The Synergetics of Student Success workshop is part of SyRF Systems, The Synergetic Redesigning of Fitness. SyRF Systems was created by Lorne Young and integrates the most ancient science from the East with the most recent science from the West for total mind, body and spirit fitness. This synergetic system creates innovative, realistic and practical techniques and strategies that teachers can employ to help our students achieve success both inside and outside the classroom. These strategies develop attention and focus, transform stress, improve academic and athletic performance and lead the way to the development of character including integrity, leadership, caring and compassion. Research on students in all grade levels has shown significant and measurable advances in these areas. Teachers and students describe this system as “exciting…life-changing…fun…transformative”. In this workshop participants will be actively engaged in the practice of this system and will be given the opportunity to join the expanding SyRF Systems Research team. This workshop has been presented in many schools and educational conferences across North America with future presentations during the summer 2007 in Chicago (IBNA Annual Regional Conference) New Mexico (United World College of the American West) and Toronto, Canada (Upper Canada College). For more information on this and other workshops or to view the book SyRF Systems, visit www.SyRFSystems.com or email lorne@syrfsystems.com or call Lorne at 416-523-2748

The Centre for Design promotes environmental sustainability through a directed program of research, consulting, professional development and knowledge sharing.

The Centre is recognised internationally as a leader in the development of design methods and tools that support sustainable product design. Our programs focus on sustainability and eco-efficiency as a source of innovation and responsible business development.

The Centre has access to extensive national and international networks including research centres, companies and institutions that enable the development of best practice products, buildings, services and policies.. This also keeps us informed of current policies and regulations, and the latest trends in sustainable design and innovation across all major sectors.

The Centre for Design has a strong multidisciplinary research team and access to specialist expertise and resources from within RMIT University. Collaborative projects are undertaken with industry, government and community stakeholders to develop pragmatic solutions.

The Centre for Design is based in the Faculty of the Constructed Environment at RMIT's city campus in Melbourne. RMIT is one of Australia's largest and most respected technical and design universities.

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From Lorne Young | Upper Canada College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, email | 416-488-1125 ext 3411

Content: Throughout this three-week (110 hour) integrated curriculum unit for grades 7-9 (adaptable to higher or lower grades) several general principles are emphasized and employed to maximize the benefits of an integrated unit. The systems approach, whole systems thinking and the underlying principle of synergy are the central, core concepts that all of the curricular areas will revolve around.

The following scenario is presented to the class:

The Synergetic Organization for Sustainability on Earth (SOS Earth) is recruiting/advertising for 4 individuals to make up a Research Team that will be spending 5 years on an uninhabited, ecologically sensitive island off the coast of British Columbia. The goal of this team is to be a model for the rest of the planet and to demonstrate that it is possible to live sustainably with the environment, without degrading it, for an extended period of time while doing important research on endangered species. The team must accomplish the following:

• Design a research station where the 4 team members will be able to live sustainably and self-sufficiently for the 5-year term
• Design an energy production system that will provide sufficient energy for the station
• Design a food and water production system for the 5 years
• Design a waste and recycling system
• All of this within the climatic and geographical limits of the island
• The design of the station and its components should be constructed to a realistic scale, ie research into the requirements and appropriate size of the various components is necessary

» Click here to find out more details

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

» Click here to visit Molecular Expressions

Molecularium™ is an award-winning, groundbreaking Digital-Dome animation that takes audiences on an unforgettable adventure into the nanoscale universe of molecules with an ensemble cast of animated atoms. This National Science Foundation funded project was co-written and produced by Kurt Przybilla, long time BFI member, student of Synergetics and inventor of Tetra Tops™.

The Molecularium™ Project's premiere attraction, Riding Snowflakes, is a science lesson, a thrilling ride, a musical cartoon and a magical journey into the world of atoms and molecules. Aboard the Molecularium™, audiences join an ensemble cast of atomic characters on an immersive and unforgettable adventure into the nanoscale universe. Explore billions and trillions of molecules with Oxy, a precocious young oxygen atom, and Hydro and Hydra, her hydrogen sidekicks. Fly through the structure of a snowflake in the most fantastic ship in the Universe at a digital planetarium dome near you soon.

The Molecularium™ Project is an entirely new way to learn. It is committed to promoting science literacy and awareness for children of all ages. Our goal is to create a series of unique vehicles using engaging atomic characters to fulfill this commitment.

Molecularium™ is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between scientists and artists, educators and entertainers. The first show of its kind, Molecularium™ presents accurate molecular simulations within a musical cartoon adventure. The crew of Molecularium™ draws from the talents of over 100 people from a wide range of disciplines: scientists, molecular simulators, computer animators, story and song writers, character creators, singers, actors, musicians, teachers, students, software developers, audio and video engineers, and many more.

Molecularium™ is the flagship outreach and informal education effort of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's National Science Foundation funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures.

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION OF THE MOLECULARIUM^™

Omnidirectional Projection Systems: The development of digital dome projection systems for planetaria is a recent one. Digital dome is an emerging medium that allows us to use the dome to visualize much more than space and stars. Most well known large planetaria have already installed multiple projector digital systems, but the development of single projector systems with an omnifocus lens has radically reduced cost and complexity, and created a rapidly growing number of small digital dome systems worldwide.
Omnidirectional Fisheye Lens: Molecularium^™ was developed in a digital dome with a single lens projection system. Inspired by this innovation, the Molecularium^™ team developed its counterpart: an omnidirectional fisheye lens for a virtual camera. The omnidirectional camera captures an entire immersive world in a single frame, instead of using multiple shots from different camera angles that are later stitched together, as is commonly done. This is a radical innovation, as it allows for the streamlining, ease of use, and democratization of the digital dome medium.



Molecular Simulation: The many molecular environments in "Riding Snowflakes" are derived from accurate theoretical simulations (circa 2005). Generating the molecular worlds described in the screenplay entailed a wide range of challenges in statistical mechanics, molecular modeling, and simulation. To create a truly immersive portal into the nanoscale universe, required simulations of a massive scale and complexity, an entirely unusual request for the chemical and biological engineers and scientists involved in the project. Additionally, the creation of a believable, dynamic, and cinematic molecular landscape that visualizes the plot twists and dramatic tension of the story, posed a host of new creative challenges for the collaborating scientists. Their involvement in this work has brought about insights that will hopefully spark a breakthrough in the very real worlds of energy, environment, and health.
Data Driven Animation: Translating the vast amount scientific simulation data posed unique challenges for Molecularium's^™ CG animation team. The gigantic data sets generated by the incredible numbers of atoms in most scenes required innovative procedural animation techniques to enable the computers to process and render through an omnidirectional fisheye world-view. As a result of this new hybrid of simulation and animation, we see the atomic structures of the universe as never before. Atoms and molecules are rendered with reflections, refractions, texture, color, lighting, motion blur, and atmospheric volume. They are rendered to be as believable and real as the objects that they constitute.

Be sure to check out the trailer and have fun building molecules in the Molecularium™ Project's interactive kid's website.

» Click here to visit molecularium.com



Click on the images above to check out the TetraTops™ kits in our on-line store.

See also:
» domefest.org/
» sciss.se/
» scalingtheuniverse.com/
» fulldome.org
» visualbandwidth.com
» elumenati.com
» e-planetarium.com

Purpose
To develop an understanding of our planet as a system by designing a very-long-duration space mission in which the life-support system is patterned after that of earth.

Context

This lesson was developed by Dr. Penny Firth, a scientist, and Mr. Bradley Smith, Director of the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program of the Department of Defense, as part of a set of interdisciplinary Science NetLinks lessons aimed at improved understanding of environmental phenomena and events. Some of the lessons integrate topics that cross biological, ecological, and physical concepts. Others involve elements of economics, history, anthropology, and art. Each lesson is framed by plain-language background information for the teacher and includes a selection of instructional tips and activities in the boxes.

One of the really nice things about living on earth is all of the stuff we don't have to worry about. We don't have to worry about running out of oxygen. There is always plenty of water somewhere on the planet. And where the soils and climate are right, we can find or grow ample food for ourselves. In short, the earth functions as a massive life-support system for over six billion humans as well as the trillions of other life forms that share the planet with us. Click on the Earth Observatory site for a spectacular image of earth. The "blue marble" picture is the most detailed true-color image of the planet to date.

How does our planetary life-support system work? There is no real mystery to the broad outlines of the story (although scientists continue to refine our understanding of various bits): the requirements for human life are provided by organisms and their interactions with the non-living environment. Energy from the sun powers the food webs and the water cycle and all parts of the system are interconnected. Outputs from one part of the system are inputs for another part. This linked output-input setup is often called feedback, and feedback is what keeps the system from careening out of bounds like a soccer ball. For earth, out of bounds might mean runaway global climate change (such as ice ages), or catastrophic loss of important species leading to the collapse of vital ecosystems, or wildly unusual extreme weather patterns and the consequent loss of life and property.

This lesson is entitled Spaceship Earth to reinforce the idea that our planet is — in reality — like a spaceship hurtling through space on a long-duration mission. There is no resupply from outside sources. Recycling is as much a part of the natural order of things as is the sunrise everyday. Pollution occurs when there are outputs that cannot be used as inputs for something else. Pollution is harmful and can be downright dangerous. The connections between parts of the natural system are imperative to its normal operation. By actively thinking through what it takes to keep people alive on a spaceship, the students will come to understand more fully what it takes to keep people alive on this planet.

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Bonnie DeVarco

Education Innovation is a "4-part overview of Buckminster Fuller's approaches to Education and their intersection with Education Technology on the leading edge in the new millenium." | Copyright 2002, Bonnie Goldstein DeVarco. All rights reserved.

The article appears on the author's website as part of Media Tertia, an extensive digital portfolio of work dedicated to "emerging technologies in education." The site includes 2 important essays about Fuller: "Life, Facts & Artifacts" and which are both featured in the PBS Thinking Out Loud companion website to the American Masters Special on Buckminster Fuller which debuted in 1996). Also included, is Ms Devarco's seminal 1997 digital work; "Invisible Architecture - The NanoWorld of Buckminster Fuller" (1997), in which Ms. Devarco places Fuller "into a contemporary context by juxtaposing the relevance of his ideas to some of the newest technological advances of the latter part of this century - including the newest work on buckminsterfullerene and nanotechnology."




Emerging Technologies in Education

Bonnie DeVarco regularly writes and lectures on emerging technologies in education, virtual worlds, next generation geographic information systems, information visualization and the culture of cyberspace. She is currently Senior Researcher and Project Coordinator for the NSF funded Interactive Earth 2 Project, a next generation interactive for Earth Systems Science led by WorldLink Media, TERC, NASA Goddard and the World Resources Institute (WRI). And for the past five years, she developed and co-directed LinkWorld, a 3D multi-user world for high school students, as part of the Borderlink Project, a federally funded Technology Innovation Challenge Grant. Through Planetwork.org, Telascience.org and other non profit organizations and educational institutions, Ms. DeVarco leads efforts to research, explore and develop new opportunities for telecollaboration, visualization, education and environmental action using advanced satellite and network technologies, visualization and open source tools.

Ms. DeVarco has served as an education technology consultant to non-profit, corporate and educational organizations for the past 16 years (this list includes PBS, Stanford University, the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, San Diego and James Burke's Knowledge Web, UC Santa Cruz, UCOP, Smithsonian Institute, DigitalSpace and others). She has helped develop multi-institutional programs for distance and media enhanced learning for the University of California Office of the President and the K-12 as a research and development consultant for the UC College Prep Initiative, one of the first statewide virtual high school programs since 1998.

As a member of the Board of Directors for the Contact Consortium, Ms. DeVarco founded the VLearn3D initiative in 1998. Vlearn3D is an international networking hub for educators using multi-user environments to enhance the learning process. She has regularly produced educational events in cyberspace and in distributed physical locations through Vlearn3D.org, UC Santa Cruz's "Tech Innovation" program, UCLA, the Los Angeles Festival, Telascience and the Buckminster Fuller Institute. From 1989 to 1995 she was chief archivist for the Buckminster Fuller Archives, recently acquired by Stanford University.

» Click here to read the entire Education Innovation article online

from YESMag | Canada' Science Magazine for Kids

The "GEODESIC CLUBHOUSE" project is quickly proving to be our most popular! We often get comments about how much fun families have had building and playing in their own geodesic dome. We think this is wonderful and encourage anyone doing this project to take photos and write us about your dome experience. You can send them to us via email.

So far about 23 photo illustrated dome project stories have been posted to the site.

» Click here to visit the Geodesic Clubhouse website

A group of designers in Minneapolis has created an online training program for sustainable design.In particular, classes are offered in Innovation (starts Jan. 30th), Mapping with GIS (starts Jan 30th) and Systems Thinking (summer session). The innovation and systems classes use Bucky's design principles along with biomimicry.
» Click here to find out more