Ed Tech 4 Science » science instruction

Tracing Matter: Ninth Grade Biology Students’ Project

Peter Rillero — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:59:48 +0000

This was my son’s project for Tracing Matter and Energy at Boulder Creek High School in Anthem. He decide to make a video, as he is fond of doing. Less scientific videos he made can be found at youknowmeHy. He just uses a small Sony camera that is primarily for taking still photos and Adobe Premier. This Christmas he is hoping for an upgrade.

Here is his video: Radioactive Tagging and the Carbon Cycle

A scene from Adaptive Curriculum's "Significance of Carbon Dioxide-Oxygen Cycle."

Impact Earth: Asteroid Damage Calculations

Peter Rillero — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:22:40 +0000

In a couple of days, a large meteor will pass between the Earth and the Moon’s orbit. The Asteroid named 2005 YU₅₅ is 400 meters long and at its closest point will pass 325,000 kilometers from the Earth traveling 13 km/s (30,000 mph).

The Impact Earth website allows you to calculate the impact of various asteroids if they were to hit the Earth. In this case if the YU₅₅did hit Earth we could expect the equivalent of 8.49 x 10¹⁸ Joules = 2.03 x 10³ Megatons TNT or a 6.8 size earthquake. If it hit the deep ocean, 45-meter Tsunami waves between 2.3 meters (7.6 feet) and 45.7 meters (150 feet) would be expected. But you will be happy to know that the average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 1.1 x 10⁵years (and if you need a brush up on your scientific notation, just move the decimal point five space to the right so it is 110,000 years). And just to be precise about the vocabulary, when it is traveling in our solar system it is an asteroid, but when it crashes through our atmosphere and breaks up into pieces that hit the Earth, they become meteorites.

Impact Earth data for 400 m Asteroid

It is interesting to use Impact Earth to see the effects of various size asteroids on the Earth. Indeed, student exploration will allow them to realize some of the parameters that will affect the collision including speed, density of asteroid, and angle of impact. The Impact Earth calculator is a good start but it leaves me a bit flat. No matter what size Asteroid, the impact animation is always the same. The depicted size of the asteroid should resemble the number that was entered. But the data are useful, and students could ask and answer many questions about asteroid impact, producing deeper asteroid understanding and inquiry skills.

Famous Asteroids from Adaptive Curriculum Animation

Air Table Physics and Conservation of Momentum

Peter Rillero — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:09:27 +0000

When I was a doctoral student in Science Education in the 1990s at The Ohio State University, Vic Mayer (1933-2011) was on my committee. He was a fabulous science educator and a role model for all who were in the program. As a proponent of hands-on science, it perplexed me when he said one day, “All classroom hands-on science is a simulation of real science.” I could partially see his point: clearly many hands-on activities were simulations, especially when contrasted with having students examine real data sets that seem common in the Earth Systems sciences, which Dr. Mayer loved. Yet I wondered, why isn’t looking at cells through a microscope real science?
When it comes to air tracks and air tables for doing physics investigations, these clearly are simulations. They are also very expensive simulations with the cost of one group’s materials approaching $1000 when you factor in the track or table, air source, photogates, and other materials. So a class set of the materials can easily approach $7000. It would be great to have lab technicians keep the apparatus fine-tuned but alas that responsibility typically falls upon the physics teacher. The point of any simulation is to help students understand real concepts, such as momentum.
I was delighted to experience Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object “Conservation of Momentum in One Direction.” The Activity Object begins with an animation of two basketball players throwing a ball back and forth, and then being put on ice skates. Now, the players move backwards as they throw the ball forward (Newton’s Third Law). Students are now engaged by the question, why did the player on the left move more than the player on the right?

Instead of just sliding objects on an air table, the Activity Object shows clearly what each block represents in our basketball situation, as shown in the scene below. This helps students establish the real-world connection.

Then the rich scaffolding begins. First students join different orange blocks, the spring, and the red block, and set them in motion by releasing the compressed spring. Students have to examine the data for which physical property (mass or volume) is important in determining the block’s speed. The analysis of data indicates that the mass is important.
After the exploration, an explanation describes momentum, and explains the equation and units for momentum. In the elaboration phase, students now tackle the driving question of the basketball players. The students now join the orange and red blocks with a spring but also place the blue block on the table. When the blocks are launched, the orange block moves to the left, the red block to the right where it collides and joins with the blue block. Just as in the starting investigation, students see the actual motion of the blocks, so the data they explore is more meaningful. Then the momentum of each block (orange, red, and red joined with blue) is calculated, and all of these momenta are the same. This helps students to progress in their understanding of conservation of momentum.

This understanding is further developed with an animation describing conservation of momentum. Then students are introduced to other applications of Newton’s Third Law and momentum, including rocket launches, automobile-truck collisions, and Newton’s cradle. After the Activity Object, a ten-question multiple-choice evaluation helps teachers know which concepts students have mastered and where they may need additional work. There is a well-designed Enrichment Sheet for homework where students read a few paragraphs and then answer questions about momentum and solve problems.
As wise of a man as Vic Mayer was, I’m still not sure that all hands-on activities are simulations but I do know that some simulations are better, more economical, and easier than other simulations. “Conservation of Momentum in One Direction” shows the power of a virtual simulation in scaffolding and developing deep understanding of concepts, using the 5E learning model, and helping students realize how classroom science concepts apply to their lives.

Melting Ice Cubes: A Discrepant Event

Peter Rillero — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:42:48 +0000

Melting Cubes: A Discrepant Event

Today is Labor Day (thus the casualness of it all) and my son and his friend were shooting some video segments of, well, shooting as well as backwards slow motion (see http://www.youtube.com/user/YouKnowMeHy). I asked them to film a demonstration I did this week at an inservice professional development workshop I did for middle grade teachers.

My son filmed with his little Sony Cyber-shot camera (a still picture camera that also does video) and then edited it with Apple’s iMovie.

For another discrepant event please visit my blog posting on surface area to volume ratio.

Learning Science Through Computer Games and Simulations

Peter Rillero — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:25:46 +0000

Margaret A. Honey and Margaret Hilton co-author this detailed description on using simulations and games to foster science learning. Among their conclusions are that the amount of research in this area needs to increase, but that “there is promising evidence that simulations enhance conceptual understanding, but effectiveness in conveying science concepts requires good design, testing, and proper scaffolding of the learning experience itself.” There is more evidence that simulations (as compared to games) promote science learning, the authors write, “The emerging body of evidence about the effectiveness of games in supporting science learning is much smaller and weaker than the body of evidence about the effectiveness of simulations. Research on a few examples suggests that games can motivate interest in science and enhance conceptual understanding, but overall it is inconclusive.” Regarding assessments, the authors conclude: “Games and simulations hold enormous promise as a means for measuring important aspects of science learning that have otherwise proven challenging to assess in both large-scale and classroom testing contexts.”

Eclipse is More than a Vampire Tale

Peter Rillero — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:54:21 +0000

(A guest post by Seth. R. Hawkins, Besteiro Middle School)

Teacher: “Class, today we’re going to learn another important feature of the Moon called an eclipse.”

Female Student: “I love Eclipse! Edward is so hot!”

Male Student: “Oh sir, I hate that show. I wish I had a stake for that…”

Teacher: “No, no, wait! Not the movie ‘Eclipse.’ I’m talking about the scientific phenomenon in which either the Sun or the Moon seem to temporarily disappear.”

(Cue disappointed groan from entire female class population…)

Going into this lesson, I knew I couldn’t compete with a vampire that shimmers and a werewolf with abs that make washboards jealous, so getting my students to focus on the interactions of the Sun, Earth and Moon during solar and lunar eclipses was going to be a challenge. It’s not that eclipses are boring – quite the opposite – but they are definitely a concept that seems very abstract unless they are seen in person. Since I don’t have time to wait for June and July to view a lunar and solar eclipse respectively, I knew I had to find some way to model this for my students. Of course, the day I wanted to do this demo I couldn’t find my globe and my flashlight was dead. No worries, a teacher anticipates these little problems. I turned to my reliable friend Adaptive Curriculum and was thrilled to find a module on lunar and solar eclipses.

While I have a computer lab in my classroom, I opted to do this activity as a class, hoping to generate some discussion and clear up any misconceptions before they became firmly rooted.

My class is very familiar with Adaptive Curriculum. We do a module about once a week. When I told them we were going to use Adaptive Curriculum, they gave the obligatory “I’m a middle-school student and I’m going to complain about this even though I really don’t mind doing it” groan – you know the one I’m talking about – but any apprehension quickly melted away when they saw what the eclipse module had to offer. My students were instantly transfixed by the animated explanation of various cultures’ beliefs in the meaning of eclipses and were even more interested in the lab-like setting presented in the module.

Learners manipulate models of the Earth-Moon-Sun system to observe eclipses.

Using the SmartBoard, we first modeled the solar eclipse. By manipulating the variable of the distance of the moon between the Earth and Sun, my students clearly saw the result on Earth. By changing camera views, they saw how the eclipse appeared on Earth. The ensuing questions provided by the module were perfectly aligned with what I would have asked myself. We repeated the process for the lunar eclipse with similar success.

Not entirely sure how well my students grasped the concept, I headed into the quiz. After the quick, five-question quiz, I was amazed at how well my students had mastered solar and lunar eclipses. I remember how monumental a challenge teaching this concept had been last year and I never felt my students understood eclipses at a level I expected of them. No problem this year. While I attribute much of that to an especially bright group of students, I know the way Adaptive Curriculum presented eclipses was in a way that was easy to understand and remember. As I asked follow-up questions, my students answered them by referring to the demo in the module.

As a teacher, Adaptive Curriculum is an invaluable asset. Not only does it keep my students engaged and on task, it also hits the objectives I want covered. I especially appreciate how Adaptive Curriculum makes a focus to incorporate process skills that students constantly need to practice.

Another benefit of Adaptive Curriculum is in its modeling of labs. Labs can be expensive, time-consuming to prepare and clean up, and aggravating when students don’t follow procedures. While there is nothing that can replace the experience of an actual lab, Adaptive Curriculum provides many safe and secure lab experiences in which students can manipulate variables and quickly and accurately measure results. Now what’s more scientific than that? Even a vampire would agree.

About the Author:

Mr. Hawkins and his students dissecting a frog.

Seth Hawkins is a 7th and 8th grade science teacher at Besteiro Middle School of Brownsville Independent School District in deep subtropical South Texas. A member of Teach for America, Mr. Hawkins came to Texas to help students realize and achieve their full potential. A self-proclaimed tech guru, Mr. Hawkins enjoys everything technology and also teaches Technology Applications and Web Design courses. When he manages to squeeze away from the classroom, Mr. Hawkins enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife and brilliant daughter. Questions or comments can be sent to him at srhawkins@bisd.us

Finding Your Passion

Peter Rillero — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:48:13 +0000

I had the great opportunity to hear Jim Gee and Lee Hartwell speak about very different topics this week, at different events, but one theme they both hit on was the idea of “Find Your Passion.” For Lee it involved asking questions in science inquiry that inspire you. This Nobel Prize winning scientist told his sustainability class to find something they are passionately interested in. For Jim, it was about electronic learning through passionate interactions. He told our entire college the story of Tabby Lou and the Purple Potty.

Perhaps the greatest roll in technology for science education is helping students find their passions in science. As both men point out, fantastic things happen when passions ignite.

From social interactions to simulations to blogs, there are so many elements that can contribute to this and help students to have multiple experiences with multiple voices.

Of course, passion can also come from looking forward to a career in science and getting paid for the work they will do. Speaking of which, there are now blog sites that can link you with an advertiser to get paid for your passion, such as Link From Blog. It is great to connect passion with future earnings, but Jim Gee really makes the point, that it is not always necessary.

Cooling Curves, Hot Coffee, and a USB Warming Mug

Peter Rillero — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:39:18 +0000

Especially in the winter months, I enjoy a good cup of strong, hot coffee. So I purchased the 12V and USB Travel Mug from ThreeSixty Lifestyle. It is a nice looking mug with a cover but on my first use, it didn’t seem like it really was adding any heat to the coffee.

So I got out my probeware and Spark (from Pasco) and put it to the test. First, I determined that the coffee in our coffee pot is 80° C (degrees Celsius or 176° F ). To test the mug, I filled it almost full (350 mL) with water at about 80° C (beverage heating for 12 ounces in our microwave) without plugging into my USB. Then I dumped this out and started again and I tested it with 80° C water with it plugged in.

From the first graph, after about 80 minutes it had a temperature of 46° C. From the second graph it kept a constant temperature of 60° C after

Graph 1: Cooling Curve with No Electrical Heating

falling for the first 28 minutes. So clearly heat is being added with an equilibrium (heat lost=heat gained) established at 60° C with a room temperature of approximately 20° C. But is it worth the bother to plug it into my computer and have a tethered cup? Without heating the cup, the

Graph 2: Cooling Curve with USB Electric Heating

water stayed above 60° C for approximately 30 minutes. It seems like both cups took about the same amount of time to cool to 60° C so there is no advantage for my first cup of jo in the morning, as that usually doesn’t last 30 minutes. Later in the morning, when I tend to let the coffee sit longer, it might pay to have it plugged in. But coffee at 60° C doesn’t give me that coveted deep-warming feeling. So good thing I bought this at Big 5 Sports, as they are quite good at accepting returns.

When it comes down to it, I would like to find a coffee heater that has a

Image from "Melting and Boiling Points: Heating Curve" from Adaptive Curriculum

heating curve, rather than a cooling curve. Perhaps I need a hot plate, like the one shown in the image from Adaptive Curriculum to the right. Bring on the heat!

Sustainable Science for Teachers

Peter Rillero — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:41:41 +0000

Yesterday, after about two years of planning led by Nobel Laureate Lee Hartwell, our Sustainability Science for Teachers course was launched. This is the pilot phase, but eventually all elementary students in our college (Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University) will take this course.

Lib Guides for the course have been developed and vetted by Dr. Hartwell, as sources for helping teachers teach sustainability better.