Less Than 3 Weeks Left!

Summer's Coming!

Let the countdown begin- we are less than 3 weeks away from the glories of summer vacation! Less than 3 weeks until the school doors close and kids come home eager for an unforgettable summer of opportunities.

Still scrambling to make your plans? Icamps across Greater Boston are filling up fast, but there’s still time to save your child’s seat and join us for our 5th season of story-telling, movie-making, building, playing and learning at icamp.

To register for icamp in Westborough, Concord, Weston, Belmont, Needham, Lexington, or Newton visit our website or call us at 617-395-7527.

Check It Out!
The Record:Artists explore the cultural significance of vinyl records at the ICA in the exhibit The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl. Works include a 16 foot canoe made of records and famous album cover art. Full details can be found on the exhibit website.

Programs at Mount Auburn Cemetery: On June 14th visitors can take a tour of the park and describe how various plants have changed and survived over time. Also on the Mount Auburn Cemetery calendar is a tour of the Egyptian Revival Monuments, and a program featuring the circles and spirals that occur in nature. View their full June schedule on the website.

Science Images: The International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge awards creative depictions of scientific concepts and themes. You can see some of the amazing images that have won in past years on our blog.

Artificial Intelligence: While it’s still not perfect, artificial intelligence is advancing and becoming more and more prevalent on the web. Read our blog post to learn more about chat bots and virtual humans.

Fall Planning

Sure, we’re excited about summer. But we’re also planning ahead and getting our schedule ready for fall! Library workshops, after-school clubs, in-class academic programs, and special events are on our radar. If you’re like us and starting to plan your calendar for the next academic year, learn more about available programs by emailing info@ctwboston.com, or calling us at 617-395-7527.

Chatting with Computers

Turing tests have received a lot of attention lately thanks to Brian Christian and his new book, The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. The book describes Christian’s experience participating in the Loebner Prize competition, a contest that awards the computer program that most accurately replicates human interaction. Contests such as these are designed to advance AI technology, the goal being a program that provides responses indistinguishable from those of a human and can therefore be considered to be thinking.

It may sound like science-fiction, but such programs are actually being used more and more on the web. Companies like Ikea are using virtual assistants on their websites to help customers, virtual humans that respond to perceived human emotions are used for training medical students and law enforcement, and a variety of chat bots that are designed to replicate human conversation can be found online.

Want to see a chat bot in action? Talk with Suzette, winner of the 2010 Loebner Prize (registration required) or the 2008 winner Elbot (no registration needed).

Science Through Image

Words are only one medium by which to think about scientific concepts, and many scientific minds utilize multiple intelligences to work through their ideas. Even Einstein used visualization exercises to work through thought experiments, imagining himself chasing a beam of light to consider ideas of relativity.

Recognizing that language is only one way to describe scientific phenomena, the National Science Foundation and the publication Science developed the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (ISEVC). Since 2003, ISEVC has awarded prizes in four categories: Photography, Illustrations, Informational Posters and Graphics, and Interactive Games and Non-Interactive Media. The 2010 winners include a 3D illustration of HIV, a video tracking where individual pieces of garbage travel after you throw them out, and a colorful Introduction to Fungi poster.

You can review all the winning entries and honorable mentions from 2010 and past Challenges on the National Science Foundation website, but here are a few eye-popping highlights.

Kuens Surface: A Meditation on Euclid, Lobachevsky and Quantum Fields; 2009 First Place Illustration Winner

Save Our Earth. Let's Go Green. (self-assembling polymers); 2009 First Place Photography Winner

String Vibrations, 2009 Honorable Mention in Photography

What Lies Behind Our Nose? (3D image looking upward at the sinuses from underneath the head); 2007 First Place Photography Winner

Workshops and Science Festivals

Simple Machines Workshop
Trapeze artists, lion tamers and silly clowns make the circus entertaining, but levers, inclined planes and other simple machines make the circus educational.

In our Simple Machines in-class workshop, second grade students are challenged to solve problems around the Big Top by building models of simple machines. In the process they'll also create their own simple machine story books to take home and share what they've learned. (Do you know which simple machine will help raise the flag?)

Interested in bringing one of our creative academic workshops to your classroom? Call 617-395-7527 or email info@ctwboston.com for more information.

Check It Out!
Cambridge Science Festival: The annual celebration of science is underway with activities running through May 8th. Lectures, workshops, art performances, and other events for people of all ages are scheduled. CTWBoston will be there- visit the official website to see the complete line up.

Arnold Arboretum: Spring flowers are in bloom, and the Arnold Arboretum is celebrating with Lilac Sunday on May 8th, with free family events, tours, and performances planned. The Arboretum is also screening a documentary and discussion of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted designed parks across the country, including Boston’s Emerald Necklace and New York’s Central Park. Registration (and $10) is required for to attend; register at the Arboretum website.

Stumble Upon: Sifting through the giant haystack of search engines like Google to find relevant websites can take more time and patience than it’s sometimes worth. Visit our blog post to learn how Stumble Upon can help reduce the hassle.

Kerpoof: Tell a story, make a picture, make a card or make a movie on this website for kids. Learn more on our blog.

Upcoming Icamps
Save your child's seat soon! Register for icamp in Wellesley, Westborough, Concord, Weston, Belmont, Needham, Lexington (only 2 seats left!), and Newton. See the full schedule of dates and locations on our website.