Wired magazine believes that making geeks cool could reform education and gives some suggestions for schools. One of the main suggestions was "stamping out youth culture" by surrounding kids by adults. Some good ideas and examples to be sure.

I believe that our whole culture needs to make geeks cool. In that spirit I list my Making Geek Cool Hall of Fame. Since this blog is St. Louis centric, I've added a few local additions.

1. Mythbuster's Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman
2. Jon Stewart—when a late-night comedian makes it cool to follow politics, economics, history...
3. Bill Gates—as much as I want to hate Microsoft, he has shown how geeks do philanthropy. That's cool.
4. Pres. Obama
5. Steve Jobs—brought design to technology
6. Danica McKellar—Hollywood star and mathematician writing math books for middle school girls. Maybe every tween girl should be given this book, and she should be number 1.
7. SciFest
8. Chuck
9. Rex Sinquefield for bringing back chess to St. Louis
10. Mayor Francis Slay for bringing FIRST Robotics Championship to St. Louis
11. iCarly—any time a Nickelodeon show encourages tween girls to spend their time directing movie shorts and editing them on the computer, I will applaud it
12. Rick Riordan—any author that can get my son to read...

If they want to be fabulous and sexy and all that, great. There's no problem with that. But you don't have to give anything up for it. You don't have to give up your brain. (Danica McKellar)

I would love to add to the list if anyone would like to send me their suggestions. I'll also be composing a Hall of Shame, so if you have ideas for that, feel free to send them to me via comments, email or twitter.

Tags: Mayor Slay, Mythbusters, Science, ed tech, Math, Danica McKellar, Chess, FIRST Robotics Championship

Congrats St. Louis—new home of the cool geeks.

Tags: Science, engineering, FIRST Robotics Championship, St. Louis

Photo by Adam Baker

Since the MAP is including science now, schools are increasing their focus on teaching science although I’m not sure they have enough.

All of this comes as economic and education experts worry about U.S. global competitiveness.

“We should be embarking immediately on an all-hands-on-deck, no-holds-barred, no budget-too-large crash program for science and engineering education.” (Thomas L. Friedman in The World is Flat 3.0)

Missouri needs to increase its state requirements for graduation. All students need to take biology, chemistry and physics (not necessarily in that order). Students graduating in 2010 are required to take three years (same as math and history), which is an increase from the currently required two years. I think all students should take four years of all four core subjects. Most schools don’t require physics, but the concepts are essential in science and can be taught to all. (See previous post on teaching physics first.)

For example, Hazelwood currently requires students to take Physical Systems and Chemical Systems, each a semester course. Then students are required to take biology for a year. This includes students with a College Prep designation on their diploma. With the requirement increase, students are then required to add another year of science of their choice. Only one semester of chemistry? They offer a full year of chemistry but don’t require it. This is not enough science for people competing with other countries for jobs and deciding on the direction of science via elections.

Francis Howell currently requires a year of physical science and a year of biology. Chemistry and physics are optional.

Elementary schools need to increase the emphasis on science and integrate science with math and reading.

MRH, which has a helpful curriculum online, does not include science K-5. Is it not important enough?

Rockwood does include a grade-by-grade detailed list of its science curriculum starting at the K level. It also puts on a Science Expo at the beginning of the year to stir up excitement and let the students and parents know of science resources available in St. Louis.

Mehlville doesn’t include the detail that Rockwood does, but it gives an easy to decipher overview of the content covered in each grade, the name of the textbook used (!) and suggested resources and activities for families. As an educator I like the Rockwood detail, but the Mehlville overview is definitely more readable. I would like districts to include both.

I looked at the 2008 MAP 5th grade science scores comparing median MAP scale scores. None of the top 10 in the state were in the St. Louis metropolitan area, but none of them had more than 27 students taking the test, so I narrowed my list to districts in the metropolitan area, including charter schools. The top school districts were not surprising, but I was intrigued by some of the districts on the list such as Washington, Windsor and Fox. Parkway was 16th. Union and Festus were 11 and 12.

DISTNAME	MEDIAN_SCALE_SCORE
ROCKWOOD R-VI	684
LADUE	682
KIRKWOOD R-VII	680
CLAYTON	680
LINDBERGH R-VIII	677
BRENTWOOD	676
WEBSTER GROVES	676
WINDSOR C-1	674
FOX C-6	674
WASHINGTON	673

I then searched to see if the same districts had the highest number of students scoring at the advanced level.

DISTNAME	ADVANCED_PCT
ROCKWOOD R-VI	39.6
LADUE	36.2
CLAYTON	30.2
KIRKWOOD R-VII	28.9
WEBSTER GROVES	28.5
LINDBERGH R-VIII	25.4
ORCHARD FARM R-V	22.9
WASHINGTON	22.3
FOX C-6	22.2
JEFFERSON CO. R-VII	20.2

Most of the districts were the same with Orchard Farm joining the list and Windsor falling to 11. Parkway moved up to 12.

Sorting by median Terra Nova scores shuffled the districts a bit bringing New Haven (Franklin Co. R-II) into the top.

DISTNAME	MEDIAN_TERRANOVA
ROCKWOOD R-VI	82.0
CLAYTON	81.0
BRENTWOOD	80.0
KIRKWOOD R-VII	79.0
LADUE	77.0
FRANKLIN CO. R-II	77.0
WEBSTER GROVES	76.0
UNION R-XI	74.0
FOX C-6	73.5
LINDBERGH R-VIII	73.0

Rockwood comes out on top in every configuration. Whether it is the Science Expo, detailed expectations or another reason altogether, the elementary schools there come ahead.

I’ll be interested to watch whether this new focus on science raises everyone’s scores.

Tags: Science, Francis-Howell School District, Hazelwood School District, MRH School District, Rockwood School District, Mehlville School District

Dr. Leon Lederman, 1988 winner of Nobel Prize in Physics discusses teaching physics first

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article about the Missouri Physics First program, which encourages and trains high school science teachers to teach an introductory, hands-on physics course for freshmen.

❝Physics drives chemistry and biology," said Sara Torres, director of a program at the University of Missouri in Columbia that trains future ninth-grade physics teachers. "To understand chemistry, you need physics, and to understand biology, you need chemistry. So it makes sense to teach physics to ninth-graders.❞

The counter-arguement is that students need to use higher-level math to understand physics.

❝Those students don't have a sound enough basis in math skills," said Gwen Thomas, the secondary science curriculum coordinator for St. Louis Public Schools.❞

Since the intro course wouldn't replace a higher-level math-based physics course that many to most (depending on the district) students wouldn't take anyway, I love the idea of an introductory physics course for all students. This would help them see a need for that algebra they're learning, expose them to an area of science they might not see otherwise and help them better understand other branches of science.

Tags: Science

I wonder what all the kids will be talking about at school today? (Hint: 5.2) Enterprising teachers across the Midwest will be bringing up the 1906 San Francisco earthquake anniversary, the Missouri quakes of 1811-12 and some good earth science lessons. Some might even tackle how a 5.4 is 10 times greater than a 5.2

Here's a well done YouTube (albeit long) on the New Madrid quakes of 1812 and predictions:

Tags: Science

Finally, a break in the incessant rain. Go outside and play, I mean, learn!



The No Child Left Inside Coalition advocates for more outdoor education, citing research showing improved science scores (pdf) among other benefits. As our students are now taking a science section of the MAP, I thought this was especially relevant.

I believe the school tagging the monarch butterflies at 4:20 is the fifth grade at The College School. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Tags: Science, Outdoor education, College School

In spite of the anticipated snow day tomorrow, our school's beloved science fair will go on. Yes, we'll trek those projects up to school in however much snow we get. Of course, we could take them up today if we were organized enough to be finished....

Participation may be emphasized over winning and that pizza party is motivating, but the competitive kids know that some of the projects get to go to Queeny Park, the world's largest regional science fair. It really is impressive.

Hear, hear for well run science fairs that motivate students to learn more about their world and teach them how to do so scientifically.

Tags: Science, Science Fair