Science Cheerleader

Our own Dr. John Ohab was invited to speak at Tim O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0 conference in D.C. this week. He demonstrated how federal government agencies (the Department of Defense, in particular)  are applying social media strategies to inform and engage the public. Great job, John!

I’ve hinted at a special announcement the White House was expected to make today and here it is:

President Obama Launches “Educate to Innovate” Campaign for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (Stem) Education. This nationwide effort includes over $260 million in public-private investments to move American students to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade.

You can read the “official” White House press release on this but it’s only fair to tell you, it’s nothing but good-old safe facts. I, on the other hand, am about to fill you in on who’s REALLY behind this huge effort to improve science education. Ready? OK!

Kudos to President Obama and:

-his Office of Science and Technology Policy staff (my guess is, based on some conversations I’ve had with her, the unbelievably effective Beth Noveck had a big role in this)

-the MacArthur Foundation, (here’s hoping they support little people with big ideas, too, not just Obama-sized proposals)

-Dean Kamen (the real hero here even though he spilled red wine on my borrowed shoes)

-Jack Hidary (kindly took a break from his squash game a few weeks ago to talk me through these plans)

-The Discovery Channel (an independent production company of theirs called me Friday to talk about my family starring in a Science Family reality TVshow–not sure it’s going to fly since I don’t have one scientist in my family)

-and others I’m sure I’ve come in contact with along the way….OH! and Tim O’Reilly who seems to be taking over the world through his Gov 2.0 and Web 2.0 conferences and now it looks like his giant Maker Faire will take over the White House in May (as part of National Lab Day). THAT’s going to be cool.

From the NASA press release:
Now anyone with a Web browser can become a Martian explorer. That’s because NASA is launching a new citizen-science Web site, called “Be a Martian,” that gives people a chance to view hundreds of thousands of images gathered over decades of exploration on the Red Planet.
The site is also designed as a game with a twofold purpose: NASA and Microsoft hope it will spur interest in science and technology among students in the U.S. and around the world. It also is a “crowdsourcing” tool designed to tap visitors’ brains and help the space agency process volumes of Mars images.
“We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, director of Mars Public Outreach at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “And we’re also accomplishing something important for NASA. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important.”

“So NASA and Microsoft are combining crowd-sourcing, cloud-computing, and citizen-science, all toward aligning with a web philosophy that Tim O’Reilly calls ’small pieces loosely joined,’ ” says Microsoft’s CTO of Advanced Government Technologies, Lewis Shepherd. (more…)