The article covers a lot of ground and has many layers. I finally read it and these are just some really quick thoughts, just to provoke discussion…..

First, Murcott is complaining about being essentially a lay-person outside of his own domain in biochemistry. That is true. Science reporters who don’t have any scientific background are in an even worse shape – they definitely have a handicap, but not something they cannot overcome with years of study. But for this, they need to have the freedom to focus on only one area of science, e.g., Andy Revkin focusing on climate, Carl Zimmer on evolution, etc. I wrote a little bit about this before.

If you have spent some time in science before moving into journalism, you understand that years of total immersion in the field are necessary to fully understand it – I mean a narrow field! And not just the purely scientific information, but also historical, philosophical and social context, who-is-who in the field, relative strengths of various hypotheses, etc. You understand that it is impossible for a single person to gain a full understanding of every area of science.

- Can you play violin?
- Sure, of course
- Have you ever played?
- No. But it looks easy, I’m sure I can do it.

This is how non-scientists often think about science. This includes some journalists, until they get started on science reporting and realize that it’s not as easy as it looks. But their editors do not grok it. Editors think of ’science’ as a single thing – there is a sports-guy and a fashion-guy and a science-guy in the newsroom and they get assignments accordingly. Which means that the poor science reporter has to report on everything from cosmology to math to medicine to ecology with no time to actually study these areas sufficiently to understand them. Of course they get nervous and exhausted and touchy…

But in the era where newsrooms are firing in-house journalists and relying more and more on freelancers, this is an opportunity for freelance journalists to put a stake into a particular territory: specialize in one field and refuse to write stories outside it. That way, a journalist who has become, over years of study and reporting, an expert in field A, will only report on A, will be on rolodexes (I guess not virtual but real physical ones) of every editor in the country/world for stories on A and will be asked all the time by everyone to cover A. And will do it really well. Each editor will have a list of experts on A, B, C and every other area of science. With specialization, biochemists will not have to risk showing off their ignorance of astronomy, media organizations will know they have all topics covered by the best of the best, and the general quality of reporting science will increase.

In the next segment of the article, Murcott seems to want more investigative science journalism. But, compare this to this. Connie St.Louis and I have the opposite ideas what science journalism is. I am not specifically targeting Connie, it just happens that I am aware of her post that puts into words, very clearly, what many other journalists say or at least hint at.

Everything that I think is science journalism, she dismisses as not being ‘real’ science journalism: science reportage and explaining. And one aspect of it that she thinks is the real science journalism is the only one I think is really not – “investigative science journalism” is, in my book, just the regular investigative journalism in which the people under scrutiny just happen accidentally to be scientists. The former (science reporting and explaining) requires that the journalist understands science, the latter (investigating potential misconduct by people who happen to be scientists) does not. As I said before, if the investigation involves analysis of data, it is done by scientists and reported in specialized media: scientific journals (these can be then translated into lay language by journalists and reported to the general audience). If the investigation involves potential misconduct of humans who happen to be scientists, it is done by journalists, but it is not science journalism any more – it is more something like political journalism (as misconduct usually involves money and prestige).

Steve Mirsky (editor at Scientific American: here on Twitter ) once said, and I agree with him, that all of science journalism should be activist: evangelizing for truth (not capitalized). There is no mealy-mouthed HeSaidSheSaid, False-Balance, View-From-Nowhere tabulation of opinions held by people. Science journalism is straightforward: this is how the world works and this is how we learned it.

Which brings me to another important question: why professional journalists dismiss Press Information Officers. If journalists think that journalism that investigates scientists is what should be called ’science journalism’, and see that what PIOs are doing is not that, they will not think of PIOs as journalists. On the other hand, if you agree with me that investigation of scientists is not science journalism, but reporting and explaining science is, than PIOs, many of whom have science degrees, are actually doing the brunt of science journalism these days. Sure, not all of them are perfect, and not all press releases are good, but they are getting better (as science majors are replacing j-school majors as PIOs at many institutions), they are, seeing how media is crumbling, starting to see themselves as serious journalists filling the void left by the massive layoffs of science reporters in the MSM, and are writing better and better copy, usually much better than what remaining newsroom reporters write under horrendous deadlines and pressure.

In other words, as we realize that scientists, PIOs, journalists and audience are in it together, collaborating on science reporting, we need to eliminate this antagonism between newsroom journalists and institutional journalists (formerly known as PIOs). For that antagonism to be eliminated, the two need to agree on what the definition of science journalism is. And I don’t think defining it as ‘investigating potential misconduct of scientists’ is a good and healthy definition. It is much more productive to leave that kind of stuff to political reporters (who will be tipped off by scientists themselves, as was always the case: all data-fudging was first discovered by other scientists, the only people with expertise to notice it in the first place) and have everyone focus on real science journalism – reporting and explaining science.

Next, Murcott wants to move science journalism from a) presenting facts (including results of latest studies), to b) presenting how scientists work and their method. He, and many others, forget that the key element is the third level: c) trust. Read this carefully to understand why. So, all three things need to be reported. Eyeing every paper and every press release as suspect, and treating scientists as dishonest until proven otherwise, is one of the journalistic techniques that undermines the trust in science. Whose side are you on, guys? Creationists, GW-denialists, HIV-denialists and anti-vaccers? Job of a journalist is to explain the world as it is. Science is the best method to figure out how the world works. Use this method as a journalistic method.

Scientific method has several (actually many) elements in phases, but one can oversimplify here: get an idea, test it, communicate it. Yes, communicating science is a part of scientific method. Which is why both scientists and journalists have to do it, hopefully together as allies, not as opponents eyeing each other with suspicion. See also many of the reports from scio10 – almost all of them focus on the need for collaboration between scientists, press officers and journalists, not antagonism. It’s a new ecosystem today. And the new niche for science journalists is NOT the top predator any more – the mindset has to shift from the competitive to a collaborative view of media ecology.

More and more people studying the evolution of media are coming around to the idea that the job of a journalist these days is a person who collects, aggregates and interprets information. Even data.

The story is important, as humans are storytellers by nature, but the story is a hook that takes people to the wealth of underlying information, the background, and the data. Each news-report needs to be embedded in a broader structure that also contains an “explainer“. Which is why it is essential for the story, the “hook”, to link to all the relevant background information and data.

Finally, we get to Murcott’s wish to see reviews….the reviews that scientists have written during the process of peer-review of manuscripts. Murcott, pressed for time, thinks that being able, as a journalist, to see the reviews, would help him understand the story better and glean some of the context that he is missing because is writing a story outside of his area of expertise and has not time to study it first. In essence, he is asking for a shortcut that helps him do his job. But he is not considering how this would affect the review process.

First, it is important to remind everyone that peer-review is a very new thing. Only one minor paper by Einstein went through peer-review. Nature only started experimenting with it in the late 1960s. Yet lots and lots of great science was published before this was instituted. There is no data supporting the view that peer-review actually does much good.

We at PLoS ONE are trying to improve the process. What we have noticed (and most of our academic editors and authors agree) is that by eliminating the need for reviewers to evaluate if a manuscript is novel, exciting, revolutionary, paradigm-shifting, mind-boggling and Earth-shaking, and only asking them to evaluate the technical aspects of the work, the review becomes MUCH better:

As the scientific paper itself evolves, more and more of the peer-review will happen after publication, on the paper or connected to it and journalists need to be a part of it.

You can search the Web for many discussions of “open review” and you will see that there are many more cons than pros. The reviewers will find it difficult to be frank. Fewer people will agree to review (and there is already too many manuscripts for the available number of reviewers). Showing reviews to journalists would have exactly the same effect, for good or ill. Having a journalist see reviews is …a crutch for a journo who does not have the time, or expertise, or inclination to do the heavy lifting of personal education and everybody would object to this, rightly so.

Specialization of journalists – each grabbing one’s own area of expertise – and the collaborative journalism done by scientists, PIOs, journalists and audience, would make a ‘peek’ at reviewers’ comments unnecessary and irrelevant. The collective WILL have all the necessary expertise and historical/philosophical/sociological/theoretical/methodological context to get the story (and attached data/information) right.

Cross-posted from A Blog Around The Clock.

Today, I asked T. DeLene Beeland to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

Geography: I live in North Carolina, but my heart is still in Florida, where I spent my whole life prior to 2009. Perspective: I love nature and learning about the natural world. I am a freelance writer with graduate training in ecology, natural resources management and journalism.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

It’s been more of a higgledy-piggledy switch-back path than a trajectory. Let’s see…I’m 33 and have been freelancing for a little more than one year. This is actually my second career – my first was as a commercial interior designer (not a decorator, an interior architectural space planner – very different). While working in design, I was bored down to my bones. I’d also had a health crisis that forced the soul-searching question: if I can do anything in the world, what would it be? My inner voice kept answering, “Be a writer, study ecology.” So I did.

While in grad school (Univ. of Florida) I worked for two years as a staff science writer at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The science divisions in this museum are vast, there are 20-plus scientific departments. I wrote about goings-on in ichthyology, herpetology, four different archaeology departments, a Lepidoptera center and of course, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology – oh, and ornithology, palynology and paleobotany too! It was a cool gig, except for the money. Shortly after graduating I took a similar position with the Emerging Pathogens Institute at UF, except they were a start-up so I built their science communications from scratch.

Today, I’m building a freelance writing business and working on a natural history book. I feel like I’m at a point where I’ve struggled to the bottom-rung of the freelancing career and I’ve got a toehold but still have a marathon climbing trek ahead of me.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days?

Trying to afford health insurance. (Kidding! Sort of.) Seriously, trying to carve time to research and write my book; stay afloat with freelance work and expanding my professional network. Yep, that pretty much consumes most of my time. And watching the birds at my seed feeder – that soaks up a lot of time too. I like watching them over time and learning their seasonal behaviors.

What aspect of science communication interests you the most?

Finding an interesting story, pitching, finding the lede to a story… Figuring out how to break complex things down into interesting reads; making science relatable to everyday people who may not be into it – these are communication elements I’m interested in. I see my science writing as in its infancy. I’m still really focused on explanatory approaches (here is what they found, this is what the results mean, etc.) Which is fine for being a science evangelist and getting people interested, but in the future I hope to be doing more critical pieces and analysis; especially concerning conservation biology and species conservation and extinction, topics that I always feel drawn to. I am interested in learning to do profile pieces better too – getting at the personalities who do science. I’ve also been sinking time into reading about narrative writing craft and how to bring story-telling elements into science writing: using dialogue (well), orchestrating plot and conflict, stuff like that.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

It is a small part of my professional life. I write blogs for one client (Science in the Triangle), and I write a personal blog, Wild Muse. But blogging is not my primary writing outlet and is a small fraction of my income; and because of that, the majority of my time and effort goes into other types of print communication work. I started blogging as an experiment, mostly because all the freelance business articles I was reading said “You Must Blog. Period.”

I use my personal blog to explore things I’m interested in: wolf studies, birds, ecology the environment… It’s really more of an online journaling exercise. I’m a highly kinetic reader. I have to underline and scrawl copious notes in the margins in order to process ideas… and blogging, for me, is kind of the online analog to that learning process. The happy accidental side effect of it is that I’ve met many people through the process of blogging – like you – and now have a wider and richer online social network because of it.

Facebook I reserve for my personal life. Twitter, I treat a little more professionally. I’ve made a point to use it more tied to my online presence as a science and nature writer.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites?

Ah, British spelling?

Shortly after moving to N.C., and hooking up with the SCONC group. As for favorite blogs… I graze a lot. Since I’m new to the blogosphere – Wild Muse is only seven or eight months old – I flit around a lot and skim many people’s blogs just to see what is out there. Some faves in my Google Reader are: CreatureCast, Round Robin, Wolves of the High Arctic and Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News… but if you notice, these are not blogs you go to for interesting writing or science news, my preferences are more clustered around content I find intriguing. Deep Sea News is great too because it has a unique tone. Scads of people have great blogs, but I can’t say I’m a very loyal daily reader of any single person’s blog. I get impatient, bored and turned off by blogs that are self-promotional or bloggers who take themselves too seriously, and usually won’t go back if I get that vibe from someone’s site. But if they have good content and package it well, I’ll flit back to it.

Is there anything that happened at ScienceOnline2010 – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job?

Hands-down, the fact-checking session won my interest. There are cases where you can’t just take your source’s word for it. Just because someone says something, does not make it true. Writers are not transcriptionists. You have to check with a second or third source to verify what the first said if something does not feel right or sounds off or contradicts what you know. This happened to me recently on an assignment… a project manager told me they had discovered one species trend, then a person collecting data on the project told me the exact opposite. So I had to run it by others to find out the reality. Sometimes people think they are telling you the “truth” but really they are only telling you their perspective of what they experienced – and it’s your job as the writer to sift through and drill down to the un-colored reality. So yeah, I’d say that was the best lesson and what I took home with me. You really get into the danger zone when you think you know something, but don’t check it to verify that what you think you know is in fact true.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I’ll see you around.

Today, I asked Robin Ann Smith from NESCent to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I’ve spent much of my life taking a grand tour of southern cities — born in New Orleans, raised in Atlanta, and schooled in Nashville. My Midwestern mother says that makes me and my sister g.r.i.t.s: Girls Raised in the South. My paternal grandmother grew up in Cajun village in south Louisiana and inspired me to study French, so I lived in France for two years during and after college. I moved to North Carolina in 1999.

Scientific background? I have a PhD in biology from Duke, where I studied plant ecology and evolution. Ask me about the mating habits of morning glories and I’ll give you an earful. Before that I did Master’s work at the University of Montpellier in France, mostly on how different mixes of plants rebound from disturbances like fire and grazing. While there I also learned to love things like tripe, cheek kisses, and strong coffee.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I’m a science writer at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), a nonprofit biology research center based in Durham, NC. NESCent is building their newsroom. That’s where I come in — my job is to help communicate some of research that comes out of the Center.

Before that I taught undergraduate writing for four years at Duke. There are several university writing programs around the country that recruit recently-minted PhDs from across the sciences and humanities to design and teach writing classes in their field. For people who want to learn more about teaching and writing it’s a wonderful opportunity. More science PhDs should apply.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

As a staff writer for a research center I handle a wide range of writing assignments. In a given week I may write a news release, a story for our newsletter or website, a project proposal, or text for a talk or brochure. I also interview researchers, read journal articles, and attend talks and conferences to find out about research in the pipeline.

My goals? I’d like to learn how to tell stories using images and audio. I recently signed up for classes in graphic design and digital photography. I also want to keep flexing my freelance muscles via non-work related stories. In my spare time you can find me hiking, dancing, or experimenting with frozen desserts and home plumbing projects.

How do social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook figure in your work? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I was skeptical about Twitter until I started using it. It’s a news aggregator, for one. I use it to find the latest stories about a range of topics. Twitter has also been great for tapping into a universe of writers and editors and getting to know their interests. As for the cons? Between Twitter, Facebook, email, and a million other online outlets, some days my laptop feels like my external brain. I need to unplug and get outside. Time management is tricky.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I first discovered science blogs by following traditional writers and journalists who expanded into blogging. Olivia Judson’s blog The Wild Side (now a subset of Opinionator) and Carl Zimmer’s blog The Loom are great examples. I recently discovered and have gotten a huge kick out of CreatureCast, a blog and podcast series jam-packed with playful videos, animation, music and original artwork about animals. Not all of my favorites are bloggers per se, but I’m also a huge fan of Susan Milius at Science News magazine for her coverage of the plant world.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

What stood out for me was the diversity of people there – researchers and writers mingling with artists, editors, librarians and educators. That’s definitely one of the things that distinguishes Science Online from other science or writing conferences I’ve been to. My one suggestion for next year: we need a bigger room for the pitch slam! I love that session.

Thanks, Bora.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I’ll see you around.

The three tips could have come from self-help books, a consultant or a mentor. Instead, they came from the first TED talk in the Research Triangle Park area. The all-day, free event Saturday at RTP headquarters attracted more than 150 people, who on a sunny and balmy winter day sat inside, listened, did the wave and talked to people they had never met before.

Amy Calhoun

Durham couple Amy and Eric Calhoun organized TEDxTriangle, an offshoot of the TED conference, over the past 10 months using word of mouth, Twitter and Facebook to recruit speakers. In the spirit of TED, whose motto is “ideas worth spreading,” TEDxTriangle brought together local speakers willing to share their ideas and insights.

“We’ve been TED fans for a long time,” said Amy Calhoun, who runs a management consulting business. The goal of the conference, she said, was to get attendees excited, plant seeds of passion and help people connect to solve problems.

TED talks follow in the footsteps of storytellers who spread knowledge and wisdom – at TEDxTriangle they included the director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University, a Raleigh author of books for program developers and New Music Raleigh, three clasically trained musicians who played a work of a living composer.

But TED talks go beyond traditional storytelling. They are among a growing number of events that combine old techniques with new technologies.

Raleigh, which just topped Forbes magazine’s most wired U.S. cities list, RTP and Durham have been venues for these digital storytelling events. There’s IgniteRaleigh, which allows for five minutes and 20 slides, and its counterpart, FizzledDurham. And there’s Pecha Kucha Night, which gives each presenter six minutes and 40 seconds to get an idea across in 20 slides.

Together, these events are a grab bag of anecdotes, each with an idea at its core and a kernel of wisdom as inspiration.

A few examples from TEDxTriangle:

• Ideas are fragile and slippery, said Andy Hunt, author of “The Pragmatic Programmer.” Carry a notebook with you and jot them down as a drawing. “Doodling is good for thinking,” Hunt said.
• Christopher Gergen, the director of Duke’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative, is about to open Bull City Forward in the downtown Kress building, where he hopes to nurture innovators willing to take on social problems. To follow through and put ideas into practice, Gergen suggested shifting from fear of failure to fear of regret.
• “Talent is not in short supply, passion is in short supply,” said August Turak, a business consultant and author who gets inspired by regular visits to a South Carolina Trappist monastery, where 24 monks work in silence.

When the stories are told, the new technology takes over.

Social media tools take on the role of word-of-mouth to spread the reach of the storytellers on the Internet beyond time and place. The videotaped TED talks are posted on YouTube, where they can be watched round the clock and the world. Bloggers write about the talks and their posts are distributed on Twitter.

Events like TED and Ignite aim at what Hugh Hollowell called connecting people with yearning to form tribes. Hollowell runs a Raleigh nonprofit to end chronic homelessness. The kernel of wisdom in his TEDxTriangle talk: Tribes spread ideas and change the world.

Zach Ward

To become a member of a tribe could be as easy as what Zach Ward, an impromptu comedian and founder of DSI Comedy Theater in Carrboro, did with a fellow comedian to perform at TEDxTriangle.

To reach his creative place  on stage, Ward said he accepted every idea his counterpart presented him without judgment and then added to it. Ward, who emceed TEDxTriangle, called this “Yes, and …”

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Panelists at the NAE Grand Challenges Summit, Innovation in America. Left to right, Lynn Soby, vice president of innovation and commercialization at RTI International; John Chambers, CEO of CISCO; Jeff Wadsworth, CEO of Battelle Memorial Institute; and Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware). Photo by Roger Winstead/NCSU.

RALEIGH — You may be familiar with the idea that American businesses – especially those tied to technology and engineering – fret that our country is losing its innovative edge on the global stage. And because innovation drives technological advancement and economic growth – one might even say, hegemony – it’s a looming threat that many in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are scrambling to address.

But STEM fields are facing a crisis of their own – fewer graduates in the jobs pipeline compared to industry demands, and companies hiring foreigners for STEM jobs because they are better qualified.

Friday morning in Raleigh, a group of engineers from industry, academia and even government met to discuss the threat of America losing its global lead in innovation. The panel discussion was part of a Summit on the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges sponsored by N.C. State and Duke universities. (To learn more about the NAE Grand Challenges, go here.) Titled “American Innovation and Competitiveness,” the panel was chaired by Lynn Soby, vice president of innovation and commercialization at RTI International in Research Triangle Park. It was one of seven sessions spanning March 4-5.

Three panelists representing public and private industry and government emphasized that the problem could not be fully addressed unless the nation’s secondary education system is revolutionized.

Jeff Wadsworth, CEO and president of Battelle Memorial Institute, noted that high school graduation rates have fallen from about 86 percent in the Baby Boomer generation to about 72 percent today. He compared that to a 96 percent graduation rate in Denmark, 92 percent in Japan and the fact that China graduates three engineering students for every one that we do.  It’s not news that international competition is stiffening against us, but the statistics he presented about how the U.S. measures up to foreign countries in K-12 metrics was gut-wrenching.

“Our historic lead in secondary education has disappeared,” Wadsworth said. “And as a leader of a large organization, I worry about education.”

Wadsworth is not alone in this worry. Members of the Business Round Table have also expressed concern about what the future holds for the U.S. with a shrinking STEM pipeline feeding a growing global demand.

Another panelist, Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware) said the country was at a critical point in history. “We are in an economic war,” he said. “The future of our country rests on our ability to use STEM to solve problems.” Kauffman is the only sitting senator in Congress to have worked in the engineering field, and he repeatedly drummed out a message that policy could drive a solution to the STEM crisis.

Panelists at the American Innovation and Competitveness session. Photo by Roger Winstead/NCSU.

Taking a different tact, Wadsworth emphasized increasing financial incentives to teachers and working to change societal and cultural mores such that STEM education fields and STEM jobs are viewed as more prestigious and more desirable. A third panelist — John Chambers, chairman and CEO of CISCO – said he believed changing teaching methods in K-12 settings to be more collaborative, projects-oriented and skills-mastery oriented would be a good starting point.

Both Chambers and Wadsworth discussed the importance of developing new metrics for measuring not only student potential and performance, but teacher’s efficiencies. “We don’t need to know a student’s class rank,” Wadsworth said. “We need to know their vector.”

Chambers also explored the idea of using gaming and collaborative teaching methods because he said that as an employer, he is interested in hiring people who have collaborative work skills and who can learn and develop in collaborative work situations.

Perhaps with this emphasis on K-12 education as the pivotal platform business is eyeing as a solution to the STEM crisis, it was no accident that the deans of the engineering colleges at both Duke and NC State universities announced today a new nationwide program targeting attracting school-aged children to the STEM fields. The Grand Challenge K-12 Partners Program will lean on engineering colleges throughout the U.S. to be resource hubs for K-12 students and teachers in their region.

It was clear that the panelists were grappling with the conundrum of how to tap future generations of students to step-up their game and embrace devoting themselves to an education and a career path in science, math, technology or engineering.

Wadsworth hammered home the point that despite the grimness of the STEM crisis, “Now is a good time to be an engineer,” because there are so many problems awaiting solutions. In his view, a large part of the path to economic recovery lies in transforming our current economic platform to the energy revolution. “There are so many opportunities if you want to solve energy problems,” he said. He discussed his perspective that the future of economic growth and even political stability was rooted in innovation in green technologies which would create green jobs rooted in a sustainable path.

“China gets it,” Wadsworth said. “Last year they became the biggest producer of wind turbines. They were all ready the biggest producer of solar panels.”

What is it going to take for the U.S. to lead and dominate not only the globally-emerging green markets, but the innovation that will drive these markets? A political solution? An educational revolution? A re-structuring of our society’s values? Each panelist seemed to have a slightly different vision. Elements of all appear to be primary ingredients in the formula for change.

What do you think solutions may be? Is your company, school or organization doing something to address the STEM crisis? Please share your thoughts and stories in the comments section.

–
ONLIEN EXTRAS:
Three more NAE Grand Challenge Summits are scheduled to take place next month, in Phoenix, Chicago and Boston. A fourth is scheduled for Seattle in May.

N.C. State University College of Engineering

Duke University Pratt School of Engineering

Want to know more about the speakers? Click here for bios.

Today, I asked Mark MacAllister, Coordinator of On-Line Learning Projects at the North Carolina Zoological Society to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I was born and educated in the Midwest–grew up in northwest Illinois, spent a lot of time on my grandparents’ dairy farm in southwest Wisconsin, and went to undergrad school at Oberlin College. I then came south for the first of three tours of duty in North Carolina, including grad school at UNC-Chapel Hill. Also mixed in there is time spent living and working in Salt Lake City, St. Louis, Buffalo, Toronto, London and Chicago. I’m still a Midwesterner at heart, and really miss long sightlines and cold winters. But I love North Carolina, especially my current and quirky hometown of Pittsboro–it’s kind of like “The Andy Griffith Show” where every third person is a massage therapist. I work for the North Carolina Zoological Society, which is based in Asheboro, but telecommute from my shed-in-the-woods office in Pittsboro.

Philosophically, I tend to find myself most interested in the place where technology, education (especially K-12 but also for adults) and environmental advocacy come together. I feel that each one of those can be improved by the application of the other two–if that makes any sense. I’m an early adopter in all three, and have been lucky enough to be able to be involved in somewhat radically new things in each area. I’ve been self-teaching on computers since 1982, beginning with a Kaypro running CP/M. My Master’s degree is in Environmental Policy and Law, meaning that I took half my coursework in UNC’s Political Science department and the other half through the Law School. And, as far as teaching goes–one of the nicest compliments anyone ever paid me was to call me a “natural teacher,” meaning that I don’t have a teaching license but I somehow manage to pull it off.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

After grad school, my wife and I moved to Salt Lake City. I spent five years out there working on wilderness advocacy. I did a lot of research in the field–getting paid to hike and camp in the deserts of southern Utah was a great gig–and also in the public document rooms of various state and federal agencies. The advocacy groups I worked with were involved in mining, grazing, water rights, logging and other threats to wilderness preservation. What I began to notice toward the end of my tenure there was that many issues that appeared to be landscape-related were actually endangered species-related, and as a result I began to become more interested in species preservation.

We came back to North Carolina and in 1996 I went to work for the Chatham County Schools administrative office. The state was just beginning to wire classrooms, the Internet was just beginning to find its footing in terms of K-12 education, and Chatham understood early on that a significant teacher training effort would need to follow close on the heels of the effort to get everything wired. My job was in many ways focused on creating an atmosphere of support for integrating the Internet into classrooms; in other words, I was asked to help teachers understand why adopting technology was in everyone’s best interest, and then to work with them to actually help them gain those skills. Not long after we got started, Chatham was recognized as one of the ten top technology school districts in the country.

While this was all going on, I found myself thinking more and more about the content of the K-12 curriculum. It seemed obvious that a wonderful way to interest kids and meet curriculum goals was to focus the whole deal on the study of animals and wildlife, and to do so with technology-rich methods. I approached the Education Curator at the North Carolina Zoo, and not long after that we were partnering to build two websites focused on field-based wildlife research. These sites eventually evolved into FieldTripEarth, which is one of the many things I’m working on these days. I’ve been at the Zoo for ten years now, and have seen through a variety of other projects, ranging from teacher education (in both the US and Africa) to social media planning to field-based informal education.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

I’m often thinking about “raw learning materials” (this is David Warlick’s term, see Landmark Project) and how to best put them into the hands of students and teachers. I’m not particularly interested in curriculum–that is, in designing and assembling big packages of resources that teachers can then plug into their classrooms. Rather, I’m curious about how best to make original source material available to classrooms and, better yet, how to put those classrooms in contact with the people that actually generate those source materials (By source materials, I mean first-person narratives, photos, video, datasets, maps and so on that, taken together, tell a story about what a scientist or other field researcher is working on). FieldTripEarth wheels and deals in exactly this currency, and we’ve been successful in providing classrooms a way to access these materials from researchers working all over the world. What they do with them is, for the most part, up to the students and teachers–we do offer some generalized strategies for using the materials found on the website, but for the most part we urge everyone to apply them to meet their specific needs.

What I wish I could spend more time on–or at least be more successful at doing–is bringing various classrooms into substantive contact with each other. I don’t mean waving at each other through Skype…rather, what I’m on the lookout for are ways to help students in various locations work together to solve learning problems, to interview field scientists, to author a video about a particular topic, and so on. I think there’s a lot of potential in this, but I’m not convinced that teachers and administrators will buy into it.

More generally, I’m interested in teaching process and thinking skills to whoever will sit still long enough to learn them. What we commonly call the scientific method can of course be used to learn in any academic or technical area. Unfortunately, most schools aren’t teaching thinking as an organized process; that’s why I try to focus on the work being done by field researchers, because I consider them role models of sorts when it comes thinking that is both multi-disciplinary and systematic.

I have some other goals, of course. I’d like to figure out a way to make hiking and biking more a part of the K-12 classroom. I’d like to read and write more, and to think out loud with colleagues more frequently.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I’ve never really taken to blogging as part of my work, though I do read several blogs focused on politics and policy, both of which are hobby horses of mine. Twitter and Facebook are a relatively small part of my professional life, mostly because right now my employer focuses more on their utility in serving members than in educating them. I think these tools form a net positive, but will be much more relevant once we figure out how to use them as educational, rather than informational, resources.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

The best thing about the conference was witnessing the various interests people brought with them–as well as the varying levels of expertise. It helped me remember that this is still such an evolving area. The sessions were all strong, but for the most part my strongest impressions were formed outside of the meeting rooms.

As far as suggestions for next year–it would be cool to invite some consumers of science communication and let us see how they put it to work in their lives. There was a bit of that at 2010, but there’s a lot of untapped experience out there.

And while we’re at it, I’d love to have a session focused on the question “How do we make our students’ experiences with technology at school at least as rich and relevant as the experiences they are having outside of school?”

It was so nice to meet you and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

Today, I asked Andrew Thaler from Southern Fried Science to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I’m originally from Baltimore, but moved to North Carolina 8 years ago for undergrad and never looked back. I currently live in Beaufort, NC. I’m working towards my Ph.D in Deep Sea Population Genetics at the Duke University Marine Lab. I was the kid who wanted to be a marine biologist since I was six.

Philosophically I guess you could call me a Happy Fatalist. We’ve profoundly changed the world and anthropogenic influences on the environment are going to be the driving force for almost all societal change in the foreseeable future, but I’m less panicked about the way things are changing and more excited to be part of the largest experiment in human history. Most of the changes we’re going to see in the next few decades are unavoidable, we’ve passed the tipping point. People are often afraid to admit that, but eventually we need to not just reduce our impact on the environment, but also preparing for the major changes that are going to happen. We love to promote the myth of a balanced environment that’s somehow being upset, but the environment is always changing. The sooner we accept that environmentalism is about human values and not so archetypal perfect environment, the better off we’re going to be in the long run.

So I come from the position that we need to shift our focus from how to prevent changes to how we’re going to deal with the inevitable.

My scientific background is largely in marine biology and population genetics, with a brief segue into mycology for a couple of years.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I started off working as an Aquarist Assistant at the National Aquarium in Baltimore rearing seahorses. That was my first real chance to design my own experiments. I was part of the Syngnathid Breeding Program, and some of my seahorses are still swimming around aquariums throughout the world. From there I upgraded to a lab tech in a Mycology lab before entering grad school. I started my grad career studying the biodiversity of deep sea fungi that occur at methane seeps. No one had ever really looked at deep sea fungi, so I thought I was all cool breaking new ground. As it turns out, there just isn’t that much fungi down there, or if there is, it’s very elusive. I’m currently putting together a crowdsourced guide to conservation genetics geared towards managers and the general public.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

Right now I’m just trying to make it through my Preliminary exams intact. Blogging is acting as my stress relief outlet (which is why most of my posts recently have been jokes about Global Draining). Other than that, I’m brewing experimental beers. My last batch I replaced all of the grains with green tea leaves to create a sort of Green Tea Pale Ale. It should be ready in a couple weeks, so I’ll let you know how it turns out.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I’ve been really excited about Twitter lately. Suddenly I have a huge collection of experts available whenever I need them. Just send out a quick question and I usually get 5 or 6 answers by the end of the day.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

My undergrad institution was one of the first to get Facebook, so I’ve been on it for pretty much my entire academic career, so I have no idea if it’s been a net positive or negative. Twitter for sure is neutral, I get tons of help from my twitter network, but it can also be a huge time sink. All in all I feel like online activity follows the old (ways to be more efficient)/(ways to procrastinate) = no net change.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I got into science blogging through Kevin Zelnio, who I share an office with. My favorites are for sure the marine blogs – Deep Sea News, Oyster’s Garter (which I guess is Deep Sea News now too), Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets, blogfish. I met nearly all the cool science blogs I follow from Science Online 09 and this years conference.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

This was the first time I went in with a smart phone, and the amount of content that was streaming out of the twitterverse was astounding. It was almost like I could listen in on four conferences at once. It might be nice to have a closing keynote to bring everyone back together at the end of the meeting as well as the beginning.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

Thank you and I can’t wait for the next conference.

Today, I asked Andrea Novicki from the Duke CIT blog to answer a few questions:

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

Hi, thank you so much for asking. I’m currently employed at Duke University in the Center for Instructional Technology as an academic technology consultant for the sciences – I work with faculty who teach science or math, to help them figure out how to effectively and efficiently help students learn, using technology. My work is a satisfying combination of science, education and technology. Scientifically, I began as a marine biologist as an undergraduate and in early grad school; still, marine biology feels like my natural home. I became inspired by a summer course to study neural systems and behavior, because investigating changes in behavior at the level of changes in molecules in single, identified neurons was both exciting and satisfying. After a couple of postdocs and a tenure track faculty position, I stepped away from research and teaching and I went sailing, driven by a restless sense of adventure. I’m now back in academia, working with smart, interesting people.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I have been involved with some great projects; if there is a theme, it is change, both in my research projects and in my career. I’ve investigated the neural pathways that mediate color change in squid and octopus and I participated in research cruises identifying midwater ocean animals. On land I worked with insects, monitoring and altering activity in single neurons that correlate with behavior change, and predicting and then, satisfyingly, finding a neuron with particular characteristics.

I (and many other people) began to question the traditional lecture way that science was taught and early on, I began using computers and technology to help students learn biology.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

My goals? Do I have to be realistic? I’d like to contribute to making science accessible; I’d like for everyone to recognize the beautiful complexity and interconnectedness of the natural world at all scales, and find joy of figuring out for themselves how things work.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I’m excited about the increased openness and social nature of science. In my grad school days, the model was that successful scientists kept to themselves until they published, and then only in reputable, peer-reviewed journals; anything else was considered frivolous and distracting. Now, because of the web, science is now more public and more accessible (accessible both technologically and in presentation style). I’m a huge fan of Jean-Claude Bradley’s open notebook science approach, ever since I heard him speak at the first science blogging conference. This project (and many others) make the process of science more open. Passionate blogs by students and post docs as well as people who run their own labs show what science is really like – it’s done by caring people with feelings and emotions, not just some distant, always-right white-coated professor. This openness about the process, as well as the explanations of results made accessible (like at researchblogging.org) have the potential to illustrate the appeal of science to everyone.

I’d like to see people use some of the new visualization tools to explore publically available data sets to make new discoveries, just because they are curious, regardless of their final degrees or institutional affiliation.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

I lurk on numerous blogs, and I love scienceblogs, it’s a great way to keep up on how science is changing, and visit my favorite topics. I’m very fortunate, in that monitoring how people use technology to communicate science (for science education) is part of my job. I follow people on Twitter and find it a useful way to find new ideas and resources, and contribute occasionally. Although I do have an account on Facebook, I rarely look at it.

I do contribute to a blog, but it’s more about technology in education than about science, and is part of my job. As a confirmed introvert, I find blogging difficult. I am, by nature, a lurker. I’m in awe of people who can toss off a post without thinking it over and over and over.

In other words, all of this online activity is necessary for my work; I do not contribute enough, but I benefit tremendously.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2010 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

Every session I attended was thought-provoking! Stacy Baker’s students stole the show again; my notes have many observations about their attitudes towards technology. I also welcomed the sessions by librarians – their ability to find information, and think about how it is organized will continue to be invaluable.

I observed that the conference had many people attending who were not exactly science bloggers (people like me, for example), which showed how many options there are for people to participate in science online in some way, even if they are not, strictly speaking, science bloggers.

There’s still something wonderful about meeting someone for the first time after you’ve already read their writing – it’s like you can peek into their brain. When you meet a blogger (or any writer), your first impression has already been formed and modified and added to, and their physical appearance is irrelevant. It’s an almost utopian ideal – people are judged by the quality of their thoughts, not what they look like.

At one session, during a discussion of Google Earth and GIS, Cameron Neylon thought aloud about using visualizations as a way of distributing data, which is something I had been thinking about, as a way of making science, and raw data, more accessible. He, of course, said it more elegantly and I will be thinking about this for some time. How can good visualizations be used as a way of distributing data, in a way that does not immediately shape a conclusion but allows for exploration?

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I’m sure I’ll see you before then, and I expect you’ll join our event again next January.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday