This weekend, I went to Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the elephant seals, along with 14 Oakland middle schoolers. Some friends at The Lawrence Hall of Science, where I work, needed an extra driver for a field trip. I’d never been to Año Nuevo before, so I volunteered. We had a great trip—warm weather, a terrific tour guide, and plenty of animals to observe. Those perceptive middle schoolers narrowed in on a few salient facts about elephant seal life.

We took a guided walk through the sand dunes with a docent named Bob. He started and ended the tour with poems by John Muir, peppered the kids with questions, and told us some amazing info about elephant seals. He had elephant seal whiskers in his pocket, and a piece of molted skin, which he passed around to the students. They were simultaneously repulsed and fascinated. After two hours in the warm sun, peering at elephant seals through binoculars and snapping photos with cell phones, we were headed back. During our long walk from the beach to the parking lot, I asked a few kids what they found most interesting about the elephant seals. And when we got back the parking lot, we asked the kids to share with a partner what they learned about the seals, and what they still wondered. Here are the top three things that middle schoolers noticed about elephant seals.

1. Elephant seals mate. Right in front of you. And… it’s sort of violent. Males move in on the females, and sometimes bite them so they won’t struggle. As our tour guide explained, pregnant female elephant seals come onshore to give birth in December. When they head out to sea a few months later, they’re pregnant again. They’ll return to Año Nuevo and repeat the process again next year. As one girl put it, “I wouldn’t like to have a baby every year. And I wouldn’t like it if I couldn’t pick who dad would be.” From the sounds of some of those female elephant seals, they may feel the same way.

2. Elephant seal moms are mean. They nurse their babies for about a month, and then leave the babies to fend for themselves. Elephant seal milk is super fatty—the pups gain up to 250 pounds during their month of nursing. Once they’re fattened up, the moms take off. The pups are then called weaners, and they live off their fat while they learn to swim and fish for themselves. About 50% of the weaners will survive the year. However, some weaners don’t even make it off the beach. We saw a skinny-looking little elephant seal, all alone, making meager movements of its flippers to flick sand onto its body to keep cool. It was forlorn and wrinkly, not glossy, fat, and round like its neighbors. Bob said it probably wouldn’t survive. It likely got separated from its mother before it had gotten fat enough to get through the weeks without food. The students were really upset about the fact that we were standing on the sand dunes, basically watching this little elephant seal die.

A dominant male elephant seal shows who’s boss.

3. Elephant seals can be huge. The dominant males, called bulls, can be up to 16 feet long. This is three times the height of Justin Beiber, who, as I learned on the drive out, is only 5 foot 4. Big male elephant seals can move improbably quickly across the sand, to defend their harem from smaller males who try to mate with the females on the sly. In their rush to scare away the interlopers, the big bulls sometimes mow down little elephant seal pups. The small pups are basking in the sun, and can’t get out of the way in time. About 5% of the pups at Año Nuevo are crushed under adult seals. We might have seen a pup get mowed down. Maybe. Its rear flippers might have been squished; we weren’t really sure. The little guy moved a bit, but then stopped moving. Then it moved again. And then it was time to go.

Look!

These kids will go on a series of field trips throughout the year, to tidepools and marine labs, as part of a Lawrence Hall of Science program funded by a California Coastal Commission Whale Tail Grant. The Coastal Commission awards dozens of grants for youth programs and coastal cleanups. The funding comes from the sales of the Whale Tail license plate.

Learn more about elephant seals in Sheraz Sadiq’s QUEST blog post, Diving to New Scientific Depths with Elephant Seals.

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Come join us at the 2010-2011 QUEST Science Education Institute.

QUEST is gearing up for the 2010-2011 Science Education Institute, a professional development opportunity for educators designed to support multimedia integration in middle and high school science programs! We seek to work directly with teams of Bay Area teachers and informal educators dedicated to enhancing their students’ 21st century skills in science.

The Institute will focus on creating science-based media with students and using the high-quality multimedia resources available from QUEST. During the Institute, each team of educators will plan and then implement a media-making project.

Institute Overview
Schedule
• Early August 2010: 3-day training intensive
• September 2010–January 2011: monthly skill-building and project planning workshops
• Spring 2011: project implementation
• May 2011: project presentation and final celebration

Participants will learn how to use video and audio as effective teaching tools, and be trained on Google maps, Flip video, iMovie and Movie Maker for use in science classrooms and programs.

Each participant will receive a stipend of $400 for completing Institute requirements; team leaders will receive an additional $100 stipend.

Who Can Apply?
We are looking for teams of 4–10 Bay Area educators and administrators that will work with and support each other throughout the year.

Sample teams:
• Science teachers from the same middle/high school
• Physics teachers from different schools in the same district
• Middle school science teachers and educators from an informal science program
• Instructors from a science camp, museum or afterschool program

Please help us to spread the word! Click here for a printable flyer.

Applications will be available mid-April on the QUEST Education web page and will be announced via the QUEST blog.

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What is it about new beginnings that gets people all stirred up? We're not sure, but we’re definitely feeling the excitement as we launched our shiny, new 2009-2010 QUEST Science Education Institute on Saturday, May 30 at the Oakland Zoo.

For those of you who just tuned in, the QUEST Science Education Institute is KQED Education Network's year-long professional development program for Bay Area school districts. The QUEST Institute was created to provide an accessible, hands-on approach to understanding new media and technology and how it can be used in classroom teaching. Over the course of the year-long Institute, we work with teams of science educators and educational technologists from school districts to provide training and resources on using QUEST multimedia to enhance science education. The Institute is part of our commitment to enhancing 21st century skills in the science classroom and enables us to work directly with Bay Area school districts to support learning plans and align our resources with district technology integration goals.

Of course, none of these lofty goals could be achieved without a corresponding amount of enthusiasm and commitment from the Institute participants. This year's participating teams come from the Acalanes UHSD, Antioch USD, San Ramon Valley USD, Mt. Diablo USD, and Fairfield-Suisun USD. Over the course of the next year, they will be attending workshops on technology tools and resources such as Google Maps, podcasts, and Flickr. The teams will also have the opportunity to design a media and technology implementation plan that works for their district and receive ongoing support with implementing their plans.

This year's participants begin the Institute with a keen awareness of the pervasiveness of technology and the need to connect with students in new and surprising ways. As learners change the way they receive information, they must learn to communicate what they have learned more effectively in order to succeed. As QUEST Series Producer, Amy Miller, a guest speaker at the launch event described it, "We find ourselves confronted with scientific and technological changes every day, and, as media professionals, we struggle to make sense of it and present it to our audience in relevant ways. Science teachers, therefore, have a pivotal role to play in nurturing future scientists who understand the importance of communicating with audiences both within and outside their field – a skill that is just as important in the scientific profession as in any other."

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Stacy Morrow, who teaches fourth grade at Fair Oaks Elementary School in Redwood City did not need to tell me about her students' enthusiasm for science. It was obvious. Working in teams with a FOSS kit on magnetism and electricity, they could barely contain their excitement at powering a light bulb with a simple electrical circuit.

Like a quarter of California school children, most of Morrow's students are native Spanish speakers. From time to time I'd hear the odd Spanish phrase – along with new English ones, like "serial circuits" and "D-cell batteries" — drift across the room. Morrow believes that as ESL students, her kids are asked to work much harder than other fourth-graders, mastering a second language along with all the other academic demands of elementary school. It must be a relief, I thought, to engage in a subject where teamwork and experimentation are more important than getting all the words right.

Fair Oaks is a "program improvement school," which means it's been identified by federal No Child Left Behind program as falling below target in certain subjects. (Here's an SF Chronicle article about the "stigma" of Program Improvement status). Morrow says test scores at Fair Oaks are on the rise, but, as this recent New York Times article describes, those standards can be tough to meet even for some of the most improved schools.

Given those demands, it's impressive that Morrow and other teachers at Fair Oaks find as much time for science lessons as they do – (it's also rare, as this study showed). Morrow credits this to the FOSS kits and a supportive administration. But she deserves a lot of the credit, for taking the time to educate herself. The Lawrence Berkeley study also showed that many elementary teachers simply don't feel qualified to teach science. That problem is compounded in economic boom times, when high-paying tech jobs make the pool of science-qualified teachers even smaller. It's fortunate that some of the same industries that compete for workers are also helping train more K12 teachers. Our QUEST education team has put together a page of science education resources, which we invite you to check out.

Finally, a disclaimer: We're barely scratching the surface here. I hope everyone watches QUEST's excellent TV story on science literacy, which goes into far more detail than our six-minute radio slot allowed.

Listen to the Closing the Science Gap radio report online.

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UPDATE: As today's program on Forum with Michael Krasny includes a story about engaging kids in science, we're highlighting this previous post on how to help foster science education in the Bay Area.

As many of us are aware, science education in California is in trouble. However, many of us also know there are amazing people and organizations working to improve the situation. The annual California Science Education Conference put on by the California Science Teachers' Association begins next week in San Jose. Science teachers from around the state will come together to learn from each other and experts in the field. Most will take personal time off from their teaching and pay conference registration and travel expenses out of their own pockets. Their dedication to improving science teaching and learning exemplifies what is going right and the sacrifices they have to make are a stark reminder of what is not working.

It is in honor of this annual gathering that QUEST takes time away from fact-based science stories to cover California's science future in a different way. In our upcoming broadcast of Science Under the Microscope: Science Struggles in Schools, QUEST Television looks at the severity of the science education problem, what schools are doing to fill the gap, meets innovative teachers and discovers creative methods being employed to get kids caught up. And I, the QUEST Education Producer, take a bit of time away from creating media-related science resources for educators to write this blog post.

There are, of course, countless ways for concerned citizens to pitch in. As a former high school science teacher the five suggestions below are my personal recommendations – resources I wish I had known about when I was teaching and things I now give as someone who cares about students' understanding of science.

Money

There are numerous websites now being developed that allow individuals to make contributions towards the needs of specific teachers. Sites like Digital Wish and DonorsChoose provide a means for teachers to register for particular items for their classroom (similar to a baby or wedding registry). The public can search these sites for schools and teachers in their area or for certain subject area needs (i.e. search for "science") to which they'd like to contribute.

Stuff

Want to be environmentally responsible and help science teachers at the same time? Donate items to organizations like Resource Area for Teachers (RAFT) in San Jose, the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland, or Scroungers' Center for Reusable Art Parts (SCRAP) in San Francisco. Teachers are able to shop for a wide variety of items at discounted prices to use in their classrooms.

Time

Do you have a background or career in science? Find out if your local school district or county office of education has a science specialist and connect with them to offer your time or expertise. They will be able to put you in touch with teachers and schools in need of guest lecturers, tutors, or speakers for career day presentations.

Voice

Attend school board meetings, write articles, contribute to blogs, talk to friends about the state of science education.

Vote

Enough said.

Now it is your turn. What other ideas do you have for assisting our schools with science education? Science educators, what additional needs do you see as easy places for the public to get involved and what has worked in your districts, schools, classrooms, etc.? Clearly we need major reforms in our entire education system, but often it is the smaller contributions of individuals that make the most immediate change.

Watch the Under the Microscope: Science Struggles in Schools television story report online.

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