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November 2010

What's New?
A BLOSSOMS monthly newsletter

 
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A BLOSSOMS Learning Video – The Complete Lesson Resource
Each BLOSSOMS video lesson comes with all resources necessary to teach the topic covered – including downloadable hand-outs and worksheets, and a special video teacher guide segment where the video teacher provides instruction and advice to the classroom teacher. Many of the videos also include challenge problems for students eager to push themselves further on the subject material. And the web page of each learning video furnishes a list of “Additional Online Resources” where both teachers and students can find more excellent resources on the topic of the lesson.
BLOSSOMS and Haiti
Two BLOSSOMS videos, "Can Earthquakes Be Predicted?" and "Roots, Shoots and Wood," are currently being voiced over into the Haitian Creole language (known as "Kreyòl" in Haiti). BLOSSOMS hopes to be part of an MIT initiative to help rebuild the Haitian educational system. This translation project is also part of an NSF-funded effort by Prof. Michel DeGraff (MIT Linguistics and Philosophy) to evaluate the use of Kreyòl and technology toward enhancing the teaching of literacy, math and science in Haitian primary schools. Some of the rationale for this effort is explained in a Boston Globe article on Haiti's language barrier.

New BLOSSOMS Research Initiative Looks at STEM Education
The BLOSSOMS team is pleased to announce the first major “R&D” project in support of BLOSSOMS. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded MIT and its Ohio State partner a major research grant focused on modeling the scientific workforce. This grant focuses especially on the pipeline of students in the k-12 and k-16 educational systems, attempting to understand and then to mathematically model system features that cause students to remain in or to drop out from the STEM pipeline. (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) The Principal Investigator (PI) of this grant is Dr. Kathy Sullivan, three-time astronaut and the first woman to walk in space. Professor Larson serves as Co-PI. In addition to providing useful general policy information, this grant will direct us in ways to create new meaningful BLOSSOMS modules.

Can you suggest a BLOSSOMS topic?
Is there a topic you cover in mathematics, science or engineering that you find difficult to teach to your students? Do you think creation of a BLOSSOMS video lesson around that topic would be valuable to you in your teaching? Tell us out about it at: blossoms@mit.edu.

Watch for these new videos
in December

"Optimizing Your Diet: An Introduction to Linear Programming"
Detective cartoon


"DNA and Forensics"

"Find that Gene: Genome-wide Mapping in Purebred Dogs"
Meet a BLOSSOMS
video teacher

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a professor of Nuclear Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. In 1984 he received the Abdus Salam Prize for mathematics and is the author of 65 scientific research papers. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and also two series aimed at popularizing science. In 2003, Dr. Hoodbhoy was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for popularizing science in Pakistan with TV serials, and his film ’The Bell Tolls for Planet Earth’ won honorable mention at the Paris Film Festival. His BLOSSOMS lesson, The Mystery of Motion: Momentum, Kinetic Energy and Their Conversion, can be viewed in both Urdu and English.
 
 
 

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