Glowing at S-cubed. Or - fun with e.coli

Here's a Saturday with a difference.

 My friend Sierin kindly opened her lab to a small group of students. Her friend's two teenagers, my friend's teenage son, and S, a ten-year-old from the Whampao neighborhood. The agenda: show the kids how scientists make proteins fluoresce and why. She also introduced the kids to her grad students who were researching cancer. The kids could see how the fluorescent proteins acted as "tags" and how they were solving real world issues. Three hours of microscopes, pipettes, e.coli, agar, and anatomy lab time (that was where the microscope was. And the kids knocked down Mr Skeleton - but that's another story).

The older kids had already been taking biology - so, no problem there. Another friend Ching-Hua, from IBM Research, did some extra " translation" for S  - helpful for me too! We were worried that it was all too much for S - but today, a staffer at Beyond Social Services told us how on a recent outing, S told her all about what she saw and did at the lab. S is also writing about it in her personal "newsletter." 

My thought- nevermind if  S didn't get all the ins and outs of e.coli and proteins (I didn't!). She had fun, she learned, she's interested.

A related note - I came across a TED Talk by 2013 Ted Prize winner Sugata Mitra. He's been experimenting with kids self-learning in Indian villages by plonking PCs in holes in the wall and coming back to find the kids were teaching other kids to use the computers - with no adult intervention. He then upped the ante is slight dose of adult involvement aka British Grannies.

He's now experimenting with Self Organised Learning Environments in which kids, in groups of four, are armed with one computer and a "helper"go researching Big Topics like "Why are whales the largest mammals on earth." And the kids research and present. Post-its, markers - and a framework for us adults. 

Check it out at http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html

We're going to try this out at Whampoa. We'll let you know how it goes. 

Meanwhile...we've received feedback from parents that the kids go home saying that they played games and had fun. Parents want to know "why isn't there more rote learning?" I guess we're doing something right. Next step - convince the parents that fun+learning = more effective.