Announcing the National Geographic supported Lizard Project’s partner educators!

The Lizard Project is thrilled to announce our partner educators who will be working with us to bring evolutionary biology from the field to their classrooms.  They are all outstanding educators who work hard every day to share the wide world of science with their students. We are looking forward to virtually visiting their classrooms through live video chats from the field.  In no particular order they are:

Adam Taylor, John Overton High School, Nashville, TN- We first found out about Mr. Taylor when he was live-casting his evolution lecture to his class over the internet! How cool is that?  He enthusiastically uses technology including twitter in class to get his students excited about learning.  He has also been involved with the National Science Foundation’s GK12 program which brings early career scientists into the classroom to share real science with teachers and kids. You can follow him on twitter @2footgirrafe

Erin Nash, Benton High School, St. Joseph, MO- Erin teaches a very cool zoology course to high schoolers where kids are “exploring the animal kingdom, one phylum at a time” through all sorts of exciting hands on methods. Her students share their experiences in her class with the world at http://nashzoology.ning.com/ and she blogs about innovative science education at http://nashosphere.edublogs.org/ You can follow Erin on twitter @erinlynnnash

Nick Riemann, A. Blair McPherson School, Edmonton, Alberta- “Put simply, Nick Reimann loves school and at times it can be difficult to distinguish between his excitement and passion for learning about science from that of his students.” That’s according to the Government of Alberta, which awarded Nick its highly prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award in 2011. It is that passion for science that drives Wide World Science and exactly what we are looking for in a partner educator!  Nick blogs at http://rieportingwow.blogspot.com/and you can follow him on twitter @scimann

Alan Goldberg and Will Reed, Kelly High School, Chicago, IL-
 I am lucky enough to work with these guys every day back home in Chicago.  Alan and I have been team teaching inclusion biology classes for the last six years.  Mr. Goldberg works tirelessly for his students, no matter what their needs.  In 2011 he was awarded an Oppenheimer Family Foundation grant to conduct innovative lessons with live animals and last year he was instrumental in running the test program for The Lizard Project’s live communications. Will, who holds a degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago and is currently student at U of C’s Urban Teacher Education Program, is student teaching in my room and is on his way to an outstanding classroom career in the classroom. You can follow Will on twitter @greedotron

Youngzine.com - Youngzine, an engaging and interactive CNN-like website for kids has quickly become one of the very best online current event resources for classrooms.  We are super excited to have them as partners and we will be posting updates from the field on their site and fielding online questions from kids. I think these kids said it best when talking about Youngzine.

"Wow...... That's just all I can say. Its pretty cool but... Wow"

"Really really really!!!!!!!! awesome! I love animals all together!!! The world is just so amazing! Great article!"
"This is crazy awesome ! One of my favorite Youngzine articles . Made my jaw legit drop."
"Great story for such a young age! Keep writing you have gift and are meant to share it with the world! GREAT JOB!"

Check out Youngzine at: http://www.youngzine.com/ or to learn more about the great team behind Youngzine go to http://www.youngzine.com/page/about-Youngzine#Team

Gary Morris, Meredith Middle School, Des Moines, IA- Gary has worked with the National Science Foundation and Iowa State University’s Symbi GK12 program for two consecutive years.  Through this he has brought real science to his classroom in a unique way and helped to train two early career scientists in the art of science communication with the general public. We are super excited to have Gary hooked up with us this year!

Not a partner educator, but still wondering if you or your class can follow our adventures in evolutionary biology online?  You can indeed.  Drop me a line at aaronmreedy@gmail and we can talk about your class following Youngzine.com, this blog or following on twitter with: #lizardproject 

Do you want to connect your classroom to the wider world of science? Your class can become a partner classroom with the National Geographic supported lizard project.

This spring the National Geographic supported Lizard Project will be back in the field and we are looking for partner classrooms who want to share in that experience. This project will give students a unique window into evolutionary biology in action. Last year we began an ambitious experiment with the brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei) to study the effect of a skewed sex ratio on natural selection in a wild setting. We introduced small populations on nine small living laboratory islands within Florida’s Intra Coastal Waterway.  Four of those islands have female biased populations and the remaining five are male biased.  We will be going back to capture all of the lizards again, measure and mark the new hatchlings and check the population survival and growth rates.  We would like to share this process with you and interact with your class.  As we prepare for the field work, your students can get familiar with our work through blog posts and assignments that reinforce the concepts of ecology and evolution that we study.  Later, as we head out into the field, your class can watch our work and ask questions through a live Skype session and through the blog.

If you are interested in having your class partner with The Lizard Project or just want to hear more, drop us a line at aaronmreedy@gmail.com

WideWorldScience is going to TED2012!

I am thrilled to announce that I have been invited to speak at TED2012.  This year at TED there will be a new session called The Classroom that will feature ten talks that teach.  My talk on fascinating experiments in modern evolutionary ecology will be part of that session on the final day of TED2012. The talks from The Classroom may be used in part to launch TED-ED (http://education.ted.com/), TED’s new education based website that will feature talks that teach as well as "a platform where visionary educators, students, and creative professionals can identify, submit & create content for the TED-ED initiative."


I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak at TED, to promote the teaching of evolutionary biology as well as to talk with the TED community about the exciting work Dan Warner and I are doing to bring real science to the classroom with the National Geographic and Waitt Foundation supported Lizard Project. 

Thank you National Geographic and the Waitt Foundation.

Here at WideWorldScience we are proud to announce that the field component of the lizard project is now being supported by a National Geographic Society Waitt Grant.  The generous support from this grant will allow Dr. Dan Warner, me, and our collaborator Alexis Harrison to step up our work in central Florida and reach an even wider audience of students through innovative educational outreach and partnerships with classrooms around the country.  This grant will allow us to:

1) Learn more about evolution by natural selection in the wild.

As the high school students who followed our work in real time last spring already know, we have an ambitious experiment currently underway.  We are attempting to answer the question of “What effect does the sex ratio of a population have on natural selection in that population?”  An animal’s sex (whether it is male or female) is one of its most significant traits that can determine its ability to survive in a particular setting.  For vertebrate animals (like our lizards) in the wild little is known about how the proportion of males to females affects the survival of both sexes.  What does it take to survive in a male dominated world? Is that different in a female dominated world?

To work to answer these questions, we are closely studying small populations on nine living laboratory islands.  Four of the islands have majority female populations and five of the islands have majority male populations.  Each of the founding lizards on these islands has been carefully measured and marked.  We also have taken DNA samples from the founding lizard population on each island and plan to track parentage in each successive generation. We will be looking closely at the sex ratios in each generation, survival rates for individuals and which sets of traits give an animal the best chance of survival in the available environments. In short, this work will give us the chance to answer interesting questions about evolution and sexual selection that have never been answered before.

2) Bring the experience of field work in evolutionary ecology into the classroom.   

At WideWorldScience, we believe that there is too much distance between the science students usually learn in school and cutting edge of research in the field.  With the field component of the Lizard Project, we are trying to bring exciting field work into the classroom.  Students and teachers from partner classrooms will follow our work through this blog as we prepare to go into the field.  This will allow for an inside look into the process of science.  Students will become familiar with our study questions, hypotheses and development of our methods.  Then as we head out to the islands to check on our lizards along Florida’s Intra Coastal Waterway, students will stay engaged through daily Skype chats from the field and frequent blog updates.  This will give students the chance to ask questions live and in real time as they get a window into the process of science as it happens.

If you are a teacher or a student who would like to be a part of the National Geographic supported Lizard Project this spring, please drop us a line at aaronmreedy@gmail.com 

Thanks again to the National Geographic Society and the Waitt Foundation for supporting science and our efforts to bring science to the classroom!

Thank you Oppenheimer Family Foundation! Kids will DO science.

We just found out that our proposal, Animal Behavior Symposium, has been funded by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation.  Each year the foundation gives out $250,000 in grant money to Chicago Public Schools teachers to support innovative hands-on project based learning.  If you are a CPS teacher or know a good one, please help spread the word about this funding opportunity by sharing the link below.
http://www.offtig.org/teachersarea/grantapplication/guidelines.php

The curiosity is undeniable when a kid holds an unfamiliar animal in hand for the first time.  In our Animal Behavior Symposium project, students will work with one of three species- Giant Madagascar Cockroaches, African Dwarf Frogs, or Green Anole Lizards- while they design their own unique research projects to experimentally investigate animal behavior.  They will carry out their experiments over five weeks and then communicate their findings with scientific papers which will be reviewed by their in class peers.  They will then orally present their papers to classmates and invited guests at a symposium.  They will then switch species, and building on the work of their classmates, carry out new projects that further the knowledge of the community.  This will help kids learn about how science works in the professional science community.  The best way to learn is by DOING.

New school year. New chance to push the limits of science education.

Last year The Lizard Project was a resounding success. We pushed the limits of science education. The partnership we had with Dr. Warner and Iowa State University could stand as a new model for science education in high school classrooms as well as a new model for education outreach for research scientists. We are currently working vary hard to publish our findings, that a female's nesting choices have significant effects on her offspring across multiple life stages, in a major scientific journal. Although the students involved with the project could already tell you what an impact it had on their learning, getting it published will be a nice way of telling the wider scientific and education communities what kids are capable of when you set the bar higher than it has ever been before. This type of science in a high school classroom would be nearly unheard of even in the most elite and wealthy high schools in the country. I am extremely proud that we achieved this at Kelly High School, where more than 90% of our students are designated as low income. So what are we up to this year? Well we have two major grants pending that could support some great projects this year. One would support an in class project that would give kids unprecedented creative freedom to design their own behavioral experiments with live animals. The other would allow us to bring even more field experiences to our students via live Skype chats from our island research sites along the Florida Atlantic coast. Oh, and we are still working on a documentary film about The Lizard Project. Check back for more updates soon.

OPPORTUNITY FOR MY FORMER STUDENTS

Were you inspired to learn by following Dr. Warner and me as we worked in Florida? Did you feel like the blog and the live Skype chats helped bring you closer to science in the wider world? If you said yes, You might have the chance to be in a commercial for Sprint where you talk about how technology helped you learn and inspired you!

If you are interested, email me at aaronmreedy@gmail as soon as possible and I will put you in touch with casting.