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Our future belongs to a new breed of science, technology, engineering and math talent — decidedly different minds that will use the transformative power of science and technology to advance the human condition.
In this age of escalating global challenges and accelerating technologies, how our children think is the new “currency” for innovation, research and transformative global change. Shaping these habits of mind are experience and practice. When children engage in research, they learn to explore and inquire. When they identify innovative solutions to vexing global problems, they learn to ethically resolve complexity. And when they wrestle with moral dilemmas, they learn to grapple with issues of social, economic and environmental justice. They become more agile, autonomous, improvisational, failure-resilient and in control of their own minds and behavior. They assume responsibility for shaping the nature and quality of their thinking and manifesting it in action.
We know what it takes to develop expertise and to sustain the creative imagination. Yet a chasm is growing between the collaborative, exploratory, inquiry-based and problem-centered environments essential for nurturing STEM talent, and the risk-averse and prescriptive culture and conditions of schooling. Innovation happens at the edges and intersections of disciplines. It happens when irreverent questions are asked, conventional wisdom is challenged, disruptive hypotheses are explored and possibilities of “what if” capture the imagination. Innovation also happens when it’s safe to risk, tinker and venture into unexplored territory. It is a messy, unpredictable process and it requires a learning habitat that invites experimentation and discovery, rewards invention, and encourages the often playful pursuit of often absurd questions wherever they may lead.
Our students live and learn in a digital world of global networks, intelligent machines, immersive technologies and multiuser virtual environments. In this world, learning is experiential, purposeful, self-directed and on-demand.
Expertise is multigenerational; problem-solving is collaborative; knowledge is coconstructed; boundaries are often blurred; and learning, social relationships and play converge.
In a world of unprecedented connectivity and interdependence, our nation must transform STEM education and talent development to nurture a more blended generation of STEM talent, innovation and entrepreneurial leadership. This new breed of STEM innovator fluidly integrates and navigates with-in a broad spectrum of STEM disciplines, seeds and cross-pollinates ideas, and represents a synthesis of multiple STEM domains: creative scientists and researchers, innovative engineers and inventors, designers and technology creators, and social entrepreneurs and policy strategists. To develop this next generation, the learning environment and curriculum must engage students in the modes of inquiry, problem-solving, knowledge generation and application that distinguish three fundamental STEM learning communities and ways of thinking: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Research, which develops disciplinary, interdisciplinary and inquiry-based thinking; Innovation and Design, which ignites innovation and design-based thinking; and Global Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship, which nurtures change leadership and systems-based thinking.
This integrative design moves far beyond the traditional boundaries of STEM education and situates learning in diverse locations: schools, museums, universities, NGOs, research laboratories, design and production studios, and online pavilions. It engages practitioners, scientists, researchers, designers, inventors and social entrepreneurs as colearners and teachers.
Immersing students in the real work of STEM research and inquiry, innovation and global change leadership enables them to experience what is required to be successful in each domain. Simulating a medical residency model, students spend dedicated time in each core. When ready, they focus on expanding and deepening their knowledge and practice within their preferred field of study. What is essential is that their engagement in each learning core enables them to experience and explore a range of options for contributions in STEM, and to discover what they love.
We shape the world from the inside out. The nature and quality of our thinking shape who we become, and who we become shapes the world. The future well-being, prosperity and sustainability of our nation, the global community and our planet resides in igniting and nurturing decidedly different STEM minds that can advance both the new STEM frontier and the human future. By design, we can ignite and nurture our children’s inventive genius and enable it to flourish.
Stephanie Pace Marshall is founding President and President Emerita, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and the founding President of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology. She also serves on Society for Science & the Public’s Board of Trustees. For more information visit www.imsa.edu.
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Cosmic Evolution Simplified
On Black Holes, Biosphere(s) And All Mass-Formats
A. A black future
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Without destroying the Earth, the Large Hadron Collider might help humans explore the cosmos
B. On The Origin And Nature Of Cosmic Evolution:
It Is Space-Distance, Not Space-Time.
Life's Is The Ubiquitous Cosmic Evolution Mode.
The mode of a gene's response to organism-culture's feedback signal, i.e. "replicate without change" or "replicate with change" in case of proven augmented energy constrainment by the offspring, is the mode of Life's normal evolution, which is the mode of evolution universally.
Genes' Expression Modification
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Again, the scope of of genes lifehood is not just the lifehood of genes.
Genes, and Life in general, are but one of the forms of mass, of constrained energy formats. The lifehood of genes is the foundation of the subject of evolutionary biology, which is a major component of the subject of life, which is a minute component of the subject of evolution of the universe, which is the subject for which humanity seeks a unified field theory.
Since the big-bang resolution of E/m superposition ALL the energy of the universe is destined for the galactic clusters expansion plus laying down of the gravity natrix for the eventual cosmic impansion, and ALL the mass is destined to revert to energy for these ends. The mass-to-energy reversion is resisted by the mass, this resistance being the archtype of selection for survival by all materials, including life. This resistance is due, exciting to us, to the fact that - as we know from everyday experience - formation of mass requires investment of energy, that dissipates when the mass disintegrates. And as we also know from everyday experience all energy forms other than gravity end up eventually as gravity energy. This is expected since ALL the contents of the universe are manifestations of the gravity energy freed at Inflation.
And again, a unified field theory is sought since unlike the evergrowing list of specific science/technology divisions drawn by the "scientists" trade-unions like the AAAS, the universe and Earth evolve as an integrated intertwined interrelated tangled whole and not as a collection of individual divisions.
C. Updated Physical Evolution Definition
1. Three present definitions of physical evolution, at
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- a process of change in a certain direction.
- a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in their successive generations, and also the process described by this theory.
- a process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena.
2. Suggested updated physical evolution definition, of Life's normal evolution and universal energy-mass evolution.
a theory, and the process described by it, that the whole universe changes in a progression of interrelated phenomena of mass formats attaining temporary augmented energy constraint in their successive generations with energy drained from other mass formats, to temporarily postpone, survive, reverting of their mass to the cosmic energy fueling the galactic clusters expansion.
D. Black holes of ALL sizes are constrained-energy mass formats. Like biosphere(s) they require energy to survive temporarily, to avoid as long as possible their energy used to fuel the ongoing cosmic expansion.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
Updated Life's Manifest May 2009
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Implications Of E=Total[m(1 + D)]
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Jill Skinner
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