Science 360

Here we go with part 4! I hope you're learning a lot and that the discussion is prompting you to dig deeper and explore this fascinating field of cosmology.

A parsec (a term used incorrectly by Hans Solo in Star Wars - A New Hope) is a unit of distance, not time. The word comes from the contraction of two other words...parallax and arcsecond. You see, we need a unit larger than a light year to start to understand the magnitude of the universe and the distance between the stars. Indeed, 1 parsec is equal to 3.26 light years!

Questions? Email me at [email protected] or Twitter @astrostephenson

This is a tricky concept to grasp when hearing about it for the first time. I'll again point out that the same clip can be found on my YouTube channel, Science 360 - Beyond the Sky. It contains visuals that may make it easier:
https://youtu.be/HkNTA7zX-u0

Be sure to check out the inquiry questions below that video.

I'd also like to point out that the discovery of the Cepheid Variable star is generally attricbuted to Henrietta Swan Leavitt. This audio I did made it sound like Hubble made the discovery. He did USE them but only because of the work of Leavitt.

This is the second in the 7 part series on Cosmology, designed to help you, the teacher, feel better and more confident in bringing this topic to your science classes.

The video verison of this episode can be found on my YouTube channel, Science 360 - Beyond the Sky:
https://youtu.be/mH5rxx_E1_c
Be sure to click "Show more" for lots of inquiry questions you could use with your students on this topic.

I apologize for the sound quality.

And let me know if these are helping you prepare to teach astronomy to your classes. My email is [email protected]

This is part 1 of a 7 part series on cosmology. I've put this together as a teacher resource, for anyone out there who is asked to teach about the Big Bang Theory, the origin of the universe, modern cosmology...but just doesn't know where to start.

This lesson is also on my YouTube channel linked here:
https://youtu.be/-bOLkAOjsi8

If you click "show more", you will find several inquiry type assignments that you could give to your students. Browse through my YouTube channel for all kinds of space related videos and dozens of inquiry questions to help you teach astronomy.

Here I introduce a 7 part series that is designed to teach you, the teacher, a few things about the Big Bang Theory and what we might call modern cosmology for high school.

I'm often asked for teaching strategies or class assignments for astronomy. But I'm much more inclined to teach you about the subject and then allowing YOU to determine how to teach it. This is what I call the joy and the privilege of being a teacher: you GET TO customize it for your class. So if you're just a little nervous about the concept and lack confidence in your understanding, then this series can help. But then go have fun teaching it in a way that best suits your class!

Subscribe to the podcast to be sure to catch all 7 parts in the series. Plus check out all the other episodes and see if there are topics that will help you teach other science concepts as well

Dr. Chutko is a professor of Environmental Science at the University of Saskatchewan. He teaches courses in Environmental Systems, Weather and Global Climate Change. And he doesn't limit himself to the university either, but regularly gets out to the elementary schools to see if he can answer their questions on this difficult and complex topic.

This is a "sciencey" discussion but extremely interesting. We cover lots of topics including evidence of human involvement in climate change by analyzing carbon isotopes, how the planet and the Sun could be a part of the puzzle and then some of the social and economic fallout that comes with switching from fossil fuels.

There is a lot here that can really help any teacher who needs some scientific support in bringing the lessons of climate change to their classes. By listening to this conversation (and maybe taking notes!), any teacher could go into their class feeling ready to lead a rich and meaningful AND relevant discussion.

And these discussions are essential to bringing about solutions to the global challenges we have as we transition from an older energy source to a new and cleaner one. This can be done, but education is key. So let's get informed, let's do our best to connect the lessons to something of great significance and let's shape the future by staying up to date and involved.

Connect with Dr. Chutko: [email protected]

Think chemistry is boring? Think again! Dr. Colleen Kelley has created a chemistry comic book
series filled with colorful characters and exciting storylines that translate complex chemistry into animated mysteries. Her comics and unique imagination have turned the Periodic Table into a playground of chemical adventure and have allowed elementary school students to master concepts often taught at the college level.

Dr. Colleen Kelley is the Creator and Founder of Kids’ Chemical Solutions
(www.kidschemicalsolutions.com) which is a comic-book based chemistry curriculum intended for kids ages 8 – 108.

Her journey as a chemist began at The University of Richmond where she received her B.S. in Chemistry. She fell in love with the world of discovery and research and wanted to continue explore more chemistry.

She headed to Penn State University and dashed through graduate school receiving her Ph.D. in chemistry at the age of 24. She was having so much fun doing chemistry research that she accepted a Chateaubriand Postdoctoral Fellowship in Strasbourg, France with Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Lehn.

Colleen was a first-generation college student who kept following her flow of having fun doing
chemistry research. Fast forward 30 years later to the tail-end of her career teaching chemistry in higher education, Colleen finds herself captivated by the question, “Why do my students think chemistry is SO hard?”

Dr. Kelley now conducts her research in Chemical Education to uncover this mystery. What she has discovered is that learning chemistry is very much like learning music. Both disciplines are dependent on the interpretation of symbols and the development of fluency with these symbols. We know that the best time to learn music is between ages 6 – 10 when the brain has the plasticity to make the neural connections necessary. We NOW know,
through Dr. Kelley’s research, that this is also the best time to learn chemistry.
Dr. Kelley is now teaching in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in Arizona using her chemistry comic book series. The kids are excited and embracing learning through this platform.

What’s next? “My WHY is to make learning chemistry fun, accessible, and inclusive so that it becomes a ‘normal’ part of a child’s education.”

Connect with Colleen:
Twitter: @kids_chem
LinkedIn: Colleen Kelley, Ph.D.

Maria Vamvalis is a doctoral candidate and instructor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto) where she is researching climate justice pedagogies that nurture learner well-being. She is a former public school educator who continues to support teacher education and teacher professional learning.

Maria has worked with diverse not-for-profit organizations engaged with the intersections of transformation, education and systems change.

The underlying paradigm? We just aren’t in a healthy, sustainable relationship with the land or each other…

I’d like to start by saying that this episode is a mindset episode. By listening right through to the end, I feel that this discussion I had with Maria WILL affect what you do in your classroom.

I first got to know Maria through my own personal network of educators who put climate education in the spotlight. And having been in many conversations I’ve had with Maria, I came to realize that besides climate change and climate crisis, there’s something else she taught me about called climate justice. Her research focuses on the profound impacts of climate change and the affect it has and will have on young people, namely our students. One of the clear messages coming out of her research is that today’s youth want a different education. They want schools to focus on the major themes of this era of climate change and help them prepare for what comes next.

The way Maria describes this process in this discussion is that teachers need to enact a wholistic approach, engaging students in critical inquiries, where learning is a series of imaginative and creative discoveries. The curriculum isn’t something that is just covered, but is the starting point that can lead students to find creative spaces, allowing them to try and test new ideas.

Maria even goes on to say that ecological collapse IS our curriculum and you now what? I agree with her 100%. This is not the time to dance around an issue. Climate change is real, the evidence makes the headlines every day, and the schools are the place we will find the solutions and the new way of thinking as we learn to unlearn a colonial and extractive mentality towards the land that our society has held for long enough.

And within all of this is the beautiful message that Maria brings about how the individualistic nature of personal advancement, must give way to a collaborative and respectful group mentality where the collective is greater than the sum total of the parts. Caring for each other can lead to caring for the land, our future relationship with the land and the blessing we have to be part of such an interconnected and dynamic equilibrium.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Maria and I hope that it moves you to teach with the child’s total well-being in mind.

Links for Show

Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt: https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/

Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext

Karen Barad: Meeting the Universe Halfway
https://www.dukeupress.edu/meeting-the-universe-halfway

Natural Curiosity: The Importance of Indigenous Perspectives in Children’s Environmental Inquiry
https://www.naturalcuriosity.ca/

Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother
https://jabsc.org/index.php/jabsc/article/view/577

Basic Call to Consciousness
https://goodminds.com/products/basic-call-to-consciousness-1981

Climate Education Reform BC
https://www.climateeducationreformbc.ca/

Kari Grain – Critical Hope
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690768/critical-hope-by-kari-grain/

This Book Will Save the Planet: A Climate Justice Primer for Activists and Changemakers
https://www.quarto.com/books/9780711268890/this-book-will-save-the-planet

The Link Between Climate Justice and Racial Justice
https://climateanalytics.org/blog/2020/black-lives-matter-the-link-between-climate-change-and-racial-justice/

Unleading for Climate Justice Podcasst
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/podcast-episodes/leading-for-climate-justice/

Hospicing Modernity
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675703/hospicing-modernity-by-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/



Connect with Maria
on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mvamvalis
on Twitter: @MariaVamvalis

How do you take a solid background in engineering and design; combine it with creativity in writing, art, and music; and use it to solve the problems you see in education and environmentalism? If you’re Bobby Donohue, then you make a cartoon about boneheads, of course. And it seems to be working.

When his two kids were little, he realized he wanted to do his part to make sure he was leaving them a planet that was in better shape than he found it. So he created Planet Bonehead to inspire and empower a new generation of master stewards for our one and only planet Earth.

He introduces kids to the amazing advancements and optimism he sees in environmental science and green technology.

Links to Bobby's work:

Planet Bonehead: https://planetbonehead.com/ (FREE to join)

Work with me to share your environmental work, OR to sponsor teachers: https://fuelblue.com/

Kids & Greentech Podcast: https://planetbonehead.com/kgt

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbydonohue/

Sandy Marie Bonny is a writer, visual artist, and earth scientist (PhD 2007, UAlberta; MSc 2002, UAlberta; BSc 2000, UBC) whose creative practice is grounded in interdisciplinary perspectives and engages the storied media of paper, pigment, and stone.

Her writing has appeared in academic and literary journals and anthologies, including The Shape of Content—Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science (2008) and Coming Attractions 11 (2011); as well as two book-length publications, The Sometimes Lake (stories, 2012) and Yes, and Back Again (novel, 2015). Sandy is an advocate of interdisciplinary and multi-vocal literacies and believes in the power of story to connect, teach, and motivate personal agency for listeners of all ages.

She has brought science, stories, and students together for over 20 years in roles coordinating, developing, and delivering community-based STEM outreach programs and post-secondary STEM access and equity initiatives, alongside graduate studies, university teaching, and creative work.

Sandy currently leads the USask College of Arts and Science Indigenous Student Achievement Pathways (ISAP) and STEM Access Initiative team, which welcomes First Nations, Inuit and Métis students to the University of Saskatchewan (USask) with academic and co-curricular programming that builds confidence, knowledge and skills.

Sandy is a non-Indigenous member of Saskatchewan's Treaty 6 community in the homelands of the Métis people; she lives and works in Saskatoon.

Links to Sandy's pages/media:
https://www.sbonny.com/
https://artsandscience.usask.ca/profile/SBonny

Links to Sandy's books:
Thistledown Press
The Sometimes Lake https://thistledownpress.com/product/the-sometimes-lake/
Yes, and Back Again https://thistledownpress.com/product/yes-and-back-again/

Links to articles mentioned in the episode:
Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis, et al. "Teaching about the importance of trees: A study with young children." Environmental Education Research 17.4 (2011): 519-536. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504622.2010.549938

What We Believe But Cannot Prove; Science in the Age of Certainty
https://www.amazon.ca/What-Believe-but-Cannot-Prove/dp/0060841818

Firestein, Stuart. Ignorance: How it drives science. OUP USA, 2012. https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SrK7iS3E8nAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=ignorance+how+it+drives+science&ots=I5TBHXSkU1&sig=9hE0WlcAUbtUG1ckxxKHRL2G1uM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ignorance%20how%20it%20drives%20science&f=false

Phillips, Jonathan. "Storytelling in Earth sciences: The eight basic plots." Earth-Science Reviews 115.3 (2012): 153-162. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825212001249