Help with troubling epub validation?

ashopis · 02-20-2015, 03:23 PM

Hello,

I'm attempting to publish my book on Smashwords and have run into validation errors. I got the attached message through validator.idpf.org/

How do I find and fix this error? I created the ePub using Scrivener, if that helps.

Thanks a ton.

-Adam

AlexBell · 02-20-2015, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ashopis

Hello,

I'm attempting to publish my book on Smashwords and have run into validation errors. I got the attached message through validator.idpf.org/

How do I find and fix this error? I created the ePub using Scrivener, if that helps.

Thanks a ton.

-Adam

Could you give us the XHTML of lines 66-69 and 72-75 please? I know nothing about Scrivener, but my best guess is that you have <ul> ... </li> in both places. If I remember rightly <ul>...</ul> is not allowed in ePub2 anyway.

dgatwood · 02-20-2015, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Could you give us the XHTML of lines 66-69 and 72-75 please? I know nothing about Scrivener, but my best guess is that you have <ul> ... </li> in both places. If I remember rightly <ul>...</ul> is not allowed in ePub2 anyway.

AFAIK, EPUB 2 supports all xhtml 1.1 tags, including <ul>.

Toxaris · 02-21-2015, 02:20 AM

The tag is fully supported of course. It is just to indicate that it is an unordered list after all. Correct syntax would be something like this:

Code:

<ul>
<li>first list item</li>
<li>second list item</li>
<li>third list item</li>
</ul>

As you can see, the list items must be enclosed in the <ul></ul> tags. Also, don't forget to close the list items. I know that HTML gets away with it, as the renderers close it for you, but XHTML is more strict.

ashopis · 02-21-2015, 07:21 AM

Here are the first couple hundred lines of the html. I'm not sure I converted it correctly from Scrivener and it's pretty much gobledy-gook to me.

Any help would be awesome!

-Adam

P.S. I can't upload the html document as an attachment so I copied and pasted it below. I've also taken a screenshot of the only portion of the file that seems to contain "li" and "ul" tags. They are at lines 49-52 and 61-63.

---------------------------

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<title>Why Science Fair Sucks and How You Can Save It_Cover_SW</title>
<meta name="Author" content="teacher ">
<meta name="CreationTime" content="2015-02-21T11:41:14Z">
<meta name="ModificationTime" content="2015-02-21T11:41:14Z">
<meta name="Generator" content="Cocoa HTML Writer">
<meta name="CocoaVersion" content="1265.21">
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin}
p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px}
p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px}
p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin}
p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 15.0px Optima}
p.p6 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px}
p.p7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Optima}
p.p8 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p10 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p11 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p12 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p13 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p14 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p15 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 11.0px Optima}
p.p16 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima; color: #323333}
p.p17 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p18 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p19 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p20 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p21 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px}
p.p22 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px}
p.p23 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p24 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p25 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p26 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
p.p27 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 14.0px Optima}
p.p28 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px}
p.p29 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima}
p.p30 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 14.0px Optima}
p.p31 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 11.0px Optima; min-height: 13.0px}
p.p32 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria}
p.p33 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria; min-height: 15.0px}
p.p34 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria; color: #0433ff}
p.p35 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 16.0px}
p.p36 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #0433ff}
li.li9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima}
li.li12 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima}
li.li28 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px}
li.li29 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima}
span.s1 {color: #000000}
span.s2 {font: 9.0px Optima}
span.s3 {text-decoration: underline}
span.s4 {font: 12.0px Helvetica}
span.s5 {font: 13.0px Cambria; text-decoration: underline}
span.s6 {font: 13.0px Cambria; color: #000000}
span.s7 {font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; text-decoration: underline}
span.s8 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #0433ff}
ol.ol1 {list-style-type: decimal}
ul.ul1 {list-style-type: hyphen}
ul.ul2 {list-style-type: disc}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div style="width: 600px; margin: 0 auto">

<a id="doc39"></a>
 
Why Science Fair Sucks and How You Can Save It
By Adam Shopis
Smashwords Edition
 
Copyright © 2014 by Adam Shopis*
All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this ebook.*
You are welcome to share it with your friends.*
This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for*
non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains*
in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return*
to your favorite ebook retailer to discover*
other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
 
 
 
<hr>
<a id="doc38"></a>Dedication
 
 
 
 
for Tracy, Laryssa and Liz
<hr>
<a id="doc55"></a>Who Should Read This Book
 
 
I wrote this book entirely from my perspective as a seventh grade science teacher. So my thinking about the type of student and the level of complexity revolves around the middle school age range. Furthermore, the lesson outlines, rubrics, and other items in the appendix represent artifacts from my seventh grade classroom.*
However, the book definitely has applicability beyond the middle school grades. After all, Science Fair sucks no matter what grade you teach. Moreover, the basic premise we used to save Science Fair in my grade can be applied to elementary and high school grades alike.
I recommend you read the book and use what works for you. Every teacher works in different circumstances. Some teachers’ schedules may not allow for complete application of the process described in the book. Moreover, the amount of team level work might not be possible given the organizational structure of some schools. However, once again, the basic premise used to transform Science Fair from a fiasco in which little education takes place into a rigorous learning experience can be applied, at its core, in most any classroom.
<hr>
<a id="doc6"></a>1. Why Science Fair Sucks
 
 
Preamble
 
Science Fair came into my teaching life on my very first day as a teacher. Three weeks before the start of that first year of school, I’d been called in for a planning session. I sat around a table with other teachers brainstorming ideas for the brand new sixth grade that was being added to the school’s original k-5 span. Chart paper with diagrams, word webs, and sticky notes hung on the walls like ancient peeling wallpaper. They outlined ways to make the transition to a middle school program, and contained ideas for new types of learning students could do now that they advanced beyond their elementary years.
We had a large task and my principal had assembled an experienced team to confront it. The team consisted mostly of seasoned teachers chosen from the current school staff plus me: the new science guy. My background in informal science education at a science museum helped a bit, but didn’t prepare me for the huge work of formal teaching (not to mention building a science program from the ground up). So, when it came my turn to stand up and offer ideas for the new science program I said, “How about a science fair?”
Those words would come back to haunt me in the form of hours and years of tedious, frustrating, unsuccessful work added to an already challenging curriculum. However, it seemed simple at the time. What’s the big deal? Pick a question. Test it out. Put the results on a tri-fold poster board. A pretty simple assignment, right?
I heard that. Yes, I heard you chuckling at that last statement. In the twelve years since that first day of planning, I’ve come to realize exactly what you now know. According to Global Language Monitor, there are 1,013,913 words in the English language. Any one of them would be a more apt description for Science Fair than the word “simple.”
 
 
Why it’s not “simple”
 
Let’s get a definition of Science Fair going. For me, Science Fair consists of a series of pieces. First, there’s the project. For Science Fair, students conduct an independent, at-home, scientific experiment. The experiment tasks the students with putting together many steps including, stating a testable question, researching the question, making a hypothesis, designing an investigation (an experimental procedure), conducting their experiment and gathering data, analyzing and organizing the data (usually as graphs/tables), drawing a conclusion, writing it all up in a lab report, and finally creating a visual display board that summarizes their whole experiment.
The next part of the Science Fair experience happens on the day of the fair itself. On this day students “dress for success,” set up their tri-fold boards and wait while judges make their way through all the projects. Finally, the science staff announces the winners. For many, that concludes Science Fair. In some districts, the winners may go on to compete at a higher district or state level.
That whole experience from giving the assignment, to the back and forth of rough drafts/feedback/final drafts of each piece to presentation day is what I’m calling “Science Fair.” Phew. It’s a lot for us science teachers to wrap our minds around. Imagine the reactions of the kids!
The first time around, many teachers (myself included), write up all the steps in a directions pack, give out the assignment, and wait to see what comes back. Does this sound familiar? My first year I allotted many weeks for students to complete the assignment, thinking they’d work on it gradually over time. I’m not sure why I expected this. All I needed to do was to think back on my own school project experiences to realize that no one would start until a few days before it was due.*
This became apparent as I checked in with students about the project along the way. Not only did most put it off, but the few who had shown initiative and got their project rolling had serious flaws in virtually every aspect of their experiment. They had devised untestable questions, with inappropriate hypotheses, and irrelevant procedures unlikely to get them any data at all not to mention relevant data. As I worked with individual students, I began to see that the Science Fair train sped along the tracks at ridiculous speed heading exactly for a giant cliff. I wanted to hit the breaks or slow down, but that option did not exist. School schedules had been set, rooms had been booked, and judges had put in for time off from their real jobs to come in for fair day.*
The inevitable happened. The train, heading for a cliff at incredible speed, did exactly what all things do when confronted with gravity and altitude. It plummeted to a fiery wreck of baking soda volcanoes, moldy bread, and unanswered (unanswerable) questions.*
That year (and just about every year since then) my efforts in Science Fair represented the hardest work I’d ever done with the worst payoff. However, a weird thing happened the next day, after that first fair. I received hearty congratulations from many colleagues and my principal. It almost made me feel that I had accomplished something. Almost. I had read all the reports and assessed all the tri-fold boards. I had seen the train wreck. I knew the reality. Does this sound familiar? Have you conducted the Science Fair train off the cliff…more than once? I definitely have.
Just to be clear, there were a handful of excellent projects. Some of the students received significant support at home and had a lot of help puzzling through the many steps of the assignment. These kids represented the extreme minority. Furthermore, by the time Science Fair rolls around, I already had an idea of which kids received such support at home. In an urban setting such as where I teach, significant at-home involvement occurs much less frequently than we would all hope. So, each year I could pretty much predict which students would win the Science Fair before I even gave the assignment. Obviously, this raises serious equity issues. Fear not, my ultimate solution goes a long way to solve this problem.*
What is it about Science Fair that makes it such a train wreck year after year? After all students do projects in most of their other classes all the time. They write papers on novels in Language Arts. They research historical figures in social studies. They measure and redesign the school playground in math. Those trains seem to arrive safely at their designated stations. Why does the science train always seem to veer uncontrollably toward the tallest cliff on the line?
Let’s look at the first thing students must do for their Science Fair project: pick a question. Each student receives the task of choosing a question that he or she will answer by doing* an experiment. We encourage them to choose a question on a topic that interests them. For me, the array of questions that they end up choosing has usually indicated a severe need for support. However, it’s not support that can be delivered like a typical lesson to the whole class. Indeed, because all students have chosen their own questions on a variety of topics, representing different levels of complexity, each student requires specific individual support. A few comments on a passed back sheet of paper will not do the trick. They need real planning, formative assessing, and scaffolding. They need teaching…not just feedback. The level of individuation goes beyond mere differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction occurs when students are grappling with the same content and have different needs. For Science Fair, because of the level of unique teaching required, the correct model for doing this is individual tutoring, not whole class teaching. This actually occurs with those few students who have significant support at home. For most, the feedback we give them will not do the trick. They never revise their questions to a form that can lead to a successful experiment.
In short, the task of assigning a question that can be tested on a topic of their choosing is too big. It’s not really an assignment. It’s 28 different assignments per class. Each student gets a different assignment and requires a unique set of lessons tailored exactly to them to support their progress. Since the whole project will spring from this question, it’s pretty much doomed from the start.*
Then students move on to doing background research. I require students to do library or internet research on their topic. The idea is that by doing this research they’ll gain knowledge on their topic so that they can make a more informed hypothesis.*
Here’s what I learned my first year: students don’t know how to do research. What came back were random “facts” they found from places like “Yahoo Answers,” and “eHow.com.” Much of their research was irrelevant and all of it was poorly cited. Many students cited “Google.com” as a source. Ugh. It became very clear to me that first year, that students would not complete successful background research without a series of dedicated lessons on the topic. However, the train had left the station and picked up more speed each day. I tried to help with as much individual feedback as possible. This train, though, had a lot of inertia.*
*Something like this repeats for every step of the project. After a couple years doing this, the pattern became clear. Students complete a step in the process. I see the amount of individual support needed. I give as much as I can. It’s not nearly enough. Train rolls off the cliff. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis, another great Science Fair.” Seriously?
Perhaps this pattern looks familiar to you. It’s not like we don’t try to get that train to its station. We work many, many hours on providing support and feedback. It’s just never enough.*
The consequences are severe. We and our students spend huge amounts of time on this endeavor and we get two results: bad scientific process and bad scientific content. Their experiences with designing an experiment do not prepare them for doing it again the next year. Their new teacher will basically start from scratch. Moreover, no one cares which bar of soap floats and which one sinks. That’s irrelevant, non-standards based content. Everybody loses. Yet we always get that congratulations and we do it again: year after year.
There is an answer, though. It’s coming up soon enough. Now that I’ve broken down why Science Fair fails a bit, I’m going to delve into what we often try to do to fix it, why that also fails, and how to reorganize to make it all work.*
<hr>
<a id="doc7"></a>2. Why Our Solutions Suck
 
 
Solution 1: The Science Fair Packet
 
If you’ve worked as a teacher for more than five years, you represent about half of all the teachers who started when you did. The work seemed insurmountable, but you plowed through it one lesson plan, one stack of exams, one high stakes test at a time. You persevered. You are one of the few who didn’t give up and go to business school because the job of educating children seemed impossible. Of course you applied this tenacity to Science Fair, just like you did to every other challenge you faced.
Why, even after years of working harder to make Science Fair better, does it still suck? Let’s look at some of the solutions that I applied to the problem. In my second and third year of teaching, I realized that students needed way more support than I had provided to conclude a successful Science Fair project. I saw that students hadn’t really wrapped their minds around the whole endeavor. I needed to create a much more explicitly stated assignment with clear goals and complete directions for reaching them.*
So, each of those years I strove to give them a more thoroughly defined assignment with better directions. I broke down the assignment into more discrete chunks. Moreover, I wrote elaborate and detailed descriptions for each part or the assignment. The instructions included a section for the question, a section for the hypothesis, procedure, all the way to how to put together the final report and Science Fair board. Each section had a description that varied in length from one paragraph to more than a page. I tried to think of every question students might have and include information about it in the directions.*
I also provided ample information about how I would assess the project. I included a rubric for each section of the project as well as an overall rubric. I explicitly stated my expectation for each section and outlined what students would need to do to meet that expectation.*
In addition, I included timelines. The packet had a timeline for several of the individual sections and for the project as a whole. I imagined that students could use the timelines to pace themselves so they could digest and complete the chunks of the project gradually over time. These timelines also included checklists so students could keep track of what they’d done and what they still had to do.
Moreover, I included links to web resources. I had done thorough searches of Science Fair resources on the internet. Some sources had breakdowns of different parts of the project. Some included links to exemplar Science Fair projects. Some web sites provided more explanation for the different parts of the project. A few even had tutorial videos. All of these links and descriptions of what students would find at each one were outlined in the directions packet.
The result: a packet of directions with ever-increasing thickness. If I couldn’t give them actual, personal, one-on-one tutoring, then perhaps I could think of all the support I would give them and include it in a written document. They could read it, and refer to it all throughout their project. What could go wrong? Wink.
To say the projects that resulted did not represent a significant improvement sugarcoats it. In some ways giving a giant packet of elaborate directions made no difference or made it worse. Too many directions, with too many parts and too many words all turn into noise at some point. It was almost like handing students a thick science textbook and saying “Here you go. Learn.” No teacher would ever teach that way because no student learns that way. Students cannot teach a whole science curriculum to themselves. A few students muddled through the packet and only came back with more questions than in previous years. The giant packet with explanations, rubrics, and timetables flopped. It also wasted huge amounts of paper and I became persona non grata in the copy room as teachers lined up waiting for my double sided, stapled giant packets to finish.
In subsequent years, I tried breaking the packet apart. I thought giving them the directions one chunk at a time might make it seem more doable. This improved things a little but did not address the central problem: they needed the individual support. Super elaborate written directions could not replace that, even in tiny chunks. Moreover, this piecemeal approach had the effect of extending the timeline and threatening completion by Science Fair day.
 
 
 
Solution 2: Bring It Into the Classroom
 
So, if the giant packet of instructions to be completed at home didn’t work, the next logical step is to do more work in class. This would allow some group instruction on writing testable questions, and designing procedures. So, when they gave it a stab at home, it would not be a stab in the dark.
I began with a small number of lessons around writing testable questions. I tried to keep the number of lessons to a bare minimum. After all, I was also teaching a unit on Weather during this time. Every day I spent on Science Fair meant subtracting a lesson from the Weather Unit. I taught the lessons, assessed student work, and gave as much feedback as possible.
This seemed like a reasonable solution. Science Fair is a big project. Students would need instruction on it. Spending a little class time on Science Fair seemed warranted and would result in better projects. Students would get more out of the endeavor. Problem solved, right?
Here’s how it went. The first year I did this, I realized that I hadn’t spent NEARLY enough in-class time on it. The improvements I saw in students’ projects were miniscule. They needed much more instruction than the few lessons I had devised. By the time the Science Fair day rolled around the projects looked essentially the same. Train wreck. “Congratulations on another great Science Fair, Mr. Shopis.”
The next year I determined to do better. I carved out more time from the Weather unit. I wedged in a few more lessons. We did more drafting and revising. Then when Science Fair day came…wait for it…train wreck. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.”
I began to despair. I did not want to set my students up for failure as I clearly had done. I would do better next year. I think you see where this approach is going. Each year I devoted more and more class time to Science Fair. The results were very tiny improvements in Science Fair projects and student learning. I enlisted the help of the other teachers on my team. At first one lesson’s worth of time. This expanded to days and weeks. Science Fair threatened to take over everything. It was like a gas. It would expand to fill any container I tried to put it in…no matter the size. The integrity of the Weather unit began to crack and shatter. The teaching of English, history, and math became compromised as all the classrooms became cluttered with tri-fold boards, cut out construction paper, glue sticks, and glitter. That little idea I had put forth on my first day as a teacher had become a monster that threatened to eat my classroom, maybe my school if we let it.
<hr>
<a id="doc53"></a>3. Why Science Fair Sucks for Kids
 
 
Science Fair sucks for kids, even with my “solutions.” First and foremost, it sucks because they don’t learn anything. Each year I worked closely with the teacher who taught seventh and eighth grade science. Even though she taught the exact same kids I had taught the year before, she had to start teaching Science Fair all over again…beginning with creating testable questions. When she got the same kids again in eighth grade, the same pattern persisted. The kids remembered doing Science Fair. They may even remember which brands of soap sink and which float. However, they had not advanced in their scientific thinking and the scientific method.*
Tragically, this renders moot the whole purpose of Science Fair. Science Fair is supposed to give kids experiences in the process of science. My current supervisor has a T-shirt hanging on her door that says “Science Is a Verb.” Science Fair is supposed to be an experience where students get to do science, not just gain understanding of scientific content. Science Fair failed to teach them science process.
Additionally, the students learned irrelevant or even erroneous content. Once again, who really cares which brands of soap float and which sink? The vast majority of topics did not connect to standards assessed in our state high stakes test. Moreover, students’ nascent expertise on writing experimental procedures often would not provide them with anything like reliable data. So students would proudly declare that adding orange juice to soil helped their lima beans grow. Yikes.
The bottom line for kids is that Science Fair teaches bad process and bad content. The process part is taught again and again to seeming no avail. The content at best does not derive from state standards and at worst is just wrong! It’s a one two punch leaving both the Teacher and Student knocked out. Yet, each year after rising off the mat… “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.” Eventually, I started feeling like the fictional character Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Science fair also sucks for kids because not only do they learn very little from it, but it compromises the part of science class where they do learn: the normal day-by-day curriculum. Each year I kept spending more and more class time on Science Fair. School was (and is) a zero sum game. I had a total of 180 days to deliver instruction on an array of state standards. Each day I spent on Science Fair subtracted one from that total number. As I tried to improve Science Fair each year, the number dwindled further and further.
The result: I taught less content each year. I began to evaluate which pieces of the curriculum could go and which couldn’t. Each year I removed a girder here, a rivet there from the scaffolding that supported their content knowledge. The increasing shakiness of the final structure became obvious very quickly. It showed up in classwork, quizzes, tests, and other assessments. Moreover, our state test results inched downward. (By the way, when we fixed Science Fair, we fixed this problem, too. More on that later.)
In addition to teaching them little and compromising the rest of the curriculum, Science Fair turned kids off to science. This represented a severe irony because part of the reasoning behind the project was to give students an opportunity to pursue something they were personally interested it. It was supposed to be the one time of the year where they became super-engaged because it was their own topic!*
The opposite was true. Even though I spent ever-increasing amounts of class time on Science Fair, it was never enough. I could never provide the students with the tutoring model of teaching required by this type of assignment. Students became lost, frustrated, resigned to failure. They hated Science Fair. Students who were marginally interested in science, turned away from it completely. Other students decided they only liked science when they watched it on the Discovery Channel but doing it themselves sucked. The few students who did learn a lot from the project and whose curiosity was fed rather than squashed were, predictably, the kids who had a lot of support at home. These kids got the tutoring they needed.
Science Fair has created a whole additional level of suck for students and even for the future of our country. Science Fair discouraged kids from taking more science courses. I now teach in a school that spans grades seven through twelfth. So I have the opportunity to follow students over six years until they go to college. Science Fair discouraged kids from taking more science on two levels. First, it convinced them that they didn’t like science. “If this is science, then no thank you,” the thinking goes. This represents a severe shame bordering on crime. As Carl Sagan said, “Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.” Science Fair was the bat used in the beating.
Additionally, the students who did manage to “trickle through” to the upper grades sometimes avoided taking elective science classes. Students found the cool “Biomedical Research” class offered to Juniors and Seniors an interesting offering. Guess what question they wondered about when contemplating taking this new class? “Do I have to do Science Fair?”
The U.S. Department of Commerce indicates that over the past decade jobs in Science and Technology have outpaced job growth in other sectors by three-to-one and pay twenty-six percent more. Moreover, this job growth in Science and Technology will double in the next decade. We need to stop turning kids off to science and start encouraging them to take more science. Giving them a shot at a career in science provides them with a path to the middle class. This is especially important for poorer kids. Moreover, if we don’t train the next generation of scientists in this country, another country will. America will become less competitive, less innovative and less growth oriented in the future. It’s kind of amazing how much suck can come from one little assignment. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.”
The negative effect on students represents the most troubling aspect of Science Fair. However, Science Fair sucks for teachers as well. Spending more and more time working through Science Fair meant less and less time teaching my regular curriculum. Through the regular curriculum, I provided students with daily inquiry experiences that brought them up to rigorous state standards. However, with Science Fair absorbing more and more of my class time, I accomplished this less and less every year. I needed more time on curriculum, not less.
I also got an increasing annual sense of bashing my head against the wall. Teachers who make it past their fifth year do not fear long, grueling hours of work. However, we despair when that work accomplishes little. I look for ways to work “smarter not harder.” Putting more and more work into Science Fair resulted in the opposite.*
Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Fellow science teacher, I have developed a hypothesis about us: We’re all nuts. Each year we plunge head first into this endeavor called Science Fair and hope it will work this time. It doesn’t. It never will…at least not if we keep doing the same thing . The solution I’ll offer you in this book embraces the following radical proposition: do it differently.*
 
 
 
1. U.S. Department of Commerce. STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future. By David Langdon, George McKittrick, David Beede, Beethika Khan, and Mark Doms. Available at: http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/stemfinalyjuly14_1.pdf
<hr>

</body>
</html>

Toxaris · 02-21-2015, 11:37 AM

Is this output from Scrivener? It is awful! Isn't there a possibility to export to ePUB with an external stylesheet? This is unmaintainable.

There are multiple things wrong with this file. It is generated by Cocoa HTML Writer it seems, but XHTML is not the same as HTML. There are differences and that is what is causing the errors here. There are issues with the meta tags and also in the text with things like instead of . In XHTML all tags must be closed, either with an end tag or auto close for tags that do not have an end tag, like br, img, hr and others.

What is your exact work procedure, because this is not a valid ePUB in any way.

DaleDe · 02-21-2015, 11:45 AM

It looks like the author did not use styles in the source. GIGO The word processor is being used like a typewriter.

Dale

odedta · 02-21-2015, 01:21 PM

I'M BLIND!!!

dgatwood · 02-21-2015, 10:12 PM

You can fix a multitude of HTML sins with:

xmllint --html inputfilename.html --xmlout > outputfilename.xhtml

YMMV, of course.

Notjohn · 02-22-2015, 06:16 AM

Well, very early on I see this line in the style sheet:

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin}

I think it's a bad idea to use absolute dimensions in an e-book, and a very bad idea to specify the size and fact of the font. Were you planning to embed Cochin? Not all e-book readers support embedded fonts, and of those that do, many owners of them prefer to specify their own choice of font.

I too would like to know how this file was built. Scrivener is supposed to be a book-writing program as well as a book-formatting program. Did you use the program's built-in styling / formatting tools?

JSWolf · 02-22-2015, 07:49 PM

That code is CRAP! Please put it in a spoiler tag so we don't go blind looking at it.

DO NOT publish that mess. It's awful! Just say this to yourself...YOUR FIRED!

PeterT · 02-22-2015, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That code is CRAP! Please put it in a spoiler tag so we don't go blind looking at it.

DO NOT publish that mess. It's awful! Just say this to yourself...YOUR FIRED!

Too late. I find that book at various eBook stores.

JSWolf · 02-22-2015, 08:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterT

Too late. I find that book at various eBook stores.

Well, then, I think we should go give it poor reviews all over the net at every place it's sold. It's not going to work on Kobo Readers because of the px font sizes. It's a freaking mess and the author doesn't care that it's crap and won't work for a large number of people. Also, I expect the font size not to be changeable in a lot of programs/Readers.

dgatwood · 02-26-2015, 03:08 AM

It looks suspiciously like the output from TextEdit's RTF to HTML code. At a minimum, yes, you need to replace pixels with em units. Ordinarily, I would suggest combining rules and specifying multiple rules on paragraphs as needed, except that if you're producing for Kindle, that's likely to break things badly, so....

Anyway, here's a quick first pass at changing px sizes to em sizes.

Code:

<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Cochin}
p.p2 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Cochin; min-height: 1.063em}
p.p3 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Cochin; min-height: 1.063em}
p.p4 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Cochin}
p.p5 {margin: 0 0 .75em 0; text-align: center; font: 0.938em Optima}
p.p6 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Optima; min-height: 1.063em}
p.p7 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.875em Optima}
p.p8 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p9 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p10 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p11 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p12 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p13 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p14 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p15 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-indent: 1.125em; font: .688em Optima}
p.p16 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; font: 0.813em Optima; color: #323333}
p.p17 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; text-indent: 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p18 {margin: 0 0 0 2.572em; text-indent: -2.572em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p19 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p20 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p21 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; font: 0.875em Cochin; min-height: 1.063em}
p.p22 {margin: 0 0 0 0}
p.p23 {margin: 0 0 0 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p24 {margin: 0 0 0 1.125em; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p25 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em Optima; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p26 {margin: 0 0 0 2.572em; text-align: justify; text-indent: -2.572em; font: 0.813em Optima}
p.p27 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.875em Optima}
p.p28 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.875em Optima; min-height: 1.063em}
p.p29 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.875em Optima}
p.p30 {margin: 0 0 0 2.572em; text-indent: -2.572em; font: 0.875em Optima}
p.p31 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1.125em; font: .688em Optima; min-height: 0.813em}
p.p32 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em Cambria}
p.p33 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em Cambria; min-height: 0.938em}
p.p34 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em Cambria; color: #0433ff}
p.p35 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 1em}
p.p36 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: center; font: 0.813em 'Times New Roman'; color: #0433ff}
li.li9 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.813em Optima}
li.li12 {margin: 0 0 0 0; text-align: justify; font: 0.813em Optima}
li.li28 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.875em Optima; min-height: 1.063em}
li.li29 {margin: 0 0 0 0; font: 0.875em Optima}
span.s1 {color: #000000}
span.s2 {font: .563em Optima}
span.s3 {text-decoration: underline}
span.s4 {font: .75em Helvetica}
span.s5 {font: 0.813em Cambria; text-decoration: underline}
span.s6 {font: 0.813em Cambria; color: #000000}
span.s7 {font: 0.813em 'Times New Roman'; text-decoration: underline}
span.s8 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #0433ff}
ol.ol1 {list-style-type: decimal}
ul.ul1 {list-style-type: hyphen}
ul.ul2 {list-style-type: disc}
</style>

dickloraine · 02-26-2015, 07:06 AM

Do you have word? If you have, you could use toxaris word-addin to produce an epub. Of course you would first need to clean up the formating of your book with styles. If you have no knowledge about that, I could give you a simple word template to get you started. It would take some time to manualy apply the styles, but not more than to eliminate all the errors you will get with your file now. Toxaris add-in will produce a very clean valid epub. Getting used to styles will also help you, if you plan to write additional books. It is really simple and much faster than manual styling, after you createtd the styles you need. And you get an easy to convert, easy to change formating etc. book.

02-20-2015, 03:23 PM	#1
ashopis Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2015 Device: iPad	Help with troubling epub validation? Hello, I'm attempting to publish my book on Smashwords and have run into validation errors. I got the attached message through validator.idpf.org/ How do I find and fix this error? I created the ePub using Scrivener, if that helps. Thanks a ton. -Adam Attached Thumbnails

02-21-2015, 02:20 AM	#4
Toxaris Wizard Posts: 4,520 Karma: 121692313 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Heemskerk, NL Device: PRS-T1, Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura	The tag is fully supported of course. It is just to indicate that it is an unordered list after all. Correct syntax would be something like this: Code: <ul> <li>first list item</li> <li>second list item</li> <li>third list item</li> </ul> As you can see, the list items must be enclosed in the <ul></ul> tags. Also, don't forget to close the list items. I know that HTML gets away with it, as the renderers close it for you, but XHTML is more strict.

02-21-2015, 07:21 AM	#5
ashopis Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2015 Device: iPad	Here are the first couple hundred lines of the html. I'm not sure I converted it correctly from Scrivener and it's pretty much gobledy-gook to me. Any help would be awesome! -Adam P.S. I can't upload the html document as an attachment so I copied and pasted it below. I've also taken a screenshot of the only portion of the file that seems to contain "li" and "ul" tags. They are at lines 49-52 and 61-63. --------------------------- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <title>Why Science Fair Sucks and How You Can Save It_Cover_SW</title> <meta name="Author" content="teacher "> <meta name="CreationTime" content="2015-02-21T11:41:14Z"> <meta name="ModificationTime" content="2015-02-21T11:41:14Z"> <meta name="Generator" content="Cocoa HTML Writer"> <meta name="CocoaVersion" content="1265.21"> <style type="text/css"> p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin} p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 15.0px Optima} p.p6 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px} p.p7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Optima} p.p8 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p10 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p11 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p12 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p13 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p14 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p15 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 11.0px Optima} p.p16 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima; color: #323333} p.p17 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p18 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p19 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p20 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p21 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 14.0px Cochin; min-height: 17.0px} p.p22 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px} p.p23 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p24 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p25 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Optima; min-height: 15.0px} p.p26 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} p.p27 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 14.0px Optima} p.p28 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px} p.p29 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima} p.p30 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 14.0px Optima} p.p31 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 11.0px Optima; min-height: 13.0px} p.p32 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria} p.p33 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria; min-height: 15.0px} p.p34 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px Cambria; color: #0433ff} p.p35 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 16.0px} p.p36 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #0433ff} li.li9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Optima} li.li12 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Optima} li.li28 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima; min-height: 17.0px} li.li29 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Optima} span.s1 {color: #000000} span.s2 {font: 9.0px Optima} span.s3 {text-decoration: underline} span.s4 {font: 12.0px Helvetica} span.s5 {font: 13.0px Cambria; text-decoration: underline} span.s6 {font: 13.0px Cambria; color: #000000} span.s7 {font: 13.0px 'Times New Roman'; text-decoration: underline} span.s8 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #0433ff} ol.ol1 {list-style-type: decimal} ul.ul1 {list-style-type: hyphen} ul.ul2 {list-style-type: disc} </style> </head> <body> <div style="width: 600px; margin: 0 auto"> <p class="p1"><a id="doc39"></a></p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p1"><b>Why Science Fair Sucks and How You Can Save It</b></p> <p class="p1">By Adam Shopis</p> <p class="p1">Smashwords Edition</p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p1">Copyright © 2014 by Adam Shopis<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this ebook.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">You are welcome to share it with your friends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">to your favorite ebook retailer to discover<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p1">other works by this author. Thank you for your support.</p> <p class="p2"><br></p> <p class="p3"><br></p> <p class="p3"><br></p> <hr> <p class="p5"><b><i><a id="doc38"></a>Dedication</i></b></p> <p class="p6"><br></p> <p class="p6"><br></p> <p class="p6"><br></p> <p class="p6"><br></p> <p class="p7">for Tracy, Laryssa and Liz</p> <hr> <p class="p5"><b><i><a id="doc55"></a>Who Should Read This Book</i></b></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p9">I wrote this book entirely from my perspective as a seventh grade science teacher. So my thinking about the type of student and the level of complexity revolves around the middle school age range. Furthermore, the lesson outlines, rubrics, and other items in the appendix represent artifacts from my seventh grade classroom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p10">However, the book definitely has applicability beyond the middle school grades. After all, Science Fair sucks no matter what grade you teach. Moreover, the basic premise we used to save Science Fair in my grade can be applied to elementary and high school grades alike.</p> <p class="p10">I recommend you read the book and use what works for you. Every teacher works in different circumstances. Some teachers’ schedules may not allow for complete application of the process described in the book. Moreover, the amount of team level work might not be possible given the organizational structure of some schools. However, once again, the basic premise used to transform Science Fair from a fiasco in which little education takes place into a rigorous learning experience can be applied, at its core, in most any classroom.</p> <hr> <p class="p5"><b><i><a id="doc6"></a>1. Why Science Fair Sucks</i></b></p> <p class="p11"><b></b><br></p> <p class="p11"><b></b><br></p> <p class="p12"><b>Preamble</b></p> <p class="p13"><b></b><br></p> <p class="p12">Science Fair came into my teaching life on my very first day as a teacher. Three weeks before the start of that first year of school, I’d been called in for a planning session. I sat around a table with other teachers brainstorming ideas for the brand new sixth grade that was being added to the school’s original k-5 span. Chart paper with diagrams, word webs, and sticky notes hung on the walls like ancient peeling wallpaper. They outlined ways to make the transition to a middle school program, and contained ideas for new types of learning students could do now that they advanced beyond their elementary years.</p> <p class="p14">We had a large task and my principal had assembled an experienced team to confront it. The team consisted mostly of seasoned teachers chosen from the current school staff plus me: the new science guy. My background in informal science education at a science museum helped a bit, but didn’t prepare me for the huge work of formal teaching (not to mention building a science program from the ground up). So, when it came my turn to stand up and offer ideas for the new science program I said, “How about a science fair?”</p> <p class="p14">Those words would come back to haunt me in the form of hours and years of tedious, frustrating, unsuccessful work added to an already challenging curriculum. However, it seemed simple at the time. What’s the big deal? Pick a question. Test it out. Put the results on a tri-fold poster board. A pretty simple assignment, right?</p> <p class="p14">I heard that. Yes, I heard you chuckling at that last statement. In the twelve years since that first day of planning, I’ve come to realize exactly what you now know. According to Global Language Monitor, there are 1,013,913 words in the English language. Any one of them would be a more apt description for Science Fair than the word “simple.”</p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p14"><b>Why it’s not “simple”</b></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p14">Let’s get a definition of Science Fair going. For me, Science Fair consists of a series of pieces. First, there’s the project. For Science Fair, students conduct an independent, at-home, scientific experiment. The experiment tasks the students with putting together many steps including, stating a testable question, researching the question, making a hypothesis, designing an investigation (an experimental procedure), conducting their experiment and gathering data, analyzing and organizing the data (usually as graphs/tables), drawing a conclusion, writing it all up in a lab report, and finally creating a visual display board that summarizes their whole experiment.</p> <p class="p14">The next part of the Science Fair experience happens on the day of the fair itself. On this day students “dress for success,” set up their tri-fold boards and wait while judges make their way through all the projects. Finally, the science staff announces the winners. For many, that concludes Science Fair. In some districts, the winners may go on to compete at a higher district or state level.</p> <p class="p14">That whole experience from giving the assignment, to the back and forth of rough drafts/feedback/final drafts of each piece to presentation day is what I’m calling “Science Fair.” <i>Phew</i>. It’s a lot for us science teachers to wrap our minds around. Imagine the reactions of the kids!</p> <p class="p14">The first time around, many teachers (myself included), write up all the steps in a directions pack, give out the assignment, and wait to see what comes back. Does this sound familiar? My first year I allotted many weeks for students to complete the assignment, thinking they’d work on it gradually over time. I’m not sure why I expected this. All I needed to do was to think back on my own school project experiences to realize that no one would start until a few days before it was due.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">This became apparent as I checked in with students about the project along the way. Not only did most put it off, but the few who had shown initiative and got their project rolling had serious flaws in virtually every aspect of their experiment. They had devised untestable questions, with inappropriate hypotheses, and irrelevant procedures unlikely to get them any data at all not to mention relevant data. As I worked with individual students, I began to see that the Science Fair train sped along the tracks at ridiculous speed heading exactly for a giant cliff. I wanted to hit the breaks or slow down, but that option did not exist. School schedules had been set, rooms had been booked, and judges had put in for time off from their real jobs to come in for fair day.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">The inevitable happened. The train, heading for a cliff at incredible speed, did exactly what all things do when confronted with gravity and altitude. It plummeted to a fiery wreck of baking soda volcanoes, moldy bread, and unanswered (unanswerable) questions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">That year (and just about every year since then) my efforts in Science Fair represented the hardest work I’d ever done with the worst payoff. However, a weird thing happened the next day, after that first fair. I received hearty congratulations from many colleagues and my principal. It almost made me feel that I had accomplished something. Almost. I had read all the reports and assessed all the tri-fold boards. I had seen the train wreck. I knew the reality. Does this sound familiar? Have you conducted the Science Fair train off the cliff…more than once? I definitely have.</p> <p class="p14">Just to be clear, there were a handful of excellent projects. Some of the students received significant support at home and had a lot of help puzzling through the many steps of the assignment. These kids represented the extreme minority. Furthermore, by the time Science Fair rolls around, I already had an idea of which kids received such support at home. In an urban setting such as where I teach, significant at-home involvement occurs much less frequently than we would all hope. So, each year I could pretty much predict which students would win the Science Fair before I even gave the assignment. Obviously, this raises serious equity issues. Fear not, my ultimate solution goes a long way to solve this problem.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">What is it about Science Fair that makes it such a train wreck year after year? After all students do projects in most of their other classes all the time. They write papers on novels in Language Arts. They research historical figures in social studies. They measure and redesign the school playground in math. Those trains seem to arrive safely at their designated stations. Why does the science train always seem to veer uncontrollably toward the tallest cliff on the line?</p> <p class="p14">Let’s look at the first thing students must do for their Science Fair project: pick a question. Each student receives the task of choosing a question that he or she will answer by doing<span class="Apple-converted-space">* </span>an experiment. We encourage them to choose a question on a topic that interests them. For me, the array of questions that they end up choosing has usually indicated a severe need for support. However, it’s not support that can be delivered like a typical lesson to the whole class. Indeed, because all students have chosen their own questions on a variety of topics, representing different levels of complexity, each student requires specific individual support. A few comments on a passed back sheet of paper will not do the trick. They need real planning, formative assessing, and scaffolding. They need teaching…not just feedback. The level of individuation goes beyond mere differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction occurs when students are grappling with the same content and have different needs. For Science Fair, because of the level of unique teaching required, the correct model for doing this is individual tutoring, not whole class teaching. This actually occurs with those few students who have significant support at home. For most, the feedback we give them will not do the trick. They never revise their questions to a form that can lead to a successful experiment.</p> <p class="p14">In short, the task of assigning a question that can be tested on a topic of their choosing is too big. It’s not really an assignment. It’s 28 different assignments per class. Each student gets a different assignment and requires a unique set of lessons tailored exactly to them to support their progress. Since the whole project will spring from this question, it’s pretty much doomed from the start.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">Then students move on to doing background research. I require students to do library or internet research on their topic. The idea is that by doing this research they’ll gain knowledge on their topic so that they can make a more informed hypothesis.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">Here’s what I learned my first year: students don’t know how to do research. What came back were random “facts” they found from places like “Yahoo Answers,” and “eHow.com.” Much of their research was irrelevant and all of it was poorly cited. Many students cited “Google.com” as a source. <i>Ugh</i>. It became very clear to me that first year, that students would not complete successful background research without a series of dedicated lessons on the topic. However, the train had left the station and picked up more speed each day. I tried to help with as much individual feedback as possible. This train, though, had a lot of inertia.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14"><span class="Apple-converted-space"></span>Something like this repeats for every step of the project. After a couple years doing this, the pattern became clear. Students complete a step in the process. I see the amount of individual support needed. I give as much as I can. It’s not nearly enough. Train rolls off the cliff. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis, another great Science Fair.” <i>Seriously</i>?</p> <p class="p14">Perhaps this pattern looks familiar to you. It’s not like we don’t try to get that train to its station. We work many, many hours on providing support and feedback. It’s just never enough.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">The consequences are severe. We and our students spend huge amounts of time on this endeavor and we get two results: bad scientific process and bad scientific content. Their experiences with designing an experiment do not prepare them for doing it again the next year. Their new teacher will basically start from scratch. Moreover, no one cares which bar of soap floats and which one sinks. That’s irrelevant, non-standards based content. Everybody loses. Yet we always get that congratulations and we do it again: year after year.</p> <p class="p14">There is an answer, though. It’s coming up soon enough. Now that I’ve broken down why Science Fair fails a bit, I’m going to delve into what we often try to do to fix it, why that also fails, and how to reorganize to make it all work.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <hr> <p class="p5"><b><i><a id="doc7"></a>2. Why Our Solutions Suck</i></b></p> <p class="p11"><b></b><br></p> <p class="p11"><b></b><br></p> <p class="p12"><b>Solution 1: The Science Fair Packet</b></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p12">If you’ve worked as a teacher for more than five years, you represent about half of all the teachers who started when you did. The work seemed insurmountable, but you plowed through it one lesson plan, one stack of exams, one high stakes test at a time. You persevered. You are one of the few who didn’t give up and go to business school because the job of educating children seemed impossible. Of course you applied this tenacity to Science Fair, just like you did to every other challenge you faced.</p> <p class="p14">Why, even after years of working harder to make Science Fair better, does it still suck? Let’s look at some of the solutions that I applied to the problem. In my second and third year of teaching, I realized that students needed way more support than I had provided to conclude a successful Science Fair project. I saw that students hadn’t really wrapped their minds around the whole endeavor. I needed to create a much more explicitly stated assignment with clear goals and complete directions for reaching them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">So, each of those years I strove to give them a more thoroughly defined assignment with better directions. I broke down the assignment into more discrete chunks. Moreover, I wrote elaborate and detailed descriptions for each part or the assignment. The instructions included a section for the question, a section for the hypothesis, procedure, all the way to how to put together the final report and Science Fair board. Each section had a description that varied in length from one paragraph to more than a page. I tried to think of every question students might have and include information about it in the directions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">I also provided ample information about how I would assess the project. I included a rubric for each section of the project as well as an overall rubric. I explicitly stated my expectation for each section and outlined what students would need to do to meet that expectation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p14">In addition, I included timelines. The packet had a timeline for several of the individual sections and for the project as a whole. I imagined that students could use the timelines to pace themselves so they could digest and complete the chunks of the project gradually over time. These timelines also included checklists so students could keep track of what they’d done and what they still had to do.</p> <p class="p14">Moreover, I included links to web resources. I had done thorough searches of Science Fair resources on the internet. Some sources had breakdowns of different parts of the project. Some included links to exemplar Science Fair projects. Some web sites provided more explanation for the different parts of the project. A few even had tutorial videos. All of these links and descriptions of what students would find at each one were outlined in the directions packet.</p> <p class="p14">The result: a packet of directions with ever-increasing thickness. If I couldn’t give them actual, personal, one-on-one tutoring, then perhaps I could think of all the support I would give them and include it in a written document. They could read it, and refer to it all throughout their project. What could go wrong? <i>Wink.</i></p> <p class="p14">To say the projects that resulted did not represent a significant improvement sugarcoats it. In some ways giving a giant packet of elaborate directions made no difference or made it worse. Too many directions, with too many parts and too many words all turn into noise at some point. It was almost like handing students a thick science textbook and saying “Here you go. Learn.” No teacher would ever teach that way because no student learns that way. Students cannot teach a whole science curriculum to themselves. A few students muddled through the packet and only came back with more questions than in previous years. The giant packet with explanations, rubrics, and timetables flopped. It also wasted huge amounts of paper and I became persona non grata in the copy room as teachers lined up waiting for my double sided, stapled giant packets to finish.</p> <p class="p14">In subsequent years, I tried breaking the packet apart. I thought giving them the directions one chunk at a time might make it seem more doable. This improved things a little but did not address the central problem: they needed the individual support. Super elaborate written directions could not replace that, even in tiny chunks. Moreover, this piecemeal approach had the effect of extending the timeline and threatening completion by Science Fair day.</p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p14"><b>Solution 2: Bring It Into the Classroom</b></p> <p class="p13"><br></p> <p class="p14">So, if the giant packet of instructions to be completed at home didn’t work, the next logical step is to do more work in class. This would allow some group instruction on writing testable questions, and designing procedures. So, when they gave it a stab at home, it would not be a stab in the dark.</p> <p class="p14">I began with a small number of lessons around writing testable questions. I tried to keep the number of lessons to a bare minimum. After all, I was also teaching a unit on Weather during this time. Every day I spent on Science Fair meant subtracting a lesson from the Weather Unit. I taught the lessons, assessed student work, and gave as much feedback as possible.</p> <p class="p14">This seemed like a reasonable solution. Science Fair is a big project. Students would need instruction on it. Spending a little class time on Science Fair seemed warranted and would result in better projects. Students would get more out of the endeavor. Problem solved, right?</p> <p class="p14">Here’s how it went. The first year I did this, I realized that I hadn’t spent NEARLY enough in-class time on it. The improvements I saw in students’ projects were miniscule. They needed much more instruction than the few lessons I had devised. By the time the Science Fair day rolled around the projects looked essentially the same. Train wreck. “Congratulations on another great Science Fair, Mr. Shopis.”</p> <p class="p14">The next year I determined to do better. I carved out more time from the Weather unit. I wedged in a few more lessons. We did more drafting and revising. Then when Science Fair day came…wait for it…train wreck. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.”</p> <p class="p14">I began to despair. I did not want to set my students up for failure as I clearly had done. I would do better next year. I think you see where this approach is going. Each year I devoted more and more class time to Science Fair. The results were very tiny improvements in Science Fair projects and student learning. I enlisted the help of the other teachers on my team. At first one lesson’s worth of time. This expanded to days and weeks. Science Fair threatened to take over everything. It was like a gas. It would expand to fill any container I tried to put it in…no matter the size. The integrity of the Weather unit began to crack and shatter. The teaching of English, history, and math became compromised as all the classrooms became cluttered with tri-fold boards, cut out construction paper, glue sticks, and glitter. That little idea I had put forth on my first day as a teacher had become a monster that threatened to eat my classroom, maybe my school if we let it.</p> <hr> <p class="p5"><b><i><a id="doc53"></a>3. Why Science Fair Sucks for Kids</i></b></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p9">Science Fair sucks for kids, even with my “solutions.” First and foremost, it sucks because they don’t learn anything. Each year I worked closely with the teacher who taught seventh and eighth grade science. Even though she taught the exact same kids I had taught the year before, she had to start teaching Science Fair all over again…beginning with creating testable questions. When she got the same kids again in eighth grade, the same pattern persisted. The kids remembered doing Science Fair. They may even remember which brands of soap sink and which float. However, they had not advanced in their scientific thinking and the scientific method.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p10">Tragically, this renders moot the whole purpose of Science Fair. Science Fair is supposed to give kids experiences in the process of science. My current supervisor has a T-shirt hanging on her door that says “Science Is a Verb.” Science Fair is supposed to be an experience where students get to do science, not just gain understanding of scientific content. Science Fair failed to teach them science process.</p> <p class="p10">Additionally, the students learned irrelevant or even erroneous content. Once again, who really cares which brands of soap float and which sink? The vast majority of topics did not connect to standards assessed in our state high stakes test. Moreover, students’ nascent expertise on writing experimental procedures often would not provide them with anything like reliable data. So students would proudly declare that adding orange juice to soil helped their lima beans grow. Yikes.</p> <p class="p10">The bottom line for kids is that Science Fair teaches bad process and bad content. The process part is taught again and again to seeming no avail. The content at best does not derive from state standards and at worst is just wrong! It’s a one two punch leaving both the Teacher and Student knocked out. Yet, each year after rising off the mat… “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.” Eventually, I started feeling like the fictional character Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”</p> <p class="p10">Science fair also sucks for kids because not only do they learn very little from it, but it compromises the part of science class where they do learn: the normal day-by-day curriculum. Each year I kept spending more and more class time on Science Fair. School was (and is) a zero sum game. I had a total of 180 days to deliver instruction on an array of state standards. Each day I spent on Science Fair subtracted one from that total number. As I tried to improve Science Fair each year, the number dwindled further and further.</p> <p class="p10">The result: I taught less content each year. I began to evaluate which pieces of the curriculum could go and which couldn’t. Each year I removed a girder here, a rivet there from the scaffolding that supported their content knowledge. The increasing shakiness of the final structure became obvious very quickly. It showed up in classwork, quizzes, tests, and other assessments. Moreover, our state test results inched downward. (By the way, when we fixed Science Fair, we fixed this problem, too. More on that later.)</p> <p class="p10">In addition to teaching them little and compromising the rest of the curriculum, Science Fair turned kids off to science. This represented a severe irony because part of the reasoning behind the project was to give students an opportunity to pursue something they were personally interested it. It was supposed to be the one time of the year where they became super-engaged because it was their own topic!<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p10">The opposite was true. Even though I spent ever-increasing amounts of class time on Science Fair, it was never enough. I could never provide the students with the tutoring model of teaching required by this type of assignment. Students became lost, frustrated, resigned to failure. They hated Science Fair. Students who were marginally interested in science, turned away from it completely. Other students decided they only liked science when they watched it on the Discovery Channel but doing it themselves sucked. The few students who did learn a lot from the project and whose curiosity was fed rather than squashed were, predictably, the kids who had a lot of support at home. These kids got the tutoring they needed.</p> <p class="p10">Science Fair has created a whole additional level of suck for students and even for the future of our country. Science Fair discouraged kids from taking more science courses. I now teach in a school that spans grades seven through twelfth. So I have the opportunity to follow students over six years until they go to college. Science Fair discouraged kids from taking more science on two levels. First, it convinced them that they didn’t like science. “If this is science, then no thank you,” the thinking goes. This represents a severe shame bordering on crime. As Carl Sagan said, “Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.” Science Fair was the bat used in the beating.</p> <p class="p10">Additionally, the students who did manage to “trickle through” to the upper grades sometimes avoided taking elective science classes. Students found the cool “Biomedical Research” class offered to Juniors and Seniors an interesting offering. Guess what question they wondered about when contemplating taking this new class? “Do I have to do Science Fair?”</p> <p class="p10">The U.S. Department of Commerce indicates that over the past decade jobs in Science and Technology have outpaced job growth in other sectors by three-to-one and pay twenty-six percent more. Moreover, this job growth in Science and Technology will double in the next decade. We need to stop turning kids off to science and start encouraging them to take more science. Giving them a shot at a career in science provides them with a path to the middle class. This is especially important for poorer kids. Moreover, if we don’t train the next generation of scientists in this country, another country will. America will become less competitive, less innovative and less growth oriented in the future. It’s kind of amazing how much suck can come from one little assignment. “Congratulations, Mr. Shopis.”</p> <p class="p10">The negative effect on students represents the most troubling aspect of Science Fair. However, Science Fair sucks for teachers as well. Spending more and more time working through Science Fair meant less and less time teaching my regular curriculum. Through the regular curriculum, I provided students with daily inquiry experiences that brought them up to rigorous state standards. However, with Science Fair absorbing more and more of my class time, I accomplished this less and less every year. I needed more time on curriculum, not less.</p> <p class="p10">I also got an increasing annual sense of bashing my head against the wall. Teachers who make it past their fifth year do not fear long, grueling hours of work. However, we despair when that work accomplishes little. I look for ways to work “smarter not harder.” Putting more and more work into Science Fair resulted in the opposite.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p10">Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Fellow science teacher, I have developed a hypothesis about us: We’re all nuts. Each year we plunge head first into this endeavor called Science Fair and hope it will work this time. It doesn’t. It never will…at least not if we keep doing the same thing . The solution I’ll offer you in this book embraces the following radical proposition: do it differently.<span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p8"><br></p> <p class="p15">1. U.S. Department of Commerce. STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future. By David Langdon, George McKittrick, David Beede, Beethika Khan, and Mark Doms. Available at: http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/stemfinalyjuly14_1.pdf</p> <hr> </body> </html> Attached Thumbnails Last edited by ashopis; 02-21-2015 at 07:28 AM. Reason: added attachment*

02-21-2015, 11:37 AM	#6
Toxaris Wizard Posts: 4,520 Karma: 121692313 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Heemskerk, NL Device: PRS-T1, Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura	Is this output from Scrivener? It is awful! Isn't there a possibility to export to ePUB with an external stylesheet? This is unmaintainable. There are multiple things wrong with this file. It is generated by Cocoa HTML Writer it seems, but XHTML is not the same as HTML. There are differences and that is what is causing the errors here. There are issues with the meta tags and also in the text with things like <br> instead of <br />. In XHTML all tags must be closed, either with an end tag or auto close for tags that do not have an end tag, like br, img, hr and others. What is your exact work procedure, because this is not a valid ePUB in any way. Last edited by Toxaris; 02-21-2015 at 11:45 AM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
ePub Validation	odedta	ePub	7	12-19-2013 06:45 AM
Epub 3 validation	carl_torstensson	ePub	11	02-14-2012 06:00 AM
Perch - a Troubling Bird's-eye Look at Humanity - Free at Smashwords	Ed_ODell	Self-Promotions by Authors and Publishers	0	03-12-2011 10:21 PM
Epub Validation Error?	LadyDae	ePub	6	10-29-2010 07:20 PM

02-21-2015, 11:45 AM	#7
DaleDe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,470 Karma: 13095790 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Grass Valley, CA Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7	It looks like the author did not use styles in the source. GIGO The word processor is being used like a typewriter. Dale

02-21-2015, 01:21 PM	#8
odedta Addict Posts: 398 Karma: 96448 Join Date: Dec 2013 Device: iPad	I'M BLIND!!!

02-21-2015, 10:12 PM	#9
dgatwood Curmudgeon Posts: 629 Karma: 1623086 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: iPad, iPhone, Nook Simple Touch	You can fix a multitude of HTML sins with: xmllint --html inputfilename.html --xmlout > outputfilename.xhtml YMMV, of course.

02-22-2015, 06:16 AM	#10
Notjohn mostly an observer Posts: 1,515 Karma: 987654 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: Kindle	Well, very early on I see this line in the style sheet: p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 18.0px; font: 14.0px Cochin} I think it's a bad idea to use absolute dimensions in an e-book, and a very bad idea to specify the size and fact of the font. Were you planning to embed Cochin? Not all e-book readers support embedded fonts, and of those that do, many owners of them prefer to specify their own choice of font. I too would like to know how this file was built. Scrivener is supposed to be a book-writing program as well as a book-formatting program. Did you use the program's built-in styling / formatting tools?

02-22-2015, 07:49 PM	#11
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,897 Karma: 128597114 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	That code is CRAP! Please put it in a spoiler tag so we don't go blind looking at it. DO NOT publish that mess. It's awful! Just say this to yourself...YOUR FIRED!

02-26-2015, 07:06 AM	#15
dickloraine Guru Posts: 631 Karma: 7544080 Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: Berlin Device: PRS 350, Kobo Aura	Do you have word? If you have, you could use toxaris word-addin to produce an epub. Of course you would first need to clean up the formating of your book with styles. If you have no knowledge about that, I could give you a simple word template to get you started. It would take some time to manualy apply the styles, but not more than to eliminate all the errors you will get with your file now. Toxaris add-in will produce a very clean valid epub. Getting used to styles will also help you, if you plan to write additional books. It is really simple and much faster than manual styling, after you createtd the styles you need. And you get an easy to convert, easy to change formating etc. book.