No one at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth was quite sure what to expect this week when they sat down in a stuffy conference room to host the center's first-ever online kids' "Webinar," on the H1N1 flu pandemic, dubbed Swine Online '09.
As it turned out, 55 youngsters logged on from around the country - one as young as 8. And by instant message and telephone, they lobbed 115 questions at two Hopkins epidemiologists.
"We were blown away," said a center spokesman, Charles Beckman. "We never get anywhere near that many from adults."
"It was especially difficult ... even to weed through some of these," said Stacy Johnson, who funneled the students' questions to the scientists Tuesday night. "There was some pretty high-level stuff."
One student tapped out this instant message: "The SIR model says that ds/dt=-BSi. Using RO, does this mean we can rewrite this as --RO/(cD)SI= -Ro gamma ... ?"
None of this fazed the epidemiologists, Justin Lessler and Derek Cummings, both 35-year-old teachers and researchers at Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health. Nor were they bothered by the fact they could not see the students, and vice versa.
"I thought it would be more sterile than it was," said Lessler. "A lot of times, in a classroom setting, you get one person dominating the conversation or a lot of people will freeze up. ... In terms of the number of questions we were getting, it was like I always hope a classroom lecture would be."
Brittany Thomas, 16, a junior at Garfield High in Woodbridge, Va., got involved with the center in seventh grade to find "a challenge, something different I wasn't being exposed to in my school." The Webinar was "incredible," she said. "Hearing about swine flu, or H1N1, and hearing the perspective of a trained professional was very interesting. And I actually was able to ask questions. I was so impressed."
The Webinar was conducted on a 31/2-year-old CTY Web site called Cogito.org, where pre-college students identified as gifted by the Hopkins enrichment and research program can immerse themselves in science and math, learn about summer programs and internships, and hang out with scientists and one another. Swine Online '09 was the culminating event for CTY students who had spent several weeks on Cogito.org exploring issues surrounding the flu pandemic.
