My erstwhile Center for Science Outreach Associate Director Dr. Glenn McCombs has been working with teachers, students, and scientists for years in a personal mission to connect all parties to their mutual benefit and advancement. He's an outdoorsman par excellence, a gifted teacher, and a really good guy. Listen to our chat as we touch on several ongoing programs--the GAS (Girls and Science) summer camp, its corollary for boys, the BEST (Boys Exploring Science and Technology) camp, and the GK12 Program--and then listen up as he describes a couple of our new programs that we haven't featured yet on S4theB!, the RIP program and the RET program. Dontcha just love acronyms? These are research experiences programs, one for high school students and one for classroom teachers. I'm not even going to tell you what these are--you have to listen up here to find out! Pic from Glenn's 4th Grade Trail Guides website. The CSO is putting creative staff members and teacher and student collaborators to work in an all-out effort to improve the future. Download the show here, enjoy, and spread the word! ANNOUNCEMENT: If you don't see a show next week, be patient, dear pilgrim. Snacks4theBrain! is going bi-weekly and longer--somewhere between 30 minutes but not longer than an hour, every other week! The format is still being fleshed out, but I really want to provide more music, some soundseeing tours of Nashville, and some interviews of educational technology movers and shakers. There's so much going on out there and the future of technology is so intensely interwoven with the future of science and science education that I feel it's the thing to do. Dont' you? Plus, dear listener, it'll be even more fun!!!! So, starting with show number 38, it's a bigger, funner Snacks!!! As mentioned, today's music is courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network, a tasty, summery reggae tune by Austrian electronica wizard "Dreamweaver" called "Summerfeeling." Oh, yeah... Other links: Read about Glenn's Radnor Lake waterfowl study Glenn's Yosemite pictures will be here soon

S4theB! 36 features me (with a special guest star--my old pal "Homer") summarizing the rest of the programs the CSO produces and supports. It's quite a little list, ya'll; and as I mention frequently, go check out the CSO website for more detailed information, especially if you are a parent, a student, or a teacher interested in science. In my other role as Lower School Tech Coordinator for University School of Nashville, we're in the end of the year crunch. Seems like there's some school-related function every day of the week from now 'til June. Sheesh! It's hectic. Music today is provided by the Podsafe Music Network by a band(?) called Homens do Pantano from Brazil, a song called "Verdadeiro_MC." Gracias, ya'll! Download S4theB! episode number 36 here!

S4theB! 35 brings you brief descriptions of the programs created and maintained by the fine folks at the Vanderbilt University Center for Science Outreach. I'm hoping my lovely wife listens to this show and to the next, because even after my having served 5 years as the CSO's "Teacher-in-residence" I'm still pretty certain she has no idea what we really do. In many of the 34 preceding shows, I interviewed working research scientists and we sort of danced all around the goals and formats the various programs at CSO manifest. These two shows should clear things up significantly! I'm shopping for fun podsafe music to help keep things rolling, and I hope you, dear listener, find the show both informative and interesting. Download the show here! Music today from the Podsafe Music Network is a dance-trance piece called "Bang," from a band called "six six nine." Is that a California area code, ya'll?

This week I'm back to basics with an old friend, Dr. Arnold Heiser, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Vanderbilt University's Dyer Observatory. Dr. Heiser, former director of the observatory, may be retired; but he still hauls himself up to the quiet, arboreal environs of Dyer every workday to continue his research into stellar clusters and their associations and pulsating variable stars. In addition, Arnie regularly creates and delivers IVC (interactive videoconferencing) sessions with K12 classrooms worldwide, via the Center for Science Outreach's "Virtual Scientists in the Classroom" program. We had a nice chat and recorded it using Skype's "call in" feature and HotRecorder, a third-party program that does a nice job of audio capture. The resulting audio is a little noisy, but in an interesting way, I think: I for one sorta like the telephone-like sound quality. Hope you do, too. Feel free to comment here if you have your own opinion... Listen to Arnie's chat here, or click on the "Feeds" button in the left-hand sidebar to browse all past episodes of our li'l show. Music today fea!tures Israeli musician Guy David's composition, "Airwaves." Check out his work at the Podsafe Music Network! I like this piece so much I just let it play on out at the end. Fun stuff!!!