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Scientific Method and Super Mario

The scientific method doesn't exactly whip students into an excited frenzy. However, it's the basis for modern science and it's what differentiates science from pseudoscience. That being said, students more likely than not use the process all the time outside of school without even realizing.

After having students design an experiment to test which brand of toilet paper is the strongest when wet and going over the basics of the scientific method (view the presentation here), I show them this video and ask them to watch for the player's use of the scientific method:

I know that may be copyrighted content1, but it's a great example of the scientific method.

Define a problem: The player wants to get beyond this level to eventually save the lovely Princess Toadstool. This big baby stands in the way. The research question here is pretty obvious: "How can I defeat the baby dino-plant?"

Observation: The player brings knowledge of the game so far into the duel with this large dino-plant boss. For example, the player knows Mario's spin move often hurts the bad guys. Also that shooting bad guys with "stars" and jumping on top of bad guys often hurts them. The player also is observing the dino-plant boss for signs of how to beat it as well as for watching out for how it will try to attack Mario.

Hypothesis & Experiment: The player comes up with multiple hypotheses. Notice the spin move attack and the firing of  "stars" at the boss. Hypothesis: A spin move will hurt the boss. Experiment: Try out a spin move against the boss.

Analyze & Conclude: Did the spin move work? No, it didn't.

ReHypothesize & ReExperiment: The player tries out several hypotheses before hitting on one that showed results. Even then the situations keeps changing so the player has to continually make observations and hypotheses.

This probably isn't the most elegant method for introducing the scientific method, but it does seem to grab their attention2. I think it also helps students realize the scientific method isn't just an Ivory Tower scientific exercise.

It is practical. They've used it.

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  1. Dear Nintendo, Inc.: I'm essentially advertising your game as being science-y and fun. Thanks for not suing me.     [↩]
  2. Pretty amazing to think that Mario is much older than they are. He's nearing his 29th birthday (Donkey Kong was released in 1981). My students are turning 14 (most are born in 1995 or so).     [↩]
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My podcast list

Podcasts are amazing. I listen to them when I do the dishes, when I'm driving by myself in the car, when I'm going for a run, and pretty much any time when I'm doing mindless work. I've come to rely on podcasts quite a bit for my entertainment/learning/information. I've found that since I've started using podcasts (as opposed to simply listening to the radio) I'm consuming more far more information than I ever did previously.

I often find so much valuable (or at least interesting) information through listening to my podcasts, allow me share my current subscriptions. I recommend all of them. If you have a favorite podcast that isn't on my list, feel free to throw it in the comments. I'm all for more quality shows.

Education

  • Bit by Bit (SEEDlings): Bob Sprankle, Alice Barr, and Cheryl Oaks (all from Maine) meet weekly, generally with a different special guest each episode, to discuss education and education technology. Usually includes good discussion of educational uses of technology and they share lots of potential tools to use in the classroom. (~1 hr.; posts weekly)
  • EdTech Posse: Rob Wall, Rick Schwier, Heather Ross, Alec Couros, and Dean Shareski get together to discuss "learning, education, teaching and technology." I've only caught one episode so far, but I really enjoyed it. The hosts of the show are all involved in teacher education, which brings a different perspective to the discussion. Perhaps it's a little more academic, but it's not presented in a way that was off-putting or ivory tower-ish. (~1 hr.; posts now and then)
  • Moving at the Speed of Creativity: Wes Fryer creates this podcast, which frequently features recorded sessions from education conferences around the world. Sometimes the sessions aren't of great interest to me and I skip them, but I've heard many very interesting and thought provoking presentations through this podcast. (time varies, usu. < 1 hr.; posts at least once/week)
  • The Practical Principals: This currently sits as my favorite education-related podcast- which is odd since it's aimed more towards the principal crowd than the teachers. Scott Elias and Melinda Miller star as the Practical Principals relaying advice and tools to maintain your sanity. They're personable, funny, and extremely knowledgeable. It's a must suscribe. (~1 hr.; posts monthly-ish)
  • Always On: I actually haven't listened to an episode of this podcast; though it comes highly recommended from Scott Elias (of the Practical Principals). The most recent episode is on my iPod but I just recently subscribed and haven't gotten to it yet.

Science

  • 60-Second Science: A quick bite of recent news in science. (60 seconds; posts weekdays)
  • 60-Second Earth: Same idea as 60-Second Science, but with a focus on Earth Science. (60 seconds; posts weekly)
  • Bytesize Science: Put out by the American Chemical Society, this podcast is a fairly recent addition for me. Each episode focuses on one topic; going over scientific information in a way suitable for middle and high school students. I haven't used this in my class yet, but it would be appropriate for such use. (~5 min.; posts every couple weeks)
  • Krulwich on Science: Long-time science correspondent Robert Krulwich explains recent scientific discoveries and science and current events in an accessible and interesting way. I found this podcast through my exposure to RadioLab, which Robert Krulwich co-hosts (see below). (5-8 min.; posts weekly)
  • NOVA | PBS: The podcast for the PBS television show. Includes interviews and information that relates to the topic of the TV (though you don't need to watch the show to enjoy the podcast). (~10 min.; posts weekly)
  • Quirks & Quarks: A CBC-radio show where the host (Bob McDonald) interviews guests about current events in science. You can subscribe the show split into its segments or all together. I personally like the segments, but the option is nice too. (1 hr.; posts weekly)
  • RadioLab: Favorite. show. evar. Each show focuses on one idea (i.e. morality, sleep, stress) and investigates it from a variety of angles. Amazingly well produced, interesting, and easy to understand. Hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have great rapport and make the show auditorially stimulating. It's so good I have every RadioLab show permanently saved to my .mp3 player. All other podcasts get deleted after one listen. Download them all. You won't be sorry. (1 hr., weekly during the season)
  • Science Friday: Ira Flatow hosts this call-in current events in science show every Friday afternoon. I love the show but never can stick out 2 hours in front of a radio. The podcasts downloads each segment individually. I enjoy getting it broken down into smaller parts so I don't feel like I have to sit down for 2 hours to listen to the show in its entirety. The show also has it's own twitter profile: @scifri (2 hrs.; posts weekly)
  • Science Talk (SciAm): Host Steve Mirsky discusses recent events in science, often through interviewing scientists or recording presentations. (1 hr.; posts weekly)

Other

  • Baseball History Podcast: A homey yet well done podcast that showcases the biography of one player each week. Includes Hall of Famers, Negro Leaguers, and some other lesser known players. It's an entertaining and informative rundown of that players career. Excellent for me since I like baseball, yet my baseball knowledge pre-1988 is pretty limited. (~7 to 15 min.; posts weekly)
  • Car Talk: The NPR Saturday morning call-in radio show. It's funny, entertaining, and informative. If I'm behind in my podcasts I'll skip this one, but that's only happened once or twice in the last six months. (1 hr.; posts weekly)
  • Planet Money: I believe Clay Burell pointed me towards Planet Money back in September or October when the financial crisis really started to gather steam. The hosts of Planet Money make it their goal to explain the complex happenings of the financial world in simple and entertaining ways. I definitely understand the financial crisis waaaay better than I ever would've without this podcast. (~20 min.; posts Mon-Wed-Fri)
  • Sports with Frank Deford: The popular sports writer pontificates on various subjects of sport. Quick and interesting. Frank Deford has the honor of being one of the very few "famous" people I've actually met. He was giving a talk at my college and came into one of my classes to answer some questions. (~5 min.; posts weekly).
  • This American Life: An award-winning radio show which brings different stories around a single topic each week. Generally very interesting and well produced. It's one of the podcasts I look forward to listening to the most each week. (1 hr.; posts weekly)

If you have a podcast you look forward to every time you turn on your iPod, please let me know what it is, even if it doesn't fall in the science or education categories.

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Wikimedia Commons and scientific progress

I've heard of people using the revision histories of Wikipedia articles to study how thoughts and ideas about a topic have changed over time. However, for practical use in a high school science class featuring underclassmen, this has always seemed like it would be pretty labor intensive and wouldn't have the best time to learning ratio compared to other activities. 

A better, quicker, more basic activity:

  1. Find a graphic on Wikimedia Commons that illustrates concepts undergoing new discoveries and/or refinements (i.e. Trans-Neptunian Objects)
  2. Scroll through the graphics in chronological order.
  3. Observe how our knowledge on the subject has changed over time.
I've done this for you here:
This isn't perfect. The graphics more than likely aren't updated in perfect sync with the discoveries (thus throwing off the timeline), but as a quick and easy overview of recent discoveries, it works. 
Admittedly, finding graphics that this type of analysis will work for may be difficult. As an alternative, observing the changing graphics in Wikipedia articles themselves may also be a good method for showing how scientific ideas have changed over time. Imagine in several years' time students going back to the Wikipedia entry for Global warming and comparing the graphics projecting future effects of climate change on global temperatures to their current models in a study of how climate models have changed over time.
Any other ideas on how this or similar ideas might be used?
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Artifacts #2- Chemical reaction primer

Part 2 of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series. Part 1 describes what an artifact of learning is and why I use them.

I'm not someone who really enjoys being the center of attention. I don't enjoy talking for longer than 5-10 minutes a time during class and yet I found myself being the center of attention talking much more than I would've liked during my classes. I had had enough. The dissonance between how I operate best and how I was actually operating led to the following project.

The idea

Students go through the unit on chemical reactions creating a different artifact for each of the three sections in the unit. The artifact must clearly communicate their understanding of the required content. They were free to choose whichever format they felt most comfortable using- most students gravitated towards a wiki-page, PowerPoint presentations, or some form of a newspaper/textbook document.

Documents given to students on day 1 of the project:

Support

I decided early in the planning phases that I would avoid the perhaps more typical model of teaching the material traditionally (notes, lecture, review, etc.) up front, then having students work on a project as the assessment. I wanted the learning process to be wrapped up in the process of creation. However, I needed to support the students' learning. I couldn't just give them the rubric and tell them to get busy- they needed (and desired) some support. I decided to implement two support structures in order to help students while still keeping much of the onus of content learning on them.

Quick & Dirty Overviews. I did a brief (10 minutes max.) explanation of the required content broken down into three sections based upon how I broke down the content in the rubric. In addition to this, on the wiki-page for the project, I embedded an old presentation that I had used several years ago as notes for this section. I explicitly told students that these overviews covered only the bare-bones basics. It was their job to flesh these ideas out, provide examples, images, diagrams, and really show that they've mastered these ideas. These overviews served as a safety blanket for many students. The artifact was big and scary, and the overviews were just a touch of that style of teaching they'd grown used to over their schooling career.

Collaborative Groups. I placed students randomly into groups of three. At the conclusion of each day they worked on their artifacts, they met in their collaborative groups. Their requirements in the groups were to: (1) show each other what they have done of their artifacts so far, (2) help each other find resources for information/images/video, (3) check that everyone is citing their sources appropriately, (4) check that each others' information is correct.

Students were somewhat resistant to meeting in their collaborative groups. They wanted to keep working on their own artifacts, not waste time seeing what other people are doing. Students didn't do a great job of sharing useful links with each other and the thought of (in the future) getting students to use common tags in delicious or diigo crossed my mind. However, I'm unsure whether the time required to get students up to speed on social bookmarking would be worth the possible benefits. What was a major success was simply getting students to see what each other are doing. Getting to see how other people used images, organized their information, cited their sources, and so on seemed to be very helpful to many students.

Labs

It'd just be wrong to not have a couple labs when learning about chemical reactions. This section included two labs.

Exothermic and Endothermic Reactions. Students create two chemical reactions; one exothermic (adding yeast to hydrogen peroxide) and one endothermic (dissolving ammonium nitrate into water- it's not really a chemical reaction but it does get very cold).

Types of Chemical Reactions. Five reactions that demonstrate the five basic types of chemical reactions. Clicking the following links takes to you photos taken of the reactions as students performed them:

In the end

Students will upload their completed artifacts to the class wiki for all to see. At the time of this writing, students have completed their artifacts, but the upload process will happen this Monday (12/8). When they're all up I'll be sure to share.

My goal is to begin using the class wiki somewhat like a portfolio for student work. Each student will have a page on which they post their artifacts and other assignments completed throughout the year. I'm starting a little late on this for the current semester, but I hope to improve the practice in the future.

Resources

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Part of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series of posts:

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Image Sources:

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Welcome to my wiki

My last school required that all teachers have web pages in order to (at minimum) communicate the daily schedule to students and parents. I used it for my schedule, but also as a jump-off for online assignments.

My new school does not require all teachers to have web pages. Yet I enjoyed the benefits of having an online space for my class. I just had to have some online space for this year too. After a bit a research into what was and wasn't blocked by the school filter, what sites other educators have used, what features various services offer, etc., I settled on using Wikispaces for my new class website.

I began using my class wiki for the same things as my old static website: weekly agendas and a jump-off for online assignments.  Since then I've slowly been increasing the level of involvement my students have with the wiki.

I'll go into specifics about how students are using the wiki in later posts. For now, I want to focus on a few observations and issues that have come up.

The good

  • Messaging

    • Students realized quickly they could send messages to each other (and to me) through their Wikispaces accounts. Students send me messages asking for clarification. Students send each other messages asking for help or information.

  • Creating & Publishing

    • I've only had one assignment that required students to create a wiki page (details in a future post), but we like that it's being published for everyone in the world to see. They like they can work on it directly from any computer in the world (though usually just the computer at their house).

  • Saving

    • The scourge of digital assignments: lost files. My freshmen have next to zero experience saving files to a network drive. I can't tell you how many times students have saved a file to a computer's hard drive instead of their network drive, thus losing access to the file as soon as they log off that machine. The wiki creates a record of the page after each save. If somehow the contents of the entire page gets deleted (which has happened- thrice) they can simply revert back to the last version.

  • RSS

    • I was a little nervous letting my students loose on the wiki. I really didn't think anyone would do something inappropriate, but I still worried. Luckily, Wikispaces (and many other wiki sites) create RSS feeds for page edits and discussion postings- both for individual pages and for the entire space. I subscribe to the feeds for all page edits and all discussion postings. It's an easy way for me to keep track of what's happening on the wiki. I don't want to be a wiki-dictator (wikitator?), but I want to be able to catch anything inappropriate before half the world sees it.

The not so good

  • Messaging

    • There's definitely plenty of personal messaging going back and forth in addition to the academic-related messages. I don't have a problem with this- if it's done in moderation. For 95% of my students it's not a problem. 5% would message people all hour if I didn't get after them for it.

  • What's the point?

    • Roughly paraphrased, the student asked why we couldn't just do this on paper- wouldn't it be way faster? Sheesh. I wasn't ready for that one. I figured the relevance of publishing content online for parents, peers, and the world to see would clear that up. I figured the increasingly digital world we live in would make the point obvious. Obviously I didn't explain what wikis are or why we're using this particular tool very well. In classes with students who have very little computer experience (I had to show some students how to use Google), this stuff isn't obvious. They don't know what a wiki is, what it does, or why they would ever want to use one.

  • Quirkiness

    • Let's face it: Editing a wiki- even one that has a visual editor like Wikispaces- isn't always inuitive and striaght forward. There are certain quirks to it that take time to adjust to. It's trickier and less flexible than editing a Word document. Students who aren't tech savvy can quickly get frustrated with these quirks. I'm constantly finding myself saying, "Just be patient, everyone is running into similar issues, I promise it'll get easier the more experienced you become." These first few uses can be a bit trying.

Exemplars, tips, suggestions?

I'm coming to the realization that I really don't have good examples of wiki usage in a science classroom. I've done my research checking out several classroom wikis, yet I can't recall finding a single high school-ish science class' wiki. Anyone know of any?

I'm feeling a little frustrated that my curriculum doesn't seem to mesh extremely well with the use of a wiki. I could make the wiki a more prominent part of assignments and projects, but I'm wary of forcing the wiki into situations it really doesn't belong. However, I can't help but feel my lack of experience using a wiki in a science classroom and of exemplar science class wikis means that I'm missing some really powerful and obvious things that would mesh perfectly. I'm hoping when I revamp the curriculum next year to facilitate more project-based assessments these uses may spring up and smack me in the face like a garden rake.

Any tips, suggestions, or examples would be greatly appreciated. 😉

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Calming periodic fears

It's really not that scary, especially at the level high school freshmen need to know it. The periodic table, however, is something almost inherently deemed as incomprehensible by incoming students. To them it's something to be feared not something to be understood. After some ineffective periodic table teaching for a few years I realized I needed a better approach.

Sometimes you just get lucky

Students really didn't understand what an element's atomic number and atomic mass meant, nor how they could find the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons simply by looking at the periodic table. Our school had just gotten a couple laptop carts, and I figured I would try to create a little assignment utilizing websites that took students through the concepts of atomic number, atomic mass, reading a periodic table, ions, and more. What I created was this sheet. It is one of the very few online assignments I've ever created which hasn't needed major overhauls in order to be as effective as I'd like. I've never had a computer-based assignment be as instantly successful as this.This year was the fourth year I've used this. I look forward to it every year- it's a great "aha!" day. 😉

How I do it

I'm constantly walking around while they're filling this out. Whenever I see mistakes I ask students how they came to that number. It's a battle to fend off misconceptions from forming. I never give answers, I simply ask them to explain how they got their answer and ask them to verify their process against what they've looked up previously. This generally heads off 98% of errors students make.

The Sheet

  • Atomic Information Assignment (WORD) (PDF)
  • BONUS! A worksheet I drop a day or two (or more) after doing the initial sheet. It gives me a good idea how well they're picking it up.

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Scream by marysia
Periodic Table image from Wikipedia

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Ready for day 1

Despite the problems I've been having lately with my new position, I feel (mostly) ready to go for day one. As part of my continuing crusade against my previously poorly designed presentations and handouts, I decided to peruse what my blogosphere (the one in my aggregator) had to say about the matter. I found plenty of great stuff, which is nearly inevitable given the quality of educators out there sharing. Here's my plan:

Getting to know you

I've always felt teachers often spend too much time explaining who they are, or what the course is, or what the rules are right away on the first day. I knew my first day plans would focus first on who my students are, then work my way into expectations and procedures.

I vaguely recalled an old post on dy/dan where a beginning of the year "get to know you" activity was shared that struck me as not being stupid.¹  It took me awhile to re-find it (luckily Google Reader had a pretty good search), but upon finding it I knew I had something. I had to track back to his original post from 8 months earlier in which he posted the original blank document.

Here's my version of the document:

Silly Bus

I really dread going over the syllabus every year. It's boring. It's so not a good indicator of what the course is about. But, we're required to have them, so lucky for me, in the same post where Dan introduced the above activity, he shared his more interesting syllabus. It required student participation, it looked good, and as Dan mentions, is different from the 47² other syllabi they've received that same day. At minimum, I figure a different syllabus will earn a couple cool points with students on the first day of school.

Here's my effort (blank):

And then...

I believe my fellow teachers generally go right into lab safety³, so I figure I'd better follow their lead at this point, since I'm still the relatively ignorant rookie. Instead of just reading each of the rules and making students sign their safety contracts, I figure I'll split them into pairs/threes and have each group design and create a safety poster explaining a rule of the lab. Then each group can come up, explain their poster and the importance of their rule, and we're not all bored to death.

Good reading

A few (other) good reads regarding the first day(s) of school I've found:

  • FirstDay Wiki
    • created by the aforementioned Dan Meyer, it has several good ideas for opening day, and you can add your own if you'd like.
  • An Open Letter to Teachers
    • from Bud the Teacher, a motivational post on getting ready for the new year. Read it.
  • What's matter?
    • Doyle does such a great job of verbalizing (textualizing perhaps) science as a process. Science as not a set of memorize-able facts. This post on something he's done the first day of school regarding how matter isn't all we typically think it is makes me want to use his idea, but I'm not sure I could carry it out in the expert way he's described.
  • Do it the right way, not the Wong way
    • Tom in his typically cynical tone nails problems with the "classic" book The First Days of School by Harry Wong. This post in itself probably contains more valuable information for new teachers than the entire book.

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¹ I guess I'm not a big ice-breaker fan. Perhaps it comes from my somewhat introverted nature. I've always hated ice-breakers.

² 47 may be a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

³ Communication between everyone teaching my classes has been pretty slim, so this is based upon my best guesses.

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Awesome Video of the Week, Vol. 1

In addition to my interesting finds series, I'm starting this series which will include a video of something I found compelling, awesome, or interesting each week. They may be videos that are educationally useful or they may just be too awesome to not share with the world.

This first video's narration is in Japanese, and I don't know what's being said, but it still fits into both of those categories: educational and awesome (crazy awesome): The Goblin Shark

Besides the immediate (for me) connection between the Goblin Shark and the alien from the Alien movie series, this video can lead to some interesting discussions in a science classroom. Why did this species of shark evolve its special jaw mechanism? What type of terrain/environment/other factors led this crazy jaw mutation to be selected over the more standard type of shark jaw?

Taken further, this could lead into students "designing" their own crazy creatures, with the caveat that whatever crazy appendages or features their creatures have must be defended with an explanation of how these specific mutations would provide the creatures with evolutionary advantages over other animals competing for resources in the same ecosystem. You might even be able to work this type of assignment into using this game, but I haven't worked out the specifics of that quite yet.

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Interesting Finds, Vol. 1

I'm going to attempt to post interesting bits I've found recently, both as a way to share with the community things I've found, and as a way to reflect upon items I've found. I won't go as far to guarantee I'll do this weekly (I'd like to), but whenever I get together 5-10 interesting items, I'll be sure to throw them out there. Let me know what you think!

1. Practical Theory: Teaching and Shortcuts

  • Chris Lehmann, inspired by Dan Meyer's 8th episode of his dy/av series, asks that if "Herculean" effort is needed for teachers to be truly effective and great- are there things new teachers can do to help prevent burn-out and reduce the high attrition rate common among new teachers? The comments also contain some good ideas on how to keep good, hard working teachers in the profession. As a teacher that was hired one week before his first teaching job to teach brand new classes with no set curriculum, the humongous work load on new teachers strikes a chord with me, as does the problem of teachers who take too many "shortcuts."
    • Penelope of Where's the Teacher? adds to this thread as well as part of her critique of Hollywood teacher movies. Check it out.

2. The entire dy/av series

  • Dan Meyer decided to create a summer series of short videos on planning, working, management, and more. The series is probably more effective than 95% of new teacher orientation programs (in my opinion). Each week I've looked forward to the next episode, and will miss it when it's gone. Follow this link to the 10th and final episode, which includes links to the other 9.

3. Google Reader Preview Extension for Firefox

  • In Will Richardson's post on the new improved delicious, he quickly notes he's been using this preview extension for Google Reader which allows you to view the actual webpage in the reader window by clicking on a preview button. Why is that cool? It's cool because it means you can read and leave comments directly through Google Reader. No more having 25 tabs of articles whose comments you want to read and where you want to leave comments. I've been looking for something to allow this functionability through GR for awhile!! NOTE: You do need to install the Greasemonkey User Script Add-on to install the GR Preview Extension.

4. Science Teacher: A blog

  • I've been keeping my eyes out for them for awhile, and have just now found my first good one. I've been interested in reading another science teacher who blogs primarily on the teaching of science (as opposed to just edu-tech stuff). Michael Doyle's blog Science Teacher does just that. I'm hoping to do a little more science specific blogging, and I'm grateful for the model that I've found. Thanks to Clay for pointing him out.

5. World War Z

  • Maybe this goes better on a summer reading list, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading Max Brooks' zombie novel, World War Z. It's written as a series of interviews with individuals from around the world recounting the days leading up to and during the "dark years," or their wars with "Zack." Besides being just a good read, it also has some very subtle (but existent) social commentary on consumerism and our service based economy. One of the more interesting parts was the description of job training courses occurring in the midst of the Zombie War. The teachers were all former illegal immigrants, because 80% of the legal population was in the service economy, and didn't actually know how to do anything. Definitely a good read, even if you're not into social commentaries.
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People I'd love to job shadow

I really enjoy teaching, but there are a few people that'd be able to convince me to take a hiatus from my current career track if they offered me a position. Here are three of them:

Richard Preston

Richard Preston is perhaps best known for writing articles on scientists and science in New Yorker magazine. He's well known for his article on people with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome- a genetic disorder that is perhaps most dramatically characterized by involuntary self-mutilation. In a recent Science Friday interview, he also discusses his brush with danger at a Level 4 biohazard facility, among other things. Dr. Preston, if you ever need a note-taker (or other technical support) during your research trips, I'm available.

Listen to the Science Friday episode here (.mp3 file)

Nathan Myhrvolds

Described on his TED Talk page as a "professional jack-of-all-trades," Nathan Myhrvolds has been the CTO of Microsoft, won a world championship for BBQ, discovered Tyrannasaurus Rex skeletons, and taken award winning photographs of wildlife. He's obviously a smart dude with skills, passion, and the money to fund them. Well, Mr. Myhrvolds, I love BBQ, enjoy wildlife, believe in the SETI program, and enjoy all manners of volcanoes. If you need a taste-tester, tripod holder, or alien hunter side-kick, I think I'm a good choice.

Nathan Myhrvolds' TED Talk does contain a couple PG-13 words, but those words do tend to be used quite accurately (Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip).

Robert Ballard

Yes, this is the Robert Ballard who re-discovered the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. However, that was hardly the only highlight in his career of exploring the depths of the ocean. In his TED Talk, he passionately petitions for a higher priority in exploring one of the largest unknowns in the universe: the depths of Earth's own oceans. Dr. Ballard, I think I could definitely help you out. First, you're interested in working with educating youth. Me too! Second, I have a degree in geology. Third, I already am a member of the Mystic Aquarium, which is a partner with the Institute for Exploration that you founded. I'll be living 25 minutes or so from Mystic, CT, and about 45 minutes away from the University of Rhode Island. Sounds like a natural fit, no?

Robert Ballard's TED Talk

Now, I don't really expect to hear from any of these guys¹, but I'd love to spend a summer following them around. I'm captivated not only by what they do, but their passion for it as well.

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¹ Except maybe you, Robert Ballard. C'mon! I'm right in the neighborhood! 🙂