San Diego Science Educators Association

08/07/2021

Recent years have seen a decline in participation and membership in many education oriented professional organizations. SDSEA was no exception to this trend.

Our support for science education professionals has been made possible primarily through sponsorship of science education conferences, focused on making useful connections between national trends, state standards and practical classroom applications of exemplary science pedagogy.

With increased reliance on information gathering via internet searches, declining support for conference attendance by school districts, and a final blow against in-person gatherings dealt by the novel Coronavirus, SDSEA finds itself financially unable to continue its mission.

The Governing Board of the SDSEA met on Sunday, July 25, 2021 to decide on the future of our professional organization.
Two actions were taken at that meeting:

First, it was decided that the San Diego Science Educators Association take the necessary steps to disband, severe our affiliations with the California Association of Science Educators (CASE), formerly California Science Teachers Association CSTA), and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), wishing them every success at the state and national levels; and discontinue the SDSEA page.

Second, it was decided that the remaining assets of the SDSEA be distributed to science education support organizations as provided for in our bylaws. Accounting and legal documents are now being processed before the final announcement of SDSEA's dissolution.

The SDSEA Board extends a hearty thank you to all those who contributed to the success of the organization. That includes the hundreds of hours of volunteered time and effort to mount conferences, organize field trips, evaluate and process scholarship grants and funds for deserving projects, and coordinate awards and recognition for outstanding science educators. We also thank those organizations and people from "informal science education" venues and interested groups with similar missions that contributed to our local success over the years.

04/29/2020

Dinoflagellates!

Have you seen the electric blue waves off Southern California lately? Scripps PhD student Philipp Arndt captured this photo of the bioluminescent spectacle near Scripps Pier over the weekend. The glowing waves are caused by the red tide that’s occurring now along the coastline from Baja California to Los Angeles. Red tides are due to aggregations of dinoflagellates including Ceratium falcatiforme and Lingulodinium polyedra, the latter of which is well known for its bioluminescent displays, with waves or movement in the water causing the phytoplankton to glow neon blue at night. During the day, the water appears to have a reddish hue, hence the term “red tide.” Scientists at Scripps have been tracking and sampling these events for more than a century to better understand their dynamics. We don’t know how long the current red tide will last, as previous events have lasted anywhere from one week to a month or more, but scientists are continuing to monitor. For your best shot at viewing the ocean’s light show, head to a dark beach at least two hours after sunset. Please use caution and make sure to follow social distancing guidelines! 🌊 ✨

04/11/2020

The following article is from the National Science Teachers Association, of which SDSEA is an affiliated member. This post unfortunately does not include links but you can get an overview of what they are offering for stay-at-home learners. For complete information including the "Daily Do" lessons go to:

https://www.nsta.org/dailydo/?utm_source=realmagnet&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Successful%20Online%20Strategies%20%7C%7C%20Helping%20Parents%20with%20Online%20Learning&utm_campaign=2020%5Fapril%5F7%5FNewsletter%5FExpress%5Fnonmember

"With another week of home and distance learning behind us, it's time to take a reflective look back and a hopeful – perhaps even excited – look forward. We shared in last week's blog post how crucial it is to give our students something to figure out if we want them to engage in science learning outside of the classroom. This week, let's consider what it means to do science.

Each Daily Do presents a phenomenon and guidance for engaging students with practices for sensemaking. Read the full blog post to learn more and to access the free, daily resources available from NSTA.
This Week's Dailys
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In this task, Why does population size change?, students engage in science and engineering practices and use the lens of cause and effect (crosscutting concept) to figure out there is a maximum number of buffalo an area can support based on the living and nonliving components of the ecosystem.

This task has been modified from its original design to be used by high school students, families, and teachers in distance and home learning. While students could complete this task independently, we encourage students to work virtually with peers or in the home with family members.
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This task, How do we know if something is alive?, uses children's books and family reading time to invite students to share and build on their ideas about things that are alive and things that are not. Wonderings about living things and what they have in common leads students to engage in science and engineering practices to figure out that living things grow and move.

This task is modified from the elementary lesson "Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow?", published in Even More Picture–Perfect Science Lessons: Using Children's Books to Guide Inquiry, K-5. The Picture Perfect book series of was developed to help K-5 teachers integrate science and reading in an engaging, kid-friendly way. The strategies for reading aloud to support students' sense-making in science can be used at multiple grade levels with any scientific concept.
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Today's Daily Do presents two different – but related – science tasks centered around children's books.


What Floats in a Moat? (K-2) Students float and sink everyday objects to figure out what makes some things float and other things sink.

Who Sank the Boat? (3-5) Through an engineering design challenge involving aluminum foil and pennies, students figure out how the shape of a boat and it's ability to float are related.


Although designed for different grade levels, you may choose to do both tasks with your K-5 students (you can adjust the amount of scaffolding in both tasks). Make sure to check out the STEM careers at the end of this Daily Do: Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering!
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In this task, How do living things choose their home?, students and their families read the NSTA e-Book Home Is Where My Habitat Is and use the thinking tools of patterns and cause and effect (crosscutting concepts) to make sense of the science idea that animals live in habitats and changes in habitats affect the animals living there. Opportunities to make connections between local habitats and the habitats Kippy encounters inspire appreciation and stewardship of habitats around the world as well as close to home.
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Today's task, Where do new infectious diseases come from?, creates an opportunity for students consider examples of infectious diseases they might know a lot about and compare them to diseases they want to know more about. Students engage in science and engineering practices – including the use of a simulation (mathematical model) – to figure out how "new" infectious disease-causing bacteria can come from bacteria that have been around for awhile.

This task has been modified from its original design it can be used by students, parents, and teachers in distance and home learning. While students could complete this task independently, we encourage students to work virtually with peers or in the home with family members.

03/18/2020

Great explanation on COVID-19 and how it is so different than the known seasonal influenza.

This has been copied from another page.

This is a clear explanation of how this illness differs from the flu and why it is so dangerous to humans.
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Feeling confused as to why Coronavirus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu? Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand...

It has to do with RNA sequencing.... I.e. genetics.

Seasonal flu is an “all human virus”. The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year... you get immunity two ways...through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.

Novel viruses, come from animals.... the WHO tracks novel viruses in animals, (sometimes for years watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once, one of these animal viruses mutates, and starts to transfer from animals to humans... then it’s a problem, Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity.. the RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so, we can’t fight it off.

Now.... sometimes, the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human, for years it’s only transmission is from an infected animal to a human before it finally mutates so that it can now transfer human to human... once that happens..we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, thats what decides how contagious, or how deadly it’s gonna be..

H1N1 was deadly....but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently, too.

Fast forward.

Now, here comes this Coronavirus... it existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long...but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan China, in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from animal to people. At first, only animals could give it to a person... But here is the scary part.... in just TWO WEEKS it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability, “slippery”

This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity). Took off like a rocket. And this was because, Humans have no known immunity...doctors have no known medicines for it.

And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way the way that it causes great damage to human lungs..

That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza.... this one is slippery AF. And it’s a lung eater...And, it’s already mutated AGAIN, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain s, and strain L....which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.

We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in the past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu.

Factoid: Henry VIII stayed in his room and allowed no one near him, till the Black Plague passed...(honestly...I understand him so much better now). Just like us, he had no tools in his shed, except social isolation...

And let me end by saying....right now it’s hitting older folks harder... but this genome is so slippery...if it mutates again (and it will). Who is to say, what it will do next.

. Stay home folks... and share this to those that just are not catching on. 🤓

Written by Kimberly Dawn Barker

03/18/2020

Try this learning resource...

02/19/2020

Studying earth's outliers may point to how we'll study other planets.

02/19/2020

Was the arctic climate once like Virginia's climate today?

02/19/2020

Our sister planet, Venus..... twisted sister that is.

Earth is pretty nice. but it won't stay that way.

02/19/2020

How "squishy" are these measurements?

Space Mysteries: If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, how can a star be more than 14 billion years old?

02/19/2020

Viruses without genes?

Another group finds hundreds of new viruses, some of which may play a role in human disease

02/12/2020

An update on Australian wildlife...

Koalas, platypuses, and some species of echidna, possum, potoroo, and dunnart were listed as "high-priority" for government intervention.