SMART PHONES and FASCINATING WORMS

Today, May 9th, after a heavy, much-needed, rainfall, I saved some worms.......they were stranded on my drive, slowly drying out and dying in the early morning sun.

This brought back memories of saving worms when I was a kid.

Here's the story:

The worms

One Saturday, Mum and Dad planned to go to Penzance and do some shopping in the main street. Jimmie was off snaring rabbits with his friend, Ego James, in Bejowan Woods. I was left in charge of my little brother, 2 year old Charles.

Charles was a handful. He could never sit still, and was always poking around to see what he could find. As baby of the family, Charles, of course, could do no wrong and always got me into trouble.

When it was time for Mum and Dad to go, Mum gave us both a kiss, a piece of Cadbury’s chocolate to share, and headed off to the bus stop with Dad.

We waved goodbye and went outside to play in the back garden.

We picked some goosegogs from the three gooseberry bushes, sat on the grass and ate them as fast as we could. They were sour but good.

We finished off our snack with the chocolate.

Suddenly, I felt a spot of rain. A huge black cloud covered the sun and, as I looked up to the sky, it began to pour cats and dogs. I took Charles’s hand, and we ran inside, closed the door and climbed on two kitchen chairs to watch from the kitchen window. We shared our chocolate. The rain pelted down and we moaned that Mum and Dad would be back before it dried and we had our fill of goosegogs.

After a few minutes, though, the black cloud moved slowly across the sky and the sun reappeared. The rain stopped. We went back out in the garden again, jumping over the puddles on the path. Charles bent over and picked up a worm that was swishing around in one of the puddles, then started finding more and more of them. He held one in his hand and looked at me.

“Poor things. They’re drowning. We mustn’t let them drown, Charles.

Let’s save them all.”

I went inside and got one of my old tobacco tins, ripped up some newspaper and put it inside as a lining.

We searched over the puddles and collected every worm we found drowning ina puddle of rainwater, put them on the newspaper to dry, and then took them to a safer place in the garden.

When Mum and Dad came home from shopping, we told them what we had done.

"That's great," said Dad, "they're important, you know, They keep my garden healthy. When the garden is healthy, my plants grow."

Years later.....

After saving the worms, there I was, sitting and sipping coffee in my local Starbucks, when the gentleman at the next table asked: "I know you, don't I?"

It turns out that he is a parent at the local elementary school where I volunteer as science teacher.
He is also, I learned, the local manager of an international technology enterprise. Curious to know more, the conversation focused on smartphones and the challenges he was currently wrestling with. They included how to get smartphones to open garage doors and let you know when you have water heater leaks!

The more he told me the more animated he became. I could see how the smart phone potential filled his brain.

Eventually, he asked me what I was up to, and, linking with the smartphone, I told him about the technology I see in many classrooms I visit. I described how fascinated I am by the technological skills I see in young children as they excitedly interact with their phones, iPads and laptops.

Then I described the afternoon I spent on Monday talking with K, 4th and 5th grade students about the delightful and very interesting world of the earthworm, the little wriggly creature that helps keep our soil and plants healthy. I told them the story of me and brother Charles saving worms. Their eyes widened as I held a squirmy worm and showed them how to make a home for it and its friends from a plastic container and shredded paper.

I know, I added, that kids are glued to their smartphones........but their brains still find the delights of nature very appealing.
Thank goodness.

"Mmmmm," he said, "smart phones, earthworms.............mmmmm......now there's something I haven't thought of!"

Oh, in case you're interested, here's what I covered with the kids at Buffalo Ridge Elementary School:

All about Earthworms

Charles Darwin, the naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, saw an earthworm in his garden emerging from its burrow.

Being a naturalist, Darwin was curious, and started to study the little wriggly creatures. To his amazement, he discovered that the worm is one of the most important animals on our planet. Without worms, half our crops would be failures. The worm brings air into the earth. It opens the pores of the soil by boring through it and eating it, letting in the life-giving, nitrogen-making bacteria, without which most plant life would die.

Darwin found this out by watching the earthworms in his garden……think of what we learn when we do the same.

Earthworm facts

Earthworms live everywhere where there is soil.  
Earthworms dig large burrows that let water and air into the soil.
Earthworm burrows keep our garden soil healthy.
Earthworms drag dead leaves into the earth.
Earthworms eat the leaves in the soil. The soil passes though the worm's body and is left in little piles called CASTINGS on top of the ground.
Earthworm castings help plants grow.

Species 

There are over 2000 species of earthworms around the world.
The smallest earthworms are about ½ inch long and,
the largest earthworm, the Giant Gippsland Earthworm, found only in Australia, can be six feet long. (I showed the kids a six foot long piece of string - and showed them what a six foot worm would look like. That brought loud Ooohs and Aaahs!)

Earthworm bodies 

Earthworms are invertebrates, which means they don't have bones.
Earthworms’ soft bodies can be brown or red.
Earthworms have a brain, 5 hearts, and parts inside their bodies that help them to breathe.
Earthworms are blind.
Earthworms use their tiny sense organs feel things around them.
Earthworms are both male and female and lay very tiny, rubbery eggs.

Building your own wormery

You will need:

A plastic food container - like the ones that are sold with lettuce inside. Make about 6 air holes in the bottom for drainage.
A couple of sheets of newspaper.
Scissors to cut the newspaper into thin shreds.
Waste food from the kitchen.
A small jar of soil.

What you do:

Fill the bottom of the plastic container with about an inch of wet shredded paper.
Sprinkle a cup of soil on the paper.
Add about 6 worms.
Add a layer of food, cut it into very small pieces.
Place a thick layer of damp newspaper over the top. This keeps in the moisture and keeps out the light.
Finally, put on the tight fitting lid.

Start off with just small amounts of food while your worms settle in. As they multiply, you can add more.

Worms really like:

Coffee grounds and wet tea bags,
fruit and vegetables peelings,
cereals, bread, and
crushed egg shells.

Worms don’t like:

Meat and fish,
fats or greasy foods,
milk, cream or cheese, and
rice, pasta, or cooked potatoes.

***** Support your plastic container on bricks inside a tray to collect any liquid that drains off. Don’t forget to keep the wormery damp and out of direct sunlight.

Why don't YOU make a wormery? :)

Try it......it's fun!

And, tonight, I read this:

Smartphones a Standard for Majority of Students by High School, Survey Finds

By Sean Cavanagh on May 2, 2013 7:00 AM

A new nationwide survey reveals the extent to which mobile devices have become an inextricable part of students' and families' lives—while also indicating that parents see potential benefits, and drawbacks, to those technology tools.

By the time they enter high school, 51 percent of all students are carrying a smartphone to school with them every day, the survey of parents shows. Nearly a quarter of all students in K-12, overall, are doing so, while 8 percent of students in grades 3-5 are bringing a smartphone to school.

It's unclear, however, whether that tech usage results in benefits for students during the school day. Just 16 percent of all K-12 parents say their children's schools allow students to use family-owned devices in classrooms.

Nearly the same portion of parents, 17 percent, said their child's school requires students to use at least one portable device or mobile device in school.

Those results suggest that "there are a significant portion of mobile devices that are just being turned off when students get to school, or are being used under the radar," Peter Grunwald, the president of Grunwald Associates LLC, told Education Week. His organization conducted the survey of parents, in coordination with the Learning First Alliance.

The survey found that parents were largely optimistic about the potential academic benefits of mobile devices. But they were also cautious about the pitfalls that come with using those tools.

Large majorities of parents believe that mobile technologies and apps can "make learning fun," teach basic tech skills, and encourage curiosity among students, the survey found. They also believe mobiles and apps have the potential to help children cultivate specific skills: 68 percent of parents surveyed, for instance, believe those tools can help teach reading skills, and the number was even higher, 79 percent, among parents of children in grades K-2.

Yet despite their belief that mobile devices have academic benefits, nearly 70 percent of the parents surveyed said the devices their children use regularly are solely for entertainment, while about 30 percent say those tools offer educational value. And 62 percent of parents said they believe mobile devices can be a distraction.

The survey was conducted by Grunwald Associates, a Bethesda, Md.-based research and consulting firm, in conjunction with the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 16 education associations, including the National PTA, American Association of School Administrators, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers.

The results were based on a nationally representative survey of parents of children ages 3-18. Data about technology ownership and usage were collected from 2,392 parents, representing 4,164 children. From that larger sample, a core group of 925 parents completed the full survey. For that core group of parents, the margin of error for survey was about 3 percent.

One of the more intriguing findings is that parents had more favorable views of the learning benefits of mobile or portable devices, if their children's schools required the use of those tools.

While Peter Grunwald told Education Week there was no way of knowing whether the schools' requirements influenced parents' views, watching educators incorporate digital learning into teaching "seems to color [parents'] perceptions about mobile learning in a positive way," the report says.

Girls are more likely than boys to be users of mobile devices, by a margin of 75 percent to 69 percent, the survey found. They were also more likely to use tablets, by a margin of 39 percent to 30 percent, than boys, and e-readers, by a margin of 16 percent to 7 percent.

That finding was largely consistent with past surveys conducted by Grunwald on technology and communication devices, said Li Kramer Halpern, a senior analyst at the organization.

At home, children and families rely on many different technologies. Seventy-seven percent of families have a least one smartphone, and 46 percent own a tablet.

Parents of high-school-age children said their families were more likely to have portable computers, MP3 players and iPod Touches. But parents of children grades 3-5 were more likely to have games, tablets, and e-readers. Parents of prekindergarten-age children were most likely to own smartphones, it found. (See a more complete breakdown of family tech ownership below.)

The takeaway is that "family ownership of technology tracks with the stages of children's development," the authors say.

And in the Sunday paper, I read this:

May 11, 2013

The Hidden World Under Our Feet

By JIM ROBBINS

HELENA, Mont.

THE world’s worrisome decline in biodiversity is well known. Some experts say we are well on our way toward the sixth great extinction and that by 2100 half of all the world’s plant and animal species may disappear.

Yet one of the most important threats to biodiversity has received little attention — though it lies under our feet.

Scientists using new analytical techniques over the last decade have found that the world’s ocean of soil is one of our largest reservoirs of biodiversity. It contains almost one-third of all living organisms, according to the European Union’s Joint Research Center, but only about 1 percent of its micro-organisms have been identified, and the relationships among those myriad life-forms is poorly understood.

Soil is the foundation on which the house of terrestrial biodiversity is built. Without robust soil ecosystems, the world’s food web would be in trouble.

To understand more, scientists recently embarked on what they call the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative to assess what is known about soil life, pinpoint where it is endangered and determine the health of the essential ecosystem services that soil provides.

They are not just looking at soil in remote, far-off landscapes. One of the more intensive studies is taking place in New York’s Central Park.

The focus is on the life that resides in the soil — the microbes, fungi, nematodes, mites and even gophers that make up a complex web of interrelationships.

A teaspoon of soil may have billions of microbes divided among 5,000 different types, thousands of species of fungi and protozoa, nematodes, mites and a couple of termite species. How these and other pieces all fit together is still largely a mystery.

“There’s a teeming organization below ground, a factory, with soil animals and microbes, each with their own role,” said Diana H. Wall, a professor of biology at Colorado State University who has studied soil biodiversity in Antarctica and Kansas over the last two decades and who is the scientific chairwoman of the soil biodiversity initiative. “A leaf falls, and earthworms and termites are constantly ripping and tearing it apart, and microbes and fungi pass the nutrients on to plants.”

Forget the term “dumb as dirt.” The complex soil ecosystem is highly evolved and sophisticated. It processes organic waste into soil. It filters and cleans much of the water we drink and the air we breathe by retaining dust and pathogens. It plays a large role in how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. Soil, with all of its organic matter, is second to the oceans as the largest carbon repository on the planet. Annual plowing, erosion and other mismanagement releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, and exacerbates climate change.

The last decade of research has overturned a key concept. For decades there was a saying among soil scientists — “everything is everywhere,” which meant that soil was largely the same across the globe. That has proved to be spectacularly untrue.

A 2003 study in the journal Ecosystems estimated that the biodiversity of nearly 5 percent of the nation’s soil was “in danger of substantial loss, or complete extinction, due to agriculture and urbanization,” though that was most likely a very conservative guess, since the planet’s soil was even more unexplored then than today, and study techniques were far less developed.

That means that species critical to some important functions could have already disappeared or be on their way out. That’s why the global soil assessment is a matter of some urgency.

There are numerous threats to soil life. Modern tillage agriculture is a big one, because it deprives soil life of organic matter it needs for food, allows it to dry out and adds pesticides, herbicides and synthetic nitrogen. Soil “sealing” from the asphalt and concrete of suburban sprawl destroys soil life, as do heavy machinery and pollution. Even long-ago insults like acid rain still take a toll on life in the soil by having made the soil more acidic.

THE problem is global. In nearly half of Africa, for example, overgrazing and intensive agriculture has destroyed topsoil and led to desertification.

Yet few things are more vital than healthy soil life. Our food supply begins in the soil. Wild plants need healthy soil to grow well, so other species can eat the leaves and seeds and fruit, and predators can eat the plant eaters.

Healthy soil can prevent human disease. Valley fever is found in the southwest United States and is caused by a fungus that becomes airborne when soil dries out and is inhaled. It is rapidly increasing. The soil system also plays what is thought to be a key, if poorly understood, role in the spread of cholera, fungal meningitis and other diseases, which live part of their life cycle in the soil.

Healthy soils also hold the cure for some diseases. Antibiotic compounds are the chemical weapons of competing soil microbes, and most of the antibiotics we use came from there. Scientists are searching soil in various places now for a new class of antibiotics to deal with antibiotic-resistant diseases. Who knows, the answer may lie underneath the fountains and sidewalks of Central Park.

New technologies that enable scientists to study the genes of soil microbes and to track microscopic amounts of carbon and nitrogen as they pass through the soil ecosystem have provided leaps in the understanding of soil ecology. But the more scientists learn, the more they realize how little they know.

Global warming will no doubt greatly compound the threats to soil biodiversity. Food security is a big concern. What will happen to crops as the earth gets warmer? Slight changes in temperatures and moisture can have profound impacts on soil, altering the composition of soil life and the types of plants that will grow. We may no longer be able, for example, to grow wheat in Kansas.

Some plants are expected to gradually migrate north to cooler climates as it warms, but others may not be able to adapt to new soil communities. “The world above ground and the world below are very tightly linked,” said Dr. Wall.

Scientists are also discovering that a healthy soil ecosystem may sustain plants naturally, without chemical inputs. “The greater the soil diversity, the fewer diseases that emerge in plants,” said Eric B. Nelson, who studies soil and disease ecology at Cornell. Insects are also deterred by plants grown in healthy soils, he said.

What can farmers and gardeners do to protect their soils? Practice no-till agriculture for one, Dr. Wall said, which means not plowing every year and allowing dead vegetation to decompose. Backyard gardeners can do the same. Avoiding synthetic chemicals is also important. Adding compost, especially worm compost, can help by making soil ecosystems more robust.

The topic is starting to get the attention it deserves. Dr. Wall was just awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, a distinguished prize that comes with $200,000 that she says plans to use for her research. “It’s showtime for soil biodiversity,” Dr. Wall said.

Jim Robbins is a frequent contributor to the Science section of The New York Times and the author of “The Man Who Planted Trees.”