I was amazed and inspired when I visited my old school's brand new science wing. They start teaching in the space in January, and I know it's thoughtful design that seems to include every possible bell and whistle will only inspire more creativity and innovation in their lessons.
One of my favorite things about all of the rooms was the fact that every single surface could be used as a whiteboard! This means teachers and students are not chained to the front of the room, but teaching and writing can happen virtually anywhere in the space.
Rather than being limited by the size of a traditional whiteboard, the entire wall is one! How cool is that??
Rather than using disposable chart paper, they have portable whiteboards that hook onto the wall, but can be taken down to record lab data with groups, or ideas at tables.
Even the cabinets and the backsplash can be used as space to write. I've dreamed about this, and it's real! I also love the green color here, fitting since this is a biology classroom.
Here's a good example of how the cabinets can be used as a writing surface - a diagram of a parallax angle in a physics classroom.
Even the inside of the cabinets can be written on! This, by the way, is the physics prep room. It's so big and well-organized I wish it was my closet, or even possibly my bedroom! (And that person who you will see in many of my photos is the wonderful science department chair there, who can explain the reasoning and planning behind the entire space much more eloquently than me since he helped design it.)
The plethora of whiteboard space can also be used for science related art. I love this drawing that one of the school's art teachers did of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It's quite appropriate since this is the astronomy classroom!
Even the tables in the student lounge are a whiteboard!
My second favorite thing about the space after the unending sea of whiteboards, was the integration of dynamic, science-related art.
My favorite is this rube goldberg-like kinetic art piece created by a famous Chicago artist for the wall space between the two Physics classrooms.
In between the two biology rooms, they were in the process of installing a saltwater fish tank with actual coral reef (but no living coral). It will be maintained by the store that installed it, which means less work for the already busy teachers.
The new wing is also filled with lots of technology. There are smartboards in every room.
In addition to the smartboard, they also have flat screens above the teaching station (which is offset, so it's easier for the teacher to walk around while teaching). The monitor is attached to the document camera below so a document or lab results can be shown above while other items can be written on the smartboard. The monitor is also hooked up to a video camera that's permanently installed in the classroom. This allows teachers to tape themselves teaching, which means if a student is absent, he can watch the lecture remotely. (I think it would be a bit scary to have every lesson recorded, but it's nice to have the option!)
Here is a crazy huge bank of eight flat screens in the common space between all of the classrooms. These monitors are also hooked up to the video cameras in the classrooms so visitors can watch what's happening without disturbing classes. These are also hooked up to the internet.
Unfortunately, the photo above is blurry, but it shows a monitor in the hallway that will show the energy usage in the building. They've installed solar panels and a wind turbine on the roof, so this will show how much electricity is being produced as well.
You can tell these rooms were designed with a lot of input from the teachers and what they would need. One example are these metal bars installed in the ceiling of the physics classroom. They are strong enough to do chin ups on, but are there for activities like pendulum labs.
I miss having a proper prep room, and the ones here are HUGE! This is the Chemistry prep room. There is also a separate closet (really a small room) for all the chemicals, complete with beautiful wooden shelves (non-reactive material), an acid cabinet, and one for flammable items.
The prep room would also be an enviable office (or studio apartment) since it has huge picture windows that overlook Lincoln Park.
There is even an independent study space for students who might want to do their own research.
As I'm writing this I am being driven crazy by the construction that starts outside around 9:30 every morning. There's always hammering or drilling happening with the occasional swear word thrown in. The worst though is the constant 80's and 90's music that they play. It's all the cheesy stuff too....that's better - I just put on my noise cancelling headphones and am listening to Blossom Dearie instead. (I could also just move to the front room, but why do that?)
On Thursday I went back to the Royal Society for the last day of the Science Exhibition. On the way, I walked by Trafalger square and the Mall. They were setting up bleachers and big screens in Trafalger for the Tour de France opening ceremonies tomorrow and the mall was closed to traffic. It was lined with new trucks and Tour de France vehicles. I walked over to Carlton Terrace and up the stairs of the Royal Society.
The only quiet exhibit room contained information on primate language. You could listen to different chimpanzee sounds and the researcher's explanation for what it means. They also had a machine that showed pitch and loudness of different primate sounds and a microphone so you could try matching their sounds. I tried a few times, but the room was so quiet so it was quite embarrassing to hear myself trying to sound like an orangutan for example.
There was another room that was loud with the sound of airplanes taking off. They are trying to develop technology for quieter aircraft. One of their simplest and most brilliant solutions was to point the engines up instead of down so that most of the sound was above the plane rather than below it. They also gave out cool portable frisbees.
An exhibit about life in the canopy of the rainforest had many arthropod specimens. There were huge beetles and ones so tiny they looked almost like specks of dust. There were also a few live samples, including dung beetles, a millipede, and a centipede.
In the basement of the Royal Society were the last few exhibits. The clothes of some of the first arctic explorers were on display. I couldn't imagine staying warm in such thin layers of cloth - they must have been cooooold! One of the coolest exhibits let you control a mini ROV (Robot Operated Vehicle) that was in a large fish tank. It's similar to playing the game where you try to pick up things with a robotic claw, except you watch what you are doing on a tv screen and it's hard to do something 3-dimensionally from a 2-dimensional image. Kids were once again overwhelming the exhibit so I just watched them bicker with one another about whose turn it was and how so and so was hogging the machine.
After watching all the exhibits, I walked down to Regent street to Habitat, a store with similar goods for sale as Crate and Barrel. The biggest difference was the in-house wurlitzer organ that was being played when I walked in. There were several old people gathered on couches near the organ and I joined them for a little while.
Next, I walked down to Carnaby street. I was going to get some sticky toffee pudding, but decided I better have something more substantial and sat down in a quiet corner of a pub for sausage and mash instead.
After taking some time to read and rest, I took the tube to the Southbank Centre. I walked through their Operation Soapbox maze, where people could leave messages throughout and then went next door for a poetry slam. All the poets were teenagers and many of their works were about the violence they had seen. The two that impressed me the most were only 12-years old and great beatboxers!
Tuesday I went to the second day of the Royal Society Science exhibition. It was like a science fair for scientists. There were probably more high school age students visiting than anything else so it was crowded with people grabbing whatever freebies they could. Why is that so often human nature - to take all the flyers and pens and random crap that you can? Often, people got carried away and took anything that wasn't nailed down and some exhibitors were left without some of their presentation materials.
Before I went in to see the exhibits I went to hear the presentation about deep sea discoveries that have been made in the Arctic. 60% of the world hasn't been explored and that includes the deeper parts of the ocean. The scientist who talked to us had just returned from a June expedition to the Arctic where he found coral that lived in deep (350 meters), dark and cold waters. Apparently, corals, like trees, have rings so you can tell how successful each year was for them. He showed us the damage that fishing can do. When they get too close to the coral beds, they end up killing the colony which pretty much destroys the entire ecosystem. I didn't realize it, but 98% of all life is on the seabed.
After the presentation, I headed into the ground floor exhibits. The first exhibit focused on research being done on the bacteria that live in our digestive system. Apparently, we obtain most of the bacteria living in our gut when we are babies. They had a series of beakers kept at different temperatures that were supposed to mimic the different parts of the digestive system. They monitored the pH of each beaker because each section has a slightly different pH. You can take the microbe journey online.
The next exhibit was about a three-wheeled, two passenger vehicle that runs on compressed natural gas. They wanted it to have the small footprint of a motorcycle, the comfort of a car and lower emissions than both. The vehicle was called CLEVER (Compact Low Emission VEhicle for uRban transport) and you could sit inside it to see what it was like.
They had an interesting historical exhibit on blackboards. Apparently, at the University of Oxford, they have kept a blackboard that Einstein used during a lecture there in 1931. They didn't bring that with them, but they asked other notable scientists, writers, and philosophers to recreate writing from their lectures on blackboards. It seems that the value of the smartboards now found in classrooms is that it is even easier to save this kind of writing. Rather than having to cart around a blackboard, it can all be saved electronically and displayed on a computer, on paper, or on a smartboard in a completely different location!
There were several more interesting exhibits. At one, they had body sensors similar to what is found in a Wii that you clip on to your ear. It is able to track your position in space. There was another exhibit where you could practice being a surgeon. They had silicon models of skin with a "lipoma" (benign tumor) embedded in it. You could tape the silicon skin onto a real person and perform surgery on them. They had two operating areas and they even put people in scrubs, masks, and gloves. Of course, the exhibit was inundated with kids so I moved on to an exhibit on listening to trees. It seems you can tell the hardness of a tree by hitting it with a mallet. The deeper the pitch, the harder the wood.
After seeing half of the exhibitions, I was ready for a break and spent some time wandering around Regent street. I headed home early to take photos of the house for Marshall, who was desperately looking for someone to take his room while he is in India for 6 weeks. (It turns out the rent in India is much more expensive than the rent in London!)
Last Thursday I went to the Science Museum. I took the tube to South Kensington and was surprised to see daylight when I got off of the train. It wasn't an underground stop! I did head down to the subway (here the name for underground tunnels, not the train system) which connected the station to the many museums in the area. I walked by the Natural History museum exit and a very cool entrance to the Victoria and Albert museum and ended up at the Science museum. Like almost all the museums here it is free - unless you want to check out the IMAX movie, hang out with Bob the Builder, or see their special exhibit on spying.
I headed upstairs, hoping to get away from the crowds of children (when I'm not teaching, I like to get a break from the hordes) to the third floor, which was filled with airplanes and engines. It was quite interesting and I just wished my grandfather, Lolo Pepe, was there too. He's an engineer and would have loved seeing all of these great machines!
Next, I headed upstairs to their displays on the history of medicine and health care. I was surprised to learn they had speculums all the way back in Roman times and snapped pictures of the Gynecological displays for my dad. The scariest object was a rusty chastity belt. I didn't realize they had actually existed. I'm pretty sure the sharp teeth on it would discourage any possible premarital sex.
On the first and second floor, there were some terrific art and science exhibits. One of my favorites was a sculpture made of hundreds of different types of materials. Next to the sculpture, were samples of each material found in it. There was also a huge circular track (pictured above) that would show suggestions visitors had given for reducing our carbon footprint. You could add your own suggestions to it.
After checking out the museum, I met Marshall for dinner. We went to Maroush, well, one of them. There are a chain of these Lebanese restaurants around the city. We had a delicious meal of lamb, rice, bread, and vegetables and then he headed back to work. When he left work at 2am, the police had found the first car bomb on Haymarket street and bus service was suspended in Central London. Of course, Marshall didn't find out until he was waiting at the bus stop for 45 minutes. Then, he had to figure walk further out of the city to find another bus stop. He didn't end up getting home until 5am!
My feet were killing me by the end of the day on Wednesday, so I took it easy on Thursday. I hung out at the apartment for most of the morning. It's been nice because there aren't any other tenants yet and Abigail is often gone, so I had the place to myself. I made myself a tasty lunch of pasta carbonara and sat in the front room reading. Eventually, I decided to venture out and ended up right across the street at the South London Gallery, which is housed at the Camberwell College of the Arts. I checked out the exhibit, Stay Forever and Ever and Ever, just before it closed. I also sat in their comfy lounge reading the latest edition of Time Out. On the way out I picked up one of their free posters which can be cut up into individual cards to build with - very cool!
After dropping of the poster at home, I walked down to Primark and discovered the only store (so far) that has clothes cheap enough to buy when you take into account the currency conversion. They were also stylish. I picked up a pair of pants for £4, a shirt for £6 and a cute orange coat for £10.
Next, I headed to Central London for a lecture at the Royal Society, an "independent scientific academy dedicated to promoting exellence in science." I got there early, but they hadn't let anyone inside yet, so a queue had formed outside of the building, composed of mostly white-haired science fans. The title of the talk was "The LHC: How the world's largest experiment can investigate matter's smallest constituents." The talk was given by Dr. Tara Shears, and she did an absolutely wonderful job of communicating very complicated information in way that easy to understand and follow. Her powerpoint presentation was also impressive in that it didn't have the words she was saying, but was instead very visual in nature - showing graphics or photos that really enhanced and supported what she was saying. (I took lots of notes on the talk if you're interested.)
After the lecture, there was a lively Q&A and then I met Marshall near Trafalger square. We walked to the seven dials and found Food for Thought, a cheap and delicious vegetarian restaurant, right before they closed. We got their special of the day and sat in Neal's Yard (where Marshall picked up more tasty vegetarian fare) to eat.
