ICAM News
ICAM, Wolf Ridge, and UC-Davis Combine Efforts in a Youth-Oriented Science Education Initiative
Wed, July 13, 2011
Early in 2010, the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center (Wolf Ridge) became a branch of the ICAM global community in order to fulfill a specific purpose: to partner with ICAM in developing online materials addressed to an audience of middle-schoolers on up. Their first joint activity will be providing financial and content support for a course to be offered in the winter of 2012 at UC-Davis. The course, Technocultural Studies (TCS) 198: The Internet as a Medium for Education About Science and Sustainability, will be taught by Steve Hartzog, a noted graphic designer and environmental educator based in San Francisco. TCS 198 will offer undergraduate and graduate students real-world experience in creating a new internet-based curriculum about climate change and the environment for an audience of middle-school youth aged 11-14.
Founded in 1971, Wolf Ridge is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in environmental education. It was the first environmental learning center in the nation to be accredited as a K-12 school. Its mission is to develop a citizenry that has the knowledge, skills, motivation, and commitment to act together for a quality environment. Wolf Ridge became interested in ICAM through Michael Plautz, a renowned Minneapolis architect, who serves as a board member for both Wolf Ridge and ICAM.
ICAM has been developing several Science, Education and Engagement (SEE) initiatives with the goal of combining scientific research, formal education, and education outside the classroom to help learners of all ages develop an informed perspective on science and its role in solving global challenges. SEE initiatives allow collaboration among scientists informing the public about their research, teachers developing new curriculum, students wishing to become actively engaged in citizen science, and informal science education professionals (like Wolf Ridge) adept at translating complex phenomena to the general public.
To enhance this already strong alliance, Wolf Ridge, ICAM, and UC-Davis enlisted the help of Shawn Carlson, winner of a MacArthur Grant for his work in science education. Shawn recently founded LABRATS™, a science education program that provides comprehensive after-school STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education to an audience of 11 to 18 year old young people. In addition, Shawn has established the iLearnScience.org website where students of TCS198 will post their work.
“The Wolf Ridge/ICAM/Davis/LabRats initiative takes STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] education outside the classroom,” remarked David Pines, co-founder of ICAM. “We really want to use what Wolf Ridge and LABRATS have already started to make a difference in after school science education.” Like ICAM, Wolf Ridge believes that targeting the world’s future leaders - writers, entrepreneurs, scientists, politicians, and policy makers - through education will help increase societal awareness of key scientific research and development.
For TCS 198, Steve Hartzog envisions creating a ‘studio’ experience for students, much like what they will encounter in the business world. In the class, students will collaborate and delegate tasks in order to achieve a common goal: design a fun, interactive, and educational online tool for after school science education programs. Not daunted by charting new territory, Hartzog believes this course will be a life-changing experience – not just for the students in the class, but also for himself, other instructors, and for the end users (middle school children): “If we do this right, this class will be a transformative experience,” says Hartzog. “It’s not available at any other UC campus.”
Hartzog and his students will develop on-line exhibits and related materials on climate change and the environment for middle school students throughout the world. Wolf Ridge is providing a teacher’s manual and some of the interpreted scientific information for this age group. One of the biggest assets that Wolf Ridge brings to ICAM is its strong ability to interpret complicated scientific information and make it understandable for young people.
In addition, LABRATS and iLearnScience.org will offer contemporary, interactive material from which students in the class will formulate materials for the project. iLearnScience.org is being established as a new online interactive science center aimed at the LABRATS audience of young people from 11 to 18 years old. It will be an online resource that fosters student interest, research, and collaborations, with an initial focus on emergent behavior, climate change, and sustainability. iLearnScience.org will contain online exhibits while providing information on the activities of other groups that are synergistic with those of LABRATS, Wolf Ridge and ICAM. It will complement the ICAM–sponsored interactive science center, emergentuniverse.org that addresses an audience of internet-savvy adults and will serve as a significant go-to learning site for LABRATS members and Wolf Ridge students.
Also being taught in the Winter Quarter of 2012 will be another new course. Physics 150: Gateways to Emergence in Science and Society is addressed to a similar audience and is in many ways synergistic with TCS 198. Taught by David Pines (Physics), Alex Navrotsky (Chemistry and Geology), and guest lecturers from within and outside UC-Davis, the aim of Physics 150 is to provide students with the tools they need to develop an emergent perspective on problems in science and society. The approach will focus on gateways to emergent behavior identified in the physical and biological sciences and on gateways that have been proposed for solving some of our major societal problems.
Physics 150 is also an experiment that emphasizes interdisciplinary and integrative learning at the upper undergraduate and graduate level. There are several aspects to the experiment: the topic of emergence as a unifying principle bringing together students in different sciences; the use of a simultaneous classroom-based and web-based offering; the emphasis on emergent global problems and the science needed to assure clean, secure, and sustainable energy and food supplies to power our world; the integration of high-profile guest lecturers who will also participate in other campus activities; and grading based on a website created by each student. This experiment will set the stage for other innovative, rigorous, and adventurous intellectual experiences for our young scientists.
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