Hero or villan

Is the mystery of DB Cooper about to be solved? FBI reveals it has new suspect 40 years after America’s most elusive fugitive parachuted from a hijacked plane

            The FBI today revealed that it believes it has America's most elusive fugitive finally in its sights 40 years after famed hijacker DB Cooper disappeared when he jumped out of a plane over Washington. Investigators said that they are testing the fingerprints of a new suspect after what they said is the 'most promising' lead to date in its bid to crack America's only unsolved hijacking. 

              A mystery hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as DB Cooper, boarded a Northwest flight in Portland for a flight to Seattle on the night of November 24 1971, and commandeered the plane, claiming he had dynamite.

Evaded justice? Artists sketches of America's most elusive fugitive DB Cooper who hijacked a jet and extorted $200,000 from the FBI before escaping by parachute in 1971. Agents believe he may have died a decade ago 

In Seattle, he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico.

Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out the plane's tail exit with two of the chutes, and was never seen or heard from again.

The FBI today announced that it has a new suspect in the case who they are hoping to link to a tie Cooper left on the plane and cigarette butts in an ashtray using DNA testing and fingerprints.

There have been more than 1,000 suspects over the past four decades, but the FBI have described the new lead as 'looking like our most promising one to date'.

'We do actually have a new suspect we're looking at,' said FBI spokesman Ayn Dietrich as she revealed the twist in the investigation.

'It comes from a credible lead who came to our attention recently via a law enforcement colleague,' she said.

'The credible lead is somebody whose possible connection to the hijacker is strong,' she told the Daily Telegraph. 'And the suspect is not a name that's come up before.'

The FBI said that an item belonging to the suspect has been sent for testing at a forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia.

'We're hoping there are fingerprints they can take off of it,' she said. 'It would be a significant lead. 

And this is looking like our most promising one to date.'

The FBI has refused to reveal if the suspect is still alive. 'Generally the large majority of subjects we look into now are already deceased based on the timing,' said Ms Dietrich.

It could be some time before the FBI gets the results back from the tests.

The mysterious hijacking has intrigued federal agents and amateur sleuths since it took place in November 1971.

A man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded the Northwest flight after buying a $20 one-way ticket to Seattle.

After getting on the plane wearing sunglasses, he ordered whisky and lit a cigarette before passing a flight attendant a note that read: 'I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BING HIJACKED.'

Cooper told the captain that in return for $200,000 and four parachutes, he would allow 36 people to leave the plane when it landed in Seattle.

The FBI agreed to the swap and the plane took off again under Cooper's orders to fly towards Mexico at an altitude of under 10,000 feet.

Somewhere over the lower Cascade mountains in southwestern Washington, Cooper stepped out of the plane with a parachute strapped to his back.

Clues: Three packets of ransom money, totalling $5,800, were found on the Columbia river in February 1980

Several people have claimed to be Cooper over the years but were dismissed on the basis of physical descriptions, parachuting experience and, later, by DNA evidence recovered in 2001 from the cheap tie the skyjacker left on the plane.

Items recovered from the skyjack include $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills and Cooper's tie

Many believe that Cooper was Richard McCoy, a Vietnam War veteran, experienced parachutist and BYU political science student who staged a similar hijacking several months later.

But the FBI has said that McCoy - who was killed in a shoot-out with law enforcement officers after a prison break in 1974 - simply didn't fit the description of Cooper provided by two flight attendants.

In 1980, a boy walking near the Columbia River found $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills.

Teaching science

Science teachers have an exciting opportunity to teach kids about how science makes the world work. Unfortunately, reduced teaching budgets and apathy on the part of students sometimes makes it difficult to get students interested in topics like biology, earth science, anatomy, physics, and chemistry. Some teachers are now using techniques such as peer learning, role-playing, and incorporating current events in science lesson plans. These techniques help engage students and help them understand the importance of science. They also make it fun to teach scientific concepts and help students understand common topics in the scientific world.

Peer-to-Peer Teaching

Traditionally, teachers used the lecture format to teach children about science. One of the drawbacks to the lecture format is that it does not engage students in their learning. This teaching technique encourages rote memorization and note-taking instead of excitement about the world of science. Peer-to-peer teaching is when the students actually get involved in teaching each other about science. This is an active learning method that encourages students to discuss scientific topics, develop questions about the material, and work in teams to learn new information. Buzz groups, solution and critic groups, and affinity groups are just three of the ways to use peer-to-peer teaching in the classroom. When students work in buzz groups, they spend approximately 20 minutes studying a topic and gathering information. At the end of the session, one representative from each group presents information to the entire class. For solution and critic groups, the teacher assigns one group of students to gather information and give a presentation. A second group of students acts as the critic group by evaluating the presentation. Affinity groups work together outside of the classroom and then present their findings during normal class time. All of these techniques help students develop research and presentation skills that will help them in the science classroom as well as other areas of life.

Lecturing

  The lecture method is just one of several teaching methods, though in schools it’s usually considered the primary one. The lecture method is convenient for the institution and cost-efficient, especially with larger classroom sizes. This is why lecturing is the standard for most college courses, when there can be several hundred students in the classroom at once; lecturing lets professors address the most people at once, in the most general manner, while still conveying the information that he or she feels is most important, according to the lesson plan.^[3] While the lecture method gives the instructor or teacher chances to expose students to unpublished or not readily available material, the students plays a passive role which may hinder learning. While this method facilitates large-class communication, the lecturer must make constant and conscious effort to become aware of student problems and engage the students to give verbal feedback. It can be used to arouse interest in a subject provided the instructor has effective writing and speaking skills.^[4]

Demonstrating

Demonstrating is the process of teaching through examples or experiments. For example, a science teacher may teach an idea by performing an experiment for students. A demonstration may be used to prove a fact through a combination of visual evidence and associated reasoning.

Demonstrations are similar to written storytelling and examples in that they allow students to personally relate to the presented information. Memorization of a list of facts is a detached and impersonal experience, whereas the same information, conveyed through demonstration, becomes personally relatable. Demonstrations help to raise student interest and reinforce memory retention because they provide connections between facts and real-world applications of those facts. Lectures, on the other hand, are often geared more towards factual presentation than connective learning.

Collaborating

Collaboration allows students to actively participate in the learning process by talking with each other and listening to other points of view. Collaboration establishes a personal connection between students and the topic of study and it helps students think in a less personally biased way. Group projects and discussions are examples of this teaching method. Teachers may employ collaboration to assess student's abilities to work as a team, leadership skills, or presentation abilities.

Collaborative discussions can take a variety of forms, such as fishbowl discussions. After some preparation and with clearly defined roles, a discussion may constitute most of a lesson, with the teacher only giving short feedback at the end or in the following lesson.

Classroom discussion

The most common type of collaborative method of teaching in a class is classroom discussion. It is the also a democratic way of handling a class, where each student is given equal opportunity to interact and put forth their views. A discussion taking place in a classroom can be either facilitated by a teacher or by a student. A discussion could also follow a presentation or a demonstration. Class discussions can enhance student understanding, add context to academic content, broaden student perspectives, highlight opposing viewpoints, reinforce knowledge, build confidence, and support community in learning. The opportunities for meaningful and engaging in-class discussion may vary widely, depending on the subject matter and format of the course. Motivations for holding planned classroom discussion, however, remain consistent.^[6] An effective classroom discussion can be achieved by probing more questions among the students, paraphrasing the information received, using questions to develop critical thinking with questions like "Can we take this one step further?;" "What solutions do you think might solve this problem?;" "How does this relate to what we have learned about..?;" "What are the differences between ... ?;" "How does this relate to your own experience?;" "What do you think causes .... ?;" "What are the implications of .... ?" ^[7]

It is clear from “the impact of teaching strategies on learning strategies in first-year higher education cannot be overlooked nor over interpreted, due to the importance of students' personality and academic motivation which also partly explain why students learn the way they do”^[8] that Donche agrees with the previous points made in the above headings but he also believes that student's personalities contribute to their learning style.

Classroom Action Research

Classroom Action Research is a method of finding out what works best in your own classroom so that you can improve student learning. We know a great deal about good teaching in general (e.g. McKeachie, 1999; Chickering and Gamson, 1987; Weimer, 1996), but every teaching situation is unique in terms of content, level, student skills and learning styles, teacher skills and teaching styles, and many other factors. To maximize student learning, a teacher must find out what works best in a particular situation.^[10] Each teaching and research method, model and family is essential to the practice of technology studies. Teachers have their strengths and weaknesses, and adopt particular models to complement strengths and contradict weaknesses. Here, the teacher is well aware of the type of knowledge to be constructed. At other times, teachers equip their students with a research method to challenge them to construct new meanings and knowledge. In schools, the research methods are simplified, allowing the students to access the methods at their own levels.