I wanted to share—

In our classrooms, the experience should mirror the interdisciplinary nature of life, and not the subject of the hour. 

In our classrooms, the joys of learning should wash over student AND teacher. 

In our classrooms, a teacher passes a piece of themselves to the next generation, so our children may go where none have gone before.

In our classrooms, every child must learn that the power of one can move the world. 

In our classrooms, it should not be about the acquisition of knowledge, but what we may do with knowledge in the face of …. a question.

In our classrooms, we must celebrate the past, embrace the present, and inspire the future. 

In our classrooms, curiosity must flourish, and organizing that curiosity is the goal.

What do you think of the sentiment? You’re invited to leave a comment!

-dj

I’m now back from the intensity of months spent creating and launching the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), with 25,000 students across the U.S. now designing real experiments to fly aboard the second to last Space Shuttle flight, STS-134, the flight of Endeavour in February 2011. Pretty cool, huh. The SSEP is designed to provide regular student access to SPACE for grades 5-12, and leverage that exciting opportunity across entire school districts. SSEP embraces the notion of STUDENT AS SCIENTIST.

A big favor to ask—PLEASE help us spread the word on the SSEP via your social networks. We want to make sure that the nation knows about this bold new national STEM education initiative. If you’re on Twitter, here are two Tweets you can just cut and paste!

UPDATE: Student Spaceflight Experiments Program Now in Full Swing, GO FOR LAUNCH – http://ssep.ncesse.org

How do you get kids excited about #science? LET THEM *BE* SCIENTISTS. And why not on the #SPACE SHUTTLE. http://ssep.ncesse.org #nasa

Speaking of Twitter, and to help me ease back into Blog on the Universe, below is a steady stream of consciousness on education that I unleashed on my PLN (Personal Learning Network) last night (October 4, 2010). I thought I’d share. If you’re a Tweep, by all means feel free to Re-Tweet any and all to your PLN. And if you think Twitter is not about education, and really just for folks that want to broadcast what they had for lunch (I call them lunchies), read my post at Huffington Post titled The Remarkable Power of Twitter—A Water Cooler for the 21st Century. I think it does a great job of providing a real understanding of social media for education, and the means by which these online environments allows us to reach out in meaningful ways to the world.

One review: “Kudos, Jeff. This is one of the best posts about Twitter I’ve read in a long time. You really describe it well, especially the best that it has to offer.”

Here now my Tweets last night—

In our classrooms, let’s not lecture, but instead, entice the gift of a question. #education #teacher #science #school

In our classrooms, let’s not talk ABOUT science or teach the book of knowledge, let kids DO science and embrace …. journey. #teacher

In our classrooms, let’s not kill inquiry and exploration, let’s nurture it … for it’s in our genes. #education #teacher #space #science

In our #science classrooms, let’s embrace personality and uniqueness of thought, and not teach the scientific method as rigid scripture.

In our classrooms, let’s recognize that #teachers are the link between the legacy of human exploration and what awaits the next generation.

In our classrooms, there should be ….. magic. #education #teacher #science #school #principal

In our classrooms, the power of the one should be nurtured to flourish, and the power of the many … to shout from the towers. #education

In our classrooms, let’s foster an understanding that inquiry is an art, and practitioners are artists.

In our classrooms, we need joy … for is not empowering oneself to learn something new … joyful? #education #teacher #principal

In our classrooms, let’s not teach to the test so that we extinguish that which is innately human. #education #teacher #science #school

In our classrooms we have precious minds, and we need teachers to gently lead the way.

After that flurry of deeply felt beliefs on education, I invited my PLN to some relevant essays here at BotU and at Huffington Post. Let me invite you as well. Grab a  cup of coffee—

A heartfelt thank you to teachers EVERYWHERE. The Art of Teaching: http://bit.ly/ai6hzW

A window on the nature of our existence, and the role of teachers: http://bit.ly/u5RrD

In my mind, education and 9/11 – from a New Yorker and Educator- Sept 8 and Sept 11 Joy Pain, and Hope http://bit.ly/h9PTA #teacher

If you’re not on Twitter, think about coming aboard. For those of you that are, I’m inviting you to Follow me, and I’ll follow you back. I’m at http://twitter.com/doctorjeff

Photo caption: The Eyjafjallajökull Volcano erupting in Iceland as seen from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite on May 2, 2010. How dare it interrupt the lives of all those folks on business travel.

This is a Dr. Jeff’s Jeffisms post.

This is crossposted at the Huffington Post HERE.

OK, so I’m a regular on Twitter, and proud of it. I guess that makes me a Tweep, and if you aren’t, I’ve got something to tell you. There are lots of folks that think Twitter is where you go when you’ve got this intense need to broadcast to the world what you had for lunch. Mostly these are folks that stay away from Twitter ’cause they either don’t understand it or its power as a social medium. But there are also a whole bunch of Tweeps out there that do think I’m interested in their lunch today—let’s call them lunchies.

So to Twitter avoiders, and to the lunchies, I’d like to add my two cents. Twitter is a water cooler for the 21st century. At this cooler you can meet fellow human beings from across the planet, and share thoughts about life, our world, and our children—common thoughts that bind us all, regardless of nationality. In an age when as never before humanity faces a perfect storm of global problems, it’s precisely this kind of water cooler you’d like to see, and to frequent.

Twitter allows countless users (yes, the Tweeps) to send their messages (Tweets) into the cyber aether, forming an immense Public Stream. It is a place where all messages are equal, and each is nothing more than a human thought compressed into 140 characters. From the shores of the great Public Stream, you can see the messages flow by. There goes one from a teacher who’s had a tough day. I think I’ll reach out to her with a link, and tell her why her job is so important. There goes a link to an article on nuclear proliferation from a Pakistani perspective. Gee, I wonder what their thinking might be. There’s a thought from the President of the United States. Hey Mr. President, did you see the open letter I wrote to you on the crisis in science education? And that person over there is proposing a regular time on Twitter to have a global conversation about climate change (oh that’s me!) And yes, there goes a message from a guy who says he had a tuna sandwich for lunch.

But to be part of a social community, you can’t just watch the messages flow by. (You could, but that passive trolling for information is the old, dark ages internet experience.) You need to wade into the stream, and find folks with whom you’d like to strike up a conversation, and Tweet your own thoughts into the Public Stream. So Twitter makes it so. You can decide to ‘Follow’ any of the Tweeps in the Twitterverse, and Mr. Twitter will pull all the Tweets of those that you Follow from the Public Stream, and feed them to you as your own continuous thread of human consciousness. You can also create lists of favorites, so the consciousness can be distilled as you see fit. And the sum total of all of those Tweeps you Follow make up your Personal Learning Network (PLN). Conversely, folks might think YOUR thoughts—your Tweets—are deep and insightful, maybe ’cause you are a fellow lunchie, and so they decide to Follow you—these are your ‘Followers’.

The most remarkable experience I have on Twitter, and it’s right up there with the very best learning experiences I’ve EVER had over my lifetime as an educator, an astrophysicist, and a learner, is #edchat. Every Tuesday night at 7:00 pm Eastern Time, I join HUNDREDS of educators from across the planet that get comfortable in front of their computers—a very local and personal experience—and have a global, free-for-all conversation about education. The operation of Twitter as the vehicle for communication quickly recedes into the background, and you enter into a world of rapid-paced vibrant conversations with folks as committed as you to sharing important ideas. You leave with new thoughts, new directions, a reinvigorated sense that the issues of importance to you are also important to others—providing a common bond, and you embrace friends you’ve never met but that you deeply understand.

I am so impressed with #edchat to address diverse topics like education reform, recipes for success and failure in the classroom, implementation of new educational technologies, and assessment, that we (the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education) have decided to launch in early Summer 2010 our own weekly scheduled Twitter chat on Science Education, and maybe a second more specific one dedicated to Climate Change Education. Help me gauge interest! If you think you might want to participate, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Recently I looked back at my archive of Tweets that I’ve sent over the months, and some (at least to me) seem funny, compelling …. why, even thought-provoking. (Feel free to disagree!) Who says you can’t frame really big ideas in 140 characters. But that’s also pretty much the whole idea of my Dr. Jeff’s ‘Jeffisms’ flavor of blog post here at BotU. So I decided that each month I’ll choose some of my Tweets, and bundle them in a post as ‘Tweetisms for the 21st Century”. This is the first such post, and below are a number of recent Tweets selected from conversations I’ve had with friends across my PLN, and as part of that truly remarkable weekly experience #edchat.

And hey, if you don’t do Twitter, maybe you ought to give it a try … and if you are already a Tweep, well cool! But regardless, I’m right here, right now, formally inviting you to Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/doctorjeff (assuming you are not a lunchie), and I’ll Follow you back!

-dj

Some Tweetisms

On the Environment:

BREAKING NEWS: Humans angry that ash from volcano interrupts their lives. Planet apologizes 4 terrible inconvenience.

Fred & Barney? Lived long ago, so must b dumb. They drove rock cars that weighed a ton … we’re smarter now.

DENIAL DAILY NEWS: Earth wanders off axis, heads 4 Sun. #Climate change deniers blame raging inferno on conspiracy by science community.

On Our Existence:

Question: Was Mr. Magoo just lucky? Or did the world conspire to move under his feet in a way that made life joyful … at least for him?

Sometimes the issues that are in plain sight are the hardest to see.

On Education:

If we treat our learners as so many pegs to push thru holes, where is the humanity in that? Where is the joy in learning?

It takes a community to educate a child & a network of communities to reach a generation. http://ncesse.org/about/core-beliefs/

We are teaching to the test because it is the educational path of least resistance for results … & a disgrace to education.

KEY IRONY – you can teach the wrong things really well, get rewarded for teaching it well, and our kids and nation will all suffer.

… because 6 MILLION teachers in the US 1 out of 50 Americans have no coherent voice. Use Social Media for a movement: http://bit.ly/bc7VG8

On Science:

ASTROLOGY DEPT NEWS: “Hey Ralph, what are the #zodiacfacts today?”  “Who cares, let’s use the dart board like we always do.”

Why do I get the feeling there’s an Anti-Science Movement? Hey followers – no more medicine, vaccines, cell phones, TV, computers. 

Does anyone know where Blindfaithyland is? Can’t seem to find it on Google Maps. But it must exist….lots of folks swear by it. 

The Doctorjeff Funnies:

New adage: If we were meant to fly, we’d have …… a brain that could engineer a flying machine.

Help!! A Koala is holding me prisoner and won’t let me go until I get a tweet from an Australian. Anybody down under that can help?

[2 folks from Australia quickly answered my plea and I got out of the clutches of the Koala.]

Photocredit: NASA