To listen to Howe’s lecture click here: Download link

NSDL Core Integration Director Kaye Howe.

Saint Paul, Minnesota was the site of JA-SIG 2008 April 27-30, 2008. With the theme, “Higher Education Solutions: The Community Source Way” it’s no surprise that National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Core Integration Director Kaye Howe was on hand to deliver the closing keynote address entitled, “”Ubiquity, Interdependence, and the Age of Collaboration.” She noted that Prometheus discovered both the power and danger of knowledge when he stole fire from the gods for use by mere mortals. “There is no going back once you have stolen fire,” she said.

“Education is the great activity of the fallen world,” she said. “It is what we need to create a just society,” and yet, she pointed out, “We think of all the difficulties and all the ways we have to reinvent this wheel over and over again.”

Howe is no stranger to pointing out that the legacy of working together to create widely accessible opportunities for education has been one of conflict. These initiatives have at their core the conundrum of both striving for perfection while building on imperfect systems. She noted that the power of collaboration has at its roots a rich scholarly history and tradition with well-known relationships such as the public and private lives of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as examples of a stormy collaboration with a remarkably successful outcome.

She concluded by noting that “The imperfect is our paradise,” as Wallace Stevens suggests in “The Poems of Our Climate.”

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE
Wallace Stevens

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

On April 23, 2008 Cornell University’s 2005-2008 Networks Theme Project capped the three-year teaching and research initiative with a lecture by team members including David Easley (Economics), Jon Kleinberg (Computer Science), Kathleen O’Connor (JGSM), Michael Macy (Sociology), and Dan Huttenlocher (Computer Science & JGSM) entitled “Getting Connected: Social Science in the Age of Networks.”

David Easley introduced the idea of networks by comparing something as easy to understand as a map of the London Underground with station hubs and connecting train lines, to esoteric systems based on ideas and beliefs such as as the intertwined and often hard to detect connections among groups of people where a person is a node, and the edges between one individual and another are different types of relationships. Though the internet has made the study of the spread of networks that convey disease, rumor, and history easier because digital traces can now be tracked and measured, interpretation is still the key to making sense of their significance for people and policy-makers. As Michael Macy noted, “You can interview friends, but you cannot interview a friendship.”

The initiative itself was an interesting social network that encouraged collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. 280 students from 33 majors participated in two conferences: Search and Diffusion on Social Networks Workshop and the Cornell Microsoft International Symposium on Self-Organizing Online Communities, attended lectures, took part in reading groups and made over 600 blog posts in NSDL’s Expert Voices. Jon Kleinberg observed that undergraduate students were able to take part in “Building the science behind the world they inhabit.” Students studied situations like how a network of apartment roommates functions, and how social network theories applied to their own day-to-day experiences on line and in real life.

Fedora Day at OR08 began as 50 Fedora Commons t-shirts with two different slogans flew off a table outside a lecture hall at the University of Southampton, UK. Fedora users, organizers, developers, vendors, and planners were assembled as part of the Third International Open Repositories Conference to share ideas and discuss future plans for the Fedora Commons organization and software framework. Executive director Sandy Payette began her welcoming remarks and technical overview by asking the over 137 participants in an packed lecture hall to “tell us what you think in the Fedora Commons sloganfest”—in exchange for a t-shirt. The two Fedora Commons slogan candidates are “Connecting Digital Content to the Future,” (the explicit message) and “All Ways, Always” (the implicit message).

Payette delivered a quick overview of Fedora’s history and mission stressing that engaging the diverse and motivated user and developer communities has resulted in a strong core platform that is flexible and extensible with a wealth of community-created, related technical innovations. “The more people who participate, the stronger the software will be,” she said. She also emphasized Fedora Commons commitment to additional community-focused documentation that gets at a sense of what best practices are, and noted “Fedora Commons open source projects can be integrated together.”

New types of durable digital objects, solutions for data, enabling use and re-use, bridging web and enterprise solutions, and more open source integrations are all part of current ideas driven by use cases that include scholarly and scientific research and communication; data curation, linking, and publishing; preservation and archiving; knowledge spaces that include a variety of educational settings; and more.

In 2008 Fedora Commons Director of Community Strategies Thorny Staples will initiate “Community Solution Councils,” championed by community leaders. The Open Access Publication Solution Council will be led by Richard Cave, Public Library of Science; The Data Curation, Solution Council will be led by Sayeed Choudhury, the Preservation and Archiving Solution Council will be led by Ron Janz. An eResearch Solution Council is also planned.
Solution Councils will create a vision and requirements for each of these areas, moving towards community developed end-to-end solution bundles.

She offered a top-level summary of framework components:
Fedora Repository project
–the original Fedora Project
Fedora Middleware Project
–service integration and enterprise-orientation for repositories
Akubra Storage Project
–New storage plug-in architecture; transactional file system
Topaz Project
–Fedora Commons incubating; core componentn for semantic-enabled apps
Mulgara Triplestore Project
–Independent, Fedora supported developer; highly scalable triplestore.

She explained that Dan Davis, Fedora Commons Chief Architect, has launched “The Fedora Commons Technology Roadmap” to better meet the planning needs of community members. Payette described the “permanent draft document” as an evolving and changing view as the community gives feedback. The Fedora Commons roadmap is somewhat like the Eclipse model that includes an overview, themes, priorities, and release plans. The Fedora Commons Roadmap consists of an overview with drill-down to a table that includes the feature name, action (where it is in development), availability (when?) and notes. Please visit the Roadmap now on the web site at http://fedora-commons.org/resources/roadmap.php. and send comments.

A Q and A followed:

Q: What are thinking of in terms of sheer scale? We in Europe and looking at unestimated jumps in scale with data.”

SP: We need to understand what is the maximum vertical scale we can expect—what is max and what are pinch points—both Sun and FIZ Karlsruhe are working on this. Architectural strategies for how pedabyte storage exists behind Fedora—how it pokes into that data are significant. We need to further understand dimensions of scalability.

Q: I would like to know more about content models.

We want a basic set and then we would like to plug other validators in from the community. We want to show the richer ones.

The Southampton Bargate located in the midst of downtown shops, is part of the old town walls dating back to the Saxon era.

The Third Annual Open Repositories Conference (OR08) opened at the University of Southampton, UK, on April 1, 2008 with an observation by conference co-chair Les Carr. He suggested that the collective efforts of the 480+ delegates—repository managers, librarians, archivists, developers, project leaders and representatives from IT companies—who are working directly with worldwide research and information producers are creating a global web of knowledge.

Carr and his University of Southampton team have made all OR08 conference proceedings available in—what a surprise—a repository. You may browse and download presentations and posters here: http://pubs.or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/view/subjects/.

Peter Murray-Rust, a Reader in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow of Churchill College, gave the keynote address. He began his talk by asking how many of the assembled attendees worked in laboratories. A small number of hands went up. “We have a data drought,” He said. “Permission barriers caused 90% by people and only 10% by technology are preventing direct access to up-to-date scientific research findings.” Murray Rust suggested that the long tail of science, where most discovery takes place, has as its unit of allegiance membership in a small group working in laboratories.

“You can’t sit in a building with ivy growing up it and be removed from scientists in laboratories with their test tubes and small furry animals and call yourself a ’scientific repositorian,’” he said, ” Scientists don’t understand relational databases and hate metadata and keywords. They file everything on their desktops.”

He gave several examples of technologies and services that would help scientists in laboratories, and some that would not: “Scientists don’t want “notebooks.” Any deviation from common notation methods is too much work and they won’t use the tools.”
–RSS systems that email him “active molecules” harvested and updated by robots
–”Sticks” or incentives that compel scientists to contribute
–Text mining technologies that reclaim “lost” data from PDFs
–Involvment in scientific data collection workflow “upstream” closer to where data is created
–Pedabyte stores at universities so that there are facilities to hold scientific data at the source

NCore PI Dean Krafft after his presentation at OR08

Gardens in Southampton’s Central Park, and part of a mosaic found in the park.

Interoperability
Dean Krafft, NSDL NCore gave an overview of what was included in the NCore package of technologies and standards that allow for greater flexibility in collaborating and creating context around library resources. Krafft’s presentation was significant in scope and impact and provided attendees with multiple ideas for matching semantic content to this open source system that builds on the Fedora platform.

Sustainability
Sustainability affects what happens over time to virtually all aspects of the personnel and technology associated with ongoing repository operations possible. Stuart Haber began the Sustainability sessions at OR08 with a presentation entitled, “A Content Integrity Service for Digital Repositories.” He suggests that it is critical to be able to verify that a document, or piece of content is what it claims to be. His system creates a “witness” for each piece of a document—paragraph, sentence, speech, for example. The “witness” then computes a certificate of authenticity that is coupled and stored with the original document.
—
Mary Marlino spoke frankly from personal experience about what to do when the email arrives informing you that your funding will not continue. She explained her planning for sustainability and asked that people think openly about what happens when and if a funding agency might “pull the plug.” She introduced fundamentals about DLESE, The Digital Library for Earth System Education—one of the first big digital library projects in the U.S. DLESE preceded NSDL by 18 months and was a grassroots, community-led project with 13,500 digital educational resources organized into 41 thematic collections in the completed collection. As an organization DLESE was a focal point for community action in geoscience education and developed numerous best practices towards building education-based digital libraries. Innovative teacher services such as online Strand Maps based on AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy were also developed for DLESE’s large and distributed community of K12 teachers.

NSF gave the DLESE team a one-year time frame, with one year of limited development support to ensure that users could continue to have access to DLESE resources for the not-clearly-defined “forseeable future.” They launched an analytical process to define core library components, come up with cost estimates, and criteria for selecting new business models. They wanted to continue library operations and selected a model that would extend end-user services and retain access for their user base of 1+ million users through the DLESE.org web site. Host selection involved making sure that users would still have free access, and that the institution they chose would have some financial stability.

The artifact was sustained in partnership with several groups—NSDL, DLS, UCAR, and NCAR, but the sense of community and ownership was lost. Marlino reiterated that she did not know what would happen with to the DLESE community and their embedded sense of ownership in their digital library.
—
Les Carr presented, “End of Life Scenarios for the Repositories of Virtual Organizations.” In giving this talk he did not want to be known as the “man who burns repositories” as a result of this talk. His alternative title for the talk was “Or: who cleans up when the party ends?” Collecting and curating over time is what a persistent and permanent repository backed by policies and institutional commitment implies—it is not intended to be a fly-by-night dumping ground.

How old is old? How persistent is persistent? A review of venerable institutions like the University of Oxford, for example, shows that it was in existence in 1096, and may have been in existence even earlier. Seats of learning are by their nature institutions that can be counted on to last. Virtual libraries or repositories have only been around for the last decade or so, and often come into existence as a part of grant activities and without the benefit of clear institutional affiliation. Institutional repositories have long lifespans. Virtual repositories generally have shorter lifespans. Carr suggests that the “Squillions of Dollars” spent on international, highly collaborative multi-million dollar projects may equate to a longer repository lifespan. If the institution that backs the repository,however, disappears, contents are often tied up in administrative and resource allocation knots leaving information consumers without access.

Links and references
Presentations and posters from OR08
http://pubs.or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/view/subjects/
Flickr photos
http://flickr.com/search/?q=OR08&w=all

Friday at NSTA’s national conference in Boston, MA included two informative literacy sessions.

Scaffolding Inquiry: Research on Writing in Science

Dr. Rick Vanosdall, Director of the Center of Excellence for Learning Sciences at Tennessee State UniverVsity presented an overview of research results from his work with Dr. Mike Klentschy, the Superintendant of Schools of the En Centro School District in En Centro, California. During the seesion, Vanosdall described and provided examples of writing samples that have improved learning opportunities for all students and shared research on Scaffolded Guided Inquiry.

Scaffolded Guided Inquiry is an instructional technique that builds scaffolds, or supports, into a guided inquiry approach to learning. As described in a recent paper:

SGI has four phases: Setting the Stage for learning, Formulating Investigable Questions, Conducting the Investigation, and Making Meaning. In the first phase, Setting the Stage, the focus is on cognitive academic language development, including developing a consistent vocabulary for objects in the kit.

In the second stage, students are presented with an engaging scenario that is aligned to the concepts being addressed. Students use this scenario to write focus questions and predictions using the stem “I think…because…”. The inclusion of the “because” clause is essential in helping students link prior knowledge to the new scenario. Both focus questions and predictions, which are entirely student generated, are recorded in the science notebook.

The third stage involves planning and conducting the investigation. Again, students are responsible for planning and recording the procedural steps followed in their investigation. SGI makes use of the familiar narrative structure (first, next, last) to assist students in procedural writing. Students then conduct the investigation and record their data in an organizer of their own construction. Allowing students to construct their own data tables builds an operational sense of variables, setting the stage for later introduction of concepts such as independent and dependent variables. Students record both positive and negative results to build the understanding that learning can result from both. Pictures and diagrams are also often utilized.

The final stage, making meaning, is arguably the most important. Supported by student-centered “making meaning conferences,” students make claims that are explicity linked to evidence. Students also write conclusions by rewording their focus questions into declarative statements. Finally, reflections allow students to pose further wonderings that may be explored through open inquiry.

The use of supports for teachers and students, the use of science notebooks, and the careful alignment of the intended, implemented, and actual curriculum has been effective. Studies show that Scaffolded Guided Inquiry produced greater gains in knowledge than text or kit-based instruction.

A new book, Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms, provides more information and samples from student notebooks.

Nonfiction Trade Books

Dr. Donna L. Knoell presented “Enhancing Science Instruction and Literacy with Quality Nonfiction Trade Books, Related Resources, and Investigations.” In her session, she enthusiastically shared how the use of nonfiction trade books allow students to do, talk, read, and write science. Drawing on her own teaching experience as well as her work with NSTA Review Board for the annual list of Outstanding Science Trade Books, her presentation included a lengthy bibliography of trade books as well as a packet of resources for integrating content area reading into K-8 classrooms.

Knoell also discussed differentiated text, an exciting idea for supporting students of all reading levels in the science classroom. On first glance, two copies of a differentiated text look identical, with the same headings, boldfaced words, and images. On closer inspection or a careful reading, you will notice that the copies differ only in the text stucture used to convey identical concepts. The use of varying levels of sophistication with identical content means that teachers can assign appropriate levels of expository text to their students while teaching the same concepts to all. This exciting type of expository text is currently available from Heinemann and Delta Education.

For a sampling of outstanding science trade books, view the 2008 award winners. Lists from previous years are also available on the NSTA web site.

Highlights from Thursday, March 27 at the National Science Teachers’ Association national conference in Boston, MA included a presentation on IPY science projects and the Polar Discovery expedition series.

IPY Science

Louise Huffman, Coordinator of Education and Outreach for the ANDRILL project, presented an informative session, IPY Cool Science: Hot Topics. An overview of the three previous International Polar Years (1882-1883, 1932-1933, and 1957-1958) reviewed the many scientific achievements and gave me an opportunity to reflect on the impact of technological advances such as email, podcast and video technology, remote sensing, and web 2.0 tools. It is clear that this IPY offers unprecedented opportunities in terms of international scientific collaboration as well as communication, education, and outreach.

While the polar year officially ends in March 2009, results from polar research will be presented at major conferences in 2010 and 2012, effectively continuing the “year” and public focus on the polar regions. In this vein, the education committee of the IPY plans to remain active until 2012 – good news for educators committed to the topic.

Climate change is a major focus of IPY, but is often difficult to teach. Teachers may be challenged by a lack of current materials or guidelines, or even opposition due to the controversy surrounding the topic. NOAA has developed climate literacy frameworks and objectives, providing support for educators as they incorporate this topic into their curricula. Additionally, Huffman shared a three-star “rating” system that teachers can aid teacher and students make sense of the onslaught of climate change reports in the media. One star indicates that the data has been shared, compared, and published (peer reviewed). Two stars indicate that the data has been collected in more than one location or using more than one technique. Three stars indicate to data supported by multiple locations and collection techniques.

The remainder of the presentation was devoted to data and projects from the polar regions. Huffman concluded with an overview of the ANDRILL program, which seeks to understand the paleoenvironmental conditions and changes during Antarctica’s history. ANDRILL offers a suite of K-12 educational materials that includes podcasts, videos, photos, and “flexhibits” in which students learn about an aspect of Antarctica’s history, create an exhibit, and become the teachers themselves.

Discovering the Poles

In the past, seasoned travelers and expedition leaders would hold lectures, engaging the public with tales of adventure, danger, and foreign lands. Today at the national NSTA conference, I was treated to a modern day version of this experience.

Chris Linder is a Research Associate with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the photographer for their Polar Discovery project. This informal education, NSF-funded project aims to make polar science accessible to all people through a website, live talks with eight partner museums, and a traveling exhibit. Polar Discovery has run three expeditions (two to the Arctic, one to Antarctica) and plans two more for the future.

In an expedition, Linder and a science writer travel with a research team, documenting the science, landscape, and people through photo essays and live talks via satellite phone. Unlike other projects, which might quickly visit a research project for an interview and then leave, the Polar Discovery team is embedded in the expedition for the entire duration of the project – sometimes as long as 40 days! A professional storytelling team and a focus on the human dimension of scientific research make the information truly compelling.

Reflecting on his second expedition, a 40 day voyage on an icebreaker to study the life found on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, Linder explained that you “leave the world you know of waves and water and sea birds and enter the world of white and ice.” Accompanied by dramatic images of the juxtaposition of a “floating construction site (the research vessel)” and a “pristine environment,” Linder’s description of the research methods and challenges was engaging. The practical considerations involved in deploying (and later recovering) autonomous vehicles to sample the sea floor amidst floating and ever-shifting ice was an aspect of polar research I had never considered. Nor had I considered the relative proportions of sea ice to water: about 6-10 feet of ice as compared with 2 miles of water. Yet this seemingly thin layer of ice is capable of supporting the weight of a helicopter!

Tales from the third expedition to Antarctica to study Adelie penguins and lava flows were equally engaging. Images of penguins’ often anthropomorphic behavior, such as stealing rocks from other nests and waddling down to the water in a well-organized “penguin superhighway” were entertaining. (As Linder notes, penguins seem to follow American tradition and waddle on the right-hand side of the “road”.) A serious note followed, as Linder explained that researchers had noticed fishing vessels off the coast, and while Antarctica is protected by treaty, the waters are not. Climate change and a decrease in food supply may negatively impact these birds in the future.

Polar Discovery’s next expedition, Greenland’s Lakes, is scheduled for July 7-27, 2008. In the meantime, material from Expeditions One, Two, and Three is available on line. A traveling exhibit showcases Expedition Two, Discovering the Arctic Seafloor.

Dr. Judy Willis is a neuroscientist who also happens to be a middle school algebra teacher. After years in the lab, Dr. Willis decided to apply her knowledge on brain research to the classroom. At the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Dr. Willis was a featured speaker sharing her expertise in neuroscience research and how teachers can benefit from greater awareness of neuroscience and apply strategies that are (as she puts it) “neuro-logical”.

The brain possesses a greater plasticity than was originally thought. For example, through cognitive therapy, stroke patients have the potential to relearn functions by creating and developing new pathways in the brain to take the place of damaged neural pathways. Willis recounted a case study of an individual with no measurable brain activity until a more sensitive fMRI test was done indicating near normal activity in the patient’s language centers of the cortex. Through deep electrical stimulation of the thalamus, “the patient’s speech improved, his movement became more fluid, and he was able to chew again—despite having survived brain damage for six months”. When they stopped deep brain stimulation, his abilities degraded over time and when stimulation was resumed, the patient’s abilities improved and sustained with therapy.

Another study points to changes in blood flow in the inner brain in an area known as the amygdala, related to the forming and storing of emotional memories. Studies indicate that decreases in cerebral blood flow can be found in this area when a person is in a stressful or negative emotional state, affecting their ability to retain information.

What implications does this have for teaching? Given that the brain has versatile neuroplasticity, developing student strategies to strengthen their abilities to create new pathways, connecting new knowledge to previously learned concepts and patterns, teaching students to look at problems from multiple perspectives or providing periodical shifts in attention when teaching through the use of word puzzles or discrepant events—what Willis calls “syn-naps”—can aid student understanding and capitalize on the innate processes of each individual. Such strategies are the hallmark of good teaching, but having a better understanding and intentional focus on brain-based strategies is a useful tool for any teacher.

Active Participation

In another session, Clarissa Reeson and Tracey Allen are two dynamic and extremely talented teachers from Yuba City, California that conduct workshops through their company, Real Educators. Reeson and Allen provided some specifics on how to engage students through active participation that directly and indirectly relate to Willis’ ideas.

Allen, a fireball teacher and reading specialist, started out by describing covert (non-measurable) and overt (measurable and observable) methods that allow students to integrate material at a deeper level with an emphasis on multiple learning styles (visual, auditory and kinesthetic).

In a lively 60-minute session, Reeson and Allen had the group moving around and singing “corny” songs to remember the names of the continents, doing quick “mix-pair-share” interactions to deepen the quality of people’s responses to questions, and energizing a crowd of over 100 people late in the afternoon after a long day of conference sessions.

Reeson introduced an activity called “Find the Question” that is a prime example of how teachers can challenge student thinking in a highly active way that motivates students and enhances retention. As an example, Reeson placed large sheets across the room, each with a vocabulary word on the top and a definition in the form of a question of a different word below it. Participants walked around the room trying to find the question that matched with the word written on the top of each sheet. In this way, students are challenged by thinking “backwards” to find the question and are actively moving around (especially if the activity is done outdoors) to stimulate blood flow and engage multiple learning styles in the process.

“This was great,” one teacher stated, “if I could only inject even one half of [the presenters’] energy I’d be set!”

More about neuroscience and learning:

The Brain and Learning
Brain Facts Primer (from the Society of Neuroscience)

A key question pondered by many presenters at the Computation + Journalism Symposium at Georgia Tech in Atlanta was trying to get at what the combination of those two concepts meant. Georgia Tech does not have a school of journalism, but invited speakers from many well-respected news organizations to weigh in about how they saw the future of those combined fields evolving.

Perhaps one of the most memorable aspects of the meeting was the fact that there were almost as many people live blogging the event as there were people in the room giving presentations. And, of course, the wall-sized whiteboards at the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. You would need a ladder to get your ideas up near the ceiling, but the point is, I think, when it comes to graphics and visualization ideas, bigger is much better. And 230 people from news organizations, Internet businesses and research groups nationwide showed up to talk big about what news is, who gets to select it, and whether or not machines are unbiased.

Two distinct points of view were represented with many stops in-between as participants explored the future of storytelling. Symposium organizer Professor Irfan Essa remarked, “A story can be a computational object as it starts to have different points of view.” There were journalists who talked about their craft as a “personal calling” juxtaposed against technology experts who promised that their news-media-information gathering mechanisms were automated “without human intervention.” There were also speakers who had developed hybrid systems that fell somewhere in the middle. Notably speakers from American Public Broadcasting had developed a technical-social model for reaching out to their audiences and making them part of the process of gathering and vetting news stories.

Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist at Google and creator of Google News explained telling “stories” from the perspective of developing system algortihms for gathering and publishing thematic and on-demand news. He views Google News as a “birds eye view” of the Web that provides a “shuttle” to content that others write and publish. there are currently 41 editions of Google News in 18 languages. The Google News system presents news “clusters” gathered from the news items title, content snippet, source, timestamp, URL, and links to other perspectives. Bharat says, “Reading one article (about an event or topic) is like looking through one eye.”

Michael Skoler, Executive Director, Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media talked with equal passion about the hands-on craft of building personal relationships as you build a story calling this, “public insight journalism.” He believes that the wired world has given news organizations many ways to loop citizens into the new gathering loop and to create a “partnership with the public” while gaining public trust.

Everyone seemed to agree that news and news organizations had changed dramatically as the Internet has become the place where most people get their news. The concept of breaking the news first has become a moot issue as bloggers and citizen reporters often make it to their blogs and Facebook site before you can say “news at seven.”

And speaking of news at seven, Nate Nichols a PhD student from Northwestern University is the creator of “News at Seven” system designed to “give you the news you want, the way you want it, each day.” Male and female animated characters read news, weather and entertainment segments in somewhat computerized-sounding voices. But hey, it’s a prototype and if I could design an avatar to tell me what I wanted to know every morning, I might subscribe.

More about the Computation + Journalism Symposium:

“Annenberg Online Journalism Review”
“upcoming”
“My Urban Report”

The One Laptop Per Child logo is as bright, hopeful and open as the project itself. OLPC is laying the groundwork for a world where every child will have the opportunity to take advantage of cyber learning opportunities.

AAAS’s tag line, “Advancing science, serving society,” was evident in many presentations at their Annual Meeting in Boston Feb. 14-18, 2008. Passionate interest and action around issues such as providing basic energy and educational infrastructure in developing countries, relief during times of disaster, and information about how nations might work together more effectively was presented and discussed.

No presentation was more inspirational than the final plenary lecture given by One Laptop per Child Founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte on Feb. 17. Since OLPC was launched in 2005 this education project, which, Negroponte emphasizes, is definitely not a “laptop” project, has already had an impact on the ability of countries all over the world to provide children with new learning opportunities.

If you visit the OLPC wiki you will find targeted information that is focused heavily on “getting it out there.” Short on philosophical background and long on action-oriented instructions about how to buy it for someone else, program for it, contribute money and expertise, and use it, online materials are helping the jolly green-eared laptops to proliferate at a rapid clip.

Negroponte detailed a series of advances and setbacks that included a good-natured overview of the vagaries of creating a multinational “OLPC Planet.”He was challenged to take laptops to places like Cambodia where telephones, electricity and common language skills in rural areas were rare. He found that even in remote places students’ first English word was likely to be “Google.” He suggested that kids drop out of school in developing as well as in developed countries because, “School is boring.” OLPC aims to make education fascinating by providing children around the world with tools and opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

Initially OLPC’s strategy included engaging large countries as partners in making the laptops available to their students. Uruguay and Peru were the first adopters. Since then 80-90 countries and cities have signed on to the program.

A more successful method has been the “Buy One Get One” campaign which to date has generated 170,000 laptops. On day one of the campaign PayPal experienced the highest number of hits in the company’s history of people purchasing a laptop for a child.

Negroponte explains that OLPC is based on the principal of “learning by doing” outlined in his book Being Digital. He encourages anyone to get involved in this very open experiment in transferring educational technology and learning opportunities to children everywhere. The sentiment behind the quote, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission,” often attributed to computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, is helping OLPC level the global educational playing field.

A Stylaster Elegans (Elegant Lace Coral by Teresa Zubi (Sept. 2005).

Anyone who has been fortunate enough to see Lace corals up close and underwater might remember their delicate form and color. Researchers from the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Stanford University, and the Scottish Association for Marine Science have discovered unexpected connections between shallow-water coral and deep-sea coral species, and reasons for learning more about these organisms that may hold clues for improving underwater ecosystems.

The deep sea is a source of environmental diversity says Brendan Roark, a postdoctoral fellow of Professor Robert Dunbar in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting on Feb. 15, 2008. His interest in corals and related animals led him to study deep sea Lace corals in particular. This deep water Coral species has invaded the shallow water tropics in the past. His research shows that organisms have evolved from the deep sea to shallow waters as well as the other way around.

Some coral species have very long life spans–2,700 years in some cases. Very deep water corals have even longer life spans with growth rings like trees that create a kind of “archive” or record of climate change. One such deep water coral, gold coral, is harvested to make jewelry. We are “Just scratching the surface for the potential for deep sea corals.” Greater conservation efforts will be necessary to preserve these ancient living organisms.

Noting that some of the coral reefs off of Norway are 8-10 thousand years old, the Trans-Atlantic Coral Ecosystem Study ‘TRACES’ was also announced at AAAS. This study is a 2-year multinational effort to use advanced sonar and other technologies to use these techniques to look at climate history and genetic evolution. There is a general understanding that warming and acidification of oceans is a major issue with respect to sustaining marine species. TRACES aims to generate the experimental data to back up our understanding of ocean changes in relation to coral and other species.

Further reading on this issue:

Eureka Alert press release
Science Daily