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LABRats: The Mad Scientist's Club Meets Scouting
Some random reader sent in this note: "The Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS), an organization that exists to help those with a love of science make new discoveries, has launched a youth program called LABRats to help young people do real science. There's a white paper available describing the program, which is something of a cross between the Mad Scientist's Club and the Boy/Girl Scouts. The idea is to train a small army of young scientists and engineers, 12-18 years old, to do experiments and solve problems in their communities by teaming them up with adult scientist/engineer mentors. Those who advance through the ranks of the program would have to complete a series of experiments, projects, and other tasks that demonstrate proficiency in the basics of science and engineering. The creators -- including Shawn Carlson, a MacArthur Fellow -- aim to make the highest rank comparable in difficulty to Eagle Scout. One of the SAS local chapters in Connecticut built an astronomical observatory, which was used by high school student Lisa Glukhovsky to measure the distance to near-earth asteroids. She was one of three Grand Prize winners in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for 2003. It sounds like a great idea to me. Sure, I'm a little worried that a few misguided youth might take the program's motto -- "Do the experiment!" -- a bit too literally when working on their Nuclear Engineering merit badge. But then again, maybe someday a LABRat will spot an asteroid with our name on it -- and tell NASA."
yikes, thats a long headline! I try and read it but all my brain hears is "ramble ramble ramble ramble"
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
This sounds like a lot more fun than the usual basic science class experiments with predetermined outcomes.
It's an operating system, not a religion.
The idea is to train a small army of young scientists and engineers, 12-18 years old, to do experiments and solve problems
We can call them "H-C Freelancers".
I really like the outline but am not sure how I feel about "no mixed gender groups". I can see the point about social issues interfering with the kids learning, but I just have to think that a girls group would end up a bit more neglected or simply non-existant.
I would love to volunteer time for such an organization to help local kids, but am not sure I could get behind that limitation. It's still very conceptual though, who knows if they will get anywhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've been a Boy Scout for the last 4 years or so. This is shoule be a nice change from what usually goes on. Things in my troop get boring at times.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Here's an idea, let's screw up these kids intellectually from an early age by imprinting them to think science/ technology/ learning and "geeky" things are things that boys and girls do separately.
If you ask me this is going to exacerbate the problem that once the college age is reached, girls tend to feel uncomfortable in the male-dominated science / CS / engineering programs because they feel like poorly-integrated outsiders.
Some scout actually did build a breader reactor after he got interested in nuclear engineering, he now works on the USS Enterprise.
I got started in electronics at age 12 thru Ham Radio. Mentors kept me on track and I decided electronics was for me. I went through University and got a degree as an electronic engineer and never lost the spirit of discovery. This sure beats most of the half-baked ideas that the educrats are having on the burner now.
Best
TG
Can gay atheists apply?
Is that a quote from someone or your own thoughts? I don't know why you posted that AC. In either case, it summarizes the core of my discomfort with the idea. I know that I work well enough with female programmers, but then we are all older... even so, I feel like I never had problems learning in mixed gender groups when I was young.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Separating the genders has shown benefits in middle school classrooms. It also removes many barriers.
As for females being slighted, I doubt it. Seems to me our society isn't as dense as it used to be.
Come, join the real world.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I agree, you can't separate women and men forever. Mixed groups at an early age are a good way to learn that everyone can work together, and in a controlled environment the typical societal roles can be clamped down. Especially in a scientific setting, which tends to be more gender neutral anyway. Smart is smart no matter the packaging.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I just spent 50 bucks on "Mad Scientists Club" books so I can relive my childhood. All because of a little throwaway link in a story I didn't bother reading.
Argh!
Let's say you live in a small town and are a girl. Now there is a LABRats chapter with eight boys. Well, you have no LABRats. That's not being slighted, it's being marginalized for very little reason.
I also think that the benefit is more marginal in a scientific setting, where gender plays very little role compared to the populace at large. In any random group of kids gender may be a distracting issue, but kids interested in science tend to be able to have better focus.
I am not some kind of feminist crying out "discrimination!" I am thinking of it logically that the reasons to keep girls from boys seems poorly thought out and more grabbing on a hot concept from other realms.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh...
Never mind!
I think you've hit upon the crucial problem - there may not be enough people interested to have two local chapters running separately. And in this situation, it's most likely the girls that will lose out.
However, I also see why they would prefer to have it that way - there is a lot of research showing that when girls and boys are separated in classroom situations it positively influences both groups. The girls are the big winners generally, with increased class participation and fewer inhibitions about demonstrating knowledge. I still have concerns about the girls being marginalized, but there do seem to be definite benefits.
~ Leilah
saw a link to "Airzooka" on /. and decided to investigate more. Found this and from a box of chips and broken condom (no trolling, really!) I built a gun that shoots vortexes of air :)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"a bit too literally when working on their Nuclear Engineering merit badge."
v 297/ 21281407/print.jhtml
You mean like this guy? =)
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/n1782_
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I started the "Society for Amature Radio Scientists", but for some reason, no one wanted to join.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
If done well, this program could help gather useful data on a range of pressing sociological, climatological, and environmental projects. I only hope they do more than those tired pre-canned experiments that appear in every "science experiments for kids" book. With enough people collecting real data on real experiments, we could learn a lot more than can be accomplished by a single professor or a grad student.
This could be an excellent use of all those idle brain wave cycles. Best wishes for LABRats and Society for Amateur Scientists
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What's that?
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
Several years ago I did some science enrichment work with a Boys and Girls' club in South Central LA. It was a mixed-gender group of 11-13 year-olds from the surrounding neighborhood (a scary 'hood, too: bars in every window, pit bulls in every yard, and burned-out vehicles and graffiti everywhere). The counselors held the children to very high standards of conduct, so we never encountered gender issues in the lab.
BTW, in several hundred presentations to groups ranging from pre-school through grad school, I have never seen students dive into a technology project with as much drive and intelligence. After 2 weeks with Lego Mindstorms and books about remote exploration, we held a final showcase. After my brief lecture about remote environments, every last student was just bursting with questions. Some questions were better than I had heard anywhere else. We then broke for technical demos. Because hardware was scarce, they had devised a team approach to tear-down and rebuild that let them accomplish it in 2 minutes flat (vs. typically 20-45 minutes for an adult). Thus they were able to showcase many original designs in less than an hour.
The highest-performing assembly was designed by a girl, a fact that none of the students thought unusual or remarkable. They just said, "We saved Nancy's for last because it's the fastest!"
To me, this experience is a strong argument for mixed-gender sci/tech enrichment, especially in neighborhoods with otherwise poor infrastructure.
Your troops boring? Your fault, instead of complaining do something about it. I recommend a can of pepsi in the campfire. "Do the experiment!" (but not at home)
Regards,
Dr. Zap
Man, I wish there had been something like this when I was a kid. I gotta sign up as a mentor for his thing. Anybody know how, off hand?
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
"His editorial exploits have included an assignment from the National Enquirer to evaluate the feasibility of eavesdropping on Howard Hughes by laser (it was possible, but Forrest declined to take part) and getting dropped by Scientific American as their 'The Amateur Scientist' columnist because he admitted to the magazine's editors that he was a born-again Christian."
The Forrest Mims Engineer's Notebook
I just want to point out that Mr. Mims wasn't dropped from "Scientific American" exactly because he is a born-again Christian. He was dropped because he is a Creationist. "Scientific American" is just one of the many bigoted publications that refuses to deal reasonably with the subject of Creationism. As a consequence of their firing Mr. Mims, I have refused to buy "Scientific American" for the last several years.
Another blurb on Forrest Mims from another site: ISCID: Forrest M. Mims III
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
...their virginity. This does sound interesting as I am an Eagle scout and I am college now majoring in chemistry. I wish this was made a few years back, I would've joined it.
Brevity is the soul of wit. -- Prince Hamlet of Denmark
The manifesto for LABRats says they'll wear a distinctive item of clothing...not a military style uniform.
...just the kind of thing a trendy teenager will want to be seen in!
Now - I just *know* we slashdotters can come up with good suggestions;
* Pocket protectors - emblazoned with the LABRat's logo done in simulated whiteboard marker ink.
* White lab coats.
www.sjbaker.org
Kinda depressing if humanity's sum total of asteroid-watching is three boy scouts and a dog with rabies...
-- Hi! I'm the "Good Times" signature virus. Copy me into your Sig!
Getting an Eagle Scout rank in Boy Scouts isn't really that hard. A lot of the adult leaders make it so easy to advance and a lot of summer camps I've been to fudge the requirements for required badges.
chillax137
I remember reading the Mad Scientists Club stories in Boys Life when I was a kid back in the 60s.
I really liked them.
I may still have those old Boys Life magazines sitting around in boxes somewhere.
By the way, my Boy Scout troop was almost entirely under achievers. Most of us went only as far as we needed to do the hiking and camping, and nothing past that.
We did have one Order of the Arrow member of the troop. Since you didn't need that for the hiking and camping, the rest of us didn't bother.
Ok, after some thought, I have the best solution - offer the program, but only for girls!! No worry about mixed gender, because there is one gender. I agree that somehow women in general tend to migrate away from engineering and by getting as many girls interested as early as possible you just might end up evening out the situation by college. In a way, boys already have such a group - the Boy Scouts - and will be fine even if ignored by top scientists. I don't think the Girl Scouts fills the same roll for boys (though I could be wrong, the number of things I really know about either orgs nowadays can be counted on my fingers with my hand closed).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Great. So even more kids can grow up to discover that, despite 25+ years of school, 80-hour work weeks, and endless financial hardship, they can't actually get a job because universities mostly only want to hire adjunct professors.
And people wonder why we have trouble attracting students to a career in science.
I'm on a very liberal church board, and we're grappling now with whether to let a startup, earnest yet fundamentalist-seeming church find a worship home in our Parish Hall for a nominal rental fee every week. I'm personally an "escaped" fundamentalist with a strong background in science, thanks to people like Brinley, Hofstadter, and Feynman.
Now in my early middle age I'm reinvestigating Christianity for the salvageable aspects of it. Which started explicitly as a scientific experiment, in the interest of gathering more data as I learned of churches that didn't preach Creationism (and also who didn't hate gays, women etc.) I'm trying to help the more enlightened ones: to my way of looking at it, I have escaped from a burning building, and now am trying to see if anyone's still trapped inside. Since this new Christian mission of mine is to help people dissatisfied with fundamentalism, which helps those who have been oppressed by fundamentalism, I have to say that my non-churchgoing friends (which is to say, all of my friends) are pretty enthused, if they do wonder why anyone would bother spending time with a church.
I'm delighted to say that in addition to the above mentioned scientific authors who have influenced me, I can now add Christian writers such as C. S. Lewis and John Shelby Spong, the latter of whom likes to point out his late friend, Carl Sagan's comment that if Christ literally ascended into the sky 2,000 years ago at the speed of light, "He hasn't yet escaped our galaxy!"
Spong, now the retired Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, calls gentle but firm "shenanigans" on any notion of literalizing the Biblical narrative. But religion can be valued and cherished for the good that religion does teach, often using myths, while at the same time called to account for the evil it has produced. Protestant guy Nun Scientist. Boy the fundamentalists hate hate hate Bishop Spong.
Now I have to stop before this post actually becomes evangelical (shudder)
-1 Offtopic...make my day.
Can I request in advance that slashdot repeat this post in a few years? Thanks. My kid won't be old enough for another 5 years. Oh, I know they'll repost it several times between now & then, but I just wanted to be sure :)
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
A beowulf cluster of Young Einsteins would certainly find a lot more uses for beer.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's neat that their site uses ALIGN=JUSTIFY. Few people know that even exists. It would be even neater if they justified all the paragraphs that need it, instead of only half of them, but hey, what do you want?
Touching on the increased class participation and confidence in an all-female classroom...
Wouldn't it be better if we could get the same results in a co-ed environment from the same girls? Wouldn't this offer a good opportunity for that, as well?
In my experience as a student, I did find it more common for girls and women to be less aggressive about demonstrating knowledge... but more worrying, also less confident about the knowledge they did have. On the other hand, males tended to be not only more aggressive in class participation, but also commonly overconfident about their own knowledge... often talking before throughly thinking through or understanding the subject.
A guy was more likely to SEEM like he knew what he was doing, even if he had to BS his way through... on the other hand, a woman was more likely to understate her own skills, even if she was more competent. After all, everyone around SEEMS to know more...
I guess experience teaches patience and moderation quickly (and harshly), but confidence is more difficult to acquire: by a vicious cycle, those with less confidence are not as eager to experiment without guidance, getting less experience, etc.
I can see how in a large classroom separating the sexes would be an effective method to give girls a more neutral environment, less intimidating to participate in (perhaps because it removes the alpha-male competition process). However, this neutral environment does not reflect real-life, even if it helps to increase their confidence.
I can also see how it would be difficult to achieve the same results in a big classroom, as it would probably require dedicating personal attention to most girls and keeping a very good control of the social dynamics of a high-school class.
But smaller social groups, like those formed in extracurricular activities of these kind, have less complicated social dynamics, less students to dedicate attention to, and more opportunities for personalized attention. In general, I would think with mixed genders they are the perfect opportunity for girls not only to acquire confidence on their knowledge and their ability to participate and help, but also to do it in the real-world, without being intimidated by the occassional "pissing contests", etc.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
their using kids as lab rats :-D
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
We don't complain about it much. Sometimes we do interesting things, like putting aluminum cans in the fire until they get red hot. We get a lot of amusement out of fire.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
What I meant to say there was that the traditional roles people assign to boys and girls can be put aside - "Clamped down" was mean to indicate a restrainment of those rules so they would not break free and roam among the youngsters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At least when we go out for a burger, if the total is $4.55 and we give them a fivespot and a nickel, they won't get all confused...
Seriously though, I think that view is too pessimistic and ignoring long term trends. An even surer way to send work overseas is to not have any locals that can do it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now if people were really serious about making this work, they would link the mentoring process to the scientist working for the department of defense. DOD would be able to mine the unfettered imagination of young people and shape/mold the most promising talents along productive lines of scientific inquiry. Sort of like taking a DNA sample from the top scorers at the video arcade.