Wordle is a tool for displaying words as a graphic image that has implications for science education. The size of the words is a relative indicator of their frequency of use. At the Wordle website I entered the URL for this blog, and received a JAVA-produced image. This image is presented above.

Wordle was developed by Jonathan Feinberg who has produced other science education tools including physics applets and the Secret Lives of Numbers.

Software applications seem to be a creative playground for Feinberg in that he produces what he is interested in and let’s others play with them depending upon their interest. I think Wordle is the most promising classroom tool he has created. But of course, he leaves it to us science educators to explore how to use the tool.

I have just completed 11 days of electricity explorations with a middle school class. I put the text for all my lesson plans into Wordle’s create page and it produced an interesting word art graphic. Teachers will have to take a screen shot of the image to share it with students. (Macintosh: command-shift-4 produces cross-hairs to capture the image, which then appears on your desktop.)

It was interesting to see words such as day, one, and two appear prominently. In checking the word count (see image to left), I realized how often I used the term “one” (apparently it is found in terms such as “someone” as well as pure uses) as I had it over 40 times. These words are not related to electricity, so in MS Word, I deleted (through find and replace) these terms and redid the Wordle image. It is presented below. I will share the image with my students for their review and reaction. It does present an interesting way to view key vocabulary in science. 

I am excited by the potential of Wordle as I stand along the shore. Teachers can make their own “Word Art” or borrow creations of others. There is an ocean of potential waiting to be explored by creative science educators. 

Useful Resources for Electricity and Electricity Science Activities 

• Adaptive Curriculum’s Voltage, Current, and Resistance: Ohm’s Law
• Adaptive Curriculum’s Building Circuits: Light Bulbs in Series
• Circuit Construction Kit

To be sure the idea behind WolfQuest has merit, let children ages 10 to 15 become virtual wolves and learn about wolves and their habitat. But in production, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and privately supported free WolfQuest game is disappointing. I found it to be tedious and buggy (on my Macintosh). Just to be fair, I did induce my 11 year-old son to try out the game. By induce, I confess, that I paid him an hourly rate to try it out. He played for about three hours total. I will say that the game does have good 3-D graphics and when my 8 year-old son saw him playing the game, he was induced to be a wolf just for the fun of it–for about one hour. They seemed to spend most of their time hunting, which wasn’t all that much fun (lots of running, with some attacking). They never did get around to mating….

I do suppose that some children may become deeply immersed in this environment, creating their own online wolf packs and exploring aspects of wolf social behavior. And if a good percentage of tweenagers were motivated to do a couple of extra hours of science explorations, I suppose the NSF would be happy with the $508,253 grant they gave to the Minnesota Zoo for the project. (I don’t know the full budget but private organizations contributed quite a bit as well.)

But where is the science? You would think there would be a “for educators” or “for parents” description of the science that might be learned. I couldn’t find any descriptions like this on their web site or the downloadable manual. The developers apparently don’t think this is important, but yet the WolfQuest merchandise link was very prominent. So what did my sons learn? They saw some variation in wolf types as they created their avatar.  They also learned that wolves in Yellowstone National Park hunt elk and hares and perhaps that the life of a lone wolf is not that much fun.

It is not easy to criticize this project; it is much like in the movie Teachers (1984), where Alex says, “That’d be like $#*%ing on the Peace Corps!” It is far more PC to say, “Wow, this is nice, look at all the downloads they attracted!” or “Wouldn’t you rather have your kids play this?” I know I might come off as sounding “anti-wolf” or against conservation of natural habitats, but that is not at all my view. For instance, when I was co-author for the biology textbook, Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Glencoe/McGraw Hill), I introduced for the first time a chapter on Conservation Biology that was eventually copied by other textbook companies. I have also taught a Conservation Biology course in the National University when I was living in Costa Rica.

Besides the lack of fun, my problem with this game is with the lack of science education. Perhaps the goal isn’t science education. Oddly enough, the web page does describe one of the goals: “Gameplay will create a strong emotional connection between players and wolves, changing player’s attitudes toward wolves and habitat conservation in the real world.” First, I think this is a ridiculous statement. My children have “become” so many characters in video games, and I have not observed strong emotional connections form. Indeed if this was the case, in any Nintendo game I would insist my sons never become Wario and always become Mario! Second, I think this is a misguided goal; the idea of a good education is to develop an understanding of a situation to make informed choices. Our goal should be to help children understand species, ecology, and conservation and not to have their emotions guide their behavior.

Resources

Chandria, Pultkit (December, 2007). Wear the skins of wolves in WolfQuest

Linde, Aaron, (January 2008). Be a wolf, learn about nature in WolfQuest

WolfQuest: Amethyst Mountain Deluxe Review

The Circuit Construction Kit (CCK) is a great electricity resource for middle grade and high school students to conduct science investigations and learn about electricity. This FREE resource allows students to produce simple circuits using cells, light bulbs, resistors, and switches. Students can complete series and parallel circuits and they can observe the varying brightness of the light bulbs. CCK also allows students to move into the quantitative realm. Clicking on some additional buttons enables voltmeters and ammeters, and thus measurements of voltage and current can enhance investigations.

Well equipped elementary and middle schools will have batteries, light bulbs, switches, and wires to give students real experiences in constructing circuits. CCK can compliment the physical activities with virtual activities to enhance understanding. Unfortunatley, many schools will not have these physical resources so CCK is a way to help students explore electricity. And, I have not yet come across elementary or middle schools that have class sets of ammeters or voltmeters, so this is a welcome component.

Putting CCK to use

With my middle grade students we are using CCK to discover how to make series and parallel circuits, how to use ammeters and voltmeters, how current and voltage vary in different types of circuits, what are short circuits, and to observe that the ratio voltage/current is equal to resistance (Ohm’s Law).

Of course, the possibilities of how to use CCK are vast. Teacher goals, creativity, and experience level will make this a great resource in some classrooms. Most high school physics teachers will be able to instantly employ this tool. I wish that there were more structured lesson plans for using this tool at the elementary and middle school level so that teachers who are not yet comfortable with electricity could help their students have meaningful experiences. Some lessons can be found at the teaching idea page but these are almost all high school and university lessons.

The diagram above is one of the circuits I asked my middle grade students to construct. Then using a non-contact ammeter, they measured the current through all the branches of the circuit. They later used the voltmeter to measure the voltage across each of the branches.

Reflections in teaching

Working with middle school students, I found that they had few problems in using CCK. We started off constructing real circuits and then reproducing them in CCK where they used the ammeter to measure current at different places in the circuit. Although I know the importance of “free exploration” and wrote about it before in this blog, my regret is that I didn’t allow for free exploration with this virtual tool. Students really wanted to explore lots of things on their own, without me specifying what circuits to create. So, I should have allowed time for this before directing their explorations.

The Circuit Construction Kit is a simple but powerful tool that has a lot of utility in the upper elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms. It is a rich environment for free exploration and it presents many possibilities for guided-inquiry investigations.

Ever since, and probably before, Robert Yager’s (1983) study that suggested the amount of new vocabulary in science textbooks exceeded the number of vocabulary words for learning a foreign language, many educators have been concerned with the number of terms introduced in science classes and methods to help students learn vocabulary.

Recent reforms of state standards, starting with Project 2061, have hopefully reduced the amount of superficial knowledge we ask students to learn. Nevertheless, the new vocabulary can be daunting. The NCLB focus on math and English, with the consequential neglect of science in the elementary grades has resulted in many students entering the middle grades with deficits in their science vocabulary (Cunningham & Allington, 2007).

The teaching of vocabulary is the job of all teachers (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2002). The understanding of content vocabulary is, after all, an excellent predictor of success in the subject area (Wilcox 2006). While inquiry skills, concept development, and understanding are more important goals, students knowing and using key vocabulary are important outcomes of science education.

I recently discovered a tool to assist in vocabulary acquisition. Andrew Sutherland created Quizlet in 2005 when he was a 15 year-old student studying French vocabulary. From what I can tell, it has become a phenomenal success, with over 200,000 registered users. More than flashcards, Quizlet has activities in the following sections: (a) Familiarize, (b) Learn, (c) Test, (d) Play Scatter, and (e) Play Space Race. The great thing about Quizlet is it is all internet based, so there is no need to download and install software, which can be annoying in some situations and impossible in many schools.

Students can type in their own words and definitions and then learn them through a variety of activities. I also like, however, having access to the great repository of already prepared quizlets. For instance, I just taught a unit on magnetism in my son’s middle school classroom. If I would have discovered Quizlet sooner I might have assigned the quizlet on magnets to review for the test. As a parent, my other son (in third grade) had some vocabulary words to learn from his language arts book in the section “Pepita Talks Twice.” A few different quizlets for these words were already established. My son and I reviewed a few words on my iPhone on the way back from soccer practice.  

While we need to be mindful of reducing the “tyranny of terminology” that sometimes describes science courses, we must also help our students learn the key words. Quizlet is a free tool that can help students learn and use scientific vocabulary.

Resources

Adaptive Curriculum, Magnetic Field of  Magnet.  http://www.adaptivecurriculum.com/us/details/USSXP080401

Cunningham, P. M. & Allington, R. L.  (2007). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Wilcox, J. (2006). Chicago teachers learn to build academic vocabulary. ASCD Education Update 48 (6): 1–2.

Blachowicz, C., and P. Fisher. 2002. Teaching vocabulary in all classrooms. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice- Hall.

Quizlet. http://quizlet.com/

Thelen, J. N. (1984). Improving reading in science.2nd ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Yager, R. E. (1983). The Importance of Terminology in Teaching K-12 Science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20(6), 577-88. 

In my “Physics for Teachers” class, when student groups present hands-on lessons, they sometimes start with a YouTube video. They are usually well selected and they turn out to be interesting and short. These videos are easy to find and in a university setting easy to display. While some schools have blocked YouTube as a website because of some content, there are workarounds for downloading the videos as .flv files (such as TechCrunch) and playing or converting them with flv players (my favorite for the Macintosh is the free iSquint.

On August 12, 2008, Smartteaching.org posted their 100 top YouTube videos for teachers. Below, I present their science list.

Resources

Adaptive Curriculum’s “Making Sperm and Eggs: Meiosis” Uses Flash-based animations and interactions.

Adaptive Curriculum, describes its core learning segments as “Activity Objects.” This is, as far as I know, a new term that has evolved from other terms including “Learning Objects.” In case you are not familiar with the term Learning Object, I will describe this, touching briefly on its origins, and then explain why I think Activity Objects is a well-chosen term.

What is a Learning Object?

The term Learning Object grew from computer object-oriented programming, a paradigm of creating reusable and cooperating “objects.” As with programming objects, the generally accepted criteria for Learning Objects are that they are digital, cooperating, and reusable. Unfortunately, as so often happens in education, terms are used in so many different ways, they start being less useful.

From a broad perspective, a Learning Object is any instructional resource that can be combined with other resources. This is formally presented as “independent pieces of instruction that may be reused in multiple learning contexts” (Fernandez-Manjon & Sancho, 2002). To many of us, that is too wide a definition as almost anything can be considered a learning object.

Wiley’s (2000) definition—more useful because it is narrower—is as follows: “Any digital resource that can be reused to facilitate learning.” According to Wiley, “Learning objects are generally understood to be digital entities deliverable over the Internet, meaning that any number of people can access and use them simultaneously (as opposed to traditional instructional media, such as an overhead or video tape, which can only exist in one place at a time). Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions.”

Friesen (2003) describes problems with terminology involving Learning Objects and makes a call for clarity: “Using a term that make sense only in abstruse technical discussions, and that is opaque and confusing to practitioners does not make its potential benefits clear to teachers…. It is simply that innovations must be presented in terms that are meaningful for teaching practice.”

I think teachers need to be able to easily differentiate between online resources that are relatively passive (such as text based web pages) and those that have strong elements of student interactions. I believe that the term Activity Object is a term that will make sense to practitioners and will help differentiate online resources with strong elements of interactivity. There is a big difference between some current science articles versus cool science experiments online.

What is an Activity Object?

An Activity Object, as the name describes, is a learning module that puts the emphasis on active learning rather than just passively reading text or viewing images or movies. It is designed to compliment other instructional approaches.

I propose the following definition of an Activity Object: An Activity Object is an online digital learning module featuring high-quality student interactions that help to achieve narrow learner outcomes.

To be sure, the Activity Objects of Adaptive Curriculum feature engagements, animations, closures, activity sheets, and assessments, but these are supportive of the high-quality interactions. Of course, some may take the definition I propose and say that many online materials are Activity Objects. To me the question resides in whether or not it is a high-quality interaction. If students mainly read text or watch movies, even if they are answering some questions as they go, this just doesn’t rise to the level of being a high-quality interaction and should not be considered an Activity Object. I propose that we use the term Learning Object for those online materials that support learning but that don’t have high-quality interactions, and that the term Activity Object be judiciously used for learning experiences with high-quality interactions. Therefore, the resource with current events in Earth science can be considered to be a Learning Object but the science project, science activity, and interactions would be considered Activity Objects.

References

Fernandez-Manjon, B. and Sancho, P. (2002) Creating Cost-effective Adaptative Educational Hypermedia Based on Markup Technologies and E-Learning Standards. Interactive Educational Multimedia, No. 4, April, 1-11 

Friesen, N. (2003). Three objections to Learning Objects and E-learning Standards

Wiley, D.(2000). The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Agency for Instructional Technology and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Available at Reusability.