IRIDESCENT

Learning pains while developing science education apps

2012-02-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

An engineering design problem

We are a science education nonprofit and work with engineers and scientists to convey complex physics-based concepts to children through open-ended engineering design problems. We dove into the nascent field of science education apps because of the overwhelming evidence that mobile devices are going to become mainstream educational devices (see Horizon Report).

The field is new and exciting, but it is not easy to develop an engaging educational app that teaches the user something new each time. So we have had to repeatedly question why we are in this field and what unique perspective we can provide. After developing five apps we finally have a better understanding of what we can provide.

We have a good understanding of developing open-ended engineering design problems that draw children in and hook them as tinkerers. The virtual world presents a no-mess, quick-reward approach to tinkering. The user can rapidly create many prototypes (without having to get out of her chair), test them and leave no mess.
We have some experience explaining complex concepts simply to children.
We work primarily with upper elementary and middle school students and can expand the app market that targets that age range
Apps provide a cost-effective way in which we can increase our impact. We spend a huge amount of resources on our in-person programs and they only reach a few thousand children and parents each year. Through apps we can reach hundreds of thousands of children and provide them with meaningful experiences that help deepen their conceptual understanding of physics.

Our main learning objective therefore is to develop games that focus on conceptual learning through experience rather than factual learning, providing both a better game and a better learning experience. We only illustrate specific concepts and topics that lend themselves to the virtual world. For instance topics such as nanotechnology, planetary movement, bacterial locomotion, fluid dynamics or the engineering constraints of building a submarine naturally lend themselves to the virtual environment, where the user can zoom around molecules, see gravity fields and air and develop an intuition for how invisible forces work.

Lessons from each of our apps

We have developed five apps so far and are in the process of releasing five more this year. Each app has been a huge learning experience.

Aero

We created this app in partnership with Gamedesk. Our vision for this app was for it to be able to show air flow around a bird's wing (to help teach how lift works) and then to enable the user to create their own bird and see why each was successful or unsuccessful because of the amount of lift generated on the wing. Due to time constraints, we cut out the latter part. The result was Aero which provides an insight into the air flow around a wing and the resultant lift forces. But there is no game element that: 1)would make the app fun; 2)encourage the user to transfer her learning. As a result many subtle aspects of lift generation are probably missed by the casual observer.

Build a Bird (iOS, Android)

We then worked with I-site to release a second app that would show the marvelous adaptations of birds to various environments and hopefully have a more engaging game play aspect. But again due to time constraints, we had to cut back on the game play. However the artwork in this app is stunning (created by an extremely talented science illustrator - Ioana Urma) and that goes a long way towards making this app notable. This app was featured by Apple and as a result got about 64000 downloads. Here are some blog posts about the app that give us hope that we are on the right track:

from a birding enthusiast
from a school that is using it in their 2nd grade classroom (scroll to "2nd Grade Migration Game and Build-A-Bird on iPads")

Biobots

This is our most recent and most exciting app developed in partnership with Night and Day Studios! It is much more complex than the others and targets upper elementary and middle school students. It is based on the work of an amazing illustrator - John Kelly - in the book The Robot Zoo - a mechanical guide to the way animals work. The book is now sadly out of print. We decided to bring some of the animals in this book to life through an app. Our physicist on our team developed the story line: It is the grand opening of the Underwater Biobot Zoo - a collection of mechanical animal robots created by a scientist - when a catastrophe strikes: an earthquake damages the underwater museum and visitors get stuck. You happen to be trapped in the scientist's lab. The user has to study the database of the scientist records and design an underwater rescue robot to save the visitors. So the app has three parts - the database, builder (where you choose the propulsion system, energy source, respiration, digestion and camouflage type) and the navigator (where you get to rescue the visitors stuck in a yellow submarine).
Due to financial constraints, we had to limit the scope of our vision and so the story really doesn't get developed too well. In execution the learning pieces stand apart from the gaming experience. This is easy to see while playing the game, but was totally not apparent to us while we were developing the app.

Clean Marine

This was developed in partnership with Desktop Aero. The user has to design an underwater glider that can pick up trash and clean the bay. This app is targeted towards nerdy middle and high school students who spend their time tinkering and thinking about design problems. This group is probably very small! It has a lot of physics and engineering design, but the concepts are complex and need some more engaging game play to inspire the required persistence.

Current field of science education apps

According to the iLearn II report toddler apps are the most popular education apps in the Apple marketplace (58%), followed by apps for adults (40%). Elementary school apps are only 19% of the educational apps, followed by 18% of middle school apps. High school is the least popular age category (10%).
As a mother of a two year old I can make some surmises as to why toddler apps are so popular:

toddlers need a lot of attention and supervision and educational apps seems to be a "low-guilt" way of keeping them busy. And hopefully they are learning something!
it is relatively easy to develop an app to keep a toddler's attention - put some bright cartoonish pictures of animals, add animal sounds, put in some letters, numbers and music and have a simple matching game to ride on top of it all - and you have a toddler app.

Currently science educational apps barely scratch the surface of what is possible with a smart-touch device. They are weak enhancements to the content in a book and are mostly focused on presenting factual information. The only exceptions are apps not specifically designed for educational purposes, but involve manipulating partially realistic models of physics in achieving non-educational goals. For example, Anodia incorporates gravity wells in a traditional block breaker game and Osmos uses the concepts of momentum and gravity in moving bubbles of water around. Even Angry Birds contains some useful simulations of projectile motion. Notice that these games do not present facts, but allows a user to gain an intuitive feel for how a complex system operates through direct experience. This is a guiding principle behind how we design engaging hand-on activities, and is also the component that makes any game, educational or otherwise, enjoyable (Gee, J.P., 2005).

Development challenges, lessons and next steps

Like any engineering design problem, we had to balance our wish list with time, funding and expertise constraints. Developing an engaging game that looks beautiful and supports learning requires a team that has the scientific, app development, teaching, aesthetic and UI design expertise.
The hardest piece for us has been to understand how to have both an engaging game and an educational tool. After five apps, we finally have an understanding of how we should go forward i.e develop games that focus on conceptual learning through experience rather than present factual learning in one module followed by the game play in another module.
We also need to build iteratively in smaller chunks of time and money. It is not wise to spend the entire budget on one version without extensive user feedback. We also need to limit ourselves to having one clear learning objective and an engaging game play aspect that keeps reinforcing it.

What lies ahead

We are currently working on:

a new version of Build a Bird where the user can actually "build a bird" and vary parameters such as wing span, weight, flight speed, beak type etc to suit a particular environment. Through the process the user will have an opportunity to transfer her learning to a design problem, thereby building a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts.
an app on high Reynolds number fluid flow in partnership with Robot Super Brain.
two apps that were conceptualized by high school students and are based on science exhibits at the New York Hall of Science. The goal of these apps is to deepen and enhance the learning experience of the visitors to the science center.

Our final frontiers are to:

address the App Gap - The iLearn II report states that 38% of low income parents dont know what an app is. We work primarily with low income communities who need a lot of support learning how to access the internet, using keyboards, smart phones etc. We plan on making these apps a regular part of our in-person programs and documenting the learning/training process as well as the impact to further inform the field.
research the long-term effect (if any) of these virtual learning experiences on the behavior and attitudes of users. Does tinkering in the virtual world translate into tinkering in the real world?

Regardless of all the learning pains, the science education app field is a very exciting one with much unexplored potential. We are very excited to collaborate with educators, scientists, developers and artists and develop powerful learning tools that unlock the wonders of our world for children. We welcome thoughts, comments and suggestions!

Each of these apps has been made possible by the generous support of the Office of Naval Research.

References
Gee. J. P. (2005). "Learning by Design: good video games as learning machines". E-Learning, Volume 2 (Number 1), p. 5-16

Women in Leadership Videos

2011-12-29T13:58:00.000-08:00

Did you miss the Technovation Challenge’s Women in Leadership panel at Andreessen Horowitz last month? Never fear, as we have posted short videos from the panel and backstage interviews, that are packed full of the insights and wisdom of some of Silicon Valley’s most influential female movers and shakers. Highlights include:

Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco speaks about the challenge of women having to prove themselves over and over again and the integration of family, work, and hobbies.
Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Location & Local Services at Google recounts the mentor who changed her life, sleeping under her desk, pulling all-nighters, and working 130 hour weeks.
Sandy Jen, Co-Founder and CTO of Meebo shares her personal vision and thoughts on women not being confident enough and gives advice on how to build a brilliant and inspired team.
Angela Benton, Founder of the NewME Accelerator talks about her vision of changing the tech industry, the value of diversity, and refusing to let others define her life after getting pregnant at 16.
Freada Kapor Klein, Founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, speaks about hard work vs. luck, the importance of being yourself, and having a mentor who reminds you who you are.


Hard work is the key to success	The importance of mentorship 1	The importance of mentorship 2

Technovation Challenge’s vision	Profile: Angela Benton, NewME Accelerator	Profile: Padmasree Warrior, Cisco

Profile: Sandy Jen, Meebo	Building a team

Become a Mentor
The panelists are living proof that having a mentor is a major key to success, but the flip side of finding an amazing mentor is being a mentor to the next generation of female tech entrepreneurs.

The Technovation Challenge is looking for female mentors from the tech and entrepreneurship industries in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles to mentor a team of high school girls for ten weeks this spring. You don’t have to be a programmer, anyone in the field could be a mentor, as there are teaching assistants who help the girls with technical issues.

Being a mentor not only helps the girls, but it benefits the mentors too. Last year’s mentors said that the program expanded their network of women working in technology and increased their understanding of entrepreneurship. Here’s what they had to say:

“Professionally, this has been a great course in entrepreneurship. My favorite lecture was the Pitch lecture. I have been to many workshops and seminars in the past, and I think this one was top notch. I have to do public speaking a bit more, and I will take some of his advice and apply it.”

“I've been so inspired that earlier this month I created a startup at Startup Weekend for Education in San Francisco, and I still have a team working on it, but that's not it. I just found out I got into Founder Institute, a part-time incubator for tech startups!”

“The [Technovation Challenge] experience was absolutely amazing, and my group of girls inspired me to start something of my own... watching my high school team code such an awesome app made me realize that I could do it too!” (This mentor was also accepted into the Founder Institute).

Sign up today! http://iridescentlearning.org/programs/technovation-challenge/participate/participate-mentors/

Technovation 2012 will be held in Berkeley, San Francisco, Mountain View, San Jose, Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles.

This work has been made possible by the generous support of the Office of Naval Research.

Explainers as Designers

2011-11-21T20:43:00.000-08:00

Do you think you can make a mobile app?

Of the eight high schoolers in the class, just the hands of the two boys shot up. They had experience hacking at home. One had hacked his Nintendo video games, the other jailbreaked his iPhone. The six other girls? Not one raised their hand. They didn’t feel they had the experience or confidence to imagine that they could program an app. But by the end of our co-ed Explainers as Designers program, the girls had not only created mobile phone apps, but they won the competition to get their apps created professionally.

“I enjoyed the challenge provided by the program because I initially wouldn't even come near programming applications. Honestly, I wouldn't have thought of trying to program anything prior to taking part in the Explainers as Designers Program,” said Jacqueline, a member of the winning team.

The challenge: create a phone app to match up with exhibits and engage New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) visitors. This may be a simple challenge for a Silicon Valley software engineer, but not for these high school students, many from low-income neighborhoods, with no engineering background. Could they design and create these apps and pitch them to a panel of judges in just seven weeks? They could and they did (and the apps were pretty amazing).

Fifty-five NYSCI Explainers (high school and college students who explain museum exhibits to the public) participated in a version of Iridescent’s Technovation Challenge this summer and learned not only how to design and program apps using App Inventor, but they learned all about entrepreneurship from industry experts.

The program was targeted at low-income and minority students who were already interested in science, but did not necessarily have any interest or experience in engineering. The point? Show them that engineering and business is fun and accessible and that yes, they too could be engineers and entrepreneurs.

“I thought that it was amazing. My favorite thing about it is that it allows these students who would not normally get training in entrepreneurship or App Inventor to learn about these subjects. It opens new doors for them and may encourage some to become engineers or entrepreneurs,” said Sookram Ramsaroop the NYSCI Supervisor for Visitor Interactions.

Most of the students had never programmed before, but they picked it up in just a few classes. “The part that interested me the most was the programming (I gained a greater understanding of what it is, what it's used for, and how it is done). I was pleased to find that I could pick up app inventor pretty quickly,” said Lauren, a member of one of the winning teams.

The judging panel chose Bio-Hatcher as the winning app at Pitch Night. The panel was also very impressed with Molecule Rush, and they asked for an exception to be made and for both apps to be developed professionally. The apps will be developed this winter by a professional studio for both the Android and iPhone. The apps will be available for download online, at NYSCI, and at other partnering museums across the nation. Iridescent is working with the studio to have them mentor and train the eight students from the two winning teams this winter in coding and app design.

The program was funded by the New Youth City Learning Network and the New York Community Trust.

Iridescent Five Up! - video series following our family science participants

2011-10-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

After three years of applying for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Informal Science Education grant, we finally were awarded the grant to work with the same group of Family Science Participants for five years. We are now in year two of the project called, "Be a Scientist".

There are some really cool aspects of this project, one of which I will share here.

I was inspired by the Seven Up! documentary series and we are going to create something similar with the families who participate in our Family Science Courses. The following videos are from the first year of the project and the students are all first graders. We hope to bring four more each year as these students go through elementary school.

The videos have been created by Prof. Jed Dannenbaum, Prof. Doe Mayer and their amazing students - Alejandro, Jessie and Josie from the USC Cinema School.

Some points to keep in mind and notice:
* we are targeting parents with this video. The technical content has intentionally been downplayed. We emphasize the fact that anyone can help their child learn and do science - regardless of background or prior attributes. These videos will be played at various Back to School night recruiting events to help parents see the value of engaging in learning activities alongside their children.
* Success for Iridescent is when the parent continues the learning that we initiated in the classroom. This is what we see in the Medina Family video. Parents are the biggest influencers in a child's life. Our strategy is to exponentially increase our program's impact by bringing the parents along with us on our mission.
* Success for Iridescent is also when the parent supports and encourages the child to persist through failure as Knick's mother does when he despairs.

We are so excited to start creating the series for year two. We would also love any ideas and suggestions on themes or story lines to explore :)

Iridescent - the name

2011-07-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone asks me why did I choose the name Iridescent! So here is the answer :)

Iridescent means something rainbow colored, lustrous, beautiful! I believe that when you understand a particular concept, you begin to see its manifestations everywhere. So for instance, if you learn how to observe light and shadows, you suddenly begin to see the world in 3D. Or if you learn about how a bird takes in its wings in an upstroke and fans them out in a downstroke, you then see the same mechanisms in swimmers, turtles and other biomechanical forms of movement.

So the world becomes very interesting, beautiful and multi-colored. It becomes Iridescent :)

My husband Tim came up with the name one morning after we had biked and had spent a good 3-4 hours listing names! The sad part is that only 20 people can spell it!

And the airplane in our logo comes from this airplane that one of our first students designed and flew!

Iridescent is hosting a new "science of cooking" blog

2011-05-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why bananas are green when they are unripe and yellow when they are ripe? Have you ever made a batch of muffins that fell flat instead of rising? Well, you are in luck, because Iridescent is hosting a new "science of cooking" blog that will help answer these, and many other, questions from the kitchen. ScienceFare.org will be launching on June 1, 2011.

ScienceFare is not just about telling you about food science and showing you results, it is about teaching you how to be a scientist in your very own kitchen! With each post you'll see how a scientist uses the scientific method to investigate the food we eat. Most of the equipment and ingredients you read about on the blog can be found in your kitchen, which means you can feel free to put on an apron (or lab coat) and start doing science too.

We'll see you at the ScienceFare on June 1, which happens to be the same day that the Top Chef Masters are going to be "getting all Science-y" on Bravo!

Launching the first Iridescent Science Studio, Los Angeles

2010-10-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

It all started with a bus in May 2009! Paul Yarin and I were talking about having a mobile science bus that would go to parks, open up from the side, set out chairs and show cool science movies to people and then invite them to tinker and make cool things. Then we decided that was too small...

My dream was to have a beautiful space that would invite everyone to come and tinker, offer awesome tools and equipment to people so that they could design and build what they wanted, to have a library (of course) and finally a place to drink tea and coffee and to just hang-out. Paul decided that we were a good thing to support and very generously offered to fund the new dream space. There was no time to waste and so began the search for the ideal space! Our summer intern Melinda Forest interviewed nearby community organizations serving youth. The goal was to learn about their challenges in recruiting and working with children and families from the community over the long term. Click here to learn more about what we learned!

The ideal space had to be close to our university partner USC (within the thick red line) and to our current (yellow star) and potential (blue circle) partner schools in South LA.

We started scouring the Craigslist ads, saw a few places, went quite far with two options and then decided to ask for help! Drake Coker (a long-time friend and Iridescent supporter) put us in touch with a rock star broker Paige Coker Heiman who in turn set us up with Marin Rutherford (a local broker). Marin went around with us and found us this space. 750 sq ft. Cute, within our budget - but sooo small!

We went around the building and saw this space

1750 sq ft.Completely out of our budget and so perfect! Drake also put me in touch with an awesome team of designers and architects - Peter Gargagliano, Vanessa Hooper and David DiGiacomo. They inspired me to go talk to the landlord and to pitch for Iridescent to take the dream space. I did! This was my first big pitch and it worked!!! So much for the Aladdin Factor :)

I signed the lease in March 2010 and then we were off and running!

Here are the plans that the design team came up with.

I wanted to start using the space as soon as possible so that we could quickly respond to our needs and design a beautiful but practical space. We started by renting tables and chairs until we found good-looking, sturdy, reasonably-priced chairs and tables. The chinese lanterns did a lot to make the space look nicer! Thank you Vanessa and Benjii!

First piece of color! We printed photographs from our sessions (taken by Heather D' Augustine).

Our lovely T-shirts!

First Engineers as Teachers (Spring 2010 cohort) class at the Studio

Fall 2010 Engineers as Teachers cohort!

First Family Science Sessions at the Studio (from Synergy)

Setting up the cafe tables

And set!

Stocking the library

Library today :)

No need for rental furniture anymore!

First Summer Engineering students.

Setting up THE BIG TV (our first big purchase!).

In use!

Setting up the projector

"How Things Work" Mural (then) by Ioana Urma

"How Things Work" Mural (now).

Gathering our tools and toys (must remember to get insurance ;)

The Iridescent Wind Tunnel - 60 hours of labor and much love from Sinchai Tsao and Darryl Hwang

Vision for the Iridescent Science Studio

Conduct super-cool science weekend workshops (like "Taking Things Apart")
Provide sophisticated equipment and tools to children so that they can design and build whatever they want. We will be accepting proposals for project ideas soon. The top 10 winning proposals will get $200 each for the project, access to equipment and one-on-one engineer mentorship for a semester.
Screen science films :) Yes.. nerdy, but fun :)
Offer Summer Engineering programs to children
Conduct Family Science Sessions in the evenings
Conduct engineer training sessions
School Appreciation Dinners, Engineer-teacher meetups :)
Team hang out spot :)

Ready for the launch! Dream come true!

Click here to RSVP for the Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony and Science Festival.

Program Agenda

Click here to VOLUNTEER for the event.

The Address: 553 W 23rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007

View Larger Map

Thank you Paul for believing in us!

Working mothers - how do they do it all?

2010-07-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

I have now been a mother for almost 8 months and have voraciously consumed all advice on
"doing it all". Here are some pieces of advice that particularly resonated with me:

From Lucy Hood (CEO of Jamba! until 2007 and Executive Director of the Institute for Communication Technology Management, USC Marshall School of Business):

While in the thick of things it seems crazy to think that your career should not meteorically keep rising. However your career will realistically span 30-40 years and you should think about what kind of interesting challenges lie ahead of you. Would your day be just as fulfilling if you were doing more of what you are doing now - 20 years down the line? It may make sense to have a career that rises and falls like the waves, to have some periods of lull between storms. It maybe more sustainable and interesting.
Backwards plan your time! This is so interesting as we use this strategy all the time while developing our lesson plans. But it never occurred to me to do the same with my life! After having children, it is not reasonably possible to work 90 hours a week (and be a mother and wife). So you have to decide how many hours you are going to devote to work, how many to your family and how many for yourself. Then stay true to your decision.
Have fun. Don't take red-eyes. You are in this for the long haul. Don't think you are superwoman. Sleep. Have fun! Take your children along on business trips. Spend an extra day before and after the business and play!
Seek support. Read books. Talk to other working mothers. Build your support network.
Live close to parks and other children. You will save countless hours that will otherwise be spent on the road.
And the best one of them all: Have no fear! Be true to yourself. You are the same ambitious, go-getting, quirky, powerful person you were before. Don't let yourself down. You can do it.

From Tina Seelig's What I wish I knew when I was 20 (Tina Seelig is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program):

Once you become a mother, don't think that your career is going to go on hold. Just think that you are going into the "slow lane". Try to work part-time or volunteer so that you can keep your skills sharp or develop new ones.
The skills you develop as a parent will be invaluable at work. You will become uber-efficient, will be able to juggle thousands of thoughts at the same time in your head, function on low sleep and realize that you have the ability to conquer mountains.

Some books that I found particularly useful were:

This is how we do it by Carol Evans (President of Working Mother Media): This book had one piece of good advice regarding child care. Many times women feel very guilty about spending on child care when their salaries just about cover the costs. However, that is the wrong way to think about the whole scenario. It is an investment that enables the woman to stay in the workforce and keep her skills fresh.
Defying the odds - one of the rare women (entrepreneur) biographies. As a side note.. I always wondered why there weren't more women entrepreneur biographies and now I know why! Women entrepreneurs or executive moms have NO TIME to write. I also realized that the top male CEO has absolutely nothing on the average working mom - in my opinion :)
Wise men fish here - the story of Frances Steloff and the Gotham Book Mart. This is an amazing story of how a woman started a bookstore that not only sold books but was a literary salon hosting and encouraging authors and poets way before they became famous. What is really inspiring is reading about how she started from absolute poverty and hardship.

Working Moms! What a force to reckon with!

How do you get lucky?

2010-06-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

I read a book called the Luck Factor a while ago and some of the principles have stuck in my head. The book tries to identify what are some differences between people who call themselves lucky and those who do not. Here is what the book say:

Lucky people

tend to be relaxed, open, happy, cheerful. They tend to notice and act upon chance opportunities. One interesting example was of a man who was extraordinarily good at finding lost money. He tried to figure out why that was so and realized that the days he was tense and preoccupied, he tended not to notice lost pennies on the streets! Another good reason why not to go through life being tense :D
tend to listen to their gut instincts. If something doesn't feel right, they dont go through with it. Unlucky people on the other hand are not so sensitive to what their gut is telling them.
are very positive in general. Its not as if bad things dont happen to lucky people. They just tend to look at the more positive side of the misfortune. They expect good things to happen to them and the good things do happen to them! Very common examples are when you meet someone for the first time, if you start the meeting being suspicious and defensive, the other person picks up on the feeling and returns the hostility and so your negative views of the world and people just keep getting reinforced. However if you trust people and are open and genuinely friendly to them, you will get many more smiles all around and people going out of their way to help you out. Iridescent is such an amazing testament of this principle. I sincerely believe that there is nothing to lose in life if you trust everyone. Maybe 0.005% of the time you will have a negative experience, but overall the world will trust you back!
are much more persistent. Unlucky people tend to give up at the first sign of failure and chalk it up to "bad luck". Whereas lucky people just keep trying! One example was of a woman who had amazing luck in competitions. She seemed to win every competition that was offered until the author of the book dug deeper and found out that for every win she had, she would enter 100-200 other competitions that she didn't win! She just kept trying!

Good luck!

Technovation Challenge Pitch Night: "Fixing Silicon Valley's Gender Gap One Pitch at a Time"

2010-04-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Technovation Challenge Pitch Night was a smashing success!

The girls stepped up with incredible pitches, battled tough questions from the all-star judging panel, soaked up the overwhelming support of the community (over 200 attended), and were rewarded with fabulous prizes.

We'll have more up soon!

But, in the meantime... don't take our word for it - check out the review in Tech Crunch!

Iridescent Technovation Challenge Pitch Night

2010-04-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

Iridescent Bay Area has been busy conducting the first ever Technovation Challenge - a revolutionary 8-week curriculum providing high school girls with the skills and opportunity to develop mobile applications for the Google Android smartphone, and the entrepreneurial coaching and mentoring needed to harness ideas and make them happen.

On April 22nd, the girls will be presenting their prototypes and business plans to a judging panel of venture capitalists and industry leaders. 'Pitch Night,' hosted by Microsoft at their Mountain View, CA campus, is free and open to the public. Join us in supporting the girls and checking out the next generation of entrepreneurial and technical leaders!

Click here for reservation information.

Peter Diamandis - The Best Way to Predict the Future

2010-04-05T01:22:00.001-07:00

Peter Diamandis - founder of the X Prize and visionary behind the bourgeoning space tourism industry - speaks on how to create change.

It's a long talk, but one of the most inspiring I've seen.

We will miss you Ruben!

2010-02-23T14:41:00.001-08:00

Ruben Medrano was an amazing force - full of positive energy and cheerfulness. You would never guess by his enthusiasm that he battled and won herculean obstacles - every day.
He came to the Social Innovation Fast Pitch event in November 2008, approached Kara and asked to be involved with what we did. Very soon after he started helping us out by translating at our Family Science Sessions. We came to rely on Ruben to be always there and to be an amazing bridge between the engineering instructors and the families. He was always smiling and cheerful and eager to be part of all the action.
He helped translate at Norwood Elementary and then at Trinity St Elementary for the Cardiovascular mechanics course. He was going to translate for us at Weemes this spring semester before we lost him irretrievably.
He was and remains an inspiration to all. How can one dwell on minor grievances after meeting Ruben and experiencing his positive energy!!
Ruben can never be forgotten.
Click here for a video of Ruben translating.

How to think like and become an entrepreneur

2010-02-03T16:22:00.001-08:00

I just finished Tina Seelig's book "What I wish I knew when I was 20" and wanted to share excerpts that particularly resonated with me..

"Carlos Vignolo, a masterful professor at the University of Chile, told me that he provocatively suggests that students take classes from the worst teachers in their school because this will prepare them for life, where they won't have talented educators leading the way."

I didn't have very good teachers in my K-12 schooling years and learned to find solutions to problems on my own, to ferret our extra resources and to teach myself. This training has been invaluable - especially now as we build Iridescent. I instinctively turn to books to find solutions to problems and immediately apply whatever I learn to improving operations.

"Even as a kid he (Michael Dearing) wrote letters to famous people and was pleased to see that most of the time they wrote back. He still continues the habit, sending unsolicited e-mails to people he admires. In almost every instance they respond, and in many cases the correspondence results in long-term relationships and interesting opportunities. He never asks the folks he writes for anything. His initial contact is all about thanking them for something they've done, acknowledging something they've accomplished, asking a simple question, or offering to help them in some way. He doesn't wait for an invitation to contact these people, but takes it upon himself to make the first move."

As I didn't have a formal background in education, I had to find mentors and experts who could guide me in the right direction. I would email notable professors and researchers in the field asking for help and almost 50-60% of the time I would get a reply with the requisite help or advice.

"A quote attributed to the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao-Tzu sums this up: The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both."

"Some situations literally force you to reevaluate your life. For instance, once you decide to start a family, the entire game changes. You're suddenly faced with the need to figure out how to balance parenting with your profession. As everyone knows, caring for your children takes an enormous amount of time and focused energy. It's both physically and emotionally demanding and incredibly time consuming. Keeping you on your toes, a child's needs change dramatically as they get older. Each year brings a brand-new set of responsibilities and a fresh set of challenges. As a result, parenting provides an ever-changing opportunity to be creative and helps build skills that are extremely valuable in any setting. It exercises your ability to multitask and to make decisions under pressure, and it certainly helps you master the art of negotiation. Women especially face the daunting puzzle of figuring out how to fit together career and family obligations. From my experience, this challenge really is a great opportunity."

These statements particularly resonate with me now since I am a brand new parent trying to juggle a fast growing organization with a fast growing baby girl! Both very exciting and rewarding experiences and I really appreciate the insight that both experiences fuel and support each other.

"Showing appreciation for the things others do for you has a profound effect on how you're perceived. Keep in mind that everything someone does for you has an opportunity cost. That means if someone takes time out of his or her day to attend to you, there's something they haven't done for themselves or someone else. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking your request is small. But when someone is busy there are no small requests. They have to stop what they're doing, focus on your request, and take the time to respond. With that in mind, there is never a time when you shouldn't thank someone for doing something for you. In fact, assume a thank-you note is in order, and look at situations when you dont send one as the exception. "

Iridescent has come so far only because of the amazing people that support it, volunteer their precious time and efforts. I need to thank each and everyone for all they have done to build Iridescent one brick at a time.

"There is a big difference between trying to do something and actually doing it. We often say we're trying to do something -losing weight, getting more exercise, finding a job. But the truth is, we're either doing it or not doing it. Trying to do it is a cop-out."

"Bernie (Roth) also tells students that excuses are irrelevant or, to use the technical term - bullshit. We use excuses to cover up the fact that we didn't put in the required effort to deliver. This lesson is relevant in all parts of your life. There's no excuse for being late, for not handing in an assignment, for failing an exam, for not spending time with your family, for not calling your girlfriend, and so forth. You can manufacture an excuse that's socially acceptable, such as having too much work or being sick, but if you really wanted to deliver you'd figure out a way to make it happen."

Charter vs. Non-Charter schools

2009-11-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

In the past three years we have worked in 24 non-charter and 8 charter schools. This is roughly representative of the percentage of charter schools in LAUSD (148 out of 658 schools = 22%).
The table below rates the various partners (from 1-5, 1 being very poor and 5 being awesome) on the quality of administrative support, the partner teacher and parental involvement.

In general what I have observed is that there really is no difference between charters and non-charters. The three things that determine school performance and quality are:

The principal's dedication to the students, resourcefulness, courage and leadership abilities.
Small class sizes
Parental involvement (which is linked to point no.1)

Charter schools tend to perform better (as seen in the slides from our USN Map) primarily because of small class sizes.Some charter schools also mandate parental involvement and that results in improved performance as well.

In my interactions with researchers and funders I have seen a distinct bias towards charter schools which is not founded on hard data. On the other hand, I have also seen school administrators in non-charter schools be very hostile towards charter schools without basing their opinions on any credible evidence. I would like to change that! As we partner with more schools, I hope to populate the above Factual table with more data. As it is an editable table, you are invited to discuss any content.
In addition I hope the USN map will help users make more data-driven decisions about partner schools.

Results from our Parents' Needs Surveys

2009-10-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

Robyn Hightower helped develop, conduct and analyze two parent surveys (in Fall 2008 and 2009) that would help inform our decisions on how to develop programs that directly addressed our target audience's needs in the most organic and efficient manner. Here are some key findings.

Fall 2008

We sampled 361 parents from eight partner schools at Back-to-School Nights. These schools were mainly situated in South Los Angeles and represented a mix of charter and non-charter schools that serve primarily low-income Hispanic and African-American students.

Parents were asked about reasons they would enroll their child in Iridescent’s science programs, positive outcomes they expected from the program, and things they currently do to support their child’s education.
“Why would you sign your child up for this program?”
Main reasons why parents were interested in having their children attend Iridescent’s science workshops were:

So that their children could learn new things
That their child wanted to attend
They wanted their children to make new friends

“What would you like to gain through this program?”
Main positive outcomes parents hoped to gain were:

Increased knowledge about science. Nearly one quarter of parents (23%) said they would like to learn about science.
Increased ability to “help my child(ren) with their homework” (22%).
Getting information about and access to USC (19%)
Learning about new community and school resources (18%)

“What do you do to help your child in his/her education?”
Only 22% of parents said that they made sure their child did their homework and one in five parents (19%) said that they helped their children with their homework.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Parent’s low involvement in their child’s homework habits could possibly be improved by getting them involved with Iridescent’s programs, as parents viewed Iridescent as a great resource to learn how to better support their child’s education. Thus one way to get parents involved would be to focus on the message that Iridescent could empower parents with science content knowledge and the ability to help their children with their homework.

Fall 2009
We sampled 943 parents from 14 partner schools in South Los Angeles that primarily serve low-income Hispanic and African-American students. The goal of the survey was to inform decisions on whether Iridescent should develop an online Parent Social Networking Ning Site, what features to incorporate on that site and what resources to develop that would help parents engage their children in science after the workshops. The survey also had some questions determining interest in co-investing and the Parent Leadership Program.
OVERALL INTEREST IN FOUR PROGRAMS IRIDESCENT OFFERS/COULD OFFER
On the whole, parents were very positive toward all four of the programs that Iridescent tested. Almost three out of five parents were very interested in the Iridescent’s programs on the whole. Parents thought that Iridescent’s in-class science sessions were the most appealing, with 87% being positive toward those courses. These courses were defined as “4 week class led by USC engineers for your children during their science class at school.”
Almost nearly as popular were the science courses that focused on student projects. The student science project was described as a “2 month long project for your child on a topic of her/his choice. Your child will be mentored individually by an engineer and will have access to sophisticated tools and equipment like microscopes, robots and computers.” Although it was the third most highly rated series, the family science classes, described as “4 week evening class led by USC engineers, in which you conduct experiments and learn science along with your children”, still garnered 72% total positive interest and nearly half of all parents (46%) were ‘very interested’ in family science classes. Even the family science project, which was rated the lowest, had 67% total positive interest.
Parents seemed most comfortable with classes that stayed in the classroom and did not involve parents teaching science at home. This is consistent with what we have experienced in the past. Parents who haven’t participated in our Family Science Program or seen videos from the sessions are unable to overcome their biases against science and their own feelings of inadequacy regarding supporting their child’s science education. Videos are very effective in showing parents that others like them are participating in the sessions, supporting their child’s activities meaningfully and having fun! Here is a sample video we have been showing at Back to School Nights.

ONLINE PARENT SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE
Parents’ Internet Usage
Almost 4 in 5 parents use the Internet at least once a week. This is encouraging as it suggests that online forms of communication may be an efficient way to contact and interact with parents directly. This finding supports trends seen in the research Iridescent conducted in Fall 2008 in which 87% of parents said they had computers at home and 82% said they had internet access.

Interest in features of an online forum for parents
As over 80% of parents log on to the Internet at least once a week, an online forum where parents can check in on their child’s education could prove to be a value resource for parents. Iridescent asked parents how interested they would be in an online forum for parents that would give them resources to support their child’s education, adding that the parents would be provided a class to teach them how to use the forum. Parents were asked to rate different features that could be included in the online forum, including, videos of engineers explaining concepts and showing how to conduct experiments; the ability to share pictures/videos from the science sessions with friends, family and other parents; learning how to send their child to university, such as USC; access to engineers; monthly science stories; and lesson plans on how to conduct science experiments with children at home.
Overall, positive interest in an online forum appears very strong. On average, three quarters of parents were positively interested in each website feature. Parents were most interested in gaining access to resources outside their local community, including access to information about institutions of higher education and access to engineers. This finding supports trends seen in the parent research Iridescent completed in fall 2008. The partnership that Iridescent has with USC is a beneficial one, as it helps attract the interest of parents who may not otherwise be interested in science programs.

SCIENCE RESOURCES
Amount spent on home entertainment products
In the past six months, almost one in four parents (23%) spent $50-$100 on movies, including DVDs. Parents spend slightly more than average on movies rather than video games or music. As parents spend a significant amount of their home entertainment budget on movies, than other forms of entertainment, offering parents educational, science DVDs would be a great way to encourage at-home engagement with science lessons. One example of a video that we could burn onto the DVD is below:

Interest in buying science-related products to excite kids about science
Surprisingly, storybooks (80%) garnered more interest than t-shirts (72%).

PARENT CO-INVESTING
Amount of possible donations to Iridescent
Most parents were willing to spend a small sum of money to support the Family Science Courses. Nearly three out of four parents (73%) were willing to donate between $5 and $20. Fifty one percent of parents were most interested in donating $10 or less. Only 9% were interested in donating more than $20. Nearly one in five (18%) reported that they were not interested in donating anything.

Parents’ interest in volunteering for Family Science Courses
Iridescent evaluated parents’ commitment to the Family Science Courses by asking them to rate their interest in volunteering for the program. Iridescent described the time commitment and tasks the volunteers would need to complete*.
Half of the parents (51%) indicated that they would be interested in helping Iridescent organize Family Science Sessions at their child’s school. Nearly one quarter of parents (23%) stated neutral, and the last quarter said that they were disinterested in volunteering.
The finding that 51% of parents who completed the survey were interested in volunteering is encouraging. The survey has ascertained that parents are not only willing to invest money to support Iridescent in their child’s school, but they are also willing to provide support with their own time and resources. Their willingness to provide support will help ensure sustainability of the Family Science Courses at each site.
* “We are looking for motivated parents who would help us organize the Family Science Sessions at your school. We would provide a 1-2 session leadership class led by USC Business students. Time commitment = 30 hours for one month. Responsibilities would include organizing food, materials and funds.”

More details on the survey can be found here.

How to get hired? INITIATIVE

2009-09-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been reviewing a lot of resumes (both for volunteer and paid positions at Iridescent), going to career fairs and interviewing candidates and came to a few conclusions about hiring.
I used to be an international graduate student not too long ago and distinctly remember the feeling of desperation when you submit your resume to 5000 black holes.
But now I realize that good people are very hard to find and employers have the same feeling of desperation that they won't get the right person for the job. So if you know you have the right stuff, then there are two things you could do that would get you hired in a heartbeat.

Be picky.
Show initiative.

That sounds easy, but it actually requires a ton of work. Here is what the above two steps entail:

Identify 2-3 organizations that you would like to work with.
Study the organizations very very carefully and review their websites at length. This requires a lot of work and you shouldn't skimp on the work.
Google the employees and find out about them (this is super easy to do these days with LinkedIn profiles, blogs etc).
Find out what philosophy the administration subscribes to. If the organization is big, find out if they have any books about themselves and read them!

THEN comes the fun creative part!

Determine what the organization needs. This is not easy. Sometimes the organization could have job postings on their website that could guide you, but this step requires you to think like an owner. "How could I run this organization better?".
Determine how your strengths could help address the organization's needs.
Plan and execute a small project (along the lines of the organization's needs and your strengths) that you can finish in 2-3 weeks. Or if it is not possible to do a small project, then think through (in detail) a larger project that could benefit the organization AND that you would love to execute.

Last step is to get hold of someone from the organization and show them your work. You are guaranteed to floor them! Many times they may not be hiring in your field or for the position you are interested in. Do not despair. Be persistent and patient. Volunteer to work on that project for 2-3 months (shorter period of time is useless to all). And you will be guaranteed to be hired after that period!

Conclusion: If you are passionate about working in a particular field, go for it with all you have got. Don't be afraid of hard work. Think long-term. And you will be supremely happy!
Here is one of my favorite inspirational pieces on "Living a Fruitful Life" by Frank Oppenheimer.

How to build a working model of a heart using tupperware?

2009-09-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

We are playing with a new tool (called Knoodle) that enables you to synchronize powerpoint presentations with a video. I think this is a very powerful approach.
Here is an example from our cardiovascular mechanics course.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href='http://64.224.10.59/ulearn/'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Share and annotate your videos&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; with Ulearn!&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Community Within the Community

2009-08-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

For the past three years Iridescent has provided hands-on science courses at ~ 30 schools in the downtown Los Angeles area. However, in order to provide the community families with a workspace for long-term projects, we are now looking for a physical space that can be used for teaching and preparation work.
In order to get a sense of the Los Angeles community and gain insight on ways that Iridescent could become a thriving and functional partner in the neighborhood, I took a look at various successful non-profit organizations in the area: The Center for Life Long Learning (CLLL), The Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), The Salvation Army Youth Center, and Challengers Boys and Girls Club (CBGC). Although very different from each other, these organizations also had striking similarities. There’s a beautiful sense of hope that lies deep among their staff and members. Sure the community is filled with thousands of families trying to provide their children with the basics; but alongside these people and their aspirations are hundreds of non-profits trying to do the same thing, struggle to survive. So how do they do it? There were a few words that never failed to come up during an interview, “respect”, “growth”, and “commitment”. These words not only applied to the children involved in the community programs but also the volunteers, workers, and parents.

RESPECT: In order to earn the respect of the community families, each organization reaches out, they provide a comforting atmosphere and a haven for its members. The CLLL painted their gates and walls with spirited colors. HOLA has begun to clean up the Lafayette Park for community use. The Salvation Army painted a large mural on their wall. The CBGC created schools and day care programs within the area. Once the people of the community gained a sense of trust for the organization, they were able to become involved and follow the high standards that the organization placed for its members.
COMMUNITY GROWTH: Each organization makes it their responsibility to rear the children towards being successful and moral members of society. The volunteers and teachers pinpoint where a child’s talent lies then build off it. They help the children to excel in their best abilities while also offering other resources. The growth of the parents is also always a goal. In this time of economic instability many families have great intangible demands; whether mental, emotional, or supportive, the families need a safe place to connect and work with each other. The organizations often build strong bonds between parent and child. As the members grow, so does their desire to give back to the community, thus the organization can grow.
COMMITMENT: There must be a commitment to the cause. The organizations’ volunteers and workers must be selfless and the child members must be self-fulfilling. The commitment of the community provides a full proof plan for learning and change.

Giving goes both ways. No organization can function without the shared resources of another. The organizations provide activity, health care, and education for those that need it, and in return the community wants to give back. The WANT to give back is how the communities function within the community. Mortimer Jones executive director of the Salvation Army Youth Center said, “In order to succeed, this can’t be a job it has to be a passion.”

Organization

Center for Life Long Learning

Heart of Los Angeles

Salvations Army

Challengers Boys and Girls Club

Establishment

· Small

· 6 years in its location

· Transient Families

· 7-18 year old members

· 5 directors

· Over 1,000 kids

· 20 years in its location

· Application process

· 6-19 year old members

· Serves over 4,000 youth and their parents

· 7 years in its location

· No age limit on members

· 3,500 children

· 40 years in its location

· 6-17 year old members

· Application process

Volunteers

· College students

· Local professionals

· Retired teachers

· Elderly Services

· College students

· Local professionals

· SAT prep tutors

· College students

· Corporate and Local professionals

· Center for student Missions.

· Archdiocese Youth Employment.

· College students

· Local professionals

· Parents

· Teachers

· Junior Members

Fundraising

· Grant writing

· Individual donations

· Grant writing

· Individual donation

· Golf/Bowling competitions

· Summer camp drive

· Hosting major events

· Grant writing

· Individual Donation

· Grant writing

· Individual donations

· Golf Tournament

· Pancake Breakfast

· Citibank Gala

Effective programs

· After-school Tutoring and homework help

· Computer Lab

· Free Snack Bar

· After-school Tutoring and homework help

· One-on-one focus

· Soccer and sports activities

· 12 week courses of the child’s choice.

· Art, Cooking, LGBT, Sex Ed, college prep…

· Offers Mental Health Care for families

· After-school Tutoring and homework help

· Family services

· Licensed day care

· Dance, fitness, kitchen, library, arts, game rooms, food, skate park

· Computer Lab

· After-school Tutoring and homework help

· Transportation

· Character and Leadership development

· Health and life skills

· Radio Broadcasting, film editing, arts, music, dance, fitness, sports, cooking

· Field trips

Partnerships

· Teachers without boarders

· City scholars foundation

· LA food bank

· Dole Foods

· Salvation Army

· Bresee

· Boys and Girls Club

· LA Lakers

· Archdiocese

· Youth Admissions

· LA Clippers

· USC

· LA food bank

· Center for student missions

· Disney

· United Way

· McDonalds Teaching Healthy Habits

· Hola

· Q Fraternity

Security

· Background checks Gate

· Police cooperation

· Surveillance camera

· Background checks

· Gate

· Police Cooperation

· Constant Chaperon

· Alarm

· Background checks

· Gate

· Police Cooperation

· Constant Chaperon

· Alarm

· Windows in every room

· Surveillance cameras

· Everyone is searched

· Background checks

· Gate

· Police Cooperation

· Front Desk check

· Alarm

· Strict non gang related dress code for civility of children within the grounds

Essentials

· Gain the trust of the community

· Have a good PR plan

· Competitive staff

· Know your demography

· Asset Based: Build of the individual child’s talents

· Equality and respect

· High moral values

· Confidence

· Gain the trust and respect of the community

· Passion for the cause

· Build confidence within the child

· Involve the parents

· Build of the talents of the child

· Parental volunteers

· Shuttle transportation

Problems

· Tagging

· Homeless wanderers

· Awareness

· Family Attendance

· Parents with limited education

· Inconsistency with student volunteers during the summer

· Parental want for child to work or be domesticated instead of continue school.

· Cultural misunderstandings.

· Values clashing.

· Parents with limited education

· Transient culture

· On the Gang Separation line

· Not enough volunteers

· Transportation

· Parents with limited education

· Awareness for the youth centers services: Breaking the stereotype that the Salvation Army is one big thrift store.

· Discipline

· Parent disputes over fees and attendance

· Optional tutoring: The children aren’t forced to attend homework help and often pick an activity over learning.

What 106 Los Angeles teachers think and believe

2009-07-02T14:30:00.001-07:00

Robyn Hightower developed and conducted a teacher survey for the teachers in 8 of our partner schools (N= 106). Here are some of the interesting correlations that we observed in the data. You can access the survey here.

Effect of age

The older the teacher, the more they believe that “No matter a student's home environment, a teacher can help a child succeed in school” r(107)=.240, p=.012.
Not statistically correlated. The older the teacher, the more likely they will agree that “My school provides resources to those who are willing go through the difficult approval process” r(100)=-1.81, p=.72.

Awareness of Iridescent

Awareness of Iridescent is positively correlated with interactive activities in the classroom. R(108)= -.20, p=.038. The more hands-on or social activities that teachers incorporate into their classroom, the more likely they are aware of Iridescent.
Awareness is also negative correlated with “My school does not encourage teachers' continued education” r(113)=-.269, p=.004. The more a teacher believes that their school does not support continued teacher education, the less aware the teacher is of Iridescent. In other words, when the teachers believe the school doesn’t encourage their education, the less aware of outside resources they are.

Interest in Iridescent
“I think that I’m a better teacher than other teachers at my school” almost statistical significantly correlated with interest in Iridescent. R(100) = .195, p= .052. Thus, the more interested a teacher is in Iridescent, the more likely the think that they are a better teacher than other teachers at their school.

Participation in after school activities

Participation in after school activities is positively correlated with starting extracurricular groups. R (115) = .601, p=.000. Significant at .01 level.
Participation in after school activities is negatively correlated with “There are teachers at my school who are more involved in extra-curricular activities than me.” R(116)= -.363, p=.000. Significant at .01 level. This makes intuitive sense as teachers who are highly involved in extracurriculars would rightly believe that few teachers are more involved in activities than they are.
Start after-school groups is also negatively correlated with “There are teachers at my school who are more involved in extra-curricular activities than me.” R(115)= -.332, p=.000.

What is the difference between an engineer and a teacher?

2009-07-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a really interesting book on engineering called, "To engineer is human: the role of failure in successful design". One insight from the book is that engineers naturally have or are trained to have a high tolerance for change. That is why they are always looking for better ways to design and build things. This directly goes against our general love for the status quo, the known and comfortable.
This insight helped me frame our interactions with teachers a bit better. I realized that teachers need to provide a consistent, safe environment for their students (especially inner-city students who have tumultuous family lives) and change doesn't come very naturally to them. Thus a teacher's ability to innovate would be directly proportional to his/her tolerance for chaos in the classroom.
So which side of the spectrum would result in the best learning for the students? I would hypothesize that inculcating a spirit of innovation and courage would stand the student in better stead than a very orderly environment. I come from a girls-only, convent school run by nuns and there are probably some jails in the world that are better than that school. There was tremendous discipline and order and every girl had spotless white, knee-length socks - and I did not learn anything.
Maybe if the teacher were to be openly honest with the students and admit that they all (the students and teacher) were going to try out a new experiment that even the teacher didn't know the outcome of, then it could be a powerful learning exercise for all. I know some teachers on the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) listserve share similar strategies and protocols, but I wonder what it would take to have every teacher expand their comfort zone and be more receptive to change.

How do you teach persistence?

2009-07-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

We recently had a chance to do something pretty unusual - have the students work with kits (we usually have the students build/design their models from scratch with no prepared materials). We got the BP A+ for Energy Grant to do the Energy City Project with two 6th grade classrooms. We did a Family Science Course on Renewable Energy and a bunch of in-class sessions on wind turbines and then we bought some Powerhouse kits for students to mess around with. The kits are amazing and you can build a house with a wind turbine, a solar collector, an oil press, an electric car and motor amongst zillion other experiments. We photocopied all the directions for each experiment, separated the components into ziplock bags for each experiment and divided the students into pairs and small groups.
I was very curious to see how the students would react to the kits and having to decipher and follow instructions and troubleshoot on their own. We had two volunteering engineers Ralph Lewis and Tiago Wright help the students out.
I had anticipated that very few of the experiments would actually work as students generally lacked the essential troubleshooting confidence and experience. But what surprised me was how quickly and easily students gave up trying. They asked for help almost before they started to work on anything. We asked one of the classes to fill out some reflection questions on what they found difficult and how they thought an engineer would approach the problem. What was most surprising was that almost everyone knew the theoretical steps involved in troubleshooting, "read directions, look for mistakes, keep trying etc etc", but only 10% of students actually put them into practice.
Some potential explanations are:

The students we work with will probably never have had access to sophisticated kits, lego sets etc and thus lack the self-directed experience of following directions and troubleshooting. Overall these students just do not have enough experiences where they experience the tangible rewards of designing, building, testing and tinkering. That is our mission to provide these formative experiences to students, but the big question remains: "how many such experiences are needed before it is internalized into a student's psyche?"
This maybe a contentious explanation, but I almost think that students (and many teachers) are too quick to ask for help. Of course you want students to not struggle on their own futilely, but I almost think that we may have taken this a bit too far and now most students just lack the persistence to try things on their own. And this may explain why students know the theoretical steps to problem solving but are unable to actually solve any problems.

I think an education is complete and successful if you can teach a child to be persistent and curious. The child will develop these characteristics if her parents model/reinforce these for her. But in the absence of such role models, how do you impart these values?

Wisdom from Luke Sullivan – applied to life, grant writing, presentations and running an organization.

2009-05-29T21:22:00.001-07:00

I read Luke Sullivan's book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This and was amazed at how universally relevant his advice was. Here are some excerpts from the book as applied to everything important!

Read, learn, memorize

Tom hired me as a copywriter in January of ’79. He didn’t have much work for me during that first month, so he parked me in a conference room with a three-foot stack of books full of the best advertising in the world. He told me to read them. “Read them all.”

He called them “the graduate school of advertising”.

I think he was right, and I say the same thing to students trying to get into the business today. Get yourself a three-foot stack of your own and read, learn, memorize.

Sweat the details.

Go to any length to get it right. Don’t let even the smallest thing slide. If it bothers you even a little bit, work on it till it doesn’t. Poet Paul Valery said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

When you’re done ~~writing your body copy~~, go back and cut it by a third.

Once you lay your sentences down, spackle between the joints

Use transitions to flow seamlessly from one benefit to the next. Each sentence should come naturally out of the one that precedes it. When you’ve done it well, you shouldn’t be able to take out any sentences without disrupting the flow and structure of the entire piece.

Five rules for effective speechwriting from Winston Churchill

1. Begin strongly

2. Have one theme.

3. Use simple language.

4. Leave a picture in the listener’s mind.

5. End dramatically

Reductionism. Ad 5 is almost always going to be better than Ad 1.

Show, don’t tell.

Pose the problem as a question.

In his book The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy, Tom Monahan puts it this way: “Ask a better question.” By that he means a question to which you don’t know the answer. He likens it to “placing the solution just out of your reach.” and in answering it you stretch yourself.

Avoid the rush at the front door. Try the side door, or even a window.

If you can’t get in to see the general, talk to a lieutenant.

Have an opinion.

Offer to do the grunt work.

I overheard a junior creative wisely coach a student by saying, “Trust me, you don’t want to be on a TV shoot. You can’t imagine how clueless you are right now.”

Make hard work your secret weapon.

READ.

Which doctor would you have perform your next surgery? The doctor who has a dusty biology textbook from med school moldering high on the shelf behind his desk? Or the doctor whose desk is piled high with copies of the last four years’ worth of the New England Journal of Medicine?

Well, if you propose to sell yourself as an expert to your clients, you’ll actually have to be an expert. You’ll have to read. And learn. And learn a lot. There is no shortcut to being the best. No easy way around it. You have to know your stuff and know it cold.

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

“You’ve got to play this game with fear and arrogance.”

Somewhere between these two places, however, is where you want to be – a balance between a healthy skepticism of your reason for living and a solar confidence in your ability to come up with a fantastic idea every time you sit down to work. Living at either end of the spectrum will debilitate you. In fact, its probably best to err on the side of fire.

A small, steady pilot light of fear burning in your stomach is part and parcel of the creative process. If you’re doing something that’s truly new, you’re in an area where there are no signposts yet – no up and down, no good or bad. It seems to me, then, that fear is the constant traveling companion of an advertising person who fancies himself on the cutting edge.

You have to believe that you’ll finally get a great idea. You will.

Attention to detail. The Europeans sure do it right!

2009-05-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe the Japanese do it right too, but I haven't been to Japan. We recently came back from a little vacation in Germany and Italy and the first thing that struck me was the many levels of beauty everywhere.
People definitely pay close attention to detail and maybe its partly my Indian (British influenced) upbringing, but I did appreciate the little windows with lace and flower boxes :). Flowers were sold everywhere and people bought them with a dedication that was very inspiring!

People have an innate sense of color that is apparent in the way they dress, how they decorate their buildings and environment. It was so soothing to see green fields broken by yellow fields of mustard, instead of ugly billboards like here in the States.

There was a lot of uniformity everywhere (especially in the red roofs), but the uniformity was aesthetically pleasing. Again in sharp contrast to the many uniform, character-less homes in the States. I was wondering what exactly made the homes in Europe so beautiful as homes in the States that try to bring back some of those features just look fake. I think it maybe that you need to internalize an influence and not just blindly import it into a different environment. For example the Spanish style facades look so ridiculous in LA, but lovely in Spain! They just need to fit more organically with the LA environment!

Another surprising thing was that there were some inventions and features that I hadn't seen in America before. It was surprising because I assumed all first world countries were pretty similiar due to the active back and forth flow of goods and ideas. So I was very surprised to see the tilt-turn windows.
and a little teapot with a hole at the spout. This prevented the tea from dripping down the teapot. Totally ingenious! I wish I had taken a picture.

Lesson: Pay attention to detail, beauty and color. It makes life so much richer!

We all need approval and validation

2009-04-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

I have developed a pretty thick skin (or so I like to think), but am still vulnerable when people appreciate our work :)
We recently interviewed a parent who had participated in two of our Family Science Courses. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

The family couldn't attend the first session of our CardioVascular Mechanics course and the mom told me that her daughter was so disappointed that she cried!

Getting the Family Science Program off the ground has been such a battle. I got the idea in 2006 after reading an article about the Open Classroom in Salt Lake City Utah and then kept trying to implement it with little success in various schools. We would get 2 parents, sometimes 1 at the sessions and our brave volunteering engineers would continue teaching to the one student and one parent. Sessions at Shenandoah and Trinity were total failures. Many people told me that the model wouldn't work in an urban setting, especially with some of the more jaded LAUSD schools.
But I kept repeating to myself that you have to give everything a second chance. Change a couple of things and try again. And things usually got better the second time around.
We have now done 4 successful Family Science Courses at Shenandoah and 2 at Trinity with attendance between 60-70 people.
We also have some basic formulas down that help us go to new schools and run a pretty solid program. The formula seems simple now, but I guess its not that simple, otherwise the journey would have been much quicker and less interesting.
We even replicated the program up in the Salinas/Pajaro area with the help of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We weren't there at any of the sessions, but the model is sufficiently robust that it can take replication. The little town was so happy with the sessions that they got the local TV station and newspaper to cover it :)

It is an interesting lesson overall, sort of like what Gladwell's book Outliers talks about as well. It takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work to achieve any kind of success. It is about being intelligent and having staying power. It does take about 2-3 years before you start seeing any results and then maybe another 2-3 before you start getting known for what you do.

Crime in LAUSD schools

2009-04-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Our Urban School Needs Map project is humming along. The project is super cool with many far-reaching ramifications. The goal is to develop a visualization tool (with the help of a team of very kind Italian researchers from Density Design) that would help us determine which schools are the most needy in a particular area and which ones would make good long-term partners. The former decisions are based on freely available data on school performance, school crime, zipcode poverty, crime and education levels.
To determine which schools would make good long-term partners, we look for interesting patterns in the data. For example, we found a correlation between change in school crime and change in school administration. Exciting stuff!!
The map will be freely available to all and the hope is that it will help schools become more transparent and accountable.
We will also run large teacher and parent surveys that will help us add to the statistical data to determine which schools would make good long-term partners. This recommendation tool would be useful for funding agencies to help them determine which school they should support.

We just finished extracting the school crime data using some neat tools developed by a local startup. We then plugged the data into geocommons to get the following maps. You can also view the original map here.

Some other cool examples of such maps are:

Stay tuned for more neat visualizations!

Beauty

2009-04-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

I love beautiful things - paintings, photographs, flowers, mountains, melodies and writing. I try and share some of this appreciation along with the curiosity about how each of these is created. I have also realized (thanks to working with Ioana), that beauty is in the details, it is a way of life, an acquired perspective (for some) - kind of like a new lens you put onto your camera or a deeper understanding of a fundamental physics concept.
By the way this photograph is taken by Romesh Bhattacharji (click here for more amazing pictures from north-east India).
I want to bring these perspectives to children and show them that learning can be so amazingly rich. I had a very colorless formal education, but explored crazy worlds of books after school. We had a very deep, dark mysterious black wood cupboard that had book collections from two grandfathers, two uncles and my mother. I learned about cheiromancy, talking to plants, how to fly planes, buddhism, photography, sailing, art, dogs and mountain climbing. I wish I could share the same free-wheeling curiosity and love of learning with children. Schools today (especially here in the US) are way more interesting than my prison-like, churning-out-suitable-wives-for-indian-men school (Sophia, Meerut), but I still get the sense of so much regimen, boredom and lack of beauty.
I hope we can change that through our sessions that dont have a "correct" end result, or a pre-determined path to success and through our materials that share a fascination with the beauty around us.

How to start a used bookstore

2009-03-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

While wandering in New Orleans (for the NSTA conference), I came across a lovely used bookstore (Crescent City Books). Since I am interested in developing a successful business model for Iridescent, I always ask people how they run their businesses and asked the cuddly, old gentlemen behind the counter whether business was booming. Surprisingly one of them launched into this long task-list on how to start and run a bookstore. I share.

Don't sell your own books; that will just make you unhappy. Go to library sales, yard sales and buy a ton of books. Don't focus too much on quality. People read all sorts of crap, so dont let your judgement cloud what you buy :)
Find a space. It doesn't have to be on a busy, main street. Booklovers are determined people and will go out of their way to find good books.
Get a good carpenter who will make you good solid shelves. you dont need fancy wood, but you do need to have the shelves raised off the ground by a foot to protect the books from dust.
Buy an eye-catching piece like an antique bookshelf, chandelier or lovely lamp for the entrance, so that people are drawn into the store.
Advertise in the newspaper.
And you are on your way!

They have been in business for 41 years! I am a big fan of the Kindle, but to hold an old book in your hands, smell it, feel the tattered pages, read strange inscriptions, imagine all the people who read it before you - is still something quite lovely and irreplaceable.
Anyway, after that list on how to start a bookstore, I started wondering whether anyone had a task-list on how to start and run a booming education nonprofit. Maybe the list would go somewhat like this:

Find a cause you are passionate about.
Find others who are passionate about the same cause.
Experiment, evaluate and re-assess.
???????

I guess if I knew what came in step no. 4 and beyond, Iridescent would already be quite famous.

Should you pay students to go to school?

2009-03-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

I just came back from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference in New Orleans. It was not as intense as my last year's experience at Boston, but fun all the same. I met one very interesting Canadian teacher who teaches college students in Qatar.
She was saying that students there are all paid to go to school and college. Many of them come in Lamborghinis and the biggest problem is motivation. Qataris have a lot of money and outsource all their jobs to foreigners. So the government has started paying students to go to school and college and learn some basic skills.

I thought this was a fascinating philosophical problem: if you take money and financial stability out of the equation, what reason do we have to get educated? To flaunt our sophistication to others and thereby distinguish ourselves from the crowd? For intellectual pleasure? Would you still want an education if you were Robinson Crusoe? Is it to leave a legacy for someone? If you remove ego from the equation as well, would there be any defense left for getting an education?

ALOUD Business Forum: Fresh Approaches to Branding and Marketing

2009-03-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

So I just went to a business forum event in downtown Los Angeles. It was great! Before the details and lessons that I picked up vanish, I'm going to document.

Event: ALOUD Business Forum: Fresh Approaches to Branding and Marketing
Lynda Resnick, in conversation with Lisa Napoli, author & journalist (Marketplace, MSNBC, NY Times)

Lynda Resnick began her career at the age of nineteen, when she founded a full-service advertising agency. Successfully running this business so early in her career enabled her to gain invaluable and practical marketing experience. She left advertising in 1979 after purchasing a fledgling floral wire service called Teleflora, where she became Executive Vice President of Marketing, soon ascending to chairman of the company. These days, Lynda is known as the PomQueen for obvious reasons. POM Wonderful is not only a company that farms, markets and sells fresh pomegranates, but it also produces and markets POM Wonderful Pomegranate Juice and POM Tea, which are sold in grocery stores, mass merchandise and club stores across the nations. The company has invested more than 25 million in scientific research, and as a result, pomegranates are now known in our culture for their astonishing health benefits.

After signing in, I felt a little awkward. Other than a handful of other UCLA MBA students, I was much younger than the crowd. Don't get me wrong, I love networking but I had trouble getting my foot into the door. So in trouble, I scampered to the coffee table and met a lady working at an insurance company. It turned out that she was the Director of Corporate Communications. They fund organizations like Iridescent but funding was halted due to the economic crash. In any case, she told me she would look out for some possible funding options and get back to me. By this time, it was time for the talk. The talk was structured as an interview. It was a very fascinating talk and I was more and more engaged. Ms. Resnick was talking about her successes in reaching out to different markets. Without further ado, I'm going to highlight some of her strategies:
1) To effectively market your product, you need to invest time and money into finding the true value of the product. This will lead you right into the market where your product will thrive. Lynda and her husband, found some pomegranate trees in some farmland that they purchased. The land was primarily bought for pistachios. For some time, people have talked about the health benefits of pomegranates. Out of curiosity, they began some research studies into the health benefits and they found great results. I didn't know this, but pomegranates have assisted in lowering PSA (the indicator to prostate cancer). I should start drinking pomegranate juice! You need to find the real power or lack of power in the product you are marketing!

2) "Think inside the box." Many companies resort to celebrities to pitch their products out. They rely on the power of others for their success. But instead of wasting time and money with this, sell your product based on the what the product provides - or what's in the product. Make the product the celebrity! As a funny story, Jessica Simpson did advertisements for Domino's pizza. Later, they found out that she was allergic to cheese, and some other basic pizza ingredients. lol...

3) Lynda didn't talk about this directly but she referred to the power of blogging a few times. This blogging tool is becoming more and more powerful in this Internet Era. We often find random blogs all over the place. Person X tells person Y. Person Y tells Person Z, etc. Now, you have a growing network. All you had to do what was put some thoughts in your head into "print".

4) Lynda was asked about her strategies during the economic crisis. She mentioned that it's a great time to give back! A great time for non-profits to push forward. Invest time into things that people care about. She mentioned some major philanthropic efforts from Al Gore and Bill Clinton that were talked about at a recent TED talk.

5) The most important lesson that I took from her talk was the importance of not taking shortcuts. People (like me) dream about being at the top. To get there, you need to slug through the rough roads. If you take shortcuts, it will come back and haunt you. You need to do your research, invest the time and grow - No matter how many connections you have.

During the question-answer section at the end of the talk, I really wanted to ask something. But sitting in a large auditorium with directors, vice-presidents and entrepreneurs scared me. To put it simply, I didn't want to sound stupid. So I thought and developed a question:

"Hi, my name is Guru. I work for a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit that tries to make engineers and scientists out of children in under-served communities. You mentioned the importance of taking the rough road in order to get onto the big stage. You talked about developing a brand. You talked about finding out what people need and the value of your product. This all sounds great. I strongly believe in branding. But, as you said, involves a large financial obligation. As you said. POM spent millions of dollars in this process. You were fortunate enough to be in a position where you had the funding sitting right around you. But, how would it work a non-profit like us, especially in today's economic crisis? How can we do all these things when we don't have the money?"

I was slightly impressed by the question that I whipped out because it didn't sound like that in my head. lol.. Anyway, Lynda's response was something like the following:

"That's a great question. It sounds like you are apart of something really great. I'm happy to hear it. It is tough trying to brand when you don't have all the financial resources but I can suggest a few tools that you can use. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a tool that is becoming more and more useful. Search engines like google pick up on certain words. It is important to have the content on your website written out appropriately so that you optimize the number hits you get. You can pay programmers that specialize in doing this. Buy keywords to increase hits. It's very cheap! Speak to groups in your community who are interested in what you are doing. Find the movers and shakers. Go present to them and convince them to join your mission."

She also mentioned to use blogging to increase visibility. She asked me whether her answer was sufficient. lol. I think she appreciated my question and wanted to ensure she gave me a good answer.

Shortly after that, the talk was over. As I got up to move to the lobby, I was approached by two ladies that worked at a bank right across the street. They said they were impressed by my question and want to know more about what we do. The same thing happened with a lady that works at a local radio station. She told me to contact her with more details about what we do. Lynda also mentioned using the media to increase visibility.

In an attempt to get 5 seconds of face-to-face time with Lynda, I purchased her book which was being sold at the event. I then stood in line to get it signed. When I went up to her, she said, "Oh yes, you're the guy that asked the question!"

In any case, I learned a lot and really enjoyed the event. I loved the opportunity to network and help spread word about this cause that I truly believe in. It's easy to do things for people or things that you care about.

I'm tired of writing so I'll leave it at that for now. Feel free to leave your feedback.

Guru

Lone Warrior - Tribal Leadership

2009-03-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

I have been reading "Tribal Leadership" that talks about the five stages of workplace culture. This is from an interview with Dave Logan (one of the authors):

At Stage One people believe “Life sucks” and they cluster together, expressing hostility, such as in a gang.
At Stage Two people believe “My life” sucks. They feel they are surrounded by people who have power, but they themselves do not.
Stage Three is “I’m great,” which implies “You’re not.” It’s a culture of lone warriors.
At Stage Four the “I” turns to “We” as those lone warriors group into value-based relationships.
Stage Five is “Life is Great” where there is no “they.” These are the history-making groups that have excelled beyond competition.

I was reading the more in-depth version in the book that lists the characteristics of each stage. I think I am in Stage Three, but thankfully didn't display most of the symptoms except one very surprising one! It was that people at this stage obsessively manage their time and track their time. Oh goodness me! I have been logging and tracking stuff since I was born. When I was in college (in India), I had to hitchhike from one end of Delhi to the other (buses were no good as they took 5 hours and you were just groped and mauled all the way over). So I kept track of every hitchhike I took over two years. I also tracked what I ate, how much I spent, how much I studied, how much I ran, which books I read and in how much time - in short, everything that could be tracked. And the data came in useful. My mom used my hitchhiking log to make a case to the Principal of the college to open the residence for girls.
Anyway! very interesting point that Stage Three leaders also track stuff - but mostly to show off. Oh dear. I dug deep into my soul and I think its partially true. I just love logging the numbers and seeing my graphs rise (I have one from Iridescent from way back when), but its also to show off :( Oh well. will be more mature from now on!
P.S. This is the girl's residence hall that was opened up thanks to my tracking.

Proposal Writing and Pictures of Mountains

2009-03-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

Ok! we are back in the big leagues again - 70 and more hours/week. Its mostly because I have started working on a big fat federal grant (due in less than 3 weeks) that will hopefully make Iridescent's life happier.

One interesting thing I have noticed is that when I have to work on a proposal, I seem to get a lot of other smaller tasks done that I have been procrastinating about for weeks. And I also spend more time looking at how many people have joined our Facebook group and Facebook Cause. And after that is done I spend some time looking longingly at pictures of mountains in India. And yes, I am very religious about Toggl and I pause it each time when I indulge in pictures :)
Here is a beautiful blog of a friend of my husband's. Looking at these pictures (although not from India) totally relaxes my mind and I can literally feel the band loosening.

Dammit! I so want to go to the mountains!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where does the time go?

2009-02-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

Weekly report # 4 and I am increasingly puzzled as to where all the time is going.

I started keeping the Toggl reports a month ago and logged a respectable 80 hours/week the first two weeks. And then it slid to 60 or so. At least my learning hours are increasing. I still work all the time (there are so many cool things to do and try!), but where is the time going?

Here are some conjectures:

Transitions: I remember reading somewhere that a lot of time gets wasted transitioning from one activity to another. The past two weeks I have had more meetings and maybe that is where the leak is.
Tennis: I also started playing tennis twice a week. This week I will try to throw in a few runs as well. I am in this for the long haul, so might as well stay healthy!
Cooking: I am finally tired of frozen dinners (3 months of FFF or focused frozen-food eating). So we made a salad this week and one rice and beans.

On a related note, I would LOVE to know how intense CEOs like Howard Schultz, Wendy Kopp and the like manage their time. I know they run (or did when they wrote their memoirs) and have families and they must eat. So how do they manage?

Do you think like a CEO?

2009-02-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

I have been toying with the concept of "employee ownership" for a very long time and here are some thoughts. By now I have had more than 300 meetings with a variety of people and organizations and have seen some recurring things:

People tend to be overly cautious when making decisions. In almost every case they will say that the higher-ups know the bigger picture and they need to consult with them first.
Job descriptions can be good, but they can also become very effective blinders. People have a clear page of text to fall back on and say, "Look! This is not my job. That is taken care of or should be taken care of by xyz."

Here is what I would say to each of them:

YOU know essentially all the details that anyone would need to know to make the decision. It is all about ownership and true courage. Think as if you owned the company. Care about it as deeply as the owner does. Then you will go the extra mile to research, learn more, explore partnerships, put in the crazy hours, suggest improvements, make the company grow and be super successful.
If the company is on the path to greatness then the administration is sure to be supportive of such initiative and guts. You are bound to make some mistakes, but both you and the company will learn way more than if you hadn't ventured out at all.

Such thinking will save everyone a lot of time. If you complain about bureaucracy, make sure you are not contributing to the problem!

Two of my heroes are Winston Churchill and Van Gogh. Both epitomize courage, drive and fire. There is an awesome set of tapes by Prof. Fears on Churchill that I love and the best book on Van Gogh is a set of his letters edited by Auden. Read them and change the world!

"You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." -- Erich Fromm

The wondrous incident of the dog in the night-time

2009-02-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

Before I explain more, here is my weekly report.

As you can see , there has been an almost 20% decrease in productivity since last week! I did crank out two proposals (one to Lowe's on behalf of Trinity St. School and one to Motorola), but then towards the end of the week my family in India had a crisis with our old Boxer dog, Tyche. He was abandoned and then came to us through a series of owners and has been with us for 10 years. He has arthritis, is deaf and can't see very well. Then on the 14th evening he started having seizures. A seizure is extremely exhausting and after he had one, both my mom and brother thought he was going to die. Then he had another one and they really thought he was going to die. They gave him anti-convulsants (my mom is also a doctor), but he kept having seizures everytime he would try and sleep. He had more than 20 seizures over the course of the night and day until one vet finally told them to give him calcium and a steroid injection. All the canine epilepsy websites say that it is a serious emergency if your dog has more than 2 seizures in a day. Tyche had more than 20 and survived! What a miracle!

So I had a hard time concentrating on stuff! But, now that Tyche is fine (just cranky from the steroids), we can move on :)

The interesting thing I learned from this week's toggling was that it takes me pretty much the same time to write a new proposal as to reuse an existing one (~14 hours for the former and ~10 for the latter). I wonder what is wrong!

Have you ever wondered....

2009-02-11T14:26:00.001-08:00

How electricity is generated?

This is one of the hardest concepts to understand and teach. And we took a shot at it :) We spent 3.5 months coming up with a story explaining the different (clean) ways in which we can generate electricity.

Thank you Mike Simpson, John McArthur and of course our star, Ioana! You can check out what she has to say about the story on her blog :)

We are going to disseminate this story as a T-shirt and later as a poster.

Working in the Informal Science Education field

2009-02-08T22:21:00.001-08:00

First off, here is my weekly report:

It is quite different from last week's as our team is growing rapidly and we are working on developing an organic way of collaborating - that doesn't shackle a team-member, but also lets me know who is working on what.
Also, we went to Monterey over the weekend (so the travel numbers are up!) to start our partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Hopkins Marine Station graduate students. We will be conducting a Family Science Course with the families at Pajaro Middle School in March - April.
I have the highest respect for informal science education institutions for the following reasons:

They have to be good otherwise they wont survive in the wild! Unlike public school teachers, informal science educators have to be amazing otherwise the public just wont come back. In my limited experience (that doesn't stop me from making generalizations) informal science educators far outperform the public school teachers in the ways they engage with the audience and make science exciting and inspiring. Check it out for yourself here in a video of Jeff Chambers (from the Monterey Bay Aquarium) teaching about marine habitats.
I love the exploratory, free-wheeling, inquiry-based approach to informal science. I believe that is how you will get a child to be inspired to be a scientist, to strive hard, to be self-motivated and to reach for the stars - by showing them how science unlocks amazing wonders in the world, by showing them the wonderful rewards of being curious.
Informal science institutions like the Exploratorium, Lawrence Hall of Science, Monterey Bay Aquarium have masterpieces of art and science that draw people in! In addition they use all the tricks of advertising, performance, theater, teaching and communication that keep the attention of the visitor.

We have tons to learn from them!

How hard do I work?

2009-02-02T01:22:00.001-08:00

I came across this online program called Toggl and was hooked. I am addicted to logging stuff and this makes it pretty easy. Plus I have always wanted to know how I spend my time and how to be more efficient.

Here is the first report from the week!

I had an 80 hour week, battling jet lag, two proposals and a broken website (both are amply reflected in the graph).

I love how I know exactly how much time to budget for when writing the next proposal.

The Toggl interface could improve, but thats true of all of us and everything. Its a really neat tool if you want to figure out where your time goes and what to cut.

This coming week I want to focus on learning, planning long-term and following up on projects.

5th graders at Chiragh Grammar, India

2009-01-20T03:35:00.000-08:00

I taught our "Build and Fly" session to the 5th graders at Chiragh Grammar today. I do have a soft corner for this school, but I must admit that I am very impressed by how attentive the children are. They are definitely not used to visitors coming and showing powerpoints and videos in class, so my coming was a very novel experience "a golden day in my life" as you can see from the pictures below. I was more impressed by how they listened to every word I said and retained the information. I wonder why there is this difference!

"Build and Fly" - in India

2009-01-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

Warning: sweeping generalizations in this post!

I taught our "Build and Fly" session for 6th, 7th and 8th grade at Chiragh Grammar School. I started off by asking how many of them knew what an engineer did. We always ask this question when doing sessions in the US and usually we get 1 or 2 children (regardless of age) saying that an engineer fixes cars. In this class no one said anything. I started prompting and asking if they had heard the word engineer and everyone said yes. I think its indicative of the general Indian education system (which is changing though) that doesn't encourage too much analysis. I also think that maybe the drive to become engineers and doctors is not as prevalent in the lower income levels as in the middle class.

Anyway I explained that all engineering is redesign (Paul Yarin's definition) and we moved on. The average designs were pretty similar to what we see in the US and students were just as scared of trying new methods and making mistakes. We had roughly the same percentage of students with unique airplane models. The only difference was that they were all way more docile, innocent and respectful. This enabled the learning and teaching to be really easy and meaningful.

I wonder if there is a way to make children analytical, give them the ability and freedom to question and still have them be respectful and innocent. Maybe there is some middle ground.

Learning in India

2009-01-17T02:21:00.000-08:00

My mom runs a K-8 school in India called Chiragh Grammar School. I ran it for a few months before I came to the US and am closely involved with it. Here is a video from the kindergarten morning assembly. They are singing about how they made a boat, put it in the water and how it sank when a frog jumped in :)

Slumdog Millionaire - how do we fix the problem

2009-01-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

I saw Slumdog Millionaire yesterday and it completely wrenched my heart. I couldn't sleep all night.

I was born and brought up in India and go back every year. I am very familiar with most of the scenes that were portrayed. What shocked me was that I had become very desensitized to the whole problem and that it took an unrealistic (although amazingly crafted) movie to get me to think about the problem.

I appreciated the spunkiness in the movie and that the director didn't focus on making the audience walk away feeling guilty, but rather walk away with a sense of purpose - how do we fix this problem.

Here are some links that I checked out after the movie:
Article in the Time magazine about working children
Maimed Beggars
India's Railway Children

It is the most heart-rending thing you can watch, read or think about and I think that is why one does get desensitized to the issue or else you wont' be able to get through a single day.

The movie did reinforce my commitment and dedication to my mission in life - support the underdog, give them a chance, live your life to the fullest and help someone else do the same, make your time on earth count.