[Oww-Feedback] High School science project linkage? (from Scott Tousley)

Tue Apr 22 14:32:42 EDT 2008

Bill:

Good thoughts, not unexpected.

I need to figure out how to get our high school and probably county
science department head to say "yes" to this idea, and wanted to first
find out whether this was an active topic already in OWW.  FYI, we're
Stone Bridge HS and Loudoun County schools (Northern Virginia, W/NW of
DC), well-funded schools and science programs.  Although not quite as
strong as our recent experience with Acton-Boxboro HS...

The lab notebooks are likely a great place to start; I helped judge our
county HS science fair this past year, and the lab notebooks were of
widely varying quality.  So getting the kids to keep their notebook
online where their peers can see/contribute to them might help a lot.
On the other hand, I don't know if the somewhat competitive nature of
the science fair process will get in the way of open sharing.

Thanks,

Scott Tousley

From: Bill F [mailto:bill.altmail at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 2:22 PM
To: Tousley, Scott W.
Cc: Oww-Feedback
Subject: Re: [Oww-Feedback] High School science project linkage? (from
Scott Tousley)

Scott,

Thanks for your interest as well as your specific question. We have
discussed this. I have 12 and 15 year old kids myself: this as a really
important direction for me as well.

The spirit (tao?) of OWW is generally in finding something you want to
do then jumping in and doing it. As we grow out the community of folks
using lab notebooks and generally commenting on not just which
protocols they use but also on how they're using them, the raw material
for creating a context for more focused efforts, such as exposing high
school students to research, becomes more plentiful. 

Of course, the same can be said of the web in general. But the
proximity of your data to that of a lot of other similarly intentioned
people doing related  work really can move things forward. We see this
with the IGEM teams who do their work here, for example.

Rather than saying we're going to focus on high school students, I'd
say that we're interested in working with people who want to service
that sub-community within OWW. Not to be pedantic, but in OWW, we
aspire to make it all about growing out the community of collaborating
researchers. 

I do a lot of the development work on OWW. If there are specific tools
that could help in this area, please let me know. 

I hope this doesn't sound like an attempt to shrug off a great
suggestion. Rather, consider this an offer to discuss what would be
required as well as how we could position ourselves over time to serve
this community. From a group with limited resources and a LOT of
competing demands, we do our best. If we can fit things in or assist
you in community-building activities, get in touch. 

I'd encourage you to join OWW and post about this within the site. See
if you can find other people who want to work toward the same goals.
Unlike Wikipedia (which uses similar software), there are few pages
where you are competing to put forward your interpretation of a term.
For the most part, we offer a great platform for collaboration. The
data connecting out members together is what we are!

Thanks.

Bill Flanagan
OpenWetWare.org
Department of Biology, MIT

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:14 PM, OpenWetWare Feedback Form on
OpenWetWare <feedback at openwetware.org> wrote:

Have you thought about setting up a subset area specifically for high
school science project programs?
These next generations are heavily social network oriented, and
OpenWetWare might make HS science project efforts stronger, by enabling
students to get help laterally and not just from their
teachers/parents.

Scott Tousley
MITRE
stousley at mitre.org
tousleys at aol.com

(lorrie at openwetware.org)
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