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.
When it comes to science supplies, you can be sure that measuring devices such as stop watches, scales, rulers, and graduated cylinders will be useful. There is risk however in purchasing other materials, as you wonder will they work.
It all started well with my Sprout and Grow Window kits that I purchased for my elementary sciencemethods classes. They planted the generous supply of pea plant seeds that the kit provided. And in 5 of the 6 windows we had healthy germination. The plants looked neat growing up out of the thin plastic container housing the roots.
But the window idea paid no dividends. Although it was possible to see some small roots amid the very dark soil, it was disappointing how little you could actually see. I took one of the kits home to care for the plants. About one week after we started the kits, I planted the same pea plants in my home garden. Last week I took pictures of pea plants in the kit and in my garden. Our home telephone is put into each picture for scale.
Garden pea plants with phone at bottom
I know this is not a carefully controlled experiment. Nevertheless, clearly the outdoor garden plants did much better than the window indoor plants. Most people would guess that would be the case, even in a “winter” in Phoenix (where we have so far managed to avoid a seriously deadly frost). But without the benefit of being able to view the roots well, you have to wonder, why would you want to use the Sprout and Grow Window kits? So this review, gives these kits a rating of only 1 out of 4 test tubes. In other words, I don’t recommend that you purchase the product.
But it is nice that the pea plants they supplied grew so well outdoors. I have never grown peas before and I must confess I felt a connection to Gregor Mendel as I saw my plants rise up and flower. I even have pea pods starting to form. I think I will hold off on any genetic crosses for the time being but I think I might be up for a virtual experience at Adaptive Curriculum’s “Mendel’s Experiment.”
From the Activity Object "Mendel's Experiment" by Adaptive Curriculum
One of the many reasons I value living in other cultures, is that when I am removed from my culture, I have greater insight into my culture’s affect on who I am.
There is a fascinating radio show produced by NPR’s “This American Life” that explores the impact of testosterone on us.The first segment is a man who lost the ability to produce testosterone. In those four months he describes his loss of desire, not just the desire that we would suppose, but the desire for anything. To be sure , there was peace in not continually wanting, there was however also a sense of dismay in how much who he was dependant on testosterone.
Image from Adaptive Curriculum's "Human Body Systems"
The second segment was from a man who was born as a woman. Except for the growth of side burns and losing the ability to have a cleansing cry, this man didn’t describe how testosterone injections changed him physically. Perhaps it was assumed that almost everybody knows it can lead to secondary sexual characteristics, including bigger bones, stronger muscles, and a deeper voice. The change he described was on viewing women in a different way, and regrettably not being able to be as close to women any more.
Then in what seems like it could be fodder for afternoon TV, the folks at NPR sent in saliva samples to see who had the most testosterone. There was one group of five males and one group of four females. They all predicted relative levels first. Everybody thought that the woman in the office who made decisive decisions and spoke her mind would have the most testosterone. She even thought so, but hoped she was wrong. They were all right. There were differences in opinion for the males, as they displayed various tendencies, interests, and characteristics.The male who had the least was somewhat dismayed by the results. He said something like this, “I could have accepted this if I worked at ESPN’s Sports Center. But I work at NPR.” Then the “winner,” a balding, muscular, gay man (with almost twice as much testosterone as everybody else) wondered aloud, what is Sports Center? Which the least testosterone man took as another wound—he has more testosterone than me but doesn’t know what Sports Center is!It was a very funny radio moment.
The show ends with a mother reporting on and interviewing her very quiet 15 year-old son. In the process she presents how different her son and daughter are.
In high school biology we talk about hormones in general, and delve lightly into sex hormones. If you want a more interesting assignment (than answer Chapter 4 questions) for mature students, assign them this one-hour broadcast to listen to and ask them to write a one-page reflection. Lots of themes will emerge, and as you read your students’ work, you will have insights into who they are.
The show can be accessed or downloaded for free at: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1230. It can also be purchased at iTunes for 99 cents.
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.“
Berg (one of the really great guys in science education), would have the undergraduate secondary education science students put on physics and chemistry demonstrations for the local school children. It was a delightful way to give them experience teaching and expose children to the interesting world of science. In the picture, two of my students demonstrate their fire tornado. (See http://www.west.asu.edu/rillero/philippines.htm for more of my photographs from the Philippines.)
In this YouTube video below, a similar program is described called “The Little Shop of Physics.”
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.
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.
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.
Angie, one of my science methods students shared this article with me. ScienceDaily (2009-03-28) — Self-led, self-structured inquiry may be the best method to train scientists at the college level and beyond, but it’s not the ideal way for all high school students to prepare for college science. That’s according to findings of a new study. See: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090326114415.htm#
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!
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.
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