+ “Falling for Science:” New Book

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from Morning Edition, December 8, 2008

On NPR Robert Krulwich reviews Sherry Turkle’s “Falling for Science: Objects in Mind.” 

Turkle, the  Abby Rockefeller Mauze professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, feels that one way to fall in love with the world is to play with things.

According to Turkle, when you get your first microscope or your first set of Legos or take apart your first broken radio, you become an explorer.  And for some kids, the thrill of touching, fastening, examining, rebuilding and unbuilding is life-changing.  Mind-changing.  And the thrill never goes away.

In her book, Turkle has collected essays written by senior scientists (for example artificial intelligence pioneer Seymour Papert, MIT president and neuroanatomist Susan Hockfield, architect Moshe Safdie, among others), as well as by students who passed through her classes at MIT over the past 25 years.

They were all asked the same question: “Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?”

According to Krulwich, there are seven essays on Legos, several on computer games and broken radios.  But he found some wonderful surprises, including an MIT student who reported how she couldn’t stop braiding her My Little Pony’s tail, weaving the hairs into endlessly repeating patterns (a possible clue to her fascination with mathematics).

And he found this gem:

“Egg Basket” by Erica Carmel (1992)

 I was five years old and it was probably April, because I had an Easter basket full of brightly colored plastic eggs. The basket had a long handle so I was able to swing it around in circles. One wall of my playroom was lined with bookshelves that had drawers as well as shelves. They held my doll and toy collection, most of which I never looked at. At the end of the playroom, across from the shelves, was a set of double doors. When I made inventions, I usually included these doors in my designs, probably because their doorknobs were good anchors onto which one could tie things.

I did an experiment with the egg basket. I took a string (in this case, I think it was an extra- long jump rope) and tied it from the handle of a bookshelf drawer to a doorknob of one of the double doors all the way across the playroom. My idea was to create a gondola, such as the one I had seen at Disneyland on a family vacation. I hung my egg basket from the string and tried to run it down the string. When that worked I went on to transport objects from one side of the room to the other by placing them in the egg basket. Next, I moved the string back and forth, causing the basket to swing. As I watched, the basket got further and further above horizontal. Finally, the basket swung all the way around the circle. But, as if by magic, the eggs did not fall out. I was stunned. 

I took the egg-filled basket off the string, deliberately turned the basket upside down, and watched the eggs fall out. But when I put the basket and eggs back on the string and once again swung it around, the eggs remained in the basket. I tried the experiment again and again and always got the same results. When they were on the swinging string, the eggs remained in the basket. Yet when I held the basket upside down, the eggs fell out.

I was sure that I had made a new scientific discovery that was going to make me world famous. I ran to share it with my parents. My father was less excited than I had anticipated. He didn’t seem surprised that the eggs remained in the basket. He even had a name for the magical force I had discovered: it was called centripetal force. Nevertheless, my excitement didn’t die. My father may have known about the force that made the eggs stay in the basket, but I had discovered it on my own. The discovery was mine.

 At  five years old, I had never heard of the scientific method, but I had followed it. I saw a problem: the eggs remained in the basket when it was swung on the string but fell out when the basket was turned upside down. I created an hypothesis: whatever was making the eggs stay in the basket was only present in the spinning basket. I devised a way to test the hypothesis: I guessed that the faster I turned the basket, the more likely it would be that the eggs would remain in the basket. So, for my experiment, I went back and forth between spinning the basket on the string and then turning it upside down slowly and watching the eggs fall. These results confirmed my hypothesis. There was a definite connection between the speed of the rotation and the likelihood that the eggs would remain in the basket. The conclusions I drew were the most exciting of all: that I had discovered a new principle of science and that my hypothesis was correct. Something “held” the eggs to the basket.

Thirteen years later, as I sat in an MIT lecture hall for my Monday morning class, 8.01, I watched Professor Walter Lewin demonstrate the experiment that I had performed in my playroom with plastic Easter eggs and a straw basket. Lewin took a pail of water and swung it above his head on a string. Sure enough, the water remained in the pail, and Professor Lewin remained dry. At five, I didn’t know that centripetal acceleration equals the quotient of the velocity squared over the radius. I also didn’t know that for the object not to fall the centripetal acceleration had to be greater than the forces on the object by gravity. What I did know was that the eggs wouldn’t fall out of the basket and, as much as the equations are useful, in the end that is all they tell us.

Erica Carmel worked as a management consultant and joined a technology start up in Silicon Valley before going to Harvard Business School. A 1996 recipient of an SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, she currently works at IBM, managing a team focused on improving customer experience with software.

Excerpted from ‘Falling For Science: Objects in Mind’, edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, published in May 2008 by The MIT Press. Copyright: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008, all rights reserved.

source: “Krulwich on Science” story on NPR 12/17/08.  www.npr.org

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email   aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Linguistics and the Brain: A List of Books

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A list of books for people interested in the brain and linguisitcs, from the NY Times

“FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution,” by Ray Jackendoff, Oxford University Press.

“THE STUFF OF THOUGHT: Language as a Window into Human Nature,” by Steven Pinker, Viking. The author uses language to examine how the mind works, in perception and thought.

“LANGUAGE IN MIND: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought,” by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow, The M.I.T. Press. A collection of articles on linguistic research.

“FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution,” by Ray Jackendoff, Oxford University Press. Ideas about how the brain stores and processes language.

“BASIC COLOR TERMS: Their Universality and Evolution,” by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, University of California Press. Originally published in 1969, this was an early investigation of color terms in different languages.

“LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND REALITY: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf,” by Benjamin Lee Whorf (author), John B. Carroll (editor), M.I.T. Press. This work, first published in a different edition in 1956, reflects Whorf’s view that a language affects how one thinks.

“SPACE IN LANGUAGE AND COGNITION: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity,” by Stephen C. Levinson, Cambridge University Press. How the language and conception of space varies among cultures.

source: NY Times online  (no byline) 4/22/08 www.nytimes.com

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Educators’ Top 100 Kids’ Books

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from a teacher’s handout; sheet says “Ohio Schools January/February 2008″.  A great miscellany, but mixed as to reading levels.

1.  Charlotte’s Web… EB White
2.  Where the Wild Things Are… Maurice Sendak
3.  The Giving Tree… Shel Silverstein
4.  Green Eggs and Ham… Dr Seuss
5.  Good Night Moon… Margaret Wise Brown
6.  I Love You Forever… Robert N Munsch
7.  Because of Winn Dixie… Kate DiCamillo
8.  Oh! The Places You’ll Go… Dr Seuss
9.  The Little House… Virginia Lee Burton
10.  The Polar Express… Chris Van Allsburg
11.  Skippyjon Jones… Judy Schachner
12.  Thank You Mr Falker… Patricia Palacco
13.  The Cat in the Hat… Dr Seuss
14.  The Lorax… Dr Seuss
15.  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane… Kate DiCamillo
16.  The Mitten… Jan Brett
17.  Crunching Carrots, Not Candy… Judy Slack
18.  Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus… Mo Willems
19.  Harry Potter series… J K Rowling
20.  A Wrinkle in Time… Madeleine L’Engle
21.  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day…  Judith Viorst
22.  Are You My Mother?… PD Eastman
23.  Corduroy… Don Freeman
24.  Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse… Kevin Henkes
25.  Stellaluna… Janell Cannon
26.  Tacky the Penguin… Helen Lester
27.  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe… CS Lewis
28.  The Velveteen Rabbit… Margery Williams
29.  Chika Chika Boom Boom… Bill Martin Jr
30.  Click Clack Moo Cows That Type… Doreen Cronin
31.  Harold and the Purple Crayon… Crockett Johnson
32.  Horton Hatches the Egg… Dr Seuss
33.  Junie B Jones… Barbara Park
34.  Little House in the Big Woods… Laura Ingalls Wilder
35.  Make Way for Ducklings… Robert McCloskey
36.  The Phantom Tollbooth… Norton Justice
37.  Piggy Pie… Margie Palatini
38.  The Little Engine the Could… Watty Piper
39.  The Monster at the End of This Book… Jon Stone
40.  The Tale of Despereaux… Kate DiCamillo
41.  A Bad Case of Stripes… David Shannon
42.  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs… Judi Barrett
43.  From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankwiler… EL Konigsburg
44.  Inkheart… Cornelia Funke
45.  Maniac Magee… Jerry Spinelli
46.  Officer Buckle and Gloria… Peggy Rathmann
47.  Olivia… Ian Falconer
48.  The BFG… Roald Dahl
49.  The Kissing Hand… Audrey Penn
50.  The Secret Garden… Frances Hodgson Burnett
51.  The Sneetches… Dr Seuss
52.  The Very Hungry Caterpiller… Eric  Carle
53.  Tiki Tiki Tembo… Arlene Mosel
54.  A Little Princess… Frances Hodgson Burnett
55.  Bark, George… Jules Feiffer
56.  Bunnicula… James Howe
57.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory… Roald Dahl
58.  Charlie the Caterpiller… Dom DeLuise
59.  Chrysanthemum… Kevin Henkes 
60.  Dear Mr Henshaw… Beverly Cleary
61.  Frederick… Leo Lionni
62.  Frindle… Andrew Clements
63.  Frog and Toad… Arnold Lobel
64.  Guess How Much I Love You… Sam McBratney
65.  Harris and Me… Gary Paulsen
66.  Harry and the Dirty Dog… Gene Zion
67.  Hop on Pop… Dr Seuss
68.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas… Dr Seuss
69.  I Love You, Stinky Face…  Lisa McCourt
70.  Is Your Mama a Llama?… Deborah Guarino
71.  Jan Brett’s books
72.  Knots on a Counting Rope… Bill Martin Jr
73.  Little Women… Louisa May Alcott
74.  Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel… Virginia Lee Burton
75.  Miss Rumphius… Barbara Cooney
76.  My Father’s Dragon… Ruth Stiles Gannett
77.  My Many Colored Days… Dr Seuss
78.  My Side of the Mountain… Jean Craighead George
79.  No David!… David Shannon
80.  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish… Dr Seuss
81.  Where the Sidewalk Ends… Shel Silverstein
82.  Stephanie’s Ponytail… Robert Munsch
83.  Swimmy… Leo Lionni
84.  The Hundred Dresses… Elenor Estes
85.  The Boxcar Children… Gertrude Warner
86.  The Dark is Rising… Susan Cooper
87.  The Empty Pot… Demi
88.  The Five Chinese Brothers… Claire Huchet Bishop
89.  The Giver… Lois Lowr
90.  The Grouchy Ladybug… Eric Carle
91.  The Hobbit… JRR Tolkien
92.  The Important Book… Margaret Wise Brown
93.  The Last Holiday Concert… Andrew Clements
94.  The Napping House… Audrey Wood
95.  The Quiltmaker’s Gift… Jeff Brumbeau
96.  The Snowy Day… Ezra Jack Keats
97.  The Story About Ping… Marjorie Flack
98.  The True Story of the Three Little Pigs… Jon Scieszka
99.  Tuck Everlasting… Natalie Babbit
100.  The Wide-Mouthed Frog: A Pop-Up Book… Keith Faulkner

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com  

+ “Three Cups of Tea”: A Book to Change the World

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Kevin Feldman’s newsletter this month talks about the sleeper best-seller by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time.”

People are lined up to hear Greg Mortenson everywhere he goes.  Hundreds of people find themselves turned away from his talks about the book.

In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2, the toughest mountain in the world.  Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan.  Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village, where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering he observed the village’s 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks.  This village was so poor that it could not afford the $1 a day salary to hire a teacher.

When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school.

From that rash, heartfelt promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time.  Greg Mortenson’s one-man mission is to counteract extremism and terrorism by building schools — especially for girls — throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban. 

“If you promote peace, that’s based on hope,” said Mortenson at one of his talks in Seattle.  “The real enemy is ignorance because it’s based on hatred.”

Mortenson said when he first wrote the book the publishers sent him a mock-up with the subtitle “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations… One School at a Time.”

This wasn’t his message, Mortenson felt.  He wanted it to say “One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace.”

He didn’t get it on the hardcover edition, but it is on the softcover, which is now on the New York Times’s Best Seller List, and has been for 34 weeks.

Mortenson had no reason to believe he could fulfill his promise to the village.  In an early effort to raise money he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businesspeople, and other prominent Americans.  His only reply was a $100 check from Tom Brokaw.

Selling everything he owned, he still only raised $2,000.  But his luck began to change when a group of elementary schoolchildren in River Falls Wisconsin donated $623 in pennies, thereby inspiring adults to take his cause more seriously.

Twelve years later, he’s built 55 more schools.

Mortenson’s premise starts with an African proverb: “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual; if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

When a boy goes to school, it’s assumed he will leave his village and work.  But a girl stays.  If she is educated, she grows into a woman, bears healthy children and encourages them to be educated.

Consider the word “jihad,” Mortenson suggests.  In one context, the word means a violent quest.  But the word has other meanings — reflecting other pursuits.  Before beginning a jihad, Mortenson said, you ask your mother for permission.  If she’s educated, she’s less likely to give approval for a violent mission, he contends.

Those who dismiss education say that many of the 9/11 hijackers were educated — and that’s true, Mortenson says.  “But none of their mothers were educated.”

According to Mortenson, there is urgent need to build more schools.  “There are 145 million children without education — and the numbers are going up — because of slavery, gender discrimination, religious intolerance and corrupt governments.”  Think what we could do if we wanted to.

Tom Brokaw calls the book “One of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time… It’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.”

Currently Mortenson, the director of the Central Asia Institute, is a resident of Montana, but spends several months a year in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

David Oliver Relin is a contributing editor for “Parade Magazine” and “Skiing Magazine,” and has more than forty awards for his work as a writer and editor. 

Visit www.threecupsoftea.com for more about the book as well as Mortenson and his projects.  Purchasing it from that site (through Amazon) will generate up to 7% of proceeds to benefit Central Asia Institute, of which Mortenson is the director. 

The book is published by Viking Penguin; ISBN 0670034827.  There is an audio CD set and a single track music CD.

Thanks once again to Kevin Feldman and his listserve newsletter for this information.  You can receive it for information about leading-edge teaching and educational research by emailing literacy-on@lists.scoe.org. 

Feldman always notes that the news and information represents his own biased views and not those of the Sonoma County Office of Education.  He hopes you will share it with interested colleagues.

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Indy Publishing: Poetry from the Small Presses

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From the NY Times Book Review:

Small Press Distribution is a nonprofit distributor that represents books by nearly 450 small publishers. 

Go to their Web site (www.spdbooks.org) and you can find the December 07 top ten best-selling books of poetry:

1. “Sleeping and Waking,” by Michael O’Brien (Flood Editions)
2. “This is What Happened in Our Other Life,” by Archy Obejas (Midsummer Night’s Press)
3. “Necessary Stranger,” by Graham Foust (Flood Editions)
4. “You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am,” by Tao Lin ( Action Books)
5. “Eulogies,” by Amiri Baraka (Agincourt)
6. “The Line,” by Jennifer Moxley (Post-Apollo)
7. “Case Sensitive,” by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta)
8. “The View From Zero Bridge,” by Lynn Aarti Chandhok (Anhinga)
9. “Newcomer Can’t Swin,” by Renee Gladman (Kelsey Street)
10. “Lip Wolf,” by Laura Solorzano (Action Books)

Unrelated, but interesting, on the same page:

Abe Books.com reports that rare book collectors are speculating on Barack Obama’s rising to the White House.  Signed first editions of “Dreams From My Father,” which went out of print at one time, have been sold for $1,798 and $1,299. 

Hillary Clinton’s autobiography “Living History” fetched $575.   John Edwards’s memoir, “Four Trials,” is a bargain at $99. 

source: note in the NY Times Book Review on 2/1/08.  www.nytimes.com.

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com  

+ “LibraryThing” : Cool Web Site for Booklovers

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A Web site, “LibraryThing,” (www.librarything.com) is for people who love books, who have books, and who are interested in what books others might have.

LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily.  You can access your catalog from anywhere — even on your mobile phone.  

A free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books.  A paid account allows you to catalog any number of books.  Paid personal accounts cost $10 a year, or $25 for a lifetime.  (Visit the site to learn about organizational accounts.)

You need give up no information.  Setting up an account requires only a username and password.  You can edit your profile to make yours a “private” account.  With a private account, nobody else can see what books you have.

Because everyone catalogs together,  LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and much more.

This site is also a full-powered cataloguing application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 80 world libraries. 

They have just released 33 new data sources from the UK, including two massive and excellent ones — the British Library and the Talis Union Catalogue.

A group of LibraryThing members has finished adding the 4,889 books in Thomas Jefferson’s library to the site.

Members can join the Early Reviewers group and get free advance copies of books provided by publishers in exchange for reviews.  There is a mix — literary fiction, fantasy, YA fiction, Christian fiction, memoirs, non-fiction, health, how-to books and more. 

LibraryThing is also a social space, if you want it to be.  You can check out other people’s libraries (if they have chosen to be public), or see who has the most similar library to your own.

The site uses the collective intelligence of the libraries to make book recommendations.

LibraryThing was created by Tim Spalding, a web developer and web/publisher based in Portland, Maine.  He also runs www.isidore-of-seville.com, www.ancientlibrary.com,  www.bramblestory.com and www.mothboard.com.

Since becoming a “real” business in May, 2006, LibraryThing now employs a number of talented people.

Visit the site to find out how collectors, authors, publishers, bookstores or libraries can use the riches to be found.  Or to get a T-shirt.

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or email  aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ How Music Affects the Brain

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The new book by Daniel Levitin called This is Your Brain on Music  was reviewed generously (and with many neural images of the brain) by Clive Thompson  in the NY Times on New Years Day.

Levitin was a record producer for many years before becoming a scientist and has nine gold and platinum albums to show for it.  But his major work these days is the effect of music on the brain.

How is it that the reviewer, Thompson, could listen to a half-second clip of music and identify Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’; or hear one single note and be able to say “Elton John’s live version of ‘Benny and the Jets’! “

The answer, says Levitin, is that “by the age of five we are all musical experts [unless the brain is damaged in some way], so this stuff is clearly wired really deeply into us”.

The book is a layperson’s guide to the emerging neuroscience of music.  Thompson reports that Levitin is “an unusually deft interpreter, full of striking scientific trivia.  We learn that babies begin life with synaesthesia, the trippy confusion that makes people experience sounds as smells or tastes as colors.”

We learn that the part of the brain that helps govern movement is also wired to the ears and produces some of your emotional responses to music.

Doing research with 13 subjects who listened to classical music while in an MRI machine, scientists found a cascade of brain-chemical activity.  First the music triggered the forebrain, as it analyzed the structure and meaning of the tune.  Then other parts of the brain activated to release dopamine, a chemical that triggers the brain’s sense of reward. 

In addition the cerebellum, an area of the brain associated with physical movement, reacted too; Levitin suspects the brain was predicting where the song was going to go.  As the brain internalizes the tempo, rhythm and emotional peaks of a song, the cerebellum begins reacting every time the song produces tension (that is, subtle deviations from its normal melody or tempo.)

“We’ve always known that music is good for improving your mood,” says Levitin.  “But this showed precisely how it happens.”

Dr Levitin is a cognitive psychologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal.  The dean of science at McGill, Martin Grant, compares Levitin with Brian Greene, the pioneering string-theory scientist who also writes mass-market books.  “Some people are good popularizers, and some are good scientists, but not usually both at once.  Dan’s actually cutting edge in his field.”

Some of Levitin’s theories have not been easily accepted, however.  For example, he argues that music is an evolutionary adaptation; something that humans developed as a way to demonstrate reproductive fitness.  But Dr Steven Pinker, at Harvard,  has publicly disparaged this idea.

Scientists say that ultimately Levitin’s work offers a new way to unlock the mysteries of the brain: how memory works and how people with autism think.   He is now working on a study of people with autism, a project he hopes will help shed light on why autistic brains develop so differently.

Check out this book; and while you’re at it, look for Dr Pinker’s great books on language, as well!  (source: NYT article by Clive Thompson “Music of the Hemispheres” 1/1/07)

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021    or               aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com

+ Book By Frank Zappa’s Dyslexic Son

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Ahmet Zappa, son of rocker Frank Zappa, has published “The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless”, said the NY Daily News in October.

The book tells the story of Minerva McFearless, her brother Max and a coyote named Mr. Devilstone. 

Zappa said the story began as illustrations, but the publisher wanted a story, too.  The writing was unbelievably slow because of his struggle with writing and reading.

“If I wanted to write ‘The cat is red”, I might write ‘cat red’ and I’d think I had written a whole sentence.”  He said teachers and school officials tended to think he had eye problems. 

His dyslexia was not diagnosed for years.  His parents let him drop out of school after eighth grade and continue education at home.  It was then that his artistic talents blossomed.  (source:monstersandcritics.com)

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or          aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com