Issue Date: 11 / 2009

Igniting a Chain Reaction of Learning

Cover of an issue of the innovative science education magazine Chain Reaction. Courtesy of Chain Reaction / Arizona State University        The information deluge is here. It surrounds us. Depending on your level of technology immersion, each day brings a new rush of e-mail, voice mail, video clips, podcasts, tweets and twitters and bits and bytes of every flavor. But only a fraction of this ever growing information tsunami is necessarily equal to real knowledge. To avoid being drowned by the waves of advertising and marketing mumbo jumbo, or crushed by the spam avalanche, we must learn to become savvy information consumers. Being a good reader helps speed the process.                STOP. Read the last sentence again. What are the most important words that you see? Nope, not speed or process. I say the most important words are “good reader.” Every story is built with words and sentences and paragraphs. The writer is the human translation mechanism who must put those words together in coherent form to make the information readable. But the user, the reader, must be skilled enough to decipher the message to make the information contained in those words meaningful, if not enjoyable.                Reading. It’s all about reading. And readers. Don’t lose the human factor. We can’t forget the readers. Reading must be taught early. It is a skill that should be continuously honed throughout a lifetime. Laptops and Blackberries and iPhones and other assorted bits of technology are only tools that are used to help the reader, not the end point.                I’ve been an editor, science writer, and children’s author for more than 30 years. As an editor, I take my role as an information gatekeeper seriously. As a science writer, I do my best to present stories that do not drown my readers in a sticky goo of esoteric jargon and technical gobbledygook. As a children’s author, I’ve learned the incredible importance and power of words. When the message is limited to only a few words or a handful of sentences and paragraphs, the writer’s job becomes all the more important. Writing for young readers is the most difficult, and rewarding, writing that I’ve ever done.                Which brings me to the point of this essay. (Wow…that was a long winded intro that used lots of words). Ten years ago, my staff and I at Arizona State University created a science magazine and Web site for young readers. It’s called Chain Reaction.                Building Chain Reaction                Each issue of Chain Reaction is based on a scientific topic or theme. Those topics are chosen to match the science standards required to be taught at Arizona elementary and middle schools. Our goal was to demystify science for young readers. To do that, we knew we had to write stories that are fun to read. Of course, fun stories would not be enough. To grab and hold onto the individual members of generations that have become increasingly visual, the stories would have to be presented with an engaging design spiced with lots of colorful, interesting images. The basic idea was to create a four-color, well written, glossy magazine for young readers that would be distributed FREE to teachers and students at schools across Arizona. It would be the Weekly Reader of my youth transmogrified into a colorful annual magazine that kids could read and keep.                At ASU, we cannot and do not depend on regular mass media outlets to tell our stories. We know that bad news is free. It will always be free. But good news comes with a price. Either you buy advertising to totally control your message. Or you hope that traditional news media will get the story somewhat correct. The best way to share good news is to create your own media outlets and take the story direct to the audience. Chain Reaction was the first publication of its kind produced by a university specifically for young readers…and still is, as far as I know.                Why create a university-based publication for kids focused on research and creative activity? The question should be -- Why not? The day-to-day work of scientists and scholars, interesting as it may be, is hard pressed to compete for space or airtime with murder, mayhem, greed, and public corruption. We live in the media era of “If it bleeds, it leads.” Sensationalism rules. It’s been that way for decades. But we also know that information and knowledge is most valuable when it is shared. Sharing knowledge with younger readers can increase that value. For us, Chain Reaction has become a means to share interesting stories of science and scholarship with young readers without having to rely on the press to do the job.                Creating the magazine, and its companion Web site, was not easy. Most of the education gurus at ASU did not get the concept. We were told by a committee of faculty members and administrators: “You are journalists. You don’t know educational pedagogy. It won’t work.” That is the moment when I knew for sure that it would work. We did not want Chain Reaction to be about “pedagogy” or “paradigms” or any other bit of academic jabberwocky. We wanted it to be an interesting magazine for young readers. There’s that important word again -- “readers.”                We wanted to tell stories. We wanted to make reading about science fun. Teachers could take our stories and fit them into lesson plans if they so chose. Our goal with Chain Reaction was to create a publication for readers. Luckily, we had a boss who believed in the vision. Robert Barnhill was Vice President for Research at ASU in 1999. He provided the funds and support necessary to create the first issue. It focused on weather topics. We printed 20,000 copies. They were gone in just over a month. The Chain Reaction of learning was ignited.                Maintaining the magazine in print form, and creating new issues, has been even more difficult. Of course, it’s always about the money. Especially in academia. Only five new issues have been published to date. We’ve written about weather, Sonoran Desert plants and creatures, the solar system, urban ecology, and biotechnology. However, every one of those issues has been revised and reprinted many times. To date, more than one million total copies of Chain Reaction have been distributed to readers around the world, including more than 400,000 copies of our Sonoran Desert Creatures issue alone in three different iterations.                You may have noticed that word FREE several paragraphs back. Yep. It’s true. The magazine is distributed free of charge to all who request a copy. Teachers at schools across Arizona can get a classroom set of 30 copies, enough for each student to have his or her own magazine. This is important. I’ve found that many students come from homes that have no books at all, or any other type of reading material. I loved taking home the copy of Weekly Reader when I was a kid. It was mine. I got to keep it and read it at my leisure. We wanted students to feel that same way about Chain Reaction. After 10 years in print, the magazine now reaches readers in all 50 states and 14 countries. We recently mailed classroom sets of our new, revised Weather issue to more than 3,500 teachers and their 120,000 students.                Money, fiscal reality, and other hurdles                To date, funding for new issues of Chain Reaction has been provided by indirect cost recovery funds. Every research grant or contract that ASU receives includes overhead money. A fraction of one percent of those federal funds is the budget used to tell the stories of research. And a fraction of that went to fund Chain Reaction. At least, it used to. Unfortunately, fiscal reality has slammed ASU upside the ivory tower as it has other institutions of higher learning. There no longer is sustained funding to produce new editions of Chain Reaction on an annual basis. For now, a new publication will be produced only when a funding sponsor can be found.                Our audience remains loyal. Requests for copies pour in every day. Teachers share with their colleagues. Students share with mom and dad. It’s our ability to deliver fresh content that is in jeopardy. Ironic. Now, when concern is rising about the falling level of science literacy in America, and the level of literacy in general, it seems that publications like Chain Reaction should be more important than ever. The latest issue of Chain Reaction deals with the study of weather. The magazine has just been awarded the "Best of the West" Gold Medal for excellence by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Courtesy Chain Reaction / Arizona State University                Important how? Consider this. ASU draws most of its student base from Arizona high schools. As a result, Chain Reaction provides an avenue through which potential students and their parents are exposed early in their school lives to the quality and variety of research taking place at the university. In addition, Chain Reaction expands ASU's involvement in the community by providing an educational resource to local schools, parents, and home school educators. Teachers and students benefit from having a high quality teaching tool -- free of charge -- that ties directly to the science standards established by the Arizona Department of Education. The publication acts as a “scholarly passport” to ASU, promoting the accessibility of other available ASU resources for teachers, students, and their parents.                Critics will shout that we need to save the money and save the trees. Print is dead. I disagree. I know that print is far from dead. And Internet-only publications are not the end-all, be-all answer. We need both. That is why Chain Reaction has always been available in both print and in electronic form. We don’t want to hasten the growth of a society that appears to be dividing rapidly into “information haves” and “information have-nots.” We will find a way around the funding conundrum, I hope. Our goal is to keep the Chain Reaction of learning and reading going, even it is takes place one school, one teacher, and one young reader at a time.                Keeping the Chain Reaction growing                Chain Reaction is highly valued for what it is -- a free, high-quality publication that introduces kids, at a young age, to real science. It is being used in other ways as well. Teachers use Chain Reaction as a tool for teaching non-fiction reading and writing skills. Because the publication is so visually appealing, it captures the interest of even the youngest readers. Kindergarten teachers report using it in team reading exercises. Teachers have older students read stories to younger children. High school teachers use the magazine to work with underperforming students and for those who read below their grade level.                Topics for possible future issues of Chain Reaction include renewable energy, global climate change, nanotechnology; health, nutrition, and exercise science; environmental science; archaeology/Southwest anthropology; and cosmology/astronomy. We are limited only by our ability to translate complex subjects into readable stories, and the funding support to do the work.                I know that by providing a highly effective teaching/learning tool at no cost, Chain Reaction is helping Arizona teachers prepare students to become more scientifically literate and informed citizens. I’ve seen it work. I know, because I’ve hand delivered tens of thousands of copies to schools across the Southwest. Our society exists in an era that promises to be more and more technologically focused. Chain Reaction is fuel for the intellectual curiosity of those talented students who will become our next generation of scientific leaders ... not to mention, good readers.                Postscript                In early October, judges for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District 7’s annual Awards of Excellence Program proclaimed "Chain Reaction 6 – Weather" winner of the Gold Medal “Best of the West” Award of Excellence for special constituent magazines. District 7 includes all the private and public universities, colleges, and specialty schools and academies in the Western United States -- California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, and Hawaii.                Information                To learn more about ASU’s Chain Reaction magazine for young readers, or to subscribe, visit online at chainreaction.asu.edu A newly designed Web site will be ready for visitors in mid November 2009.         Conrad J. Storad is director of the Office of Research Communications at Arizona State University. He is also the author of more than thirty science and nature books for children and young adults, including 'Rattlesnake Rules' published by Little Five Star / Five Star publications. A storyteller, Storad speaks to young people at schools around the country.