SEL in Schools Series for all educators, schools

 My students know I am really into the inclusion of helping humanity into our physics classes, and also promoting the skills we ALL need and use every day of our lives, Social-Emotional Learning skills (SEL). It is to the point where ETHS, and most districts around the country, are promoting and including SEL into their district plans and goals. This is good news for everyone, and now the challenge is to all learn what SEL is (and is NOT), why we need it for our students, evidence that it works (otherwise it would be a waste of time and resources), and finally how it can be embedded within content courses. 

If interested, I have created a SEL in Schools series of slide decks and accompanying videos, as well as hundreds of examples of lesson ideas in all subject areas/departments for middle schools and high schools, in order to train teachers and staff, as well as build up 'buy in' among teachers when they see how possible and valuable it is to include SEL in lessons on a fairly regular and consistent basis. 

Note that STEM courses are often viewed as the most challenging to include SEL within, so there's a video just on the use of SEL in STEM classes. 

If you happen to view it and find it useful, please share with other teachers, administrators, schools, etc. All of it is free, and with the slides you can make a copy and then use it or modify to your needs, as you please!

Example of Biomimetics - Looking at how jellyfish propel themselves through the water

 If you are interested in biomimetics, or STEM research inspired by biological systems and organisms, check out this interview with an engineer, John Dabiri, whose work in aerospace engineering and propulsion systems, is inspired by how jellyfish are able to propel themselves through water. That type of research, looking at the processes that make a jellyfish be able to move so efficiently, is something students can do in school and home lab settings. Be creative, and think about the characteristics of a favorite animal or plant...some activity or feature you think is really cool - and then investigate aspects of that activity. How is the organism able to do whatever it is it does? 

And remember, Nature has had hundreds of millions of years of evolution and modifications of organisms to do what we see them do today; jelly fish, for example, have been around for some 200 million years. Over time, evolution tends to begin to optimize the actions taken by various organisms, whereas humans have only been around and trying to engineer things for a TINY fraction of that time ('modern' STEM is only a few hundred years old, compared to the time Nature has been experimenting!). 

This photo is from the Atlanta Aquarium. 

Going against the flow in science: Science requires some level of skepticism, outside of 'the textbook'

 In theoretical physics for the past 50 or so years, thousands of the world's best physics minds have dedicated themselves to looking for the quantum theory of gravity. Since Einstein, the dream has been to unify gravity with the other three forces of nature into a single theory - no one has done it, despite the HUGE effort given to this problem for decades. And on the experimental side, nothing has been found that suggests gravity comes in 'bundles' just like something like light comes in bundles of energy we call a photon.                  

Despite the lack of any substantial breakthrough, everyone keeps plugging away, assuming gravity MUST be quantized since the other forces are. In science, putting blinders on while looking to answer the unknown is dangerous. Part of the process of science is to be skeptical, even of things we do know! Check out this article and video about physicist Jonathan Oppenheim from University College of London, who has made the assumption that maybe gravity is not quantized as we all have been thinking - what if it is how Einstein describes it in General Relativity, where it is not a true force but rather just the consequence of curved space-time? 

Prof. Oppenheim and his students are developing a theory, as well as suggestions for experiments, that could test whether gravity is simply different and is a 'classical' force rather than a quantum force. When I teach gravity and Einstein's model, and we get into the modern thinking about quantum gravity, we have over the years asked the question if gravity might not be quantized, and that's why it is so different from the other three forces of nature and why no one has found the unified theory. It is good to see this possibility getting some attention and those isolated few who question the textbooks and group think that can happen in science...scientists are still humans, and fall into the same patterns and traps as everyone else! 

I look forward to seeing where this work goes, as all that matters is we make progress in understanding the true nature of Nature, regardless of whether it fits into our assumptions and expectations or not! 

Using AI to learn programming

 Most of my students who want to learn how to program in some language, and that mostly being Python, do so independently since it is not really taught in high school classes. Most college students and graduate students are using Python in science research because of its power and speed when it comes to data analysis and presentation. While Python and all the resources you need are free and online, one can watch YouTube videos and learn how to code in Python, or any other language. 

While that is how it's been done for a long time by many students, artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT are providing a new way. One can ask ChatGPT to write programs in Python, for example, to do many things a student may be interested in coding up. One can ask for instructions, as well, for running the programs ChatGPT writes. By giving it a problem and studying, editing and modifying the code, students and adults have a new option for learning how to code. It is effectively the same as getting code from someone else and learning by doing, which is how most people learn to code. Just wanted to put this out there if anyone is interested. Always remember, though, to cite code or all other pieces from which  you actually do find and use information.