more on [Fwd: NASA Announces Results From Beam & Tether Challenges]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Kent Quirk <kent_quirk () cognitoy com>
Date: October 25, 2005 10:47:47 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on [Fwd: NASA Announces Results From Beam &  
Tether Challenges]


David:

(for IP)

What's sad about this is that just as we're seeing this level of  
innovation in adults, we may be destroying it at the student level. I  
had lunch today with a co-worker who occasionally assists in judging  
the science fairs in his local school system. He was lamenting the  
fact that because of various insurance and state regulations, he's  
seeing fewer and fewer experiments and more and more research reports  
done by poking around Google.

He pointed to several well-intentioned complications in the science  
fair regulations:

* Students are forbidden from doing joint projects with teachers,  
apparently to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
* Regulations forbid all experimentation on humans -- even such  
things as blind taste tests. Throw out pretty much any experiment  
having to do with perception.
* All experiments must be planned and documented and submitted to a  
review committee in advance of doing them. You'd better know your  
answers before you do the experiment. Students who learn by doing?  
Sorry.

There are still independent competitions like the FIRST Robotics  
competition, but the level of financial involvement required for  
something like that excludes a lot of students.

Fortunately, we still have things like Make magazine and hackaday.com.

   Kent Quirk
   Software Architect
   http://www.cosmicblobs.com





David Farber wrote:


> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Mike O'Dell <mo () ccr org>
> Date: October 24, 2005 8:17:18 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] [Fwd: NASA Announces Results From Beam & Tether   
> Challenges]
>
>
> This is so cool.  The Boomers that very likely dominated Science Fair
> when they were young bring create "Extreme Science Fair" as a way
> to drive innovation.  Insanely cool.
>
>     -mo
>
>
> David Farber wrote:
>
>
> > Begin forwarded message:
> > From: Randall <rvh40 () insightbb com>
> > Date: October 24, 2005 5:47:56 PM EDT
> > To: JMG <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>, Dave <dave () farber net>
> > Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> > Subject: [Fwd: NASA Announces Results From Beam & Tether Challenges]
> > Climbing a cable, powered only by a searchlight?  WOW!



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