ANDRILL project connects kids, scientists
Pound Middle School’s sixth-grade science students got to meet a rock star Thursday.
He was the real deal. Not the kind who gyrates on stage, strums an electric guitar and croons into a microphone.
But a star nonetheless. One with a penchant for cold and ice and giant drills.
“I’m a scientist and I study rocks,” said the guy named Richard Levy who, if you were into stereotypes, wouldn’t look like anything like a scientist.
No wild gray hair and smoking test tubes here.
That was Levy’s first point Thursday afternoon, as he spoke to students sitting at long tables armed with pencils, paper and microscopes.
We’re not all crazy scientists locked up in laboratories, he said. We’re women and men with or without gray hair and we’re out exploring the world.
Seems, though, that these sixth-graders got it already, when he posed the question: “What do scientists look like?”
“Like normal people,” came the answer.
“You’re right,” he said. “Scientists are just normal people who happen to like to study things.”
In Levy’s case, he gets on a plane and goes way south, to take part in a multinational Antarctic drilling project called ANDRILL.
The point: to study the region’s role in climate change.
Levy’s been there, helped drill into the earth to get samples that he and scientists from the United States, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom study.
And this year, the Pound science students will get to participate from their classroom in a program called ANDRILL Project Circle.
It will include classes from about 10 schools in the U.S. and others from Greenland, New Zealand and, hopefully, Italy and Germany, said Louise Huffman, ANDRILL coordinator for education and public outreach.
She calls it an online learning community, one where students from Pound can talk with other students in the circle from Maryland or California, Alaska or Greenland via the Internet.
They’ll all be working on class projects related to ANDRILL and can compare notes. They’ll also be following scientists’ progress on ANDRILL’s Web site.
Not only that, students will be in close contact with eight teachers who have been selected to travel to Antarctica along with the scientists doing the drilling.
Pound students — the only ones in the circle from Nebraska — will talk on blogs, e-mail questions to Antarctica and take part in a conference call with the teachers and scientists there.
“They’ll have a real close connection to Antarctica,” Huffman said.
Huffman says it will be both a cultural exchange with other students, and a chance to see how science works. Not the stuff of textbooks, but the real thing.
“I think the important thing is they are involved in real-world science, seeing the whole process of science, seeing how scientists work.”
Anica Brown, the Pound students’ science teacher, had contacted ANDRILL scientists to see about getting the project’s video journals and had talked about the ANDRILL project into her classes last year.
When Huffman called her and asked her to participate, she didn’t hesitate.
Including the ANDRILL curriculum into hers will work perfectly, she said.
“How often do you get a chance to go outside and talk to scientists in Antarctica when you’re in the classroom?” she said.
Brown said she also plans to start her own blog and wants to encourage students and parents to take part.
When Levy heads south next week, he’ll take a Pound T-shirt with him and a flag representing the school. It will fly in the ice-covered land with more penguins then people.
Brown thinks the connection to ANDRILL will bring science to life for her students.
“I hope within this group of kids there’s one or two who say, ‘This is for me.’”
And Thursday was the first step, as her students peered into microscopes at tiny, single-celled algae called diatoms that Levy brought with him.
“That’s so cool, it looks like snowflakes,” said Kiara Bowling.
Akysha Johnson, who shared a microphone with Kiara, said she thinks it’s neat how the world changes. How you can see it in the different layers of rocks.
Kiara, not a wild gray hair or smoking test tube in sight, thinks so too.
“I might be a scientist,” she said.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com
He was the real deal. Not the kind who gyrates on stage, strums an electric guitar and croons into a microphone.
But a star nonetheless. One with a penchant for cold and ice and giant drills.
“I’m a scientist and I study rocks,” said the guy named Richard Levy who, if you were into stereotypes, wouldn’t look like anything like a scientist.
No wild gray hair and smoking test tubes here.
That was Levy’s first point Thursday afternoon, as he spoke to students sitting at long tables armed with pencils, paper and microscopes.
We’re not all crazy scientists locked up in laboratories, he said. We’re women and men with or without gray hair and we’re out exploring the world.
Seems, though, that these sixth-graders got it already, when he posed the question: “What do scientists look like?”
“Like normal people,” came the answer.
“You’re right,” he said. “Scientists are just normal people who happen to like to study things.”
In Levy’s case, he gets on a plane and goes way south, to take part in a multinational Antarctic drilling project called ANDRILL.
The point: to study the region’s role in climate change.
Levy’s been there, helped drill into the earth to get samples that he and scientists from the United States, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom study.
And this year, the Pound science students will get to participate from their classroom in a program called ANDRILL Project Circle.
It will include classes from about 10 schools in the U.S. and others from Greenland, New Zealand and, hopefully, Italy and Germany, said Louise Huffman, ANDRILL coordinator for education and public outreach.
She calls it an online learning community, one where students from Pound can talk with other students in the circle from Maryland or California, Alaska or Greenland via the Internet.
They’ll all be working on class projects related to ANDRILL and can compare notes. They’ll also be following scientists’ progress on ANDRILL’s Web site.
Not only that, students will be in close contact with eight teachers who have been selected to travel to Antarctica along with the scientists doing the drilling.
Pound students — the only ones in the circle from Nebraska — will talk on blogs, e-mail questions to Antarctica and take part in a conference call with the teachers and scientists there.
“They’ll have a real close connection to Antarctica,” Huffman said.
Huffman says it will be both a cultural exchange with other students, and a chance to see how science works. Not the stuff of textbooks, but the real thing.
“I think the important thing is they are involved in real-world science, seeing the whole process of science, seeing how scientists work.”
Anica Brown, the Pound students’ science teacher, had contacted ANDRILL scientists to see about getting the project’s video journals and had talked about the ANDRILL project into her classes last year.
When Huffman called her and asked her to participate, she didn’t hesitate.
Including the ANDRILL curriculum into hers will work perfectly, she said.
“How often do you get a chance to go outside and talk to scientists in Antarctica when you’re in the classroom?” she said.
Brown said she also plans to start her own blog and wants to encourage students and parents to take part.
When Levy heads south next week, he’ll take a Pound T-shirt with him and a flag representing the school. It will fly in the ice-covered land with more penguins then people.
Brown thinks the connection to ANDRILL will bring science to life for her students.
“I hope within this group of kids there’s one or two who say, ‘This is for me.’”
And Thursday was the first step, as her students peered into microscopes at tiny, single-celled algae called diatoms that Levy brought with him.
“That’s so cool, it looks like snowflakes,” said Kiara Bowling.
Akysha Johnson, who shared a microphone with Kiara, said she thinks it’s neat how the world changes. How you can see it in the different layers of rocks.
Kiara, not a wild gray hair or smoking test tube in sight, thinks so too.
“I might be a scientist,” she said.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com
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