The state of Illinois has a publicly funded boarding high school for exceptional students called the Illinois Math and Science Academy. I’m the kind of person that would have benefited greatly from a special advanced curriculum and the resources this school has – I was in the International Baccalaureate program and I still found it pretty easy. So I’ve kept one eyeball on IMSA, curious to find out more about it. So far, the most compelling fact I’ve found was in a comparison of Chicagoland high schools. The best high schools act (including the admissions-based magnet high schools in Chicago) had median ACT scores of 26 or 27. IMSA had a median ACT score of 32! For reference, a 36 is a perfect score and a 32 puts you in the 98th percentile.

I got my opportunity to find out more and meet some of the kids at a the first meeting of the OLPC Chicago Interest Group, hosted at Google’s Chicago office. Most of the meeting was IMSA students presenting projects that they were working on. Here are some of the projects they mentioned:

• An EKG probe, including building a general purpose signal amplifier that could be used for other probes. This included learning electrical engineering, breadboarding, and how to solder (hand burns and all!). These students expressed interest in getting their design manufactured in a more robust and inexpensive package that could be added on to OLPC orders. This would turn the XO into a tool for health management in addition to education.
• An acoustic tape measure program that measures sound pulses to determine the distance between two laptops. This program is already included on the Give One, Get One laptops.
• A clock program that will show multiple interpretations of the time, starting with digital, analog, and the position of the sun or moon in the sky. These two students are learning PyGtk for the graphics and doing this in their spare time, in addition to writing a general CAPTCHA solver for a semester project.
• A Rosetta Stone-like language acquisition program. This is in the planning stage but the intention is for it to be as much as possible in the target language so that once the software is developed, it can be easily ported to other languages. I’ve offered to help in the design and coding of this software.
• In addition to the hardware and software projects, other students were helping plan teaching and demonstration events at area schools and organizing a bulk purchase of laptops in the Chicago area.

Did I mention that these are high school kids?!? My summary doesn’t begin to convey the confidence, enthusiasm, and intelligence that these kids radiated. Just a little background on IMSA and the OLPC project: IMSA was the first (and looks like still only) high school chapter of the University program to create communities of interest around the OLPC. The other schools (9 total) include some lofty company, like Olin College, Northwestern, and Duke. The students are in touch with some of the main contributors to the project, and their project have attracted attention and support from industry experts working who are also contributing to the OLPC ecosystem.

The students I met tonight were exceptional in many ways. They’re worth keeping an eye on, and fortunately, they’re documenting their progress on their chapter wiki. For anyone who expects great things to come out of the students at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, you don’t need to wait long.

P.S. Google puts on a nice spread! If you ever have the chance to eat their food, take it!

This has been in my writing queue for over a month. As part of my resolution to write more, I thought the easiest place to start would be to flesh out the ideas that I’ve already scribbled down.

It doesn’t take an economics professor or a petroleum geologist to know that energy is a big issue in all aspects of society: technology, politics, military, economics, and social issues. And anyone who follows America’s energy policy know that it’s oriented towards resource extraction, increasing energy supply, and tax breaks for producers. Lots of people criticize this approach, but one man has risen above the debate.

Amory Lovins is a founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which does more stuff than I can even begin to summarize. The premise is that rather than viewing energy conservation as a social good or something to be done out of guilt, investment in energy efficiency can be done profitably and indeed must be done to remain competitive. Mr. Lovins charges a $40,000 speaking fee (he’s obviously not going to be at my birthday party) but thanks to the internet, you can listen to a complete 9 part lecture series he gave at Stanford. He covers energy efficiency in buildings, transportation, and industry, and the implications that this massive efficiency increase would have. Most of his claims sounds too ridiculous to even be possible, but for almost all of them he points to a real client or implementation where actual results were obtained, not just theoretical projections. It was so amazing that half the time I was either laughing out loud or my jaw was dropped in awe.

So without further ado, if you’re at all interested in the economics of energy, go to the Conversations Network and listen to all the talks in the MAP Energy Efficiency Series. It’s an amazing 10 hour investment that will change your perspective completely forever.

No sooner do I post my review of some of the shortcomings of MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, and today I see an article that Yale is providing full video courses online! No, I’m not nearly as powerful as I sound. They are starting out with 7 of their most popular classes and expanding to 30 over the next couple years. From the article:

“Diana E. E. Kleiner, Dunham Professor of the History of Art and Classics and the director of the project, noted that the full content of all the courses is now readily available online and may be accessed at the users\’ convenience. ‘We wanted everyone to be able to see and hear each lecture as if they were sitting in the classroom … We hope this ongoing project will benefit countless people around the world.'”

The 7 courses they will start with are:

• Astronomy 160: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics, with Professor Charles Bailyn
• English 310: Modern Poetry, with Professor Langdon Hammer
• Philosophy 176: Death, with Professor Shelly Kagan
• Physics 200: Fundamentals of Physics, with Professor Ramamurti Shankar
• Political Science 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy, with Professor Steven Smith
• Psychology 110: Introduction to Psychology, with Professor Paul Bloom
• Religious Studies 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), with Professor Christine Hayes

You can debate whether these schools are doing this ot of educational philanthropy or to increase brand awareness among the international and the socially conscious, but either way, it’s a great resource for everyone!

I was giddy with excitement when I first read about MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative. All of MIT’s classes online, world class knowledge free for the taking, a “Good Will Hunting” starter kit? This was right about the time that I embarked on my current quest of saw-sharpening, professional development, and re-geekification, so I thought it would consume my life for the entire foreseeable future. Well, it’s about a year later and I’ve taken my first good look at one of the courses and I’ve got a couple warnings for anyone interested in doing an OCW course themself:

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