How Science Can Save the World from Desertification

As I was checking my usual spots on the internet looking for resources to share with my teachers, I came across this TED Talk: Allan Savoy: How to Fight Desertification and Reverse Climate Change.

It runs for about 22 minutes, but it is a video everyone should watch. After seeing it, I cannot believe that I have not seen this in the news. All I see is Miley Cyrus, Alfuenza, and outrage over political garbage filling all of the media outlets. While this stuff is eye catching, it is ultimately meaningless. What biologist Allan Savory says in his talk literally can save the world!

In his talk Savory explains what desertification is, what its effect on the world is, and what scientists found was causing it. Most of us have heard that the reason many lands are turning to desert, is because cattle is being raised on these lands and that they are over grazing. Originally scientists thought this caused the plant life to be destroyed, which in turn exposed too much soil which then dried out and became dessert.

They were only partially right. It turns out when they removed the cattle the grasslands they were studying became even worse. Savory and his team studied this and through using the scientific process to work through many incorrect hypothesis to eventually find the solutions. As crazy as it sounds the solution was not to remove the cattle from these lands, but to actually increase their numbers! It sounds crazy, but it was not the cattle themselves that was the problem, it was how their grazing was being managed.

Here is what they found. In the past, herds of animals would live on these grasslands. They naturally herded themselves to protect them from the many predators in the ecosystem. These herds would stay in a location eating their fill, but eventually they grass became trampled, urinated, and defecated upon so the herds would move to new locations. These trampled areas were now set up to grow again due to the fertilization they received from the animals, as well as the trampled grass covering the ground to hold and protect moisture.

Predators managed the populations and this constant moving of herds kept the land healthy and able to sustain the organisms that lived there.

Enter the human element. Ranchers pushed and killed the native herds and predators in order to raise cattle for food. Unfortunately, humans again decided they new better than nature and divided the land up into different farms and started raising cattle their way. With nature's patterns disrupted the land was damaged, and stayed that way even after cattle was removed.

The solution turned out to be bringing in larger herds of cattle and managing them like nature did to the herns of the past. They needed to be moved around to "process" the land. It turns out the grass itself needed to be eaten and deposited in order to promote healthy new growth. This "Holistic Method" of raising cattle and managing the land has helped reclaim desert land on 5 continents, and it can save more and more land.

Watch the talk below to see all the ways that this type of ranching which mimics the patterns of nature can help the world. Biology and understanding nature has the ability to feed the starving, end conflicts, stop droughts, and even reduce carbon dioxide levels to pre-industrial age numbers.

NO CELLPHONES ALLOWED!

It is hard to imagine being someplace without your cell phone, let alone someplace where nobody has one, but in a 13,000 square mile section of West Virginia and Virginia that is the norm. This is the locations of the Green Bank Radio Telescope, which is one of the most sensitive movable telescopes in the world.

In order for it to "listen" for the minute radio signals being transmitted from the various phenomena in space, they need this quiet zone. Created in 1958, this zone makes it illegal to have any cell phone or wifi signals in the area that could interfere with the work of the observatory. Microwaves are even banned!

The Yahoo Originals channel on the Yahoo Screen site recorded a short documentary clip called The Quiet Zone, that visits with some of the scientists and townspeople to get there thoughts on the situation. It does a nice job of explaining the science of the whole situation, as well as how teenagers feel about the whole thing. 

The map below shows the what the zone looks like on a map.

Kickstarter - Funding Creativity and Invention

This past weekend I had some time to watch a movie, and I checked out the Steve Jobs biographical film . It is an interesting story about how Jobs and Wozniak got started on their quest to create their vision of the personal computer, which eventually led to the creation of Apple Computers. In the beginning of the story the biggest hurdle these young entrepreneurs faced was finding money to make their idea a reality.
Jobs

Luckily they were able to get some funding which they used to start their company. It got me thinking of how hard it can be to find financial support for ideas people would like to make into a business or product. In the movie it showed how Steve Jobs was forced to call countless potential investors on the phone with almost no success. How many great ideas have been thought up, that have never been put into production because the innovators behind them could not afford to make their dream realities?

There has been a huge paradigm shift with the way innovators can find funding with the growth of crowdfunding. Instead of a company deciding on whether an idea is worth putting into production, inventors and artists can figure out how much money they will need to get their product made and seek support from the masses. Using sites like Kickstarter, they are able to showcase their ideas and get funding from thousands of sources depending on how popular their idea is.

This Democratic-Darwinian model allows the ideas that people like to become a reality, and those that do not fare so well head back to the drawing board. Some projects seek only a few thousand dollars, while others can be for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. With millions of people investing, it is possible to raise capital with many small investments instead of one large one.

The site is full of inventors, writers, artists, film makers and more. Each has an idea they are looking to make a reality. They create a description of the product and show what investors will get with their contribution. Smaller donations usually get some sort of token of thanks while those closer to what the product is going to sell for will actually get the product if they are able to reach the investment goal. If the idea you invest in does not reach its goal in the amount of time set to gather start up money, they do not get charged a cent.

Here is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and it is an product someone pitched on Kickstarter. It is a kit to turn a paper airplane into a remote control, powered vehicle that you can control through blue tooth on your phone! It is called the PowerUp 3.0 and it costs $30.


The inventor, a New Yorker named Shai Goitien, was looking for about $60,000 dollars to get started... he raised nearly $600,000 from over 10,000 backers!

There are some other products that are making a name for themselves now. The Pebble is one of the first interactive watches made to work with your iPhone, and it was started through Kickstarter funding. It has raised over 10 million dollars. (For best effect, read that number with your best Dr. Evil voice.)

There is a $1000 underwater robot kit being shown on TED this week that was made possible by funding gathered on Kickstarter by two guys that never thought they would own an underwater robot making company.

 I think this is a great resource and opportunity for our students to make the ideas they dream up a reality. It is also a glimpse into the economics of the future and how some businesses will take off. Instead of small businesses starting off in a store front in a town, they will be created online with crowdfunding. Ideas that capture the eye of the masses will receive the funding they need to start up, with an instant customer base that was not possible before.

This is a great opportunity to connect business, computer, economics, and technology classes for students. Student innovation and projects can be created and tested in the real world with a tool like Kickstarter. Design, marketing, pricing, and numerous other real world skills can be covered in lessons that can help many of our future entrepreneurs get started.

I know I will be ordering on of those PowerUp 3.0 kits!

An Hour of Code - Computer Science Education Week Activities

I am not sure if a lot of you know this, but it is Computer Science Education Week this week. (Dec 9 - 15). Its OK if you forgot, I did. Luckily a colleague of mine, Mr. Anderson (The Oreo Double Stuff Guy) brought it to my attention.

To promote this week and spotlight why it is important, the organization Code.org is making a challenge to schools and educators around the country to get 10 million kids to spend at least an hour this week using computer programming skills. Here is a link to their list of activities: http://code.org/learn

I bet a lot of you are thinking right now that you don't know anything about computer programming skills, and that this might not be for you. Please keep reading and give it a chance! There are some very easy activities that can be done both online on a computer or even without a computer. All of the activities require students to think in such a way that they need to break a problem and solution down into smaller parts that they can then use to create a solution. This is the essence of the thinking needed by a computer programmer!

http://allthingsd.com/20131208/hour-of-code-calls-on-students-to-program-computers/ 

Why should we care about this type of thinking? Well according to the data shown here which was created from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of computer science jobs is growing much faster than the number of qualified individuals to fill those jobs. It is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in this field in 2020, and only 400,000 people to fill them... that is a million high paying jobs our students can compete for!

Anything we can do to spark an interest or reinforce these types of skills with our students can help them start on a path to a better future for themselves. 

The activities below can be used with students of all ages. Please take a look and see if there is something there that you could try with your students. If kids are playing games like Minecraft, they will love these activities!

1. The My Robotic Friends Activity - Break down tasks the way a computer programmer would and "program" your friends to complete the task!

2) Angry Birds Maze - Program 
the angry bird to get the piggy! Use the command steps to the right of the picture to choose what your bird does and run your program. Keep trying until you get it. Each level will add more steps and challenges! This simple game can prepare kids for many programming activities like the free software tool Scratch.

3) Light-bot - Try out this addictive and fun programming game as you program your robot to traverse the Q-bert like terrain and light up the blue squares. Each level builds skills upon the last and gets more and more challenging. This game can be played online or on Apple and Android devices.














*** Update - I had two 8 year olds totally engrossed in the Light-Bot and Angry Birds games above. Here are their certificates to prove it!

Borax Crystal Christmas Ornaments

Well... it is that time of year again... Christmas is almost upon us! 

Now it is time to decorate, shop, and find things to do with classrooms or hyper students. 

Well here is one activity that can entertain idle hands and hopefully bring a smile to the faces of students and parents a like. 

This activity combines science, crafts, and Christmas all into one cool activity!

Check out the video below to see how you can create your own cool ornaments using nothing but pipe cleaners, borax, and science!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

* Click here for a recipe that makes a glowing ornament!