Harry Keller:  

Currently, I am the president of Smart Science Education Inc. We design, create, and deliver the world's only experiential online science lessons using real experiments and hands-on measurement. I also am the science editor for the Educational Technology and Change Journal. Stop by and read some of my columns. You might be surprised by the range of topics. I am also the author of a novel, Mars Rhapsody. You can get an ebook version from Amazon for just $2.99. Now, just n occasional contributor to ETC-Journal, but my 120 articles are still there to read. I had a rather ordinary life at MCHS and did nothing particularly outstanding. The only thing special I did was to be the first Costa graduate to gain admittance to Caltech. I had minor parts in the school plays. After leaving MCHS, I attended Caltech and obtained a B.S. in chemistry, which gained me admission to a couple of the best chemistry graduate schools in the country. I chose Columbia University in New York City. Four years later I deposited my Ph.D. thesis and successfully defended it. Also, during those four years, I met and married my wife (May 7, 1965). After two years as an industrial scientist in Massachusetts, I chucked it all (boring!) and took a postdoc in Colorado for half the salary. One year later, I'm an assistant professor of chemistry at Northeastern University making a poverty wage. Gee whiz! The professor gig wasn't all that wonderful. Lots of time spent preparing for lectures and grading exams and so on. Then, there's the departmental politics. Sheesh! By some weird magic, I became the chair of the Northeast Section of the American Chemical Society -- youngest ever by about a decade. This position gave me the connections necessary to get a real job -- at the fastest-growing large company in the area, Digital Equipment Corporation. Great salary! Lots of responsibility. On the fast track. Exciting? Sort of. During my time as a professor, my wife began law school (free at my school because I worked there). She figured that would be a good time to have children. Yeah, so much free time for a law school student. We had two, a girl and then a boy 14 months later. Enough already. That was also the time that we decided to build a house. I found some land, about 11 acres, some 30 miles to the west of Boston. I did the general contracting (wife helped too), roofing (help from several people), and wiring. Nice 2,500 sq ft home in the woods next to a brook. Having the chance to be the fourth employee at a high-tech startup, I took it. Left, somewhat disillusioned, 18 months later after having done the impossible (according to the lawsuit against the founder). WTF, life will bite you if you don't look out for yourself. With some trepidation, I leaped into independence. No more corporate nonsense for me! Getting started as a contract software developer was a bit more difficult than I expected, but I managed it even though my wife landed a contract earlier than I did. Once started, we were on a roll. The best part was that we could adjust our schedules to be present at important events for our children. When they reached college age, we just stepped up our efforts and were able to pay for MIT and Brown at the same time on an ongoing basis. Whew! ' Jayne and I had tired, after 15 years, of continually doing the bidding of others, even if we were independent. It was time to write something for ourselves. But what? It was a few years earlier that I became upset with the quality of science education that my children were receiving. Around 1995, I did my first Java project and was hooked on this brand-new language. The confluence of events led Jayne and me to develop a prototype for a new way to do science labs online. We demonstrated it in 1999 and filed a patent application, which eventually was granted. That's my passion today, making my vision for better science education a reality. We just had a very successful year and are busy plowing the profits back into rapid expansion. Wish us luck. ADDITIONS: Some of you undoubtedly loved to write at MCHS. Most, like me, not so much. I did as little writing as I could get away with for most of my life. My business, in contrast, required that i write tons of material. Who else was going to write the assessment questions, the scientist mini-bios, the experiment backgrounds, and so on? Eventually, I expanded to a blog that had very few viewers (see smartscience dot blogspot dot com). As I was languidly browsing the web, I ran across an article that I felt had to be answered. I wrote the response and was invited to write more for that online publication by its editor. So, I began writing and writing. The online journal is mentioned above (etcjournal dot com). At the request of a journalist, I wrote something about going to Mars. I expanded that into a feature-length article for my journal and was surprised by over 10,000 views the first month. To this day, two years later, it has the most views every month. This article helped me make the decision to write a novel, Mars Rhapsody. A second edition expands the first. A third edition is in my mind that rounds out the four main characters, but I don't know when I'll get to the writing. Now, I have a second passion, writing. If only my MCHS education had not been so discouraging about writing, I might have begun early in my life. Well, to tell the truth, I'm not sure that I would have been able to write well even so. I don't know that I am creating good stuff. I like it, but my tastes are not those of the mainstream. You can see for yourself for a mere $2.99 on Amazon. APRIL, 2015 We have just received a substantial contract from New York City and have hired a sales rep for Texas. We have four employees. Time for the Science Bowl story. It was in 1992 that my two children were attending Newton North High School and lost their science club sponsor. None of the other teachers were willing to take over. Having a flexible schedule, I volunteered. What does a science club do? I had no idea at the time. It turns out that they do some social things and discuss current science. However, their most enjoyed activity is science competitions. Some of you may not be aware that many of these exist. The club decided to focus on these, especially the Science Olympiad and the Science Bowl. The former involves many students, the latter just five. The Science Olympiad competition involved many students and lots of preparation. My wife and I opened up our house to the members and spent many happy hours over the years preparing for these events with plenty of pizza to feed the hungry troops. The Science Bowl was a very different activity. I recruited students for this competition and held weekly training sessions for many months. Our first competition at MIT in 1993 gave us a fifth place, in part due to poorly formulated rules and in part due to our inexperience. I vowed never again to be unprepared and did everything possible to make sure that the next team would not suffer due to my ignorance or lack of preparation. And, we prevailed in 1994, winning the New England Regional Science Bowl and winning a free trip to Washington, DC for the nationals, a two-day, double-elimination competition. My team won every match the first day, guaranteeing them no worse than third place. (We took third place and won a weeklong trip to the North slope of Alaska.) I continued advising the science club and coaching Science Bowl teams for many years. We won every regional competition after that that I coached save one. In that one, we fielded two teams who took second and third place. I spent so much time with these teams that they became a sort of extended family. My Science Bowl team members went on to MIT, Brown University, and Johns Hopkins for the most part. (My son attended Brown, my daughter MIT.) One of the Brown students was there with my son and took over running the New England Regional Science Bowl when I moved to California. He is just finishing his PhD at MIT. Two others formed a consulting company that is responsible for ...Expand for more