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.“
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.
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 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).
The Texas Computers in Education Association conference just ended and I am on the plane heading home. It is a nice conference, with lots of exhibitors, presenters, and attendees. I am going to infer that Texas loves science, because at my presentation, which had a narrow niche of middle school science, critical thinking, and state standards, I estimate there were 300+ people.I posted the PowerPoint for this presentation on the last blog.
I thank District Administration’s Kurt Dyrliand Scholastic Administrator’s Ken Royal, who did one of the first articles about Adaptive Curriculum after interviewing me about two years ago at FETC. Ken really enjoyed the Activity Object on Francisco Redi, who helped disprove the idea of spontaneous generation. When Ken was a former science teacher he did this science experiment in class, replete with decaying meat and putrid smells.
It will be interesting to see if the idea of video blogging takes off. I suspect that it will do well as a medium, as long as it has either more attractive or loquacious people than me!
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.
demonstrate basic relationships between force and motion using simple machines including pulleys and levers (TEKS: 7.6)
http://2dboy.com/games.php
Creature Creator
prelude to Spore
Free trial edition
How can students making creatures
Develop science content?
Develop critical thinking?
Or both?
Adaptive Curriculum Activity Objects
Dancing with the Bees
TEKS 6.12: responses to external stimuli
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
Groundwater
TEKS 6.1: make wise choices in the use and conservation of resources; 6.14 groundwater
If you want good insights and data about why lectures are a lousy tool for learning, what the fundamental flaws in school systems are, and why students are not engaged Chalkbored(by Jeremy Scheider 2007, a former high school chemistry teacher) is a must read.
Schneider makes the point that all popular movies depict US secondary schools as weak or downright bad. While there are some good teachers that rise up, they do it against the bleakest of conditions (such as in Freedom Writers).
Savvy enough to avoid the “L” word (or lecture), teachers and administrators call them discussions. In Chapter 1, Scheider writes: “In a one-hour class, a teacher who speaks 87% of the time leaves eight minutes for students. If you divide this by thirty students, each student gets to speak for 16 seconds (and listen for 59 minutes and 44 seconds). If I had a conversation like that (it sounds like a really bad blind date), “discussion” would not be the first term to pop into my head—“lecture” or “nightmare” would be closer.”
Scheider weaves great factual information with lively narrative. He makes the point often that it isn’t the teachers’ fault; it is the system that pushes them into this mode. I agreed with many of his points because they are logical and data based.
Here are some points and questions he raises. See if you agree or disagree:
If we want students to take high school math and science classes, why do we punish them by making these classes have the lowest average grades? (Example science course average = 2.68, while Physical Education is 3.34)
“Grades should never be used unless followed by clear explanations and opportunities to correct mistakes.”
The focus on Shakespearean literature and classic literature in schools has more to do with avoiding paying royalties to current authors than it does with truly trying to excite students about reading.
“Parents who want their children to succeed must insist upon higher standards than those set by the school.”
“Students should be given as much choice as we can cram into schools.”
It would be more efficient and produce more memorable learning experiences if great lessons were prepared in one place with a big budget and distributed to teachers using various media, rather than asking individual teachers to make their own great lessons.
“All meta-analyses agree that computers are more effective than traditional instruction.”
“There is no more CAI [computer assisted instruction] in high schools today than there was forty year ago.”
The book is certainly an interesting and provocative read. But if you are a classroom teacher, you probably should read this during the summer, when you can develop plans to do things a bit differently. But if you are an administrator, you might want to get a copy immediately. Scheider doesn’t just suggest change; he is trying to instill an uprising.
Living just north of Phoenix, we get the warm sunny 70° January weather, but we can drive 100 miles to the north to play in snow. Snow takes on a reverent beauty when you are just visiting it, playing in it, and having the air full of thick, downy flakes. When it makes unwanted intrusions, such as when I lived in New York, Ohio, and Iceland, it becomes more difficult to appreciate.
To the right you will see some snow fun pictures from our snow play in Flagstaff yesterday. It is interesting to see the evolution of “sledding”. Even in my childhood, toboggans were on their way out. Wooden sleds with two rails and a steering bar, like the Flexible Flyer, ruled the hills. I didn’t even see one of these on the hills.The disc or flying saucer seems to be waning.The flexible-foam, body length “sled” is the new king of the slopes. But what slides down the snow best?
The “coefficient of friction” (COF) is used to express the amount of friction between surfaces and this is proportional to the force pushing the surfaces together, or the weight of the rider and sled on the snow. The greater the COF the more friction there is. The COF for not-yet moving surfaces (static friction) is greater than sliding surfaces (kinetic friction). Engineers have measured different COFs (link). For instance, the kinetic COF for leather on oak is 0.52 and for those interested in glass-on-glass action, the kinetic COF is 0.4. Google has enlightened me. I had no idea there was so much research done on snow, and that there is a vibrant field called “snow engineering”, which might be called the ultimate snow job. Without going too deep into it, the COF for a moving skier (ski on snow) was analyzed to be between 0.01 and 0.3. I’d have to think that metal on snow would be a lower COF than foam on snow. It is good to think about, and students could do some fun experiments to find out.
Virtual science experiences must engage students and must have rich interactions. If it is just a Flash animation, I am not ready to call it an “experience” when the term video is much more suitable. If a teacher is going to bring laptop carts into a room or sign up weeks ahead for the computer lab, they should have computer-learning experiences that feature an engagement, a significant interaction, a closure, and multiple means of assessment.
“Sliding on Different Surfaces,” an Activity Object by Adaptive Curriculum, features these aforementioned characteristics. For an engagement, students play a game where they steer a sled down a hill while encountering different types of surfaces. If they steer over the surfaces with the least amount of friction, they will go faster. They receive a score based upon how well they did.
In the student interaction, students are in an office. They slide a pencil case across a desk and then mark the distance. Their mission is to find different things in the room such as a towel, newspaper, and sandpaper (obviously a rough office) and see how the pencil case sliding distance varies. (Elearning Physics Preview)
This elearning physics experience moves forward to an explanation of friction and factors that influence friction. There is an optional paper-and-pencil activity sheet that students can complete as they do the Activity Object, with two questions to be answered when they are finished.The activity sheets promote writing and become a permanent record of their learning for their science notebooks. If a teacher has a projector or interactive whiteboard and is doing a whole class lesson, the activity sheet is even more essential.
After the closure, students move onto the multiple-choice assessment, where they answer five questions and receive instant feedback about their learning. Teachers can log in to access student scores for the assessment. They can also see how long students took doing the Activity Object.If students are up for a bit of gaming, with their new understanding of friction, they can go back to the game and improve their time.
I did the Activity Object and played the game, and I observed that compared to my 8 and 11 year old sons, my sled in Flagstaff went much farther than their sleds. I would like to think that this was because I selected the patches of snow with the least friction and thus I picked up more speed. But these foam “sleds” are not very steerable and so, unfortunately, I have to consider the competing hypothesis that since my mass is a wee bit more than my sons (well okay, actually my weight is about 50 pounds more than both of them together), this may have had an influence. Since momentum is equal to mass x velocity, my momentum should be much greater than my sons’, and thus it would take longer to bring me to a stop. An impulse (force x time) can change the momentum of an object. Since my momentum is much bigger, and assuming that friction is about the same, I coast longer and thus farther.
But I think I will choose the happier hypothesis – that my greater knowledge of friction, rather than greater weight, made me go farther. Which just goes to show the subjective side of science after a happy family day in the snow.
Last evening my 11 year-old son shared with me the YouTube Video “Charlie Bit My Finger”. If you are more like my son and less like me, you probably have already seen the cute sibling clip that is approaching 70 million views and dozens of new posted remixes and re-enactments. If you do a Google search in quotes, you can find over 300,000 sites sharing or discussing this video.
As science teachers, we know the power of analogies to help students connect new concepts to existing conceptions already wired into their brains. Certainly, knowing what students know is a prerequisite for using analogies. References to pop culture can be a good source. Now, for example, if someone does something that is likely to cause a problem in science class, I could say, “Obviously if you put your finger in Charlie’s mouth, it’s going to get bitten!” And of course, we know the power of humor for keeping science class lively. Every time my son says, “Char-lie bit me and that really hurt,” with a British accent, I chuckle.
I had a science teacher colleague in the Bronx, who argued with me that we shouldn’t relate to students through their culture, but should expose them to a higher culture. Since she went to Stanford as an undergraduate, and I went to the University of Buffalo, it is possible that I never scaled that same cultural plateau (but I did have my high school biology class dissect chicken wings which are world famous because of Buffalo, NY). But I know there are others like me who like to stay connected with the youth we teach.
So how does my generation stay connected with the top videos?
Within the YouTube environment, clicking on videos, you can sort by “most popular” or “most viewed” and you can select the timeframe desired (such as one day, one week, or one month). In this way, I came across “Sneezing Panda”, usable in all sorts of lessons, such as stimulus and response, the nervous system, or animal behavior. There is also the Viral Video Chart, where you can see the graphs of popularity rankings for videos on the internet, not just on YouTube.
Of course, I had to select the category “Science and Technology” to see the most viewed videos of all time in this category. Sadly, most had nothing to do with science, but I found the very well produced and suspenseful “Oxygen (new version) – Periodic Table of Videos”.
So you can search, view, and relate to the world of adolescents. Or, you can wait for an adolescent to share a bit of their world with you. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t discover “Charlie” on my own because it was delightful having my son share it with me. And even though he saw it many times before, when he showed it to me we both had hearty laughs—together.
Resources:
Adaptive Curriculum’s “Habit Designer: Panda” (which will create a much nicer habitat than what you see in the “Sneezing Panda” video.
Perhaps the first assay we learned in science class was the starch test, where we dropped iodine on a substance, and if it turned “blue-black”, it indicated the presence of starch.
Now, as modern-day science teachers, we carry on the wisdom of generations of science teachers, and continue to avoid calling the positive result “black and blue”, as no science teacher wants students to associate bruises with white bread or potatoes.
The starch test has become such a common test, that I believe the term “starch test” should replace “litmus test” as the analogy cliché for social or political tests. (For example, Wikipedia states, “A litmus test is a question asked of a potential candidate for high office, the answer to which would determine whether the nominating official would choose to proceed with the appointment or nomination.”) How many non-science teachers even know what litmus is or what a litmus test is? Let’s start using analogies more people can relate to. [People would really start liken that (with an intended pun on the nature of litmus)!]
Today is the six-month anniversary of this blog. It seems such a short time ago, but alas, on June 20, 2008, my first blog was posted. This made me wonder, “How does one know if one is successful after just six short months?
To find the answer to this query, I did a search on blogs. I found no numerical metrics for success. Looking at the latest report from Google Analytics, I did see that more than 35 people per day have read this blog, and that this month alone, there were over 1,000 readers from 70 countries/territories.
The search for blogs about blogs (i.e. metablogs) yielded no numbers, which I viewed once again as evidence that collective wisdom can often be found in groups of people. The qualitative metric I did derive, however, from reading the advice of more experienced blog pundits was this: If a blogger enjoys writing about their interests, and some people are reading, then it should be considered successful. As far as this starch test is concerned, I judge this blog as a success, and I thank you for reading it.
But now on to science teaching and technology, which is the focus of this blog. In the living world, photosynthesis is one of the most important processes. Fortunately, Adaptive Curriculum has a free interactive activity that teachers and students (from all 70 countries/territories) can use to learn more about photosynthesis. In “Plants Needs for Photosynthesis” students conduct several investigations, where they can add or subtract water, light, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. The plant then does its thing (AKA: metabolism) for four hours.
After this, the starch test is performed to see if photosynthesis occurred. In the starch test, the leaves are boiled and then dipped into hot alcohol to remove the green chlorophyll. Next, the leaves are dipped into room temperature water. Finally, drops of iodine are placed upon the leaves. Through these discovery-based learning experiences, students are able to determine the conditions that are needed for photosynthesis to occur.
Thank you to Adaptive Curriculum for giving us this free Flash-based activity, and for their support of this blog. And no matter what your starch test or litmus test for happiness may be, I wish you a happy holiday season.
Resources:
If you (or your students) don’t know what a litmus test is, here are some links:
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.
Living just north of Phoenix, we get the warm sunny 70° January weather, but we can drive 100 miles to the north to play in snow. Snow takes on a reverent beauty when you are just visiting it, playing in it, and having the air full of thick, downy flakes. When it makes unwanted intrusions, such as when I lived in New York, Ohio, and Iceland, it becomes more difficult to appreciate.
tion, rather than greater weight, made me go farther. Which just goes to show the subjective side of science after a happy family day in the snow. 
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