Challenging Popular Perceptions: Teen Science Cafés

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<p>
  In 2011, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) at Grade 8 in science found that only 65% of students performed at or above
  <em>
   basic
  </em>
  , which denotes just “partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade.
  <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CCEQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fnces.ed.gov%2Fnationsreportcard%2Fpdf%2Fmain2011%2F2012465.pdf&amp;ei=qXyBUN27EaTw0gG1r4HABw&amp;usg=AFQjCNGl9myXBx1uFkH1Mp_5jvqMYVQfEA">
<sup>
    1
   </sup>
</a>
  ” Interim Director of the National Science Teachers Association Gerry Wheeler stated that the scores were “simply unacceptable.
  <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/10/national-assessment-for-educational-progress-science-test_n_1504537.html">
<sup>
    2
   </sup>
</a>
  ”
 </p>
<p>
  While many factors contribute to performance observed in students, a particular factor is student perception of science as encouraged by popular culture.  Simply put, science education, as portrayed in popular media, is far from exciting.
 </p>
<p>
  Indeed, when Bella and Edward first converse in the movie adaptation of the initial Twilight installment, they’re in a biology class, and have been charged with the task of separating and labeling the phases of mitosis.  The teacher, in a valiant attempt to motivate the students to complete the arduous assignment, offers up a gag prize.  The class can be heard groaning and booing.  In the first draft of the script, Melissa Rosenberg writes about the students’ apathy and the teacher’s disappointment at their lackluster attitudes.  By the final cut, the tongue-in-cheek teacher seems resigned to the understanding that he won’t be able to maintain his students’ interest, and that, if anything, they just need to go through the motions.  Against this backdrop, the budding chemistry (no pun intended) between the two leads takes center stage.  You can almost
  <em>
   hear
  </em>
  Kristen Stewart’s character thinking, “This science stuff is
  <em>
   so boring
  </em>
  , but oh, man, is that vampire hot!”
 </p>
<p>
  Granted, teen romance is the center of the Twilight story, and biology class is most certainly not, but the fact remains that young people today are rarely presented with reasons to be excited and curious about science rather than apathetic and dismissive of it.  One need only look so far as the “scientist stereotype” to see how science, as a practice, is generally perceived.  Scientists are painted as eccentric, kooky, and generally too smart for their own good.
  <em>
   The Simpsons’
  </em>
  Professor Frink is a highly educated, bespectacled, buck-toothed man who, despite his many efforts, often only makes crises worse.  Doctor Emmett Brown, from the film
  <em>
   Back to the Future
  </em>
  , is another character that embodies the scientist stereotype perfectly.  While he is brilliant, he is also eccentric and irresponsible, having squandered his family’s fortune, made deals with crime lords, and invented a time machine that is responsible for the “almost” destruction of the entire universe as 1985 knows it.
 </p>
<p>
  Teens’ understanding of real scientists is also sorely lacking.  While most young people recognize the name of Albert Einstein, and perhaps even his most famous equation,
  <em>
   e=mc
   <sup>
    2
   </sup>
</em>
  , few understand what it means, and how integral it has been to our understanding of the universe.  Rather, when discussing Einstein, people often highlight his social ineptitudes and his “mad scientist” persona, exemplified by the famous photograph of him sticking out his tongue for the camera.
 </p>
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<p>
  So how do we resolve this issue?  How can we encourage a reimagining of how science is perceived and understood by teens such that they are inspired rather than discouraged?  Of course, we must strive, as professionals, to make the classroom a productive space, and to ensure that students are getting the most out of that precious little time they spend on applied science learning.  But beyond that, we need to make science an
  <em>
   accessible discipline
  </em>
  .  Rather than presenting science as a set of mundane tasks to be completed, we should show science as it truly is: a many-faceted, dynamic, evolving area of human endeavor.
 </p>
<p>
  In California, Art and Alfia Wallace have started the
  <a href="http://www.marinscienceseminar.com/index.html">
   Marin Science Seminar
  </a>
  , targeting students in the San Rafael school district and using the Science Café model to help answer students’ questions about science and the people who practice it.
 </p>
<p>
  In New Mexico, Project Director Michelle Hall is using the Science Café model to work with teens in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Española/Pojoaque, and Los Alamos.
  <a href="http://cafenm.org/">
   The program
  </a>
  is specifically intended for, and run by, high schoolers.  Young people in each of the four participating cities volunteer their time to help organize and hold events that keep the program exciting and relevant.
 </p>
<p>
  One of the salient benefits of these programs is that they provide participating teens the opportunity to experience scientific discourse not colored by stereotypes and character-driven facades.  Rather, teens are exposed to real science, real scientists, and are encouraged to explore how science truly relates to daily life.  Furthermore, Science Café attendees can also, if they so choose, take up leadership roles.  The potential positive outcomes of such participation are so great for young people that it’s a wonder more Science Café teen programs have yet to pop up in the network.
 </p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.sciencecafes.org">
   Sciencecafes.org
  </a>
  , produced by
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/">
   NOVA scienceNOW
  </a>
  and overseen by
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/nova/education">
   NOVA Education
  </a>
  , hosts a national network of more than 275 Science Cafés. In our capacity as Science Café organizers and supporters, we are often asked how an adult learning model such as that of the Science Café community can be translated to serve effectively for a different demographic set.  How complicated it must be, people think, to take something designed for adults and make it accessible to teens.  Truly though, it’s not quite so difficult as some might suppose.  One of the strengths of the Science Café model is that it is flexible, and can be molded to whatever parameters the organizer deems necessary for the café’s success.  Models such as the two series mentioned above are living proof of the potential power of that flexibility.
 </p>
<p>
  We want to do our part to encourage the creation and expansion of such programs.  If you have interest in starting a program for teens, or if you know of a program near you that could use the support of the Science Café network, or even if you want to share with us a success story having to do with a great café experience, please visit
  <a href="http://www.sciencecafes.org/">
   sciencecafes.org
  </a>
  , and contact us at
  <a href="mailto:getinvolved@wgbh.org">
   getinvolved@wgbh.org
  </a>
  .  We will be happy to provide you with as many resources as possible to help make your program a success.
 </p>
</section>

The Periodic Table of The Elements: A Real-Life Miracle of Science

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<p>
  In Cambridge, Massachusetts, right near the MIT campus, there’s a great little bar called “Miracle of Science.”  It’s as if someone took everything from my science-outreach-filled dreams and made it a reality.  Each delicious dish served up by the kitchen has a corresponding chemical symbol, and the menu looks, for the most part, like a periodic table.  The veggie burger, for instance, has the symbol “Vb,” and can be found in the second column, where, as it happens, the alkaline earth metals would be in a real periodic table.  I love this place.  It’s like concentrated nerdiness mixed with good food and drink, and in my life, there’s not much sweeter, particularly given that one of my main outreach projects is an informal education model known as the “
  <a href="http://www.sciencecafes.org/">
   Science Café
  </a>
  .”
 </p>
<p>
  While Miracle of Science uses clever themes to build its menu and décor, their periodic table, unfortunately, can’t hold a candle to the power and majesty of the real one.  The true, Mendeleev periodic table, in all its form and glory, teaches us an incredible amount about the world we live in.  It shows us not only that ours is a world comprised of constituent elements, that those elements fall into families, and that each member of a family shares characteristics with its relatives, but (and here’s the kicker), it also gives us clues as to
  <em>
   why
  </em>
  elements behave the way they do.  Learning to read the periodic table is like learning to read music.  It represents not just the individual chemical substances that make up our world, but the nature of the relationships between them.  If you know how the elements relate to each other, you can use them, like notes on a staff, to create what some might call harmony.
 </p>
<p>
  NOVA’s series,
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-elements.html">
<em>
    Hunting The Elements
   </em>
</a>
  (funded, in part, by the
  <a href="http://energy.gov/">
   Department of Energy
  </a>
  )
  <em>
   ,
  </em>
  is about understanding those harmonies and how they make up the chemical roots of our world.  Host David Pogue takes us on a journey where we investigate some of our most familiar substances, and learn how the theoretical basis of the periodic table can be applied to them.  We learn about gold, salt, plant fertilizer, and more.  Through it all, we stay close to Mendeleev’s chart, and learn how it serves as a guide to explain much about the daily processes we take for granted.
 </p>
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</section>

MAKING STUFF with a Community of Practice

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<p>
  For NOVA Education, the
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-more-stuff.html">
   second
   <i>
    MAKING STUFF
   </i>
</a>
  outreach project is, to say the least, ambitious. Not only did we set out to build a network over three times as big as the one built around the first
  <i>
   MAKING STUFF
  </i>
  which originally aired four episodes around different themes in materials science in early 2011, but we also decided to experiment, for the first time, with turning that network into a “community of practice.” The term, as defined by cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, refers to a group of people who share a craft or occupation, and deepen their understanding about that craft or occupation by sharing newfound knowledge and experiences with each other. Our community of practice was designed to build knowledge around the pedagogy of “making”—teaching and learning about engineering and design through hands-on experience, tinkering, creativity, and play.
 </p>
<p>
  All of this was undertaken based on the feedback from the first
  <i>
   MAKING STUFF
  </i>
  outreach initiative. Members of the original 20-site network from 2011 said that while they appreciated the experience of working with NOVA on outreach activities, there had been very little sense of a
  <i>
   national
  </i>
  initiative. Any knowledge gained through participation in the project was isolated to single sites. With the second
  <i>
   MAKING STUFF
  </i>
  , we strove to help sites learn together rather than separately.
 </p>
<p>
  Now, after months of preparation and a lot of effort from our small but decidedly determined team, our national network is a reality. Hosted on Google+,
  <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/118289609437384384583/communities/112806931944274213616">
   our community
  </a>
  currently boasts a membership of more than 100 people, with representatives from 70+ educational sites, as well as organizations like
  <a href="http://www.makered.org/">
   Maker Education
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="%25E2%2580%258E">
   Nerdy Derby
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="http://www.discovere.org/">
   DiscoverE
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="%25E2%2580%258E">
   Young Makers
  </a>
  , Pixar, and Google. As the network sites work to deliver NOVA’s outreach programming to their audiences, our community message boards are blossoming with posts, pictures, and videos, and the results are teaching us some     valuable lessons about Maker pedagogy and group learning.
 </p>
<p>
  The first thing that has become readily apparent is that although NOVA (with partners NYSCI) designed a hands-on, maker-based curriculum to be delivered as a standalone product, the spirit of making cannot be so contained. Members of our network, from almost the first moment it was in their hands, began to adapt the content for use based on their existing infrastructures and resources. Such modifications are not only novel and exciting, but they are also at the core of the “Maker” ideology. Deconstruction, experimentation, flexibility—all of these things provide a solid foundation not just for learning through making, but also for figuring out how to
  <i>
   guide other makers
  </i>
  .
  <i>
</i>
  This reality, a reality that sees educators succumbing to that “maker spirit,” is yielding better results than NOVA Education could have anticip
  
  

  
      


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</figure>

  

  
      
  ated.
 </p>
<p>
  We’re also realizing how valuable and effective the Community of Practice model is as a self-sustaining professional development (PD) mechanism for educators. Through Google+, our network members are able to communicate with each other and with NOVA Ed staff on a daily basis. Further, the community has access to leaders in the Maker education world, which NOVA provides by hosting and recording
  <a href="https://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/onair.html">
   Hangouts on Air
  </a>
  . NOVA provides the stimulus, and the community builds and supports itself. Rather than producing all the PD content, NOVA Ed staff have been able to simply stand back and watch the network members provide for themselves. In so doing, the PD is more diversely applicable, and more responsive to the needs of the educators. The kicker, though, is that it’s easier to provide and more sustainable than traditional methods. This fact has exciting implications for the future of professional development in STEM education, and has us looking at possibilities for communities of practice across WGBH’s STEM education projects.
 </p>
<p>
  Finally, with representatives from across a very diverse educational spectrum, our community has become one of the best places on the internet to see how learning through making can work in an extremely wide variety of educational settings. Whether it’s in a classroom setting where middle school students are given two hours to complete a project, or it’s as part of a science Olympiad drop-in, or a 20-minute activity with seniors in high school, our network is proving just how flexible learning through making has the capacity to be. The NOVA projects serve as the base from which many educational approaches can grow, and we’re happy to see the breadth of application that our content has inspired.
 </p>
<p>
  The MAKING STUFF outreach community has been a true labor of love, but the results are well worth the effort, as the lessons learned from the experience not only benefit NOVA, but benefit every site that has participated in the campaign, and hopefully, will help inspire future educators to take the plunge into teaching and learning through making. If you’re interested in “maker” education, why not get your feet wet by checking out this short
  <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?action_edit=1&amp;list=PLs4hKrS166YXuOFDQgZbWxwJlaJFH8MU0">
   Youtube playlist
  </a>
  ? It features NOVA Ed staff having conversations with some of the leaders in the Maker movement, and will give you a good perspective on this exciting area of STEM education.
 </p>
</section>

The Sun Lab (1994) vs. The Sun Lab (2012)

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<p>
  I honestly don’t remember too much from elementary school, and most of what I can recollect is ill-defined and hazy.  There is one experience, though, that I can recall with what seems, at least to me, to be impressive detail.
 </p>
<p>
  On a bright day in May of 1994, I was in the third grade, and my teacher, Mr. Nelson, had our class construct a few pinhole cameras.  We knew not, back then, what pinhole cameras were, but we knew about disposable cameras (
  <em>
   remember those?)
  </em>
  , and I can recall, for the first part of the lesson, feeling perplexed.  The shoeboxes, which served as camera bodies, were quite a bit bigger than Kodak cameras, and I just couldn’t understand why we would make something so big.  Still, dutifully, the students constructed five of these contraptions, then trooped outside onto the scorching blacktop.  As we gathered around Mr. Nelson, he said, with the excitement characteristic of so many elementary school teachers, “There’s going to be a solar eclipse today!”
 </p>
<p>
  It was there that for the first time, my classmates and I looked safely at the sun by peering through the viewfinders of our newly constructed cameras.  Of course, in our youthful ignorance, we’d tried before to look at the sun with our naked eyes.  I vaguely recall something about a double-dog-dare.  But we’d never been able to inspect the sun in such detail as we did that day.  That little piece of technology, a re-purposed shoebox, helped us to learn more about solar science and direct observation than we ever had before.
 </p>
<p>
  Some eighteen years later, technology has advanced in ways we couldn’t have imagined, and through the magic of the internet, students have access to a few more tools than they did all those years ago in California, circa 1994.  The new “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/sun/" target="_blank" title="Sun Lab">
   Sun Lab
  </a>
  ” from
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/" target="_blank" title="NOVA Labs">
   NOVA Labs
  </a>
  is such a tool.
 </p>
<p>
  For the Sun Lab’s “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/sun/1/1/" target="_blank" title="Boot Camp">
   Boot Camp
  </a>
  ”, NOVA has produced 3 media modules, with each module containing 3 short educational videos.  With topics like “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/sun/1/1/" target="_blank" title="Sun 101">
   Sun 101
  </a>
  ,” “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/sun/2/1/" target="_blank" title="Space Weather">
   Space Weather
  </a>
  ,” and “
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/sun/3/1/" target="_blank" title="Technology &amp; Discovery">
   Technology &amp; Discovery
  </a>
  ,” students can watch the videos to learn the basics of the sun, how we study it, and why our relationship with our home star is so important.  At the end of each video, students answer questions to check for understanding.
 </p>
<p>
  After gleaning the basics from the 9 short videos, students jump right into the online lab space, using the innovative platform to access the same tools and images that professional scientists use to conduct groundbreaking solar research.  Students learn about the solar cycle and our place in it, learn to predict future solar storms, and can even develop and conduct their own solar research project.
 </p>
<p>
  The lab includes an
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/educators/sun-lab-edu/" target="_blank" title="Educator Guide">
   Educator Guide
  </a>
  that can help you implement the programming in a variety of ways in your classroom.  The guide also outlines the ways in which the lab’s content has been designed to align with the Next Generation Science Standards.  You can find everything you need to make the Sun Lab a successful part of your classroom experience at the
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/" target="_blank" title="NOVA Labs">
   NOVA Labs page
  </a>
  .
 </p>
<p>
  The last thing that I remember hearing Mr. Nelson say that afternoon in 1994 was that another eclipse wouldn’t be visible from California until 2012.  At the time, the year 2012 seemed unbearably, impossibly far away.  I tried, for a few moments, to imagine the future, and probably had a far away look in my eyes.  I think Mr. Nelson must have seen it, because the next thing he said was, “Maybe some of you will become scientists, and you’ll study that eclipse just like you’re studying this one.”
 </p>
<p>
  I didn’t become a scientist exactly, but with the Sun Lab, I’m able to use modern technology to learn and be inspired in just the same way we used to use those shoebox pinhole cameras.  If you’re a teacher, check out the Sun Lab, show it to your students, and see if they can’t be inspired to envision a seemingly impossible future, made real by the relentless pursuit of knowledge, the advancement of technology, and also, I suppose, by the simple passage of time.
 </p>
</section>

A Firsthand Understanding of Our Energy Landscape

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<p>
  Right now, this moment, as I type, off the top of my head, I can count at least 7 devices in my cubicle that require electrical energy in order to function.  That’s not counting our office’s overhead lighting system, the heating, or any of the other building-wide stuff.  I’m just talking about things I can pick up.  My laptop, its external monitor, my phone, my
  <em>
   other
  </em>
  phone, the lamps that I use at night to keep my space bright and work-friendly, the coffeemaker that keeps
  <em>
   me
  </em>
  bright and work-friendly…every one of these things requires electricity, and I use each of them every day, for hours.  Often, I use energy without even thinking about it.  The bills are paid, and services keep coming, seemingly limitless in supply.
 </p>
<p>
  The truth, however, isn’t nearly so idyllic.  In the United States, we burn more than 100,000 tons of coal and nearly 800,000 barrels of oil every
  <em>
   hour
  </em>
  of every day in order to meet our energy needs.  Coal and oil are fossil fuels, and they are
  <em>
   anything
  </em>
  but limitless.  What’s more, their conversion into usable energy pollutes our environment and is a contributing factor of climate change.  Our energy needs only continue to rise as our society becomes more and more reliant on electrical devices, so one sometimes wonders why technologies like Sweden’s
  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillgrund_Wind_Farm">
   Lillgrund Wind Farm
  </a>
  or the
  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems">
   SEGS solar arrays
  </a>
  in California haven’t been leveraged effectively to solve our energy problems.
 </p>
<p>
  With NOVA’s
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/energy/">
   Energy Lab
  </a>
  , students learn just how complicated our energy crisis is despite the development of new tools.  Through a
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/energy/1/1/">
   series of video modules
  </a>
  , students hear just how energy is defined, and about how we convert energy from various sources into the kinds of power we need in our daily lives.  Students explore the promise of renewable energies like wind and solar, but they also learn about the challenges associated with using those renewables on a larger scale.
 </p>
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</figcaption>
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<p>
</p>
<p>
  Once students have wrapped their minds around the contexts of today’s energy landscape, they jump into the online lab space and learn firsthand how complex the battle for clean renewable energy is.
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/energy/1/1/">
   The Energy Lab’s Research Challenge
  </a>
  charges students with the task of building efficient new energy infrastructures for cities across the U.S.  Students use real scientific data gathered from the
  <a href="http://www.eia.gov/">
   U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
  </a>
  as well as the
  <a href="http://nrel.gov/">
   National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
  </a>
  to organize systems using renewable sources.  There’s added incentive in this lab, as students compete with others to see whose designs can, given cost constraints, produce the most power.
 </p>
<p>
  As with all NOVA Labs, the Energy Lab includes an
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/educators/energy-lab-edu/">
   Educator Guide
  </a>
  that can help you think of ways to use the Labs as a productive part of your classroom experience.  NOVA Education has also produced a
  <a href="http://wgbh1.adobeconnect.com/p4c070jb9s1/">
   webinar
  </a>
  to help walk teachers through the online resource.
 </p>
<p>
  All in all, the Energy Lab is a great opportunity for students to use tools provided by NOVA to learn through experience about the challenges of energy production and consumption.  Far from being a service taken for granted on a daily basis, NOVA’s Energy Lab helps put energy usage in the foreground for future professionals, a space in which it will need to remain if those future professionals are to solve our looming energy challenges.
 </p>
</section>

Understanding the Universe…one woman at a time

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<p>
  The Harvard Science Center is situated across Cambridge Street to the north of Harvard Yard. If you take the elevator to the 8th floor, go through an unmarked door on the left side, and follow the signs up a few flights of stairs, you’ll find yourself inside a room whose walls are vividly painted with astrological figures, and whose ceiling isn’t a ceiling at all, but rather a mechanical dome. This dome belongs to the
  <a href="http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~astrolab/claytelescope.html" target="_blank">
   Landon T. Clay telescope
  </a>
  .
 </p>
<p>
  Often, when I was in graduate school, my friends and I would gather on weekday evenings when we should have been studying, and instead we would spend a few hours gazing up at the sky. Many of my favorite memories of Harvard are of nights we spent at the Clay. The person who taught me to use the telescope was a girl named Sarah. It’s thanks to her, at least in part, that I spent so many fantastic hours there. It’s ironic then, that if Sarah and I had attended Harvard at a different time in history, she wouldn’t have even been allowed to operate the observatory’s instruments.
 </p>
<p>
  We are capable of measuring the distance to stellar bodies thanks to Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Astronomers today still use classification techniques developed by Annie Jump Cannon. Jocelyn Bell discovered the first quasar. Vera Rubin’s observations led to the theory, now widely accepted, of the existence of dark matter. It is undeniable that these women’s work has been instrumental in giving us a more complete understanding of the universe in which we exist. Unfortunately, it is also true that they’ve received an unsettling lack of recognition for their contributions. Leavitt and Cannon did much of their amazing work while serving as “computers,” women whose job it was to perform the arduous task of sorting, analyzing, and classifying stars seen through the telescopes at the Harvard College Observatory. For this work, they received about 25 cents an hour, less than the Harvard secretarial staff at the time. When Rubin first hypothesized the existence of dark matter, she was largely ignored. And when the Nobel Prize was given out for Jocelyn Bell’s quasar discovery, the award actually went to her male thesis advisor.
 </p>
<p>
  Today, of course, women in sciences enjoy more opportunities and credit for their work, but sadly, peek in on many science buildings across the country, and you’ll find far more men than women populating the classrooms and laboratories.  Further, the NSF has found, through its research into the professional science and engineering sector, that a
  <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c3/c3s4.htm#s1">
   pronounced gender gap still exists
  </a>
  .
 </p>
<p>
  Recognizing this gender gap, many scientists and professional organizations have increasingly been working to support and build community for women in their ranks. One such organization is the American Physical Society, which supports the
  <a href="http://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/cuwip.cfm" target="_blank">
   Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics
  </a>
  (CUWiP). The annual event includes 6 member institutions (
  <a href="http://www.cuwp.caltech.edu/index.html" target="_blank">
   Caltech
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="http://cuwip.mines.edu/index.shtml" target="_blank">
   Colorado School of Mines
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="http://www.ncuwp.org/" target="_blank">
   Cornell
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="http://physics.cos.ucf.edu/scuwp/" target="_blank">
   U. of Central Florida
  </a>
  ,
  <a href="https://publish.illinois.edu/cuwip2013/" target="_blank">
   UI Urbana-Champaign
  </a>
  , and
  <a href="http://www.ph.utexas.edu/conferences/scuwip2013/" target="_blank">
   UT Austin
  </a>
  ) representing various regions of the country. Students are invited to attend, and sponsors pay for attendees’ room and board during the weekend of the event. Those in attendance (mostly female undergrads) get to experience a professional conference firsthand, and are introduced to women of stature in the physics community. The generalization that “science and math are for boys” while “language arts and humanities are for girls” is not in evidence at these conferences. Students leave with a renewed spirit and confidence, knowing that they’re capable of achieving great things in their chosen field, despite what the stereotypes might suggest. With any luck, one, or perhaps several of those students will follow in the footsteps of a Leavitt, a Cannon, a Rubin, or a Bell, and our society will once again have a woman to thank for helping us to understand just that much more about science.
 </p>
</section>

Keep Calm and Doodle On

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<div class="add-container clearfix" id="add-block-placer">
</div>
<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-f268cb95-3fc8-aa78-aeba-ae07b2d34bf6">
  To a teacher, seeing a student hunched over her notebook furiously writing is generally thought of as a good sign. Upon closer inspection, however, a teacher sometimes discovers that instead of writing down notes, the student’s notebook is filled with small drawings. The content of these creations varies, but generally, this kind of drawing is known as “doodling.” For a long time, doodling has been thought, at best, to be an idle and mindless activity. At worst, it has been seen as a significant distraction from the real work of learning. Interestingly, recent research has revealed that doodling may actually
  <em>
   help
  </em>
  the brain to process certain kinds of information. Furthermore, it is possible that encouraging students to doodle may actually increase their engagement and interest in educational subject matter.
 </p>
<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-f268cb95-3fc8-e05e-f67e-c3b69821a8c2">
  In a 2009 study,
  <a href="http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/jandrade">
   Jackie Andrade
  </a>
  , a psychology professor at the University of Plymouth in England, designed
  <a href="http://pignottia.faculty.mjc.edu/math134/homework/doodlingCaseStudy.pdf">
   a psychological experiment
  </a>
  to determine whether doodling actually benefits attention and memory. In the study, an experimental group was instructed to make marks on paper while listening for information in a “mundane” phone message. The control group listened to the same message without doodling. The group instructed to doodle remembered 29% more information than did the control group. While the study is far from conclusive, its potential implications could explain a lot about why doodling has been so pervasive in generation after generation of school children, and how the practice might actually be useful in educational settings.
 </p>
<p dir="ltr">
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/6009763204_d71afe90a9_b-600x800.width-990_wOfUdPy.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A doodle by Brock University professor Giulia Forsythe explaining how doodling helps with learning. Courtesy of Giulia Forsythe.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
</p>
<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-f268cb95-3fc9-0144-56f3-9c4999c176b1">
  Some research suggests that doodling is particularly helpful in science classes. In 2011, educational researchers from three Australian universities — Shaaron Ainsworth of the University of Nottingham, Vaughan Prain of La Trobe, and  Russell Tytler of Deakin University — conducted
  <a href="http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/MTRJ/HTRT/Drawing_Science%202011.pdf">
   a joint study
  </a>
  to test Andrande’s 2009
  <a href="http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/MTRJ/HTRT/Drawing_Science%202011.pdf">
</a>
  results. The three researchers decided to test the theory in a science class, science being a subject that relies on images, graphs, and visual aids to explain concepts. They encouraged students to draw what they learned during lecture, and while doing assigned readings. Students who drew not only retained more information, but they also reported more enjoyment and engagement with the course material.
 </p>
<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-f268cb95-3fc9-34ba-15d7-af5c3eef66b9">
  In the face of mounting evidence that doodling is much more than just an idle activity, a few notable individuals are looking to bring the practice into the professional mainstream. Sunni Brown, named one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” and one of the “10 Most Creative People on Twitter” by Fast Company, is the leader of
  <a href="http://sunnibrown.com/doodlerevolution/">
   “The Doodle Revolution”
  </a>
  the purpose of which is to “disrupt social norms about visual language and visual thinking, [and] educate people around the world about [doodling’s] power and potential.” Brown is an ardent champion of the practice of doodling, saying in her TED Talk, “the doodle has never been the nemesis of intellectual thought. In reality, it is one of its greatest allies.” Sunni Brown’s design consultancy, Sunni Brown Ink, has worked with high-profile clients like Linkedin, Zappos, and Dell, amongst others to improve organization and planning by using doodles.
 </p>
<div class="flex-video">
<div class="flex-video">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7fx0QcHyrFk?feature=oembed" width="780">
</iframe>
</div>
</div>
<div class="inline-caption">
  Sunni Brown's TED talk from March, 2011.
 </div>
<p dir="ltr">
  It is worth noting that not all the research done on doodling suggests a positive effect. In 2012,
  <a href="http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/ubcujp/article/view/2526/182427">
   Elaine Chan
  </a>
  of the University of British Columbia found that for visual recall, doodling seemed to have a negative effect. Chan suggested a variety of plausible reasons for this result, the most likely being that “the main visual recall task required visual processing by the brain, [as did the doodling task, and so] performance on the recall of images was impaired [due to the split in attention].”
 </p>
<p dir="ltr">
  Certainly, we are just beginning to explore the connection between doodling and learning, and there is far more research to be done on the potential value of “meaningless marks.” That being said, the implications of these first few studies really are fascinating in that they imply incredible potential for the use of doodling as a way to help learners to process and retain certain kinds of information. Doodling should not be flatly discouraged, but rather, looked upon as one potential avenue for real growth as educators deduce the best methods for helping students to learn the vital skills that will help them succeed in the future.
 </p>
<p>
<em>
<font size="2">
    Cover photo by Vincent Mace. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
   </font>
</em>
</p>
</section>

Recent psychological research has found that doodling in class could actually benefit students' attention, memory, and learning.

Scott Asakawa

Articles