NISE Network Blog

Joan Straumanis of NSF's Science of Learning Centers program had a neat little slide in her presentation today at the NSE Grantee's meeting at NSF. She says that research in learning shows that if your goal is getting people to learn something:

Expert explanation . . . is not as effective as
Peer explanation . . . which is not as effective as
Self explanation . . . which is not as effective as
Teaching another . . . even when that other is a computer-generated avatar

This chart says it all (click on it to see a version large enough to read):

This chart was part of Mike Roco's presentation at the 2010 NSF NSE Grantee Meeting.

The focus of today's sessions at NSF's meeting of nanoscale science and engineering grantees focuses on putting the science to practical use. First up this morning is nanomanufacturing. Mark Tuonimen from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst gave a talk about the Nanoscale Manufacturing Network and one of his images caught my imagination. This image, which comes from the draft Nano2 vision document on the next decade of nanoscale research, illustrates and idea that is sometimes referred to as a periodic table of nanoparticles.

We are reaching a limit in the future growth of computing power using current technologies because of the heat generated by packing more and more transisters onto tiny electronic chips. Nanotechnology may provide totally new techniques for computing that would solve this problem. Nanoelectronics is one of the signature intiatives identified in the National Nanotechnology Initiative strategic plan recently developed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Jennifer Pritchard of the Da Vinci Science Center raps about her NanoDays 2009 experience:

The NISE Net Network-Wide Meeting was held in San Francisco on October 26 - 28, 2010 and included a number of concurrent sessions and workshops (see the full list of workshops and sessions).  Some of the presenters and organizers have graciously offered to make their presentations, handouts, or other resources from their workshops and sessions available to the larger Network through the Nano Bite blog.  The following materials are from the Team-Based Evaluation Session led by Christine Reich and Amy Grack Nelson.

Just a few weeks ago, the NISE Net hosted its Network-Wide Meeting in San Francisco (October 26 - 28, 2010). There were three keynote talks during the first morning of the meeting, and all three presenters have graciously agreed to share their presentations with the Network here.

We didn't have room in the latest newsletter to include all the different links and interesting resources related to the 2010 Nobel Prize award for work on graphene.   If you missed it in the newsletter, or are just looking for even more graphene information, keep reading:

NCDDKeynote addresses by Andrew Maynard and Kathy Sykes at the recent Network-Wide Meeting of the NISE Net, and sessions and workshops on addressing societal, environmental, and ethical issues in connection with nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, may have left attendees looking for ideas about how to build public engagement into their program activities.