On behalf of the staff of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and our leadership team, I would like to thank the following members of our Board, Council, Standing Committees, Advisory Boards, and Panels whose terms of appointment end on May 31, 2013. NSTA is shaping the next generation of science education, and the experience, wisdom, and willingness of the following individuals to volunteer their time has been pivotal in guiding us in the past year. The theme of my presidency is “Build the Scaffolding for 21st Century Science Literacy,” and it’s been an amazing journey and a privilege to have them at my side throughout my tenure. So, to all of you on the list below, I say “Thank You” and I look forward to working with you in new capacities in the years to come.
NSTA members who are interested in volunteering for a position on one our committees, advisory boards, or review panels can find more information at http://www.nsta.org/involved/default.aspx#committees.

—Karen L. Ostlund, NSTA President, 2012–2013

Board of Directors
Michael Lowry, Chattanooga, TN
Thomas Lord, Indiana, PA
Linda Lacy, Excelsior Springs, MO
Council
Gloria Allen, Washington, DC
Cynthia Willingham, Vestavia Hills, AL
Ramona Lundberg, Clear Lake, SD
Sally Harms, Wisner, NE
John Graves, Bozeman, MT
Jennifer Thompson, Juneau, AK
Standing Committees
College
Thomas Lord, Indiana, PA
David Crowther, Reno, NV
Suzanne Gould, Anderson, IN
Oliver Grundmann, Chandler, AZ
Coordination and Supervision
Jo-Ne Bourassa, Macon, GA
Joseph Kelly, Meridian, ID
Michael Szydlowski, Columbia, MO
Linda Lacy, Excelsior Springs, MO
High School
Michael  Lowry, Chattanooga, TN
Gail Hall, Montpelier, VT
Kerryane Monahan, Ft. Pierce, FL
Eric Walters, New York, NY
Informal        
Laurie Stuart, Seward, AK
Brad Tanner, Sarasota, FL
Middle Level
Scott Diamond, Lexington, KY
Amy Hunt, Chula Vista, CA
Alison Seymour, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Multicultural/Equity
Toni Carmichael, Lake Forest, IL
Maya Garcia, Washington, DC
Sheila Smith, Ridgeland, MS
Preschool-Elementary
Cathy Jamison, Wake Forest, NC
Michael Szydlowski, Columbia, MO
Jennifer Williams, Belle Chasse, LA
Preservice Teacher Preparation
Chelsea Ann Duhon, Baton Rouge, LA
Timothy A. Laubach, Norman, OK
Eric J. Pyle, Harrisonburg, VA
Cathy Wissehr, Fayetteville, AR
Professional Development   
Jeanne Fox, Chickasaw, AL
Eric Hadley, Florissant, MO
Barbara Tharp, Houston, TX
Research
Mary Atwater, Athens, GA
Jacqueline McDonnough, Richmond, VA
Barry Thompson, Evans, GA
Awards and Recognition
Peggy Carlisle, Flowood, MS
Craig Gabler, Tumwater, WA
Karen Maher, Juneau, AK
Jean Tushie, Eden Prairie, MN
Candace Lutzow-Felling, Boyce, VA
Budget and Finance
Peter McLaren, Providence, RI
Barbara Pietrucha, Point Pleasant, NJ
Nominations
Mary Louise Bellamy, Cary, NC
Annette Barzal, Medina, OH
Rita Hagevik, Wendell, NC
Cecilia Owens, Westborough, MA
Maryann Stimmer, New York, NY
Advisory Boards
Aerospace
Eric Brunsell, Oshkosh, WI
Steve Heck, Loveland, OH
James Kuhl, Central Square, NY
Conference
Carolyn Hayes, Greenwood, IN
Development
Michelle Ellis, Gastonia, NC
Linda Froschauer, Westport, CT
International
Julie Heintz, Calumet City, IL
Mary McDougall, Calgary, AB, Canada
Alison Seymour, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Investment
Ruth Ruud, Fairview, PA
Journal of College Science Teaching
Marshall Sundberg, Emporia, KS
Eliza Richardson, University Park, PA
Mark Turski, Plymouth, NH
NSTA Reports
Stephen Crandall, Inverness, FL
Jeanelle Day, Willimantic, CT
Deborah Tucker, Napa, CA
Michael Lowry, Chattanooga, TN
Retired Members     
Robin Curtis, Williamsburg, VA
John Jackson, Altadena, CA
Mary Strother, Glen Allen, VA
Science&Children
Jessica Fries-Gaither, Hilliard, OH
Elizabeth Barrett-Alexander, New Rochelle, NY
Todd Hoover, Halifax, PA
Science Matters
David Bydlowski, Livonia, MI
Eric Packenham, Logan, UT
Science Safety
Jeri Leonard, Wylie, TX
Science Scope
Sandy Buczynski, San Diego, CA
Kimberly Lightle, Columbus, OH
C. Anne Wallen, Winston-Salem, NC
Special Needs
Kahille Dorsinvil, Medford, NY
Maya Israel, Cincinnati, OH
Mary Beth Katz, Birmingham, AL
Sally Harms, Wisner, NE
Technology
Andrea Ellinger, Seattle, WA
Caryn Meirs, Smithtown, NY
Manorama Talaiver, Chesterfield, VA
The Science Teacher
Pradeep Dass, Boone, NC
Joel Gluck, Cranston, RI
George Griffith, Almena, KS
Michael Lowry, Chattanooga, TN
Urban Science
Martha Day, Bowling Green, KY
David Miller, Las Vegas, NV
Theresa Robinson Thomas, Chicago, IL
Gloria Allen, Washington, DC
Panels
NSTA/CBC Review
Betty Crocker, Denton, TX
Sharla Dowding, Newcastle, WY
Steve Rich, Douglasville, GA
New Science Teachers Academy
Joyce Gleason, Punta Gorda, FL
Timothy Laubach, Norman, OK
Janet Magargal, Drexel Hill, PA
Shell Science Teaching Award Judging
Deborah Cornelison, Ada, OK
Hubert Dyasi, Yonkers, NY
John Jackson, Altadena, CA

Knockoffs. You can buy them anywhere—from a street vendor, a flea market, or the local discount shop. But what if you’ve decided to pay more for the “real thing”? How can you be sure you’re getting the handbag, shoes, device, or even medication you’re paying for?

That’s going to be less of a concern thanks to the innovation resulting from the collaborative effort of Drs. Jeremy Wilson and Evangelyn Alocilja at Michigan State University. Take a look at Science of Innovation: Anti-Counterfeiting Devices to find out how knockoffs might be knocked out of the marketplace.

The series is available cost-free on www.NBCLearn.com, www.science360.gov, and www.uspto.gov/education. Use the link below to download the lesson plans in a format you can edit to customize for your situation. And if you had to make significant changes to a lesson, we’d love to see what you did differently, as well as why you made the changes. Leave a comment, and we’ll get in touch with you with submission information. We look forward to hearing from you!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Image of fake Chuck Taylors courtesy of Bill Walsh.

Video

SOI: Anti-Counterfeiting Devices highlights how Dr. Evangelyn Alocilja contributed her expertise in nanotechnology, which she had used in her own research to detect bacteria and other contaminants in food, to the problem of counterfeit goods.

Lesson plans

Two versions of the lesson plans help students build background and develop questions they can explore the clues that might identify a product as an authentic name brand or a knockoff and what strategies might they employ to ensure their products are authentic. Both include strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and strategies for a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

SOI: Anti-Counterfeiting Devices, A Science Perspective models how students might investigate how the size of a soluble particle affects its rate of dissolving.
SOI: Anti-Counterfeiting Devices, An Engineering Perspective models how students might design anti-counterfeiting devices.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

In addition to NSTA publications, I read many others related to science and education, both in print and online. I usually scan the pages and images, focusing on articles of interest. However, the May 2013 issue of Smithsonian was so compelling, I had to read it cover to cover! The theme was “The Future Is Here.” Here is a sampling of the STEM-related articles featured in this issue:
The Body Eclectic – There’s more to microorganisms that co-exist in the human body than digestion. This article looks at how these organisms affect both physical and emotional health. It could lead to an interesting class discussion on correlation vs causation.
The Printed World – How will 3-D printers change our concept of a “factory” when creating or replicating objects can be done anywhere?
Clear as a Bell – Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone, but what did his voice actually sound like? The article describes the technology used to extract sounds from media that are more than 100 years old. What the article doesn’t have is a link to the actual voice, but here is a related YouTube video with his actual words.
Block Party – Legos are more than toys. Engineering and programmable robots are some of the ways these little blocks can be used as learning tools.
The Road Less Traveled – Here is an infographic on STEM careers. Why do people who have an early interest in STEM topics not follow through in their career choices?
X and the City – A mathematician takes the readers on a tour of a city in this article on quantitative urbanism. “Many aspects of modern cities can be reduced to mathematical formulas.” What are the implications for solving problems or predicting trends in housing, crime rates, or land use?

You’re celebrating a romantic little restaurant or some other special place. Your significant other presents you with a small velvet box containing a huge diamond ring or flawless diamond cuff links. Would you like the sparkling gems any less if you knew they came from a lab and not a diamond mine?

This installment of the “Science of Innovation” video series—Synthetic Diamonds—describes an innovative process that might just be the beginning of that dazzling rock on your finger—no mining, no waiting millions of years. Synthetic diamonds (no, not cubic zirconia, but real, 100 percent diamond) are in your immediate future.

Synthesize your STEM efforts with this and other videos in the “Science of Innovation” series from the collaborative team of NBC Learn, United States Patent & Trademark Office, the National Science Foundation, and NSTA. One of the reasons the USPTO got involved in this effort to begin with was to show how the principles of intellectual property and innovation can help further motivate and engage your students in authentic STEM experiences. By learning how people invent new things and applying the creative design and engineering process in your classroom, students begin to understand the essence of the fields of science and engineering. The series is available cost-free on www.NBCLearn.com, www.science360.gov, and www.uspto.gov/education. Take a look, and then let us know what you think!

–Judy Elgin Jensen

Image of the largest model of diamond in the world created as a Summer Exhibition for the Royal Society of Chemistry. It contains 31,395 crystal clear balls representing the carbon atoms. A real diamond containing 31,395 atoms would be less than one billionth of a carat, invisible to the eye, and worth less than a penny. Courtesy of Bruce Stokes.

Video

SOI: Synthetic Diamonds highlights the research and innovation related to the production of synthetic diamonds.

Lesson plans

Two versions of the lesson plans help students build background and develop questions they can explore how the physical properties of diamonds, both synthetic and natural, make them useful not only as jewelry, but also as industrial abrasives and engraving tools, in medicine to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to affected parts of the body and to cover openings in X-ray chambers and other types of imagining devices, in high-end audio equipment, and as semiconductor coatings for computer chips, among many other uses. Both include strategies to support students in their own quest for answers and strategies for a more focused approach that helps all students participate in hands-on inquiry.

SOI: Synthetic Diamonds, A Science Perspective models how students might investigate a question using media resources.

SOI: Synthetic Diamonds, An Engineering Perspective shows how students might investigate structure and its relationship to strength.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans: [contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

Guest Post by LaMoine L. Motz, PhD, Sandra West Moody, PhD, and James T. Biehle, AIA

The cover article “Science on Wheels” in the April 2013 issue of NSTA Reports raises a number of issues which, in our opinion, fly in the face of good judgment. While we recognize there are many schools with inadequate science teaching facilities, using unsafe practices to provide science spaces can be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Recent research reveals how widespread the problem of “floating” science teachers is with more than 1,000 Texas science teachers reporting they have to teach off of a cart (Kennedy, L. and West, S., 2013).
In the NSTA Guide to Planning School Science Facilities, 2nd Edition (hereinafter NSTA Guide), we discuss a number of safety issues which, if not corrected, can lead to accidents and lawsuits. A particularly egregious example of such a safety issue is described in “Science on Wheels” where a teacher states that “mostly what we had to move on a cart were just solutions.” The NSTA Guide mentions just such an activity on page 42 in describing some of the impacts of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on science facilities and instruction. There are numerous reports of cart accidents including cart wheels sticking in a shallow doorway threshold resulting in the cart stopping and a glass jug of acid falling off which produced toxic fumes and students running around corners into and knocking the cart over, subsequently breaking jars of chemicals and equipment. (Laboratory Safety Institute, 2013)
On pages 41 and 42 of the NSTA Guide, under a discussion of tort law, the situation in the schools mentioned in “Science on Wheels” could readily be defined as “misfeasance” (a principal assigning a science class to a non-science classroom), “nonfeasance” (failure to provide an adequate number of science laboratory/classrooms, and “malfeasance” (forcing an employee to assume an unnecessary risk or use unsafe methods.

As often emphasized in our “Planning and Designing School Science Facilities“ workshops and seminars at NSTA regional and national conferences, and also numerous state conferences, the person who will know about this article (“Science on Wheels”) in the case of a lawsuit resulting from such patently unsafe practices is the plaintiff’s attorney.  NSTA President–Elect Juliana Texley, a former superintendent, describes working with an architect who had no idea of what it was like during class changes in a middle school. The architect was instructed to stand on one tile in the middle of the corridor as classes changed and nearly got swept away. We believe it is a mistake for the NSTA Reports to suggest that it would be safe to move “solutions” around the halls from room to room on a cart.
Science teachers and students are at risk whether the teacher moves from one science room to another science room or is required to teach in non-science rooms. The greater risk is, of course, for science students to have to do science activities in a non-science room lacking required safety equipment such as eyewashes. When a room is used for laboratory activities, it becomes a “science laboratory” and is subject to fire code occupancy load requirements.

Further, leaving science materials in a non-science classroom, supervised primarily by a teacher not trained in safe science instruction, is an invitation to further lawsuits due to students and, possibly, teachers being injured as they move, or otherwise deal with science equipment and materials left in, say, an English classroom. Leaving science materials in a room with a non-science trained teacher is extremely unsafe.
The prep room concept described at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School sounds like a further invitation to a lawsuit if there is not a door which can be locked. Prep rooms must be off limits to students, protected by lockable doors. It is possible to design lockable mobile tables that will fit through a standard 36” wide door but having a large opening into the classroom will invite curious students to explore an area they should not enter.
Some suggest we should recognize that many science teachers are in the same predicament discussed in the NSTA Reports article and we should propose ways to teach science more safely when adequate science teaching facilities are not available. However, we strongly believe that it is not possible to safely teach an effective science program in a general purpose classroom as virtually all such classrooms are unequipped with even the basic safety equipment such as a fire blanket and fire extinguisher. In visiting more than 450 schools, nationally, almost none have a sink, and we have yet to see a safety shower or even portable eyewash in a general purpose classroom. We believe it is our responsibility to emphasize that safe science can only be taught in a properly equipped science classroom and that the practice of using general purpose classrooms for science and transporting chemicals and equipment from room to room, as described in “Science on Wheels,” should be strongly discouraged to district patrons, school boards, administrators, architects and facilities directors.
Constructing an adequate number of safe, spacious and well-equipped science lab/classrooms and appropriately located and designed science storage facilities should be seen as an investment in the future. The alternative is to take the approach discussed in “Science on Wheels” which can result in spending a significant amount of money defending unnecessary lawsuits instead of providing a safe science learning environment.
 

References:

Motz, L., Biehle, J., and West, S. (2007). NSTA Guide to Planning School Science Facilities, 2^nd Edition. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.
Kennedy, L & West, S. 2013.  Safety in Texas secondary science classrooms: 1990-2007.Proceedings of the 116^th. Annual Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science, Kerrville, TX p .42
Laboratory Safety Institute, 2003. Learning by Accident, www.labsafety.org/ Natick, MA

With the heavy spring rains in my neighborhood there has been some erosion of soil on a slope in the park and soil from the baseball field has been washed across the sidewalk. There are not many fiction or non-fiction books for young children that include a discussion about soil erosion, or erosion in general. If your class becomes interested in learning about erosion, they can write their own story, and illustrate it with photos or drawings of places where they saw soil washed away by water or blown away by wind. See the resources on “dialogic reading,” listed at the bottom, to learn how this interactive shared reading experience with an adult and a few children supports gains in reading.
Children can make a model of a neighborhood in sand in a plastic tub or in the sandbox and then make it “rain” to demonstrate erosion.
If indoors, use a tray or baking pan with sides 6-9cm tall, and make a layer of damp sand that halfway fills the pan. Have children shape the sand into a landscape with hills, mesas, valleys, river channels and depressions for ponds. Because sand allows water to flow between the grains, their rivers and ponds will not hold water, but water will flow down towards the low points in their landscape before sinking into the sand. Provide many small objects for children to use to create a scene to represent their community—small blocks for buildings, pieces of bias tape or strips of cardboard for roads, twigs for people, pebbles for animals, and small leaves for trees.
When their set-up is complete, have them draw or photograph it. Change the setting on the spray bottle to a single stream, or provide an empty condiment bottle with a single hole. The children can now spray or pour more water to move the sand and observe how moving (eroding) the sand affects their community. Have them stop and draw or photograph the set-up as it changes. When the children are finished eroding their landscape, pour the water off outside because wet sand can clog a sink.
Have the children use their drawings and photographs as illustrations for a book. Ask them to write or dictate what they saw happening, and add any comments that you wrote down during the activity. This is your class’s book about erosion!
Here are two resources about “dialogic reading,” a way for children to get the most out of storytime.
“Getting the Most Out of Picture Books,” a video series on dialogic reading from the Getting Ready to Read pages of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Inc.
“Lap Reading with Kindergarteners” by Herman T. Knoph and H. Mac Brown in Young Children September 2009.
 

What do we mean when we say “STEM education”? For years now, we’ve recited that STEM means “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” We’re often somewhat less precise when it comes to defining what STEM education is. Rodger Bybee’s latest book, The Case for Education: Challenges and Opportunities, takes a critical look at the many diverse explanations that exist in education today and provides a direction to STEM education, if not a definition.
Bybee states that, in his experience, discussions regarding STEM education fall into three separate but related goals.
“Education should contribute to:

• a STEM-literate society
• a general workforce with 21st-century competencies, and
• an advanced research and development workforce focused on innovation.

The broader category, which applies to everyone, is STEM literacy,  which refers to an individual’s

• knowledge, attitudes, and skills to identify questions and problems in life situations, explain the natural and designed world, and draw evidence-based conclusions about STEM-related issues;
• understanding of the characteristic features of STEM disciplines as forms of human knowledge, inquiry, and design;
• awareness of how STEM disciplines shape our material, intellectual, and cultural environments; and
• willingness to engage in STEM-related issues and with the ideas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as a constructive, concerned, and reflective citizen.”

Throughout the book, Bybee provides practical guidance and suggestions for STEM reforms that are appropriate for varied contexts. Thought-provoking questions, such as STEM Education Seems to Be the Answer—What Was the Question?; If STEM Is an Opportunity, What is the Federal Government’s Role?; How Can a State, District, or School Develop a Coherent Strategy for STEM Education?; and What Is Your Action Plan for STEM Education? are addressed in the chapters to provide individuals in leadership roles with a better understanding of how to take action on STEM initiatives.
Read a sample chapter:  How Is STEM Education Reform Different From Other Education Reforms?
This book is also available as an e-book.