TED Publishes My Video on TED-Ed!

I haven't had a chance to post about the video production process much, but here is basically how it went down:

1. A friend nominated me on the TED-Ed website.  You can nominate your friends, too (or yourself!) by clicking the "Get Involved" link.
2. Jordan Reeves, head of TED Ed, sent me an email to set up a time to talk on the phone about possibilities.  At this point, they make it pretty clear that the whole thing is completely exploratory--no guarantees.
3. I agreed to try to write a script for a three minute video.  
4. Discovered that writing a script for a good three minute video is really, really challenging.
5. Sent the script to the editorial team.  Bit my nails for several weeks.
6. The editorial team decided that they liked the script!  Hooray!  I made it to round three.  This one's easy--all I have to do is take a look at their suggested edits and check for scientific accuracy.  
7. I have decided that all writers should have professional editors:  I am not a writer, but their editing added a certain je ne sais quoi to the wording in my script.  Definitely better than it was when I sent it.
8. Round Four:  record the voiceover.  Since I live close to New York City, and I was on vacation at the time, I made the trip down to the TED Ed offices in Chelsea to use their cute little recording booth.  Rose, the science journalist and voiceover editor, directed me through the recording. I did not have to go down to the office--if you live far away, they send you a 'portable recording studio'.
9. Then, I have to wait.  And bite nails more.  They send the voiceover and script out to a group of selected professional animators and wait until an animator chooses a voiceover.  If you don't get chosen, that's the end of that.  The reason the animators have the choice is because they often put in many MANY hours to put the videos together--and these are real professional who are volunteering their work hours (kind of like the teachers that put the lessons together).  Some of these guys/gals work for places like Pixar and Dreamworks.  Others just rock on their own.
10. Marc Christoforidis picks my script!  WOW!  I am so excited.  Here is his professional reel on Vimeo.
11. Then, we work together...emailing back and forth for weeks.  He sends me animated sketches (animatics) and stills to get my feedback and so I can check for accuracy.  He did an amazing job of interpreting some difficult places in the script.  I never even saw what he looked like until his picture was posted on the TED site!  He's got cool hair.

TED Publishes My Video on TED-Ed!

Difficult Concepts: Teaching the Reason for the Seasons in Middle School

My last post on teaching the reason for the seasons in middle school focused on the biggest misconception of  most people when it comes to the concept, and an excellent curricular resource that I have successfully used for years to help teach this concept that is difficult to teach.  It is difficult to teach mainly because of the misconceptions that many people (including very smart people--some of them are teachers!).

I didn't even talk about the ACTUAL reasons--I spent all of my time on UNTEACHING a misconception, which is one of the challenges of being a science teacher!  Kids come to us with all sorts of ideas about how the world works, and we have to ensure experiences that help them understand what is right about their models and what ideas need, ahem, "reworking".  So here they are:

Here is a summary of the reasons for the seasons:

Images from http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6h.html

1. The big, overarching, reason for the seasons is that the Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees from vertical on its rotational axis; and the Earth revolves around the Sun with the axis always pointing in the same "direction" in space. This results in several phenomena:

• The number of daylight hours a region receives varies based on latitude and season.  If the Earth were not tilted, it would be like an equinox every day: 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness.  In the northern hemisphere, in summer, Connecticut gets around 15 hours of daylight each day and 9 hours of darkness.  As you move north in latitude, the number of daylight hours in summer increases, so Anchorage, Alaska would get 19 hours of daylight on the same day that Jacksonville, Florida gets 14.

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/climate-photoperiod.html

• When there is daylight on a part of the Earth it warms up.  When there is darkness, it cools off.  In the summer, New England warms up for 15 hours or so and then cools off for 9 hours.  It warms for longer than it cools...this happens day after day after day so there is an overall warming effect.   In the winter, the opposite happens: there are many more hours of cooling time--15 hours of darkness--than warming time (9 hours) and day after day, this results in a cooling effect.

2. The other reason for the seasons is that the Earth is a sphere and so the solar intensity per unit of surface area differs based on latitude and time of year.  If daylight hours were the only thing that determined the average temperature at a certain latitude, then areas above the Arctic Circle would be the hottest places on Earth in Northern Summer, because it receives 24 hours of daylight (see chart above). So, there has to be some other factor at work here: many equatorial regions only have two seasons--hot and wet or hot and dry!  It's always hotter there than at the poles.  The solution is solar intensity per unit of area which changes based on the angular height of the sun.  

• Angular height of the Sun in the sky changes throughout the day, with the Sun at it's highest point at solar noon; it also changes throughout the year, as shown in these diagrams:

Angular height of the Sun at 40 degrees Northern Latitude at different times of  the year.

http://www.extension.org/pages/62239/identify-sun-and-shade-areas-in-the-landscape

• Solar intensity changes in proportion with angular height. A great activity to do with students is using a flashlight held at constant height over a piece of graph paper.  Trace the outline of the circle of light and then tilt the flashlight slightly.  The new shape is an oval with a much larger surface area (count and compare the squares) over which the same amount of light is spread.  So the solar intensity per unit of area in the image to the right is much less.

Now my post is too long, and I have to teach a class in 5 minutes!  

Difficult Concepts: Teaching the Reason for the Seasons in Middle School

Yale Fellowship Day #1: Earth Science Animation Resources and Using Science Notebooks Resources

So, kids, here I am at Yale University with the Planetarium Director and Education and Astronomy people.
I am going to post for you some (or as many as I can) of the resources we are using:

http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/ 

1. Okay, on this one, scroll down.  
2. If you click on "Coordinates and Motions", and (let it load). 
3. On the Splash Page, click on "Animations" at the bottom of the page.
4. It gives you TONS of astronomy animations that address the question, "What are the reasons for the seasons".

flora.p2061.org/climate

This is a BETA site...I don't think you can Google it.  So this one's probably new for all of you!

Try clicking "Visualizations" under #3.

___________________________
Lecture: Christopher Stone    "A Science Notebook Primer"
Notes:

--a tool in your toolbelt for improving student accountablility and achievement
--using them to inform your instruction (formative assessment)
--engaging students in meaningful "conversation" about science topics (Fulton/Campbell are researchers on how this works to improved learning)

Click this link for a file of articles (ideas, rubrics, worksheets, etc.) from science education publications on the topic.

Yale Fellowship Day #1: Earth Science Animation Resources and Using Science Notebooks Resources

Exploring the Reason for the Seasons in Middle School--with ARIES from Charlesbridge Publishing

There is one essential question in middle school science that often is misunderstood, mistaught, undertaught or simply overlooked that is central to our experience here on planet Earth and that exists as a standard in every state curriculum in the United States and probably most all over our world (especially in areas north of the Tropics):  "What is the reason for the seasons?".

Many people, many extremely educated people (register with Annenberg Media to see the video "Private Universe" and you'll believe it when you see the Harvard professor and graduates explain their own misunderstandings) have incomplete or incorrect ideas about the reason for the seasons.  An overly-simplified reason is "The tilt of the Earth causes the seasons".  This answer is incomplete and provides lots of room for the insertion of ideas that are at odds with what scientists have agreed are the real "reasons for the seasons".  

An example of one of those ideas is that the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is a greatly exaggerated ellipse.   It is no wonder that most people hold onto this idea--it is reinforced by thousands of textbooks and diagrams that show the orbit of the Earth around the Sun at an oblique angle to save page space; the result is that the (nearly) circular orbit of the Earth ends up represented as an elongated ellipse--often with the Sun at the center.   Shown are several examples of that type of diagram:

 http://www.nationsonline.org/bilder/earth_rotation_axis.jpg


Having seen so many of these images, which certainly COULD be useful for teaching some concepts accurately, but have so far managed to do more misinforming than informing--a student could hardly be blamed for believing that the the orbit is an extremely eccentric ellipse with the Sun located at the center, and not at one focus of the ellipse.

Here are more accurate (from above) diagrams that could help disspell these myths if used more widely...but simple exposure to the ideas illustrated here is not the answer, either.

"  Images from http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6h.html



Oh, alright alright...the whole point of this post is to offer a curricular resource that I have used for many years that addresses all of these ideas.  The ARIES physical science curriculum by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (published by Charlesbridge) is an effective answer.  Students love the freedom of exploration.  Teachers love the lesson extensions and discussion questions, with included assessments of all types...including performance assessment ideas.

I worked with faculty from Harvard to train with and test the curriculum and I've used it for years.  It's fantastic and you can even buy apparatus bins...you only need to provide glue and scissors, usually.

Exploring the Reason for the Seasons in Middle School--with ARIES from Charlesbridge Publishing