Endless Knots

Goodbye, MA STEM Summit

Think about it. Eleven hundred people in Massachusetts came together today to talk about science, technology, engineering, and math in education (STEM). A whole day. And there were reportedly several hundred more who wanted to come but there was no room. If the numbers keep growing like this, in a few years, the Massachusetts STEM Summit may fill all of Gillette Stadium.

I snapped this picture while leaving after a long day of talks and workshops. With no responsibilities other than to attend, I spent the day tweeting. What follows are some of my tweets -- not a record of the day, per se, but a record of what I noticed, slightly edited for readability, as I moved from session to session.

Breakfast Plenary

Bob Kraft [owner of Gillette Stadium and host for day]: "Eight years ago, there was no Facebook; Twitter was a sound; a cloud meant rain; LinkedIn meant you were in prison; and apps were something you ate before dinner."

Kraft: Announces a new award of $5K for Mass STEM Teacher of Year.

Kraft: "Invites" everyone to come to Gillette Stadium on Sunday to watch Pats defeat Jets.

LtGov Timothy Murray: Announces $650K additonal funding for @Scale STEM Initiative, exemplary STEM projects across Commonwealth.

Lt Gov Murray: Our advantage in Mass is our "innovation economy;" STEM was referenced 16 times in Mass Economic Development Plan

Me: Wondering what ratio is between 1100 people at MA STEM SUMMIT today and total # of educators in state.

Rose Kirk [keynote speaker, president of Verizon Foundation]: "Every $10B invested in broadband creates 500K new jobs;" 30% of Verizon Foundation staff have STEM degrees.

MA Secretary of Education Paul Reville: "This is no longer a conference or a summit; it's a movement"

SecEd Reville: So much STEM stuff going on all around state; have double # of STEM jobs in MA as in nation

SecEd Reville: Massachusetts is developing national models for having pre-K frameworks in STEM

SecEd Reville: "We're on a roll, we've got a movement, and we've got to keep going!"

SecEd Reville: "I recently visited Newton North [High School]'s Innovation Lab" -- Go my hometown, Newton!!!!

SecEd Reville: "We need to close the inspiration gap"

MA Sec Labor & Workforce Dev Joanne Goldstein: Fascinated to watch prez debates w/kids tweeting, reading endless tweets

Sec Goldstein: Challenge to all: how to more effectively join workforce development with K-12, particularly with high school students

Sec Goldstein: Department of Labor gave community colleges $20m to collaborate & figure out work & education needs in Mass

Morning Workshop on Workforce Development

[Governor's STEM Advisory Council Executive Director] David Cedrone: Baby boomer retirements pose challenge to fill STEM jobs; must build talent pipeline by aligning programs

JD Chesloff [Executive Director, MA Business Roundtable]: Raytheon survey of 1K high school students: do you prefer doing your math homework or eating broccoli. 56% preferred broccoli

Gary DiCamillo [Chair, Berkshire Manufactured Products]: youngest tool & diemaker [we have] is 55. No one to hire! VoTech gone!

David Cedrone: STEM programs are capital-investment heavy; need continuous conversations with the business community to insure employment

Me: [It's a] complex system of economics/education/career counseling disconnects [coupled with] poor forecasting + budget cuts that has decimated pipeline for [the] trades

Precision machining company owner from SE Mass is also looking for employees with skills for jobs

Me: Would small business networks like [those formed by] manufacturing companies in '80s & '90s help STEM pipeline problems? See TEAMNET FACTOR http://amzn.to/RHhBGu 

Educator from Marlborough, MA: "Soft" skills, e.g., collaboration, [that are] sometimes dismissed, just as important as "hard" skills

MA Sec Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki: Turf issues still holding us back. Are we educating citizens or training a workforce? We need both!

Sec Bialecki: Is mission of K-12 to train people for jobs or educate people to go to college? Again, should be both

Lunch Plenary

Most impressive presentation yet: Janet LaBreck, Commissioner, MA Commission for the Blind, brilliantly delivered all from memory

Janet LaBreck: Technology has been a game changer for the blind, "leveling the playing field" in the 21st century

Commissioner LaBreck: "as a blind person, I never imagined being able to read newspaper - never mind all those apps"

Afternoon keynote by NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman, MIT undergrand, UMass PhD, 3 space missions, last 159 days on space station

Astronaut Coleman, accomplished flutist, played first earth-space duet & read to her child from space

Dr Coleman shows slide of space station and says, "I used to live there."

Coleman: things are *hard* & amazing. Lack of space station now forces NASA to think about what we *really* do.

Coleman: Private companies doing things we used to. They also make decisions like that (snaps fingers) "without a meeting! Imagine!"

Coleman: [There's a] "certain optimism about space" that we need to encourage

Coleman: 8.5 hrs to get into orbit. Showing video from space, not animation. You're not floating in space; you're flying."

Now video of Cady Coleman paying flute duet from space to earth with flutist in Russia in honor of 50th anniv of space flight! 

Coleman: INCREDIBLE video from space showing astronaut pitching ball then floating ahead of it to hit it back with bat

Now she's showing how the toilet works in space. Use your imagination, tweet-readers

Coleman: saw Cape Cod from space! Fellow astronaut said, "Oh my god, it looks just like the map."

Coleman: Took 60K pics in space, including Aurora Borealis. Spectacular. Extraordinary. Not enough characters to describeColeman: Get "Be a Martian" app or "SpaceCraft 3D" or "AstroApp"  

 Coleman: Ending with photos of glass-artist husband who keeps house when she's gone + gorgeous shot of her son (and cat)

MA Sec of Housing & Econ Dev Greg Bialecki: "In Massachusetts, collaboration happens at regional level"

Afternoon Workshop on "Designing Courses Based on Evidence of How People Learn"

Robert Milner, Prof, Neurology, UMass Med School: Demo of memory -- deeper analysis involving affect causes greater retention

Karen Kashmanian Oates, WPI Dean, Arts & Sciences: Learning depends on forming cognitive networks. Lemon>feel>image>taste>smell>lemon law?lemongrass etc

Oates: "Practice consolidates learning and feedback enhances this learning"  

Oates: In-depth teaching, not just facts [results in] active collaborative learning; experiences that link theory and practice  

Tara Mann: "For mastery, subject matter must be taught in-depth with many examples in which the same concept is at work"  

Oates: "Learners must reflect on own learning--metacognition, "knowing about knowing;" asks students to write about it

Oates: Emotional component to learning. Cancer course [is] very different from Cell Biology course; AIDS course is very different from Immunology course 

Oates: "Need to move to participatory learning around topics of impact to students." From "Inert" to "Liberating" Literacy 

Tara Mann: Experiential Learning Cycle: Active Experimentation>Concrete Experience>Reflective Observation>Abstract Experimentation

Karen Oates: Let students know why you're doing what you're doing, which motivates directed learning. "Give them voice."

At which point we did an exercise. Everyone got a peanut in a shell. Our job was to write down what it looked like to us. Here's what I wrote:

Ode to the Peanut

First the feeling, the rough shell, dirt still trapped in the crevices, spine after spine that reaches from end to end, the shape of a kidney, not that I know what a kidney looks like and there is a splotch, not just dirt but an indentation, a birthmark, poor little peanut alone out here away from your tree, your mother, your family, likely harvested by someone allergic to you who is now on the verge of death or maybe dead but doesn’t know why which makes me ask whether if the peanut did kill you, do you know  it? And I haven’t even cracked the shell, wherein lies the fruit of the woody pellet.

Milner: Learning activity provides closure and should continue beyond class. Think on way home of 2-3 things you've learned today.  

Goodbye, MA STEM Summit  pic.twitter.com/9jnHtZOk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Live from Massachusetts STEM Summit

I'm attending the Masschusetts STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) Summit today at Gillette Stadium (who knew it was a conference venue?). I'm sitting in the introductory session where the Governor's STEM Advisory Council Executive Director David Cedrone is providing an overview of the STEM initiative here in the state. David is a long-standing colleague--we first worked together when he was doing fabulous things with networking at Digital Equipment Corporation where I was an external consultant.

Here are some (incomplete) notes from the introductory session:

9th Annual STEM Summit in State--1100 people registered with 250 on waiting list.

Student interest in STEM in MA lags nation – 37% vs 43% nationwide

@Scale Project – Phase 1 – lots of good initiatives; not scaled, not replicated; identified first set of 7 projects endorsed by Advisory Council; secured additional funding for them; got 3:1 private:public match. Focused on student interest and student readiness, 2 of top 5 goals

Funding for 2012 increased to $1.5m; hope to fund complete portfolio across pre-K-12 of 20 projects; going for NSF funding for research on “best practices”

Opportunity through pre-K providers to start simple interest in STEM for kids and reach parents who bring their kids to school every day; “WOW” public awareness campaign also begun ($130K for this year) featuring “Wowsters” in MA who do exciting STEM things in state; posters available here at Summit.

Focus in 2012 on Student Interest/Readiness; Public Awareness; Workforce Alignment: Employer Awareness & Readiness

 

Danny Hauben's Beautiful Bronx

Yesterday's New York Times profiles Daniel (to those lucky enough to know and love him, Danny) Hauben, the realist/muralist/"touched with whimsy" (Times description) painter who won the commission to create the art for the new Bronx Community College Library. Stupendous.

The Times interactive page shows four of Danny's works with the ability to mouse over and see them in more detail. Click-worthy, for sure.

This photo, from Danny's website, says what words cannot, him painting, what he's painting, and how he paints it.

 

It was my good luck to meet Danny when he was a teenager. His brother, Eddie Hauben, and his wife Jan (Ward) Hauben, were our first friends in Boston, whom we met in the context of bringing Bucky Fuller to Boston to stage World Game here in the summer of 1970. The story, of course, has many twists to it -- Eddie worked for Bucky; Jan worked for Gus Jaccaci, a futurist who had previously been a Harvard admission's office who had tried to recruit my late husband, Jeff Stamps, to Harvard so that he would ski with the Harvard team. (FTR, he chose Dartmouth instead, where he lasted for less than a year--it was all-male then and far too conservative for him--before transferring to University of New Hampshire.) Gus was working at Boston College at the time and in his role as Arts Assistant to the President was able to sponsor World Game.

And it was evident from first meeting Danny that he was a major talent. Most people (everyone?) in our lifelong network of friends who grew out of that 1970 confluence of interests own Danny's pieces, including one of our house, a pastel from the perspective of the back yard, that has hung in the dining room since 1985 when I asked Danny to do it. Just superb.

Which all of this is.