­ta­tions of employ­ers and soci­ety more broad­ly (some­thing that will take time to devel­op, but less time than com­pla­cent col­leges think).

The new sys­tem won’t be bet­ter than the cur­rent one in many respects. It won’t offer a round­ed edu­ca­tion. The teach­ing will be less per­son­al. Long-last­ing social bonds won’t be made as eas­i­ly. (You’ll need to pay the big bucks at a tra­di­tion­al school for that. No, they won’t all go away.) And the teach­ing jobs cre­at­ed by these uni­ver­si­ties won’t be ter­ri­bly ful­fill­ing or lucra­tive. But the new sys­tem will offer a more focused and afford­able edu­ca­tion to stu­dents on a mass scale. And when stu­dents grad­u­ate most­ly debt free, they won’t com­plain. Nor will they be forced to forego col­lege alto­geth­er, as some would now advo­cate. There’s per­haps some­thing inevitable about this shift. But the insou­ciance of admin­is­tra­tors and fac­ul­ty inhab­it­ing the cur­rent sys­tem won’t do any­thing to delay it. Stick around, and you’ll prob­a­bly see that I’m right. And if you think my look into the crys­tal ball is wrong, let me know.

In the mean­time, we give you anoth­er take on how to solve our world’s edu­ca­tion­al prob­lems — Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci’s Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty:

For oodles of free cours­es, don’t for­get to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

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Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

in Education, K-12, Physics, Science | April 26th, 2012

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Enroll in MIT’s First Free Certificate Course Today

in Education, MIT | February 14th, 2012

Note: You can now find through the fol­low­ing link a com­plete list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs), many offer­ing cer­tifi­cates.

In the wan­ing days of 2011, MIT announced MITx, a new e‑learning ini­tia­tive that will offer cer­tifi­cates (find a list of Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es here) to stu­dents demon­strat­ing mas­tery of free MIT cours­es. The uni­ver­si­ty set a spring launch date for MITx, and they have now opened for enroll­ment the very first course. Taught by Anant Agar­w­al, Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics is an online adap­tion of MIT’s first under­grad­u­ate ana­log design course. Accord­ing the MITx web site, this pro­to­type course will run — free of charge — for stu­dents world­wide from March 5, 2012 through June 8, 2012. And stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their mas­tery of the mate­r­i­al and earn a cer­tifi­cate from MITx. You can get more infor­ma­tion on the course, or sim­ply enroll in Cir­cuits and Elec­tron­ics, today. Just click here.

Many oth­er engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

UPDATE:  MIT pro­fes­sor David Pritchard and his edu­ca­tion research group, RELATE are offer­ing an online MIT-lev­el course in Intro­duc­to­ry New­ton­ian Mechan­ics. The course is free and does not require a text­book.  Enroll­ment has just opened (it starts with an option­al pre­req­ui­sites test), and the course runs from March 1 — May 14, 2012.  Indi­vid­u­als who com­plete the course will receive a let­ter of com­ple­tion. This MIT course is unre­lat­ed to the MITx project men­tioned right above.

via Wired Cam­pus

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The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

in Astronomy, Education, Science, Video - Science | February 9th, 2012

Here’s some­thing you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, pho­tographed by one of NASA’s Grav­i­ty Recov­ery and Inte­ri­or Lab­o­ra­to­ry (GRAIL) space­craft.

The Moon is “tidal­ly locked” in its orbit around the Earth, mean­ing its rota­tion­al and orbital peri­ods are exact­ly syn­chro­nized. As a result, we always see the same view of the Moon no mat­ter when or where (on Earth) we look at it. In this inter­est­ing video, released last week by NASA, we get a rare glimpse of the Moon’s oth­er side, start­ing with the north pole and mov­ing toward the heav­i­ly cratered south.

The video was cap­tured on Jan­u­ary 19 by the “MoonKAM” aboard one of a pair of GRAIL space­craft that were launched last Fall and began orbit­ing the Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The pri­ma­ry mis­sion of GRAIL is to study the Moon’s inte­ri­or struc­ture and to learn more about its ther­mal evo­lu­tion.

GRAIL is also the first plan­e­tary mis­sion by NASA to car­ry instru­ments ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to edu­ca­tion and pub­lic out­reach. The “KAM” in “MoonKAM” stands for Knowl­edge Acquired by Mid­dle school stu­dents. The pro­gram, led by for­mer astro­naut Sal­ly Ride, will engage fifth- to eighth-graders from across the coun­try in select­ing tar­get areas on the lunar sur­face to pho­to­graph and study. Edu­ca­tors inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing can reg­is­ter at the MoonKAM web­site. To learn more about the video and GRAIL, see the NASA news release.

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