I had the opportunity to vacation and to visit the Chautauqua Institution, a most interesting place if you are interested in teacher education, the fine arts, religion, day camps, the history of education, and lake fun. Mayville, NY was having their book sale, and I was delighted to purchase a Union Fourth Reader by Charles W. Sanders (1877) for $1.00. A couple of months (May, 2010) ago I had my journal article published (The Rise and Fall of Science Education: A Content Analysis of Science in Elementary Reading Textbooks of the 19th Century) that looked at the science in 19th Century readers and analyzed how it changed and suggested possible reasons for the change.
Readers, such as the famous McGuffey Readers, were THE education book in the 19th Century and they were the curriculum, and the science in these books were most likely to be students first exposure to formal science education. To summarize quickly, science rose to a high level in the middle of the 19th century and then declined. Some evidence suggests that there was a backlash to the amount of science covered, and that the goal of making reading literary was pursued. Also, science as a separate subject in the form of object teaching and nature study became more established.
Of course, many people incorrectly delimit the term technology to devices that have integrated circuits in them. But technology includes many items present in the classroom from white boards to textbooks. With the vagueness of many state standards, it is natural for science teachers to use textbooks as guides for the level of content to help students master. So textbooks continue to influence the curriculum, as defined as “what a teacher does with students when the door of the classroom closes.” But as all experienced teachers know; trying to cover an entire textbook is folly. Authors and textbook companies pack lots of content in them so nobody will say, “I’m not going to buy textbook z because it doesn’t have [obscure] content p and q.”
I have co-authored several textbooks, including Biology the Dynamics of Life, Ecology, Glencoe Life Science, and some others listed in the references. It is sad to see the textbooks misused in classrooms. They shouldn’t be used in class but they should be used as a compliment to instruction at home. I think the worst thing for science education is the teacher who tells students, while they are in class, to read chapter x and answer all the odd questions at the end of the chapter. From discussion, interactive didactic lesson, demonstrations, to hands-on experiences, classroom learning can be so much richer. The textbook at home serves as a strong compliment—another opportunity to build conceptual understanding.
Yet many schools struggling to make ends meet, don’t have one copy of the textbook for each student—they only have one copy for each desk in their room. Thus teachers are forced to have students read the textbook in class if they want students to read the textbook. Relief is on the horizon, as most textbooks are now online and students can read them at home if they have an internet connection. Even if there are student copies of the textbooks, chiropractors will be relieved that students don’t have to lug these hefty books home anymore. But alas this might hinder the development of the next UFC Brock Lesnar.
The problem coming down the pipeline is that poorer schools in high-poverty areas may not have the textbooks for each student and the students may not have internet access. It is and will be a double whammy. Perhaps the “Kindle versus other e-reader” battles will lead to disruptive technology that is low cost and that all students can have at home for their textbook reading. Amazingly enough, Sanders’ Fourth Reader is available for free on the Kindle but as expected it is also available at Google Books.
References
Biggs, A Feather, R. M., Jr., Rillero, P., & Zike, D. (2008). Glencoe Science Level Blue:Student Edition New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 978-0-07-877811-7, 815 pages).
Biggs, A., Daniel, L., Ortleb, E., Rillero, P., & Zike, D., (2008). Glencoe Life Science:Student Edition. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 0-07-877800-X, 960 pages).
Latourrelle, S., Laub, A., Rillero, P. & Schick, R. (2007). The Living Environment (New York Regents Review Series). New York: Glencoe/ McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 0-07-879731-4, 269 pages).
Biggs, A., Daniel, L., Ortleb, E., Rillero, P., and Zike, D., (2005). Glencoe Life Science:Student Edition. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 0-07-861702-2, 960 pages).
Rillero, P. (2010). Early Science Education: A Content Analysis of Science in Elementary Reading Textbooks of the Nineteenth Century. School Science and Mathematics, 110(5), 227-237
Rillero, P. & Zike, D. (2005) Ecology:Student Edition. New York: Glencoe/ McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 0-07-8617-464, 209 pages).
Biggs, A., K., Hagins, Kapicka, C., Lundgren, L., Rillero, P., Tallman, K., & Zike D (2004). Biology the Dynamics of Life: Student’s Edition. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. (ISBN: 0-07-829900-4, 1190 pages)
Both of my sons are competitive soccer players. When you live in Phoenix, AZ and you see young athletes running and sweating on a hot day for a prolonged period of time, it is easy to conclude that they would benefit from a beverage with electrolytes and some sugar. The electrolytes replenish the salt that is lost in sweating, and can thus prevent muscle cramping, with the most important ion being potassium. Young competitive soccer players also have very little body fat, so the sugar gives their body energy.
I confess, I went through a Gatorade, PowerAde, and Propel stage for our boys. My oldest son prefers Gatorade, my youngest Propel, and PowerAde was often the least expensive. When I would grocery shop I would always stop on this aisle to see if there were bargains to be had, and then I would stock up. The drinks, made by either Coca-Cola or Pepsi, contain electrolytes and sugar so they seemed to be meeting these basic needs. I like the clearness of the Propel, in that I prefer to not have artificial colors sweating out of the pores of my children (which I never understood why Gatorade thought this was an appealing commercial). Tedd Gorden, of MSU, describes the pros and cons of different formulas for sports drinks.
On hot days with long games or practices, we would send our sons with a large water container and a bottle of a sports drink. Their bodies seemed to tell them what was best, and they always drank far more water than the sports drinks. I have now moved to natural alternatives, so our oldest son is drinking Martinelli apple juice (which he says is the best tasting and comes in a fun round bottle) and our youngest Welch’s grape juice from 10 oz containers. The juices are about the same prices as the 32 oz bottles of sports drinks. So per volume, they cost three times as much, but per outing they are about the same.
If you could design your own sports drink what would it have in it? This intriguing idea is used by Adaptive Curriculum to engage students in the Activity Object “Osmosis.” From this engagement, students examine red blood cells in isotonic, hypertonic, and hypotonic solutions. Then students place raw eggs with the shell removed into different unknown solutions and then label what the solution must be based upon the weight gain or loss in the eggs. The Activity Object has a great engagement with multiple strong interactions. And when it comes to sports drinks, hypotonic solutions are best, whether it is made by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or grown on a tree.
One of the major themes that runs through many facets of science is the notion of surface area to volume ratio. I remember being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya and using an experimental, guided-inquiry curriculum, inspired by the British Nuffield science program. Students made plasticine cubes of various sizes. I’m not sure why British people have an aversion to clay, but plasticine seems to be their school sculpting material. Then students measured the surface area of the cubes and calculated the volume. Then they calculated the surface area to volume ratio and discover that the larger the object, the smaller the surface area to volume ratio.
Which helps to explain many types of adaptations in biology and why individual cells can’t be the size of houses; they would simply not have enough surface area to absorb the materials they need, like oxygen, or to expel waste. From villi in the intestines to convolutions in the brain, our bodies have many adaptations to increase surface area.
Adaptive Curriculum has a guided inquiry Activity Object called “Surface Area to Volume Ratio in Organisms.” A clever engagement draws the students into the interactive experience. You have a plate of cheese with different size cubes that you are going to put into the microwave. But first, learners predict whether the large cubes or the small cubes will melt first.
Obviously, the small cheese cubes will melt before the larger ones. If you thought this, you have experienced a discrepant event. In actuality, the large cubes melt first. Since the microwave heats from the inside, the smaller cubes lose their heat faster than the large ones. The larger cubes, thus retain more heat and melt faster. Discrepant events are powerful, because learners want to know why they were wrong.
From this, learners virtually change the size of cubes and see the changes in surface area, volume, and surface area to volume ratio. Then body sizes and shapes of animals are explored, as students learn about the implications of size and shape for heat loss.
My Peace Corps teaching and Adaptive Curriculum are different modes of guided inquiry and discovery learning, but both can help produce deep and life long learning.
Back in 1985 I was fortunate enough to visit George Awad’s New York studio where he was using his architectural skills and space interests to construct a scale model of the universe. Awad used one million of his own dollars to make this and it was very impressive and enlightening.
This is how Carl Sagan (1997) described it in his book THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: Science as a Candle in the Dark:
Perhaps the grandest museum exhibit can’t be seen. It has no home: George Awad is one of the leading architectural model makers in America, specializing in skyscrapers. He is also a dedicated student of astronomy who has made a spectacular model of the Universe. Starting with a prosaic scene on Earth, and following a scheme proposed by the designers Charles and Ray Eames, he goes progressively by factors of ten to show us the whole Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way and the Universe. Every astronomical body is meticulously detailed. You can lose yourself in them. It’s one of the best tools I know of to explain the scale and nature of the Universe to children. Isaac Asimov described it as ‘the most imaginative representation of the universe that I have ever seen, or could have conceived of. I could have wandered through it for hours, seeing something new at every turn that I hadn’t observed before.’ Versions of it ought to be available throughout the country – for stirring the imagination, for inspiration and for teaching. But instead, Mr Awad cannot give this exhibit to any major science museum in the country. No one is willing to devote to it the floor space needed. As I write, it still sits forlornly, crated in storage.
In my office, I have the model of the Big Dipper that George Awad gave me during that 1985 visit. After seeing so many 2-dimensional drawings of the big dipper, the model is a 3-dimensional view that shows how relative size and distance influence what we see in the night sky.
Then there was the famous Powers of Ten Video (or applet) that gave us the broad view of the universe and kept on magnifying by ten, until we arrived in Florida, and then descended into a plant.
Now the folks at Primax Studio have done their own Scale of the Universe with drawn images, instead of partially using photographs, but the music and the interactive aspects make it delightful to explore.
The scale of the universe is difficult to fully appreciate but we are getting closer due to multimedia tools. A 3-d Imax movie will soon be in theaters.
In a semi-darkened classroom at Coronado High School, the recessed computer projector shined down upon a slightly cushioned floor. David Birchfield, politely told me, “We only walk on that after we take our shoes off.” So I quickly jumped off. Ms. Mills and her physics class came in, and the students sat in chairs around the perimeter of the square mat, almost as though they were there for a martial arts exhibition.
Then the physics began. There was a handmade object that when you pushed a button it dropped its bottom. It had reflective tape so the mini-cameras around the room could pick up its motion and transmit it to a computer, which interpreted the data and then created dots on the mat to show the motion of the large object or the separated objects.
A student spun around in a circle and then pushed the button. The bottom sphere dropped and fell away from the object. From the dot pattern it was quite clear, and one student even said it spontaneously: “It moved away at the tangent.” No longer would these students have the misconception that a moving object would still hold the circular force because of its prior motion. Indeed, from Newton’s first law, it was apparent the straight-line motion of the object.
Students took turns trying it. Then to keep them engaged in their free exploration, there were a number of challenges issued, starting with “Let’s aim at Justin.” Then they aimed at a fixed target. Then at a target moving the same direction they were spinning, with a student walking and holding the target, and then at a target moving in the opposite direction.
After the class was over, I tried it as well, this time sans shoes. I have experienced the future, and it is on the floor. There is more power in an experience that is whole body, rather than just fingers on a keyboard or a mouse. Watching the physics class, there is also the learner interactions that make this a potentially powerful learning environment. To be sure, we will see applications like this in museums before it makes it into regular classrooms. Because it can be used with many content areas, some schools might have a SMALLab (Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab) for all their teachers to share. And no doubt the 3-D tracking system can be brought to use with interactive white boards, making their use more economical.
My thanks goes to Arizona State University’s David Birchfield, Kelly Phillips, Tatyana Koziupa, Mina Johnson, and Leanna Archambault for letting me experience the future. This will be a tool that will help students overcome misconceptions and experience science in a different way.
I had the good fortune last week of being a conference presider for Irfan Kula, a talented educational designer. His session was “I Love Symbiosis.” He emailed me his PowerPoint presentation, and I am presenting this here: i-love-symbiosis-kula.
One of the experts they interviewed was Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. He said the following: “we’ve got to use technology differently. In any field but ours, if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today, you wouldn’t recognize what’s going on. In education, if you fell asleep 50 years ago, you still have the same discussions.”
While classrooms have changed, the major change seems to be whiteboards for chalkboards and not big technology gains. The power of technology has not been used to greatly improve math and science education. Nor has technology been fully utilized to make it easier for teachers to help students learn and assess learning. Joel Klien suggests New York City schools are starting this process. As a former New York City teacher (Lehman High School in THE Bronx) I hope he is right, and that other school districts fully embrace technologies, like Adaptive Curriculum, that can help all students learn science and math.
I am at the NYSCATE Metro Conference, in Rye, NY. I grew up about 45 minutes from here but I forgot that it is still cold in mid-May. But of course, everything is relative, and relative to Arizona almost everywhere else is cooler.
It is always exciting to experience the sites and sounds of an NSTA conference. From my first science teacher conference, it was an awakening for me to find out that there are others like me who share my passion for science and education but who did not have an abundance of money to buy materials and who feel time compressed—despite perceptions that teaches have a lot of free time.
I brought my family along for this trip because it corresponded with my sons’ spring break from school. Okay, I admit, I probably wouldn’t have taken them to New Orleans if not for these reasons. I do think, however, exposure to other cultures is a good thing, and New Orleans’ has more than its share of culture. We were even able to go to a locals only crawfish boil (see photo). That my sons might be too young to appreciate New Orleans culture could be suggested by both of them liking the cool stuff in the conference exhibitor’s hall better than any other part of their visit. They were particularly taken by the science curiosities of “Steve Splangler Science” store, where the energetic folks did some intriguing square bubble demonstrations for them and then they were able to activities including tossing bubbles with gloves and making gummy worms. They also liked Flinn Scientific where they watched an engaging rep make foam, just like the stuff I use to close holes in and around my house. Now, they are flying home with a bag full of free materials from Insect Lore including two butterfly larvae that should form a chrysalis in two weeks.
It seems that the giving of t-shirts has achieved greater popularity. I don’t recall, in my first ten years of conference going, ever getting a t-shirt. Then the tech folks started giving away t-shirts and now so are the science folks. My wife doesn’t understand my interest in getting t-shirts, and she has already placed two of them (from Learning.com) in the piles of stuff to give to our son’s teachers. But there is one shirt I intend to keep; it is by far the nicest t-shirt I received, and it was a gray-background and white lettering SPARK t-shirt. I received it from Pasco when I attended a presentation on their SPARK system. Pasco seems to have a great understanding of the needs of a science teacher! So often science technology companies seem like they are devoted to the AP physics or chemistry teacher, who doesn’t have a family, social life, and is not pursing coursework. These rare folks might be able to take the time to figure out how to use complicated tech stuff to do one lab, but most regular teachers find it daunting. SPARK appears to be a solution that is easy to implement, cost effective, and has lots of uses. It acts like a mini-computer with a monitor, and it has its primary function—using probeware. So the yearbook teacher won’t want to borrow your class set!
This activity series on weather is presented by PBS, and it has a great feature–you can add the activities directly to your school web site. I present the activities and what this would look like on your website below.
Resources:
Adaptive Curriculum’s “Hurricane Formation” (which allows students to learn that humidity, water temperature, and wind speed are important factors in hurricane development).
Readers, such as the famous McGuffey Readers, were THE education book in the 19th Century and they were the curriculum, and the science in these books were most likely to be students first exposure to formal science education. To summarize quickly, science rose to a high level in the middle of the 19th century and then declined. Some evidence suggests that there was a backlash to the amount of science covered, and that the goal of making reading literary was pursued. Also, science as a separate subject in the form of object teaching and nature study became more established.
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