The videos on television show some of the massive destruction and the human toll of the recent earthquake in Haiti. It is difficult to imagine the suffering of the Haitian people. It is an unfortunate example of the devastation of a magnitude 7 earthquake.

It is natural to wonder why or how. When students are ready, teachers may want to discuss  earthquakes and their causes.

The folks at IRIS have a website with a PowerPoint presentation and Quicktime movie that explain a lot of details associated with this particular earthquake and earthquakes in general. The PowerPoint has excellent pictures of the destruction to buildings, without presenting images of human suffering that would be difficult for some students. The image to the right is taken from the PowerPoint.

IRIS (AKA the Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology) has lots of resources for learning about earthquakes including SeisMac 2.0 which allows Macintosh computers to become seismographs.

In the quest for Science Literacy, we strive to give students an understanding of natural events before they happen. Adaptive Curriculum has two strong Activity Objects, one is on determining the magnitude of an earthquake and the other is determining the location of the earthquake. The image below is from “Earthquakes: Measuring Magnitude.“

We all want to avoid having children get hurt doing school science. We also don’t want teachers to avoid doing hands-on science because of fears related to safety issues in the science classroom. For the elementary school classroom there are a couple of valuable resources that can help teachers and administrators develop safer practices for science instruction.

These are:

Science and Safety: It’s Elementary (http://www.csss-science.org/downloads/scisaf_cal.pdf)

And

Safety in the Elementary (K-6) Science Classroom (http://membership.acs.org/c/ccs/pubs/K-6_art_2.pdf)

Many of these practices have been written with common sense in mind. And if you are safety minded, you are on the lookout for all the potential things that can go wrong and ways to prevent these accidents. Unfortunately, K-5 classrooms would not have some of this safety equipment, such as eyewash fountains, fume hoods, and safety showers, and probably most middle school science classrooms would come up short in these areas.

While going all virtual to avoid safety problems may be tempting, a more pragmatic solution is to avoid dangerous hands-on materials and be very careful to try science activities before hand, and monitor student behavior.

Technology For K-6 Science Safety

While technology is often thought of as electronic stuff, a better and wider view is that it is any human made products that make our lives better or safer. With this in mind, I present my top ten safety technologies.

1. Teacher Developed Safety Rules Contract: A teacher and students who are safety minded is probably the best defense against accidents. There should be no toleration of inappropriate behavior when doing hands-on science.

2. Goggles: Chemical splash safety goggles should be worn whenever what you are working with has the potential to hurt or damage eyes. Please don’t adopt the view, such as, “I use ammonia at home without goggles, so it is okay to use it in school without goggles.” An adult can decide not to use goggles at home and it is at their peril. If a teacher decides not to have students wear goggles with materials that could harm eyes, and eyes are damaged, the teacher will probably be held culpable, as will the administrators, the school, and the district.

3. Disposable Nitrile Gloves: From dissections to handling chemicals, these can prevent problems. And if a student is bleeding for any reason, an adult should put on gloves to help with the situation.

4. Locked Chemical Cabinet

5. Fire blanket and extinguisher

6. First aid kit

7. Proper waste containers

8. Rubber covered muslin aprons

9. Safety posters and signs

10. Non-mercury thermometers

Teachers should be urged to provide hands-on experiences for their students. But teachers are also responsible for the safety of their students.

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.

This is the nyscate-critical-thinking  presentation I am  doing today. 

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).

PBS Teachers Activity Packs

I have the good fortune to be in beautiful Austin, Texas today for the Texas Computer Education Association’s (TCEA) annual convention. Austin is a delightful city, and this conference is huge. In a couple of hours I am going to be doing my presentation “Critical Thinking and TEKS Science Content Via Online Activities.”

I am placing the PowerPoint file here for participants and anyone else interested in this topic. Below are some titles and resources from the presentation. 

Click here to access the PowerPoint. tx-critical-thinking2

The text for the slides is presented below. 

What is Critical Thinking?

Some Elements of Critical Thinking

Design a Satellite

ž  describe types of equipment and transportation needed for space travel. (TEKS: 6.13)

ž  http://www.eduweb.com/portfolio/designsatellite/

The World of Goo

ž  demonstrate basic relationships between force and motion using simple machines including pulleys and levers (TEKS: 7.6)

ž  http://2dboy.com/games.php

Creature Creator

ž  prelude to Spore

ž  Free trial edition

ž  How can students making creatures

—  Develop science content?

—  Develop critical thinking?

—  Or both?

Adaptive Curriculum Activity Objects

ž Dancing with the Bees

—  TEKS 6.12: responses to external stimuli

ž Determining Planet Layers from Seismic Waves

—  TEKS 6.6 identify forces that shape features of the Earth; 7.2: organize, analyze, make inferences, and predict trends from direct and indirect evidence

ž Groundwater

—  TEKS 6.1: make wise choices in the use and conservation of resources;  6.14 groundwater