The Art of Teaching Science Blog

Here are 10 reasons that I think the United States Senate must pass an Energy Bill which would then be reconciled with the House’s Clean Energy Bill (HR 2454).  They are listed in here in no particular order because they are really interrelated, and I don’t think that anyone of these is more important than any of the others.

1. Because the House of Representatives Passed a Clean Energy Bill.  The debate in Washington has taken a new turn, and now it is up to the Senate to carry forward with the responsibility to create a new way of looking at energy use and development.
2. We need to stop thinking we can continue to get “free lunches from the Earth.”  Although we are not an isolated “spaceship” (we do depend upon the Sun for our energy), we need to think differently about how we use and sustain the resources on the Earth, and how we make use of the Sun’s energy.  It will require that we implement a kind of “deep ecology” point-of-view rather than the “cornucopian” framework.
3. We need a new mind-set about how to use what we have.  As Thomas Friedman pointed out, the Clean Energy bill passed by the House represents the first honest attempt by America to deal with climate change by putting a price on carbon.  His view is that by putting a price on carbon would create a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs.
4. Put an end to climate change-denial.  Denial is rampant.  I wrote about one U.S. Representative from Georgia who continues to rant that global warming is a hoax.  As Paul Krugman suggests, this kind of thinking is a kind of treason against the planet Earth.
5. The science of climate change is overwhelming in supporting the need for a Clean Energy law.  Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change posted a letter pointing out that the science is clear that human-induced climate changes are already happening and will grow.  She lists some we all are observing: increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows.
6. The “Stone Age” didn’t end because we ran out of stones.  No, it ended because humans invented new tools (see an earlier post on this reason).  The “oil age” will not end because we run out of oil, but when either the costs are too high, or we are smart enough to move into the E.T. (Energy Technology) age.  Just as the oil age resulted in a host of oil-based inventions and industries, so will a paradigm shift into a clean and alternative energy resulting in inventions and new industries for new energy technology age.
7. It’s time to “step-up.”  Yes, we contibute 20% of the global emissions from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacture & gas flaring, and simply reducing that number will not lead to huge reductions in climate change (China contributes about 15%, former states of USSR about 12%, European Union about 15%, followed by Japan, India and Canada) .  Or will it?  By passing such a bill, and having it signed into law, we show other countries that we have the moral courage to face the problem of global warming and climate change, and in the end move us away from a carbon economy and into renewable energy economy.
8. Yes, it will cost us, but what is the alternative if we ignore the problem, and continue to be deniers?  The costs are difficult to determine.  Estimating is based on so many factors, and as a result  you can find estimates ranging from $80 to $4300 per household/year.  It depends on who you believe, and what “model” or factors they input into their formulations.  For example, the Heritage Foundation estimates on the high side—$4300.  While the Environmental Protection Agency estimate concludes it would cost households between $80-$111 per household per year.   Imagine the costs incurred when we went from horse carts to cars?
9. It will result is a new period or age of entrepreneurship and invention which will result in new industries and jobs.  There is support in the Clean Energy bill not only to support the invention of new technologies, but to help workers and communities make the transition to a clean energy economy.
10. We need the U.S. Senate to set an example of our youth that a problem as vast as global warming and climate change can be solved, and that clear thinking and hard work by politicians will result in a cleaner, safer and more sustainable future.

This represents ten ideas that I think support a Clean Energy bill.  I would very much like to hear from you.  What are your opinions?  Please comment.

Resources:

Download the H.R. 2454 in pdf

Download EPA Analysis of H.R. 2454

Download EPA Analysis Summary

Interesting EPA Statement on what industry claimed the 1970 Clean Air Act would have on industry and what it would cost.

Yes, the U.S. Congress did pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454), but within Congress—in the House—there was clear evidence of “scientific illiteracy.”  And no, it was not the kind of thinking that we as science teachers advocate.  It turns out that one of the U.S. Representatives from Georgia, Paul Broun, who represents citizens of Georgia in Congressional District 10 (in the Athens, GA area) appears to advocate illiteracy.  During the debate on H.R. 2454, Broun stated “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”  

These comments are not surprising from this Georgia Congressman (read about him here), but it serves to support Mooney and Kirchenbaum’s thesis of their new book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens America.  Here we have a member of Congress who denies the research on climate change, and makes false statements on the costs of the bill and how it would affect American households.  Broun needs to consider a very basic idea, and that is: “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”  Instead of doing his homework, and finding out how we have continued to get “free lunches from the Earth,” this man continues his demeanor as a denier of climate change and global warming, and serves as a poster-child for perpetuating ignorance in the face of searching for truth on one of of serious problems we face today.  Our continued greed in taking from the Earth has come home to roost as seen in the warmest years on record, the melting of ice caps, the acceleration North of climates (New Hampshire could have a climate like North Carolina) as temperatures have increased, and many other examples. 

Although his remarks received applause from some Republicans, other Representatives voted for the bill because of his incendiary and  ignorant remarks.  By the way, Broun has a medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia!

In an editorial piece entitled Betraying the Planet, Paul Krugman points out that many who voted against the bill did so because of an overall rejection of the idea of greenhouse gasses, climate change, and global warming.  As others have pointed out, these represent the “deniers,” who simply are too lazy to pursue any investigation into the knowledge that has been accumulated by scientists around the world about climate change.  Even their own government has just recently issued a report entitled Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences developed by the US Climate Change Science Program.  Climate literacy—can you believe that!

Scientific illiteracy is not something to treat lightly.  Mooney and Kirshenbaum have devoted an entire book to the subject, and cite scientist’s lament about the public’s “scientific illiteracy.”  Yet when we have Representatives such as Broun as a talking head in Washington, we see that the illiteracy that appears to be rampant in society, is even more so in our House (of Representatives). 

My own experience working with youth on issues such as global warming and climate change would put to shame Rep. Broun’s ignorance of one of the greatest problems facing our citizens, not only here, but around the world.  There is more to talk about here, but that will come later this week.  I think I want to listen to a baseball game!

There is a very interesting book by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum that will be published in July. It is titled Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens America. The authors explore the rift between science and mainstream American culture, and even refer to C. P. Snow’s famous book, The Two Cultures. I think this book will be especially relevant in that here we have a science writer and editor teamed with a professional scientist exploring the world of science in the very beginning of a new administration in Washington that has vowed to incorporate science into its decision-making, unlike previous administration. In fact, if you haven’t already, you might want to explore Mooney’s previous book, The Republican War on Science, which was a powerful exhortation on how science was largely ignored some some years.

You can visit their blog at Discover Magazine and explore their review and interpretation of science, technology and the future.

For science teachers, I think this will be a valuable book as we think about the nature of science in our schools, and what we might do to help students develop a scientific literacy that is relevant to their lives, and to the issues that are current, and will have a lasting impact on their future.

Last night my wife and I had dinner with very close friends of ours, Jenny & Dennis Springer. Dr. Jenny Springer, former principal of Dunwoody High School, and Associate Superintendent of Dekalb County Schools (Georgia) was an administrator that created an environment in which teachers thrived, and excelled in their work with students. I first met her in 1986 while I was teaching a course at Georgia State University that was based in a DeKalb County High School at which she was principal. By this time I had been involved with the Association for Humanistic Psychology Soviet-Exchange Project, and I mentioned to Dr. Springer that I was interested in having her involved in the work that we were doing. She indicated real interest.

In 1987 she became principal of Dunwoody High School, and it was in that context that I invited her to be a participant in an AHP education exchange with research institutions, and schools in Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Over the next 15 years, she became an integral person in the development and actualization of the Global Thinking Project that sought to develop and sustain an action-oriented and Internet-based environmental education curriculum between American and Soviet (at the time it was still the U.S.S.R.) teachers and students. During this period of time, she was instrumental in supporting teacher and student exchanges among American and Russian teachers and students (later expanding to other countries including Australia, the Czech Republic, and Spain).

In a recent paper in the Journal for Activist Science & Technology Education, Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Towards an Action-oriented Science Curriculum, Derek Hodson calls for a science curriculum that is rooted in the idea of giving student the chance to confront real world issues. In fact, Hodson believes strongly in the politicization of the science curriculum by focusing the content of science in socially and personally relevant contexts, and issues-based teaching. This form of teaching of course is not new (as Hodson points out), but it requires a paradigm shift in our thinking regarding what the purpose is of teaching science. Science teaching, using Hodson’s approach, suggests that we ground ourselves in humanistic science education, as reported by Glen Aikenhead.

Twenty-years ago, through the efforts of administrators such as Dr. Jenny Springer, hundreds of American and Russian students, and their teachers were involved in an action-oriented curriculum—the Global Thinking Project curriculum. Implementing a curriculum that is based on humanistic science requires the support of innovative teachers and administrators. Dr. Springer, together with her counterpart in Russia, Mr. Vadim Zhudov, principal of School 710 Moscow, forged new connections that enabled their students and teachers to be involved in a ground-breaking action-oriented science program.

Although we hadn’t seen the Springers in several years, it was a reminder that fulfilling the promise of a relevant, and socially-conscious science curriculum for students requires courageous teachers and administrators like Jenny Springer.

Within the science education community there has been a movement to explore the relationships among science, technology and society (STS), and this movement has a long history.  In fact, its history parallels the more conventional or traditional view of science education that has dominated most curriculum and pedagogy over the last century.  But alongside has been this other framework that had aims involving not only applications of science, but how science could contribute to the well-being of individuals and society.

This week, I received an announcement introducing a new project, and supporting new journal.  The project, known as PASTE (Project for Activist Science & Technology Education) is an online community of educators, scientists, engineers, students, policy-makers and others aiming to promote personal, social and ecological wellbeing. 

One of the features of PASTE is what the organization calls a community-reviewed journal.  The journal, called JASTE (Journal for Activist Science & Technology Education) will publish contributions about research and action relating activist science teaching.  The journal is a free publication, and you can read the first issue at the JASTE site.  Here is the contents of the first issue:

• Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Towards an Action-oriented Science Curriculum - Derek Hodson (pp. 1-15)
• Activism or Science/Technology Education as Byproduct of Capacity Building - Wolff-Michael Roth (pp. 16-31)
• Science Teacher Activism: The Case of Environmental Education - Michael Tan (pp. 32-43)
• Transcending the Age of Stupid: Learning to Imagine Ourselves Differently - Leo Elshof (pp. 44-56)
• Globalisation and Learner-centred Pedagogies: Some Thoughts - Lyn Carter (pp. 57-60)
• Globalization, Food Security, Public Health and Prosperity Focus on India - Shiv Chopra (pp. 61-64)
• Anti-capitalist/Pro-communitarian Science & Technology Education - Larry Bencze & Steve Alsop (pp. 65-84)
• Feeling the Weight of the World: Visual Journeys in Science & Technology Education- Steve Alsop & Sheliza Ibrahim (pp. 85-104)

I think this is an important project, and hope you have a chance to check their site, and journal.

One of the posts that I made last October was the announcement of a science education research conference that will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, August 31 - September 4, 2009.  I head from many colleagues, especially science educators in Africa and the Middle East who indicated strong interest in attending the conference.  All of their inquiries were passed along to Fatih Tasar, Professor of Science Education at Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey. Dr. Tasar is one of the organizers of the conference.

The conference is the annual meeting of the European Science Education Research Association.  There are hundreds of papers, interactive poster presentations, round table discussions, symposia, panel discussions, and workshops.  You see lists of these presentations at this link. 

For more information about this conference you should visit the conference website.

About four days before we left for a two-week trip to England, the clean out pipe of our sewer system backed up. We called the Cobb County Water Department to check it out, and after they arrived and explored our system from the point of the clean out, they suggested that we needed to hire a private plumber. They gave us the name of Donald Hearing Plumbing, who we called. They came out, and suggested that it would be an easy fix, and proceded to run a cable down the clean out pipe, and into the pipes leading to the main county line. After putting the cable into the system, they discovered that they were unable to pull in back out. It was stuck. They indicated that there was a problem and needed to bring their backhoe (excavating equipment with a digging bucket on an extended arm) to dig a trench to find the hidden problem.

Here is Donald Hearing at the helm of the backhoe. Seemed innocent enough. Dig a hole, and fix the pipe! As you look at the following images, you'll see it was a serious problem.

They arrived early Thursday morning on May 21. What they hoped to accomplish was to dig a ditch to reach the pipes that connected us to the main county line, which is located right near the white fence you see in the photograph here. Please notice the general state of the yard. They dug into the soil, and continued digging, and as they did, they discovered an underground cavern that had been developing for some time, probably the result of a broken line in our yard.

About four feet underground, we found a cavern, the beginning of a sink hole, that had been developing for some time.

As they extended the ditch to about 12 feet deep, they reached the level of our 4″ pipe, and discovered that there was a break in the pipe. They found their cable. Instead of continuing to move through our pipe system, the cable was pushed into the surrounding soil, and was actually wound around the pipe. No wonder they couldn’t pull it out.

Furthermore, they discovered that the original plumber had actually used electrical tape to bind the 4″ pipes together. Overtime, the connection failed, and the 4″ pipes separated. You’ll see a picture below of this innovative pipe work. Although we don’t know how long the pipes were separated, the fact that a cavern developed indicates that this was going on for a long time.

This a piece of the 4" pipe that was wrapped in electrical tape!

After pulling a 20′ span of pipe out of the ground (12′ down), the crew needed to insert a new pipe, which they did. They used a glue that chemically bound the new connection. Mission accomplished.

A 10 foot piece of white PCP 4" pipe.

At least we thought so. We still had to connect our 4″ pipe line to the county 6″ pipe that ran to the main line which is an 8″ diameter pipe. All we could see was the cross section of the 6″ pipe, but it was packed full of debris that probably had accumulated over time. Manually trying to push and rotate a cable into the line failed, so the plumbers indicated they would return the next day with a “jetter,” a machine that would push water through a hose at a very high velocity. They came back Friday morning, backed the jetter into our yard, ran the hose down into the ditch. Turned it on. Complete failure. They could not remove any of the debris.

A jetter, which pushes water through a hose at a very high velocity was used to try and free debris from the 6" pipe. No luck.

A real problem. Enter the Cobb County Water Department. Donald Hearing, who by now was heading to the hospital for outpatient surgery called the Cobb Water Department and asked for help. He felt that the county needed to be involved now that the connector to the main county line was clogged up.

What happened over the next 19 hours was absolutely amazing, and something that you think isn’t really happening. Here is a short time line.

The first County Water Department vehicle and crew of two arrive and stormed into our yard to make a quick assessment. They say that they’ll have to remove one or two our neighbors’ trees, and part of our fence to move a County backhoe into position to extend the trench that Hearing Plumbing had begun. I can’t believe it.

In this image, a backhoe sits where there was a beautiful Bradford Pear Tree, and two-board fence. They are searching for the 8" main county pipe. Later found.

Three additional County vehicles arrive, and the utility maintenance supervisor, Mr. Chuck Roshak arrives. He immediately determines what needs to be done—tree and fence removal. A 30′ high flowering Bradford pear tree is cut and removed, and dragged to the center of a cul-de-sac. A huge truck with at least five crew arrives, and cuts and removes the tree. A 40′ section of our fence is removed. All of this happened in about 35 minutes.

Crew cutting the Bradford Pear Tree and hauling it away.

The backhoe is used to dig, and search for the main county line. As they dig, ground water fills the trench. As soil is removed, the water mixed with the soil creates a loose mud, and simply flows over our yard. Digging continue, they finally find and break the main 8″ line; the gr0und water, which by now is at least 6′ feet deep is sucked into the main pipe, draining the trench—for a while.

Our neighbor arrives home, and sees for the first time that a tree is missing from their yard, and a huge backhoe is sitting in their yard. I talk with her, and bring her into our yard, and explain what has happened. Fortunately, the County will fully repair any damage to their yard, at the County’s cost. Not so with us. It’s on us.

Stadium lights in our backyard. We could have played baseball!

It’s getting dark. Stadium lights arrive! A truck is backed into our yard, the lights hoisted, and turned on. We could have played night baseball.

Time to eat. A trip to Burger King to buy food for the County Water Department crew of ten, and Randall and Chuck from Hearing Plumbing. Biggest sale to date for this Burger King!
Pipes are cut to precision to repair the 8″ main county line, and a 6″ T-connection into our yard. By now, the County had built and lifted into the ditch steel walls within which the men worked. By now the ditch is 15′ deep, and the safety ordinance requires walls to prevent a cave-in. The main line is repaired—this was unbelievable since the men were working 15′ deep, within water, at night, under the lights.
A 20′ pipe is attached to the “T” at the main line, and rotated and dropped into the ditch, about 8′ from the end of our 4″ pipe. Another section needs to be cut and inserted to complete the system. To do this, the steel walls need to be moved from the front end of the ditch, to the other end of the ditch. Another backhoe (the third one) is used to complete this operation.

The third backhoe being used to move the safety walls into position. These are lowered into the trench to provide supporting walls in case there is a cave-in. The men worked at the bottom of the trench between the walls. Difficult work!

This is a new section of the 8" main line that needed to be installed at the bottom of a 15' trench.

Working within the steel walls, the crew inserts the last piece of the pipe system. The walls are pulled out.
Tons on 57 stone especially used for drainage are required. We wait an hour or so, and finally a dump truck arrives with the stone, backs into the middle of our cul-de-sac, and dumps all of the stone in the middle of the road, and creates a pile of 57-stone about 15 feet high and 20 feet in diamater. The backhoe will be used to go down our driveway, scoop up some stone, turn around, and travel 100 or so feet, and dump the stone into the ditch. This was repeated for about an hour. To spread the stone along the bottom of the ditch, Greg Brock, operating Hearing Plumbing’s backhoe, works simultaneously to scoop stone dropped by the County into the ditch and move it to the other end of the ditch. The idea is to form a base of drainage stone under and on top of the pipes that have been repaired.

Here you see the 57 stone being used to provide a good drainage base in the trench. The long blue-green pipe is a new clean out pipe that enventually will be visible only at the surface.

Above the layer of 57 stone, all three backhoes are used to push back into the ditch all of the soil that was dug up. This was an absolute mess. By now the mixture of soil and water had created a oozing mud. Pushed back over the ditch, the soil/water/mud mixture was there for further work.
The Crew Leaves our Yard. The Cobb County Water Department, which had arrived at our home on Friday, May 22 at 11:30 A.M., left our yard at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday, May 23.
On May 23, the County returns with a truck to clean the road, and make sure the main line is running properly. It is. The road is cleaned.
On Monday (Memorial Day) May 25, Donald Hearing arrives, and uses his backhoe (which was left next to the ditch) to push the earth around, and create some order in the yard. It’s not really possible. The soil is still very wet, and all they can do is push as much of the earth over the area of the ditch, forming a find of hill, that in time, will hopefully settle.

The backhoe being used to grade over the soil above the trench.

On May 26, we leave for England, and hope that the earth settles.
One June 6 we arrive home to see the ground a bit dryer, and amazingly some of the grass that had been covered with mud, was growing back. But there is still much to be done, but that will happen over the next week or so.

We all take for granted the utilities that we have—water, sewage, electricity, etc.—and don’t realize what problems lurk in hidden areas, such as what we discovered with our PCP pipes 15 feet beneath the ground. It made me think about the network of piping that connects all of us to water and sewage, and the work that is needed to maintain it. The Cobb County Water Department did an incredible job in restoring a broken water system, working continuously for more than 18 hrs, and completing a job in the most professional way possible. The work is not only hard, but it is dangerous as well. In an environment that seemed so unstable and imprecise, this group of professionals, under the direction of Mr. Chuck Roshak, worked with amazing precision to fix the system. Special thanks to Mr. Donald Hearing, and his team of professionals.

Here are a few more pictures.

Working in the trench within the safety walls.

A new view into our neighbors yard; a new clean out; a tractor in our yard!

Some of the machinery in our yard.

I’ve been away on a trip to England for the past two weeks; this is the first post since the trip.

On my way out of the Atlanta airport, I scanned the headlines of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) and read the cover story headline: Student rolls don’t add up: Data shows thousands unaccounted for.  The jist of the story was that the State loses track of thousands of students each year, suggesting that the dropout rate may be higher and the graduation rate lower than Georgia reported.  The article in AJC is based on the analysis of nearly 1.8 million student enrollment records.  Although the AJC reporters were not able to track individual students, they found that last year more than 25,000 students were coded as transferring to other Georgia public schools, but no school showed them transferring in.

Heather Vogell, author of the article, suggested that we don’t really know what is the graduation and dropout rate.  She put it this way:

The system should give the public and federal officials a clear picture of how many students graduate and how many don’t; instead, it remains riddled with errors.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” said Cathy Henson, a Georgia State education law professor and former state board of education chairwoman. “We’re never going to solve our problems unless we have good data to drive our decisions.”

This falling through the cracks of individual students is a serious problem.  According to Vogell,

More than one in five 16- to 24-year-old Georgians are high school dropouts, reported Northeastern University in Boston and Chicago non-profit Alternative Schools Network.

This is a serious issue, and will require more than simply teaching to the State’s annual round of tests (CRCT).

Maureen Downey, education editorial writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote a piece about graduation rates in yesterday’s edition entitled Can’t throw up our hands as teens quit. According to Downey about 90,000 students will graduate from Georgia’s secondary schools this month, but there are another 49,000 teens who should have part of this year’s graduation class. These 49,000 dropped out since entering 9th grade four years ago. The Georgia Department of Education disputes these figures, and indicates that the graduation rate is 75% compared to 63% just six years ago. Downey indicates that the Department of Education uses a counting methodology that ignores many students who really dropped out (the State indicates that many of these students moved). The State also adds into the equation students who pass the GED at a later time. Downey suggests that the actual graduation rate is closer to 60%.

In data provided by The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, the 2006 graduation rate in Georgia was 55.9. According to their data, there were 131543 enrolled in the 9th grade in 2002. Of these, only 73498 graduated from high school four years later.

The US average graduation rate, according to data by the Center, is 66.6%, and ranges from 86.3% (New Jersey) to 50.5% (Nevada). Here is a map showing the range of rates by state. Click on the map, and it will bring you to the The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems website.

Map of USA showing graduation rates in each of the states.

And these averages disguise more serious discrepancies that exist when you compare drop out rates amongst African-American, Hispanic and white students. According to some data, less than 40% of African-American and Hispanic students graduate from high school in Georgia. When major cities are compared, the data shows the in the major 50 US cities, many of them report graduation rates is below 50%, and in some cities it approaches 25%.

According to America’s Promise Alliance (which provided the data cited above), more than 1.2 million students drop out of school each year. This is an enormous number of teens dropping out of school, and one that is hard to believe. Follow the link above to the Alliance website to find out who are the leaders of the group, and what they are doing to try and reduce the number of students who drop out of school.

The rate at which students do NOT graduate from our schools is a dilemma that just won’t go away. How can this be turned around? What programs are working that seem to increase the number of students who typically wouldn’t have graduated?

As a science teacher, we’re always looking for new tools and strategies that will motivate, and help students learn science. Several days ago I introduced the idea of Science Teaching 3.0, and in that post suggested that there were parallel dimensions in consideration of globalization, the Earth, the Web. There was an interesting article at the CNN website about new search engines that have recently been developed, and indeed some that will be brought online in the near term. Most of us use Google when searching the Internet for information and links to relevant sites, and as we all know, a text-based list appears normally in less than a second.

But there is new generation of search engines that look to make searching the web more personal and visual. There were three in the article that I followed up on, and found them to be interesting. I hope you might find this discussion of some value to you.

Although Google remains the most used search engine, I examined three new search engines. Three that I examined were:

Search Engines: Hakia, Twine & Searchme

• Seachme
• Hakia
• Twine

To examine them, I compared the results when I searched the Internet for “asteroids” with the results I got on Google. I’ve used visuals below that you can use to make comparisons. I think you will like the “searchme” tool because it is the most visual of the search engines, and I think for many of our students, this tool will be very appealing. Here are the results.

Google: You will get about 6,480,000 hits for “asteroids” on google. Top of the list was Wikipedia’s site on asteroids.

First page of a search for asteroids on google.

Searchme: NASA’s “solar system” website comes up first, which “asteroid highlighted. But notice that you visually see the full webpages, and you can scroll through them. Just click on the page, and you are there. A real winner for visual learners.

What you see when you search for asteroids on searchme.

Hakia: When I searched asteroids on Hakia, the Wikipedia page for asteroids came up first. But note that there are some interesting navigation bars, including “images,” which will lead you page upon page of images about asteroids.

Page that appears when you search asteroid on the search engine, hakia.

Twine: Visual and text information result when you search on Twine. But, as with the other search engines, there are ways to make your work more personal and visual. Look at the last side navigation list.

Results for search for asteroids on Twine.