WebEx? Ning? More on Getting Connected

How can teachers safely, easily and cheaply set up sessions with remote authors, scientists, performers, instructors and other experts? Instant messaging has the real-time contact teachers and students want, but comes with vulnerabilities. And many school networks block or don't allow instant messaging programs. Using one on the Internet that doesn't require installation poses its own problems, mostly that of security. For example, Yahoo! Messenger on the Web is just as vulnerable to spam as Yahoo! Mail. Teachers need to get students in real-time discussions without the fear of intruders or the hassle of sometimes vulgar spam.

WebEx offers "secure instant messaging" with AIM Pro Secure Instant Messaging. The application is geared toward businesses which need to connect workers without going public on the Web. It offers chat, audio and video in a tool that can be managed by an administrator to include or exclude anyone from a group or discussion. WebEx promises full security with "comprehensive end-to-end encryption, user authentication, and configurable content and URL filters." All of this comes at a price. You can try it for free, but it is a subscription service with a monthly fee. But because it is web-based, there is nothing to download or install and it can be accessed from any browser.

Ning allows members to create social networks that can be used for intra-group communication. The creator of a group or network controls who is in the group and messages can only be received from and sent to members of the group. The platform for Ning is programmable and can be adjusted for different uses, according to the About Ning page. When you create a group or network, you can select a public or private setting, discussion forums, photo or video sharing or other options. Group discussions or forums can be initiated by clicking "Start New Discussion" on the group or network's home page. Ning is free. Ad revenue supports the site and that may be something to consider. Do you want a network or group page with ads that are beyond your control? (In looking at sample groups and networks, I did not see any ads on the group homepages.) It is supported by Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari which also eliminates any need for downloading or installing on a school network. Samples of established networks can be accessed on the Ning homepage.

Has anyone used Ning? Or subscribed to WebEx? Is WebEx a possibility? Are there secure options offered by Internet providers? Or created by a school system for its schools? Or is videoconferencing easier for bringing an author, researcher or teacher from another school into the classroom? Ning seems to be a good tool for group discussion but how well does it work? As LIVEbrary on Demand prepares for Season 2, your comments will really help get our authors into classrooms.

SOURCE: "WebEx AIM® Pro Business Edition" 2008
SOURCE: "About Ning" 2008
SOURCE: "Ning Features" 2008

photo courtesy of Aaron Jacobs, used under this Creative Commons license

Texas and Florida: Students Teaching Student-Teachers

As teachers, we usually bring experts into our classrooms to bring content, motivation, excitement and real-world experience to our students, no matter what grade level. One videoconferencing exchange between Texas faculty and Florida sixth graders shows how the experts can learn from the students while the students learn from the experts.

Susan Williams and Linda Dombchik of the Hebrew Day School and the University of Texas at Austin write for Apple's Learning Interchange about a "field trip" by UT-Austin faculty and pre-service teachers to a sixth grade science class in Florida. The unit of study involved meteorology and hurricanes. Students were challenged to invent devices that could protect hurricane-prone Florida from yearly storms. The sixth graders presented their inventions and fielded questions from the faculty and pre-service teachers during a videoconferencing session.

For the sixth grade students, the pending videoconference changed their work from busywork for a single teacher to a real-life event with experts in science and education who would be listening to and evaluating their inventions and the presentation of them. The content and scientific procedures weren't the only things the students learned:

The experts’ questions served as an assessment of what students had learned in this unit. Could students explain their inventions and the principals on which they were based? How accurate was their understanding? Would they be able to use the computer technology to illustrate their work?

For the educators in Texas, the videoconferencing project was part of a new UT-Austin program that required all pre-service teachers to purchase iBooks for use in classes and in-the-field teaching. In visiting the sixth grade class, the pre-service teachers were able to "work with middle school students, to understand how they used computers to solve complex problems, learn science content, and communicate their findings, and to understand what students of this age can accomplish when technology is used effectively."

The goal was to make teaching with technology real and to give them practical experience with what students and the technology can accomplish. This program seems like an excellent one to duplicate in college education programs around the country as technology and its use in the classroom keeps rapidly changing and growing.

SOURCE: "iSight Connects Higher Ed to K-12 Classrooms" 2007
photo courtesy of justin, used under this Creative Commons license

Do You IVC (Interactive Videoconference)?

Videoconferencing is a great tool for bringing experts in almost any field into classrooms. Fiction authors can field questions about the writing or publishing process, researchers can demonstrate and discuss their work, and university faculty can bring the depth of their expertise to the elementary, middle or high school classroom. On Education World, Lorrie Jackson interviews an expert on the use of videoconferencing in education who points out the many benefits of videoconferencing in the classroom and offers tips for teachers using it for the first or twentieth time.

That expert, Jan Zanetis, is the former director of the Virtual School @ Vanderbilt University and co-wrote Videoconferencing for K-12 Classrooms: A Program Development Guide, published in 2004. For Zanetis, videoconferencing must be interactive and she uses the term Interactive Videoconferencing (IVC). Zanetis says that the "power of IVC is that students are able to question and dialogue with people and resources that would otherwise be unavailable due to distance and time." Students must also be prepared for the specific IVC session which may involve research and/or problem-solving proper videoconferencing etiquette. These preparatory activities not only motivate and involve students but teach many skills that are best learned in a project-based manner.

The Virtual School @ Vanderbilt creates videoconferencing programs for K-12 classrooms across the country using Vanderbilt faculty and staff, and sometimes community members, as presenters. Teachers can search a catalog of programs and specific videoconferencing sessions. (Schools are charged a per-videoconference fee.) These sessions can be powerful learning tools, and not just in regards to content or facts. Zanetis mentions a specific example from the "Witnesses and Voices of the Holocaust" videoconferencing series:

One of the most touching videoconferences we had was when we first ran our Holocaust Survivors series. Mira Kimmelman, a sweet and gentle woman in her late eighties, spoke with students in six schools about her experience in Auschwitz. Although Mira's story lasted almost an hour, those elementary and middle school students sat still and did not make a sound. Following her talk, the students took turns asking her questions about Nazis, the war, her family…

The Virtual School also offers Career Conversations, videoconferences with professionals who discuss their fields, career choices, paths and challenges. The Black History Month series includes a session with Rhythm and Roots, Vanderbilt's student dance and drama troupe. The full catalog can be accessed at the homepage.

Zanetis says teachers don't need computers to do IVC. A television, videoconferencing camera and a connection -- either through telephone line or an IP -- are all a teacher needs to get started. Planning is even more important; teachers need time to find content and IVC participants, email addresses, schedules, and alternative plans in case something goes wrong at the last minute or midway through an IVC session. She also adds that IVC should be "just another teaching tool in your repertoire. Do not build your lesson with IVC in mind, use it as the 'spice' in an existing lesson, a way to make something special happen that otherwise wouldn't."

It is helpful to look at how other teachers have been or are using IVC in their lesson plans. Education World is one site that has regular features about teaching with technology and specific lesson plans or summaries of IVC in the classroom.

SOURCE: "Videoconferencing Deserves a Second Look" 02/08/08
photo courtesy of Kai Hendry, used under this Creative Commons license

ePals: Connecting Made Easy and Safe

ePals offers a "learning social network" for schools with class email, blogs and other tools. Over 132,000 classrooms are connected through the site, reaching over 13 million students worldwide. Steve Lohr reports in The New York Times on ePals' latest venture: National Geographic has invested in it and is now supplying educational content for its series of learning projects. Aside from the great content provided by National Geographic, ePals has some fantastic tools for teachers, students and administrators.

The main goal of ePals is to provide safe and easy-to-use tools and forums to connect students and teachers around the world. Its purpose is to enhance not only curriculum-based learning but to expand students' worlds and contribute to the kind of higher-order thinking that educators know is critical in an increasingly globalized and information-heavy world. The following tools are available at the ePals website (teachers or schools can sign up for free) and will be made available on Classmate PCs being shipped by Intel and laptops provided by One Laptop Per Child in developing nations:

• in2books is a "curriculum-based online mentoring program" that offers adult pen pals for students. When students receive a book, they also get a letter from their new pen pals. These pen pals motivate students to read, think about and discuss books. The pen pal aspect is meant to encourage higher-order thinking beyond word recognition and vocabulary. The pen pals serve as an authentic audience for student writers and thinkers. They also connect students with real adults who can serve as role models, coaches, friends and guides into different parts of the world, country or even students' own city.

• Classroom Match connects classrooms statewide, nationally or internationally. ePals' instant translation tools make this kind of connection fun and easy. Teachers can choose a learning project or make one of their own to invite others to. Connected classrooms can share emails, blogs and discussion forums. The search engine makes it possible to search for a particular classroom, for a class in a certain part of the country or world, or for other classrooms doing the same project.

• School Blog is meant to be user-friendly and safe. Many teachers, parents and administrators have legitimate concerns about the open memberships of blogs, email and social networking sites generally available. School Blog allows teacher control so that blogs are worry-free. On the School Blog page, you can find links to a sample blog and links to featured school blogs. The page also lists available tools and has a brochure to explain how to best use the tool. There is also a PDF of a research article on the benefits of blogs in K-12 programs.

• School M@il takes a lot of the headaches out of email for teachers and school administrators. ePals' well-known translation tool is one of the highlights here. Of even more interest to teachers, principals and parents are the blocking tools that can be set by an individual teacher for his or her class or by administrators for the entire school's use of School M@il. Teasing and attacking emails can be blocked, particular words or combinations of words can be blocked, and outside users can be blocked from entering or participating in the system, reducing concerns about predators and others who are unwelcome and freeing up a teacher to deal with academic content, writing skills and other educational matters. The mail service also has a spell checker, virus checker and spam filters. The centralization makes this a great tool for class use.
  

All of ePals' options and tools can be accessed at the main web page. You can find featured teachers and learning projects, a poll asking teachers and students to tell ePals what kind of content they are looking for or want, and featured videos and discussion forums. There is also a great "Ask an ePals Teacher" section where users can connect with other educators, get answers and advice, and share projects or exciting news about their classroom activities. With the near-bewildering range of Internet tools available out there, ePals certainly makes connecting students to the world easier and more secure for already-busy teachers.

SOURCE: "A Capitalist Jolt for Charity" 02/24/08
photo courtesy of Wesley Fryer, used under this Creative Commons license

Teaching Mandarin in Ohio

What enhances acquisition of another language? Most would say regular exposure to a native speaker. And even better, a native speaker who is also a trained and experienced teacher. In Ohio, videoconferencing is bringing Mandarin Chinese, the most widely spoken language in the world, to select sixth grade classrooms. (English is the second most widely spoken language.)

In the Columbus Dispatch, Kevin Joy sums up the uses of a range of tools adding "spark" to classrooms in central Ohio. In addition to SMARTboards, podcasts, Moodle and MP3 players, he reports on how some central Ohio schools use videoconferencing to teach Mandarin to sixth graders. Two televisions, a camera and microphone allow Dun Zhang, a teacher at Bishop Hartley High School in Columbus, to teach live, daily, 40-minute classes to sixth graders at Trinity Elementary School near Grandview Heights and classes in Newark and New Philadelphia, Ohio.

Zhang can see and hear the students in the linked classrooms on one screen, split so everyone can see and hear each other in real time. The other screen displays Zhang's notes; an electronic pen lets her highlight particular points or trouble spots or just help answer student questions. Students like the notes display especially. A student in a Columbus classroom, Brianne, said, "You can see what she's writing. Her hand isn't in the way...You get a better view of the notes." Though students also use pen-and-paper workbooks, the class focuses on dialogue to really teach the students the language.

Trinity isn't just using videoconferencing for Zhang's class. Recently, students videoconferenced with a class of high school students in Taiwan. There are plans for other Trinity classes to virtually visit a museum and also to talk to an author. Though the videoconferenced Mandarin class has its technical drawbacks at times, like occasional screen freezes and subsequent audio delays and lack of one-on-one time with a teacher, students and staff welcome the addition to their curriculum and the excitement it offers. Another Columbus student, Valerie, said of the Mandarin class, "It's so much different than what we usually do...It makes you look smart, and you're excited to come to class."

Foreign language instruction through videoconferencing creates more options for students -- now, with the right equipment and access, schools, no matter where they are located, can offer more than French and/or Spanish -- and can level the playing field for rural school districts. Videoconferencing can also enhance language acquisition and fluency in general and truly prepare students for a more global future. There are many videoconferencing options, from VoiceThread to WiZiQ to Skype, with varying benefits (and drawbacks) for teachers and students. Our earlier entry, "ooVoo? Yugma? WiZiQ? How Do You Get Connected?," discusses a few of the free options out there.

SOURCE: "Plugged in: New technology adding spark to schools " 03/05/08
photo courtesy of kevindooley, used under this Creative Commons license

Viewers Wanted: Science Videos Online

The alarm has been sounded over the need to engage middle school students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects. More and more, visual tools for the classroom and home use have popped up to make this easier. Not only do they make science something done by real people, students also get to see things happening, changing, forming, dissolving and reacting.

eSchool News reports on some of these science video websites. A recent addition to the mix is SciVee, started by Phil Bourne, a pharmacologist at the University of California-San Diego. He saw how popular YouTube is with his students and wanted to create a "reputable virtual place where researchers could trade techniques without the potpourri of topics found on general video-sharing sites" like YouTube. At SciVee, researchers can upload "pubcasts" that summarize published articles. The goals of the site, according to Bourne in an introductory video, are to expose scientific work to a larger audience, to create communities of knowledge and to reduce the hierarchy often found in scientific research and the dissemination of findings.

JoVe, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, aims to look and behave more like a peer-reviewed journal. Instead of researchers making their own videos, JoVe sends professional videographers to different labs to record interesting work. The editor-in-chief, Moshe Pritsker, said that JoVe was meant to solve a particular problem:

For most of his academic career, he was flustered by what he called the “black hole” of science: Despite attempts by well-intentioned scientists to explain their experiments on paper, some procedures are so complex to mimic that a person must physically explain them.

Pritsker said he once flew to Scotland for a week when he was a Ph.D. student just to see how a research group performed an embryonic stem cell technique. He couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn't a way short of jetting across the Atlantic Ocean to reproduce a two-hour procedure.

“We need to show our experiments—and show, in our age, means video,” Pritsker said.

JoVe sparked another science video website, LabAction. Siddharth Singh, a computer science graduate student in India, started it to focus on biology. LabAction functions more like a community than a peer-reviewed journal of research. Members can subscribe to groups and channels aimed at specific biological techniques or processes. The videos range from illustration of basic concepts to dissections and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Another community-like site is DnaTube, which encourages uploads of research, lectures and seminars. The goal is to make scientific concepts easier to understand. There are taped lectures, interviews, animations, demonstrations and more. (DnaTube has ads but you can usually click to skip them and go straight to the videos.) One video shows schoolchildren simulating how infectious agents spread in an epidemic.

Whichever you might choose, many agree that these videos make science research more accessible to students at many levels and the public at large. Some sites and videos may be too much for middle school but all of the sites above use tags to categorize videos and with a little searching, some great videos can be found for almost any science class. Even if students do not grasp every single concept, these science video sites male science more about real people doing and sharing exciting things from around the world.

SOURCE: "Video sites make science more accessible" 12/06/07
photo courtesy of procsilas, used under this Creative Commons license

Mathcasts: Kids Teaching Kids

Sometimes, the expert that a student needs contact with is a knowledgeable peer. That's the idea behind Mathcasts, a series of online videos available at YouTube, TeacherTube and Mathtrain.com. In each video, a middle school student guides viewers through a particular type of math problem step by step.

In the Santa Monica Daily Press, Melody Hanatani reports on the beginnings and popularity of the Mathcasts, which began appearing online a year ago. The videos started on the tablet PC of Eric Marcos, a math teacher at Lincoln Middle School. Though the Mathcasts are just one option in a whole range of online sources available at Marcos' site, Mathtrain.com, the Mathcasts have been the most popular, garnering the attention of educators, publications and students across the United States. Students use them to review concepts when needed, to brush up on skills, or to help with homework:

“When I do my homework and I don’t get something, I can always go on and find out (how to solve the problem),” Emily Claus, a sixth grade student, said during class on Monday. “Then all of a sudden, it makes sense.”

The Mathcast has become a daily ritual for Matthew Cianfrone, a sixth grade student who reviews the day’s lessons online.

“It’s easier and more fun than to just look at a textbook,” Cianfrone said.

Most of the Mathcasts have been made by Aleya and Camilla Spielman. The very first Mathcast, which debuted on Valentine's Day last year, featured Camilla, using the pseudonym "Bob," discussing proportions. In a more recent Mathcast, Aleya, using the pseudonym "Billy Billy," talks viewers through adding fractions with different denominators. The girls rightly credit the success of the videos to the "kids teaching kids" concept behind them. Tiana Kadkhoda, a former classmate who made 6 Mathcasts herself, said, "When a kid explains something, it’s different than a teacher...We’re at the same level of intelligence and our brains work the same way.”

Another math teacher at Lincoln, Rose Supangan, used a Mathcast in her pre-algebra class and got very positive reactions. “All of the kids were so excited to do the problems,” Supangan said. Eric Marcos will soon travel to two educational conferences to present "the kid-driven Mathcast concept" to an even larger audience. Perhaps this student-driven video concept can expand to other subjects, like language arts or foreign language.

SOURCE: "Kids use latest technology to help one another excel" 02/26/08
photo courtesy of foundphotoslj, used under this Creative Commons license

Teaching Jeff Corwin Spanish

Sometimes, you don't have to have a person in your classroom -- virtually or physically -- to inspire students and prompt real-world learning. In another great teacher profile in EducationWorld, Cara Bafile introduces us to sixth grade Spanish teacher Chris Craft and the blog TeachJeffSpanish.com.

It started innocently enough. Craft looked through programs that CrossRoads Middle School received through Discovery Education Streaming for real-world applications of Spanish. He especially wanted to find examples of fluent Spanish used by people in all disciplines. What he came up with was several clips of Jeff Corwin joking about his deficient Spanish in spite of his frequent trips to Central and South America. One student comment started the whole project:

"One day, after showing a short clip as class was winding down, a student haphazardly remarked, 'We should teach him [Jeff Corwin] some Spanish.' The idea simmered for a day until I saw those students again and we began to brainstorm," Craft recalled. "In the following class periods, after the lesson was complete, we worked on what type of site we would develop, what features to add, and how it should look."

Students worked together to create a "Scavenger Hunt for Spanish" program and "word of the day" posts. Craft set up the WordPress blog and TeachJeffSpanish.com was launched. But at the end of his nine weeks with that particular class, Craft worried that the project would stop.

Fortunately, two girls who had acted in some of the programs were allowed to work with Craft for an additional nine weeks. Because they worked while Craft taught a different class, the girls asked for the video camera and started doing everything themselves. Craft stepped back and let them shine while he set up a podcast feed and got permission to put the videos on YouTube and TeacherTube.

Feedback was immediate and intense. Says Craft: "In the span of roughly one month, we saw more than 1,300 unique views to the site, and more than 500 collective views of the two shows. We have also received a number of complimentary messages." He also stresses that it was important to let the students take the lead: "Had I not been willing to hand those kids a camera and trust them, the show never would have been produced."

TeachJeffSpanish.com has been on a brief hiatus because the two girls producing the show are no longer in Craft's class. But two new hosts have approached Craft and a new episode should be ready soon!

SOURCE: "Teaching Jeff Corwin Spanish: Starring: Chris Craft" 02/19/08
photo courtesy of Nancy-, used under this Creative Commons license

ooVoo? Yugma? WiZiQ? How Do You Get Connected?

It seems that there are lots of tools or ways to get off-site writers, scientists, math teachers, graduate students and others into middle school classrooms, but which ones work with which school network or security system? Often, teachers cannot download programs or tools themselves. And even if you find a great tool for your classes, every teacher in the school may not want to use it or find it helpful. Kathy Schrock's "Guide for Educators" mentions two of the services below, Yugma and one that is new to me, WiZiQ, but it does not mention ooVoo. So what's up with these tools?

ooVoo offers videoconferencing over the Internet. The service is free, which is perfect for teachers and students, but it requires a download, also free, and broadband Internet access. You can create an account and invite others to join ooVoo and participate in online sessions. Users can engage in live chats and video conversation calls, similar to those found in Skype. For the best results, a headset is recommended, something that may not be a problem for single users or a small class. In addition, users can send files to each other. An additional feature is the video message option. Users can create video messages to send to single or multiple users. You can also send the video message to someone who doesn't have ooVoo. A link is sent that the recipient can click to access the message without downloading ooVoo. This one sounds good, but I think that there are enough problems for frequent use by teachers that make it a so-so option.

Yugma is also free and can be used with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. It offers real-time interaction with free webconferencing sessions that users can join from anywhere in the world. A free download is needed to get started. A demo video at the Yugma site shows the simple two steps needed to sign up after downloading. Each time a user wants to hold a webconference, he or she starts a session and invites others to the session via email. The emails give a session number and login to participate. During a session, the initiating user, or presenter, can share his or her desktop, hide it temporarily and share it again. The presenter can also transfer the lead role to another user who then becomes presenter. This feature seems to have great potential for reaching experts and other teachers.

Other great features of Yugma include real-time document annotation and the ability to have public and private chats. This feature can be useful for teachers who want to check in with individual students but there is no way to stop students from engaging in private chats during a session. For teleconferencing, Yugma provides a phone number that gives users long-distance access (regular long-distance rates apply) or users can use their own teleconference options, including Skype. Users can have unlimited sessions. Each session, though, must be separate and starting new sessions and inviting users each time could prove to be too cumbersome for a teacher to use regularly.

WiZiQ is a free virtual classroom with multiple tools geared toward teachers and students. It offers live audio-video connections, chat, content sharing and session recording. Best of all, there is no download needed. WiZiQ works in any browser and with any operating system, a great feature for teachers with downloading restrictions or who just want something simple to get up and running fast. The audio tour gives an overview of WiZiQ's features. Once you join, you can invite others by email. The number of sessions, like in Yugma, is unlimited.

Unlike Yugma, users can engage in multiple activities and sessions without being invited over and over again via email. Once you are a member, you can search for other teachers nationwide and contact them to share methods, tools or lesson plans. Like other tools, content can be uploaded and accessed by other users. Content can also be shared across the country. You can search for presentations and materials in the WiZiQ database and even find public sessions involving experts in various subjects. Presentations and other materials can be embedded in class websites or blogs. And there seems to be no limit on uploading; you can submit as many items as you want and access them when you need to. WiZiQ also has a Typepad blog that discusses new items, like the new Tests feature.

If you've tried any of these services, what was your experience and opinion of them? Are you using one of these or another videoconferencing or virtual classroom service? Has anyone tried Voicethread? Or Vyew? Would you recommend one of these tools or something entirely different? What works best with your students, subject and available technology?

SOURCE: "Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators" 2008
photo courtesy of Waponi, used under this Creative Commons license

Steve Elwood Meets the Vomit Comet

Remember Roosevelt Middle School's Steve Elwood of the imploding barrel video? He and another eighth grade science teacher from Roosevelt were in the news recently. Elaine Buschman reports in the Herald Journal (Monticello, IN) that Elwood and fellow RMS teacher Becky Stiller spent ten days at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. They got to work with astronauts and college engineering students on experiments. One afternoon, a live feed let Elwood and Stiller share a little of their ten-day stay with about 200 Roosevelt middle-schoolers.

Students packed a darkened cafeteria at Roosevelt to have a live question-and-answer session with Elwood and Stiller. Though all kinds of questions were asked, many students wanted to know about the new C-9 aircraft at Johnson Space Center which "flies in a roller coaster-like hill pattern and for about 20-25 seconds on each 'hill' has zero gravity, much like actual space travel." Because this roller-coaster motion nauseates some pilots, the craft is commonly known as the Vomit Comet. The zero-gravity environment allows experiments to be conducted in the kind of weightlessness found in space.

Students may have been disappointed to learn their teachers' stomachs wouldn't be tested by the Vomit Comet. Neither teacher is cleared to be on the plane. The experiments were conducted for Elwood and Stiller by Purdue University engineering students. The teachers got to pass on items to be used during the flights, such as an Elmo doll, M&Ms and spinning magnets. Elwood said of not being able to go on the Vomit Comet, "It’s like being at the Super Bowl but sitting on the bench."

After the live feed, Elwood said the students "were excited" and that he and Stiller were, too: "We were having a blast. (Stiller and I) both agree that this is one of the highlights of our teaching careers.” When Stiller and Elwood get back to Roosevelt after Spring Break, they will have lots of video and still images of the experiments conducted on the Vomit Comet. With these kinds of unique opportunities, teachers get to bring not only great material back to their students but also their excitement, joy and new experiences.

SOURCE: "Middle school teachers experiment at NASA center" 03/03/08
photo courtesy of Moody75, used under this Creative Commons license