Using gooey balls, in the “World of Goo,” to make towers and bridges is an engaging way to build conceptual ideas in physics, engineering, and chemistry. The game made by a team of two guys (Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel) at “2D Boy” won the Innovation Award and Technical Excellence Award at the Independent Games Festival. Goo is available for PCs, Macs, and the Wii. IGN named Goo the best Wii game of the year.  In my house, the free trial download version of Goo won the “Win Over the Skeptical 11 Year-Old Award” for totally engaging my son—who proclaimed, “This is addicting!” My eight-year old son called it “very fun.”

That shows the power of Goo. A game that requires no instructions, but you proceed from level-to-level building things to transport the living goo balls. There is something satisfying about building the goo structures, and something powerful about completing the puzzle at each level. Okay, the goo ball creatures and game remind me a bit of the Zoombinis, and the puzzle contexts are not the greatest, but building the structures to solve the puzzle is intriguing and satisfying. And who wants to waste time learning elaborate storylines when there are goo structures to build?

In my trial of the free on-line sample, I built towers and then bridges. Then my 11-year old son took over, starting anew, and quickly blazed past me to get to build balloon structures to help fight gravity. Neither of us met the minimal goo ball rescue at the “Impale Sticky” level, but fortunately we were able to skip this level when we were left a few balls short.

Building a goo structure is difficult to describe but easy to do. You pull one of the goo balls and separate it from the structure. Two or three white “lines of force” (my term not theirs) appear and when you stop pulling it, the white lines become goo links joining the ball to the previous structure. Of course there is a lot of jiggling and the pull of gravity is evident. If you pull a ball too far away from the others, the lines of force disappear and you realize you need to put it closer.

Science Education and Goo

Linking goo balls forms triangular tresses, which are important units of engineering design. Through trial-and-error learning, we experience that triangle goo formations are easy to build and stable. It is a nice contrast, because it seems in the world of play (from Lincoln Logs™ to Legos™), rectangular formations dominate. The tresses are then used to build towers, bridges, and dangling structures. There is a nice science (and international touch) in the use of metric measurements such a “you have 4.4 meters to go.”

The physics of Goo feels pretty real, and this can be a bridge to many physics concepts. As you build structures, the notions of a good foundation and center of gravity come into play. Build it one way too far, and it falls down; keep the center of gravity above the base, and the tower rises. There is also a sense of harmonics/resonance/vibration in that if your structure starts to bend and bob, you have to be careful that your additions don’t cause more of this in an undesired direction.

At some higher levels of Goo, buoyancy comes into play, along with levers and moments, as balloons lift up lever arms. When this is applied to building a bridge, the balloon placement is critical because too much lift or too little gets the balloons popped. Placing the balloon closer or further from the pivot point can decrease or increase the lift.

For chemistry, the most obvious notion is the idea of adhesion and cohesion. Goo balls being attracted to other goo balls is cohesion. When they stick to something else, like the level where you have to climb up out of a canyon and make them stick to the walls, you have adhesion.

How do you Goo?

If you are teaching an engineering class, I think you have good justification to buy a class set of the “World of Goo.” I also think this would make a great addition to the computers of an elementary school computer lab. I can imagine Mr. Cosgrove (my fifth grade teacher) saying: “After you finish your graphs, if you have time you can Goo.” But for stepping softly into the “World of Goo,” give your students an extra-credit assignment to download the free version (link) at home and complete a certain number of levels. They can use screenshots to prove (and display) their work.

Edu-Goo

Winning awards is great and selling lots of this game must be pretty exciting to the creators. But I think the next endeavor should be an Edu-Goo product line. The possibilities are endless so I will just name three: (a) Online competitions between classes, schools, or the world to see who can build the Goo bridge to support the most weight, (b) three-dimensional Goo structures so students can explore using triangular versus rectangular tresses, (c) DNA Goo, where students can construct DNA double helix molecules. Less exciting but useful are worksheets that can guide exploration and discovery. Edu-Goo could have a teacher contribution page so teachers can contribute ideas about educational uses of Goo. 

Back on September 11, 2008, I wrote about the new Spore game and expressed concerns about the way evolution is depicted. I also restated other reviewers’ comments that it is a boring game.  After the incredible hype approaching the release, the media has been pretty silent.

PBS’ “Online NewsHour”, however, did post this article in October: “New ‘Fun Biology’ Video Game Lets Players Tinker with Evolution”. It seems like PBS put “fun” in quotes because they know it isn’t really fun. The author, Quinn Bowman, goes on to reference my blog entry:

Educational value

Educators are mixed over whether Spore belongs in the classroom.

Professor Peter Rillero of Arizona State University wrote on his blog, which focuses on using technology to teach science, that the mechanics of the creature creation in Spore did not accurately reflect how evolution works.



“The notion of evolution as making choices, as deciding to come out of the water to be a land creature and therefore deciding what appendages to gain, and the thought that the more DNA you eat the more evolved are so wrong that I wonder why Will Wright considers this to be science inspired?” Rillero wrote.

”

But then Bowman adds this quote:

“However, University of Florida associate professor of geology Joe Meert said games like Spore ‘are a natural place for students to gravitate to.’ 

’Even the things that (Spore) gets wrong, it could be a teachable moment. Here’s something the game gets wrong.  Why is it wrong?’

Dr. Meert seems like a fascinating and good guy and he is someone who wants the public to understand evolution. So with some reluctance I say his comments remind me of College of Education field offices telling interns with crummy mentor teachers, “Well at least you will learn what not to do.” Spore tried to show itself as a great science education tool. We have to recognize first and foremost, that it is not. Teachers should have great mentors, our children should have great science education resources. 

I don’t go around boring my friends and family talking about scientific inaccuracies in the media around me.  I would not expect history educators to criticize Call of Duty’s portrayal of WWII history. Unless of course, the game made claims that it was a great way to learn history, and started touting all of the historians that had been consulted in developing the game. Spore, on the other hand, deserves to be criticized.

Not only was Spore incredibly hyped, it wanted to develop the idea that it would promote an understanding of evolution. This was evident in the September 9^th TV Show: “Build a Better Being” produced and aired by the National Geographic Channel through a partnership with Spore. Getting famous evolutionary biologists to talk about their work, and then showing scenes from Spore, could have encouraged many to falsely believe that the evolutionary biologists were supporting it.

This is far from the case, and the journal Science reported complaints by scientists involved in the documentary. “I literally never heard about Spore until I saw myself on television in this infomercial about the game,” says Cliff Tabin, a geneticist at Harvard University. “It’s an outrage (as quoted by Bohannon, 2008).”

Other Voices of Concern

Fortunately, I am not the lone voice in criticizing Spore. Here are some other views that are critical of the “evolutionary science” in Spore.

T. Ryan Gregory and Niles Eldredge describe Spore in this way:

It is, in reality, a relatively standard real-time strategy game with the same basic unlocking of features, upgrading of levels, and choices about aesthetics and function as with vehicles or buildings in other similar games. The units happen to look like organisms, the features that can be added are mouths, eyes, and limbs, and the currency is called “DNA”, but really that does not make the game anything more than superficially biological.

John Bohannon wrote in “Flunking Spore”:

So over the past month, I’ve been playing Spore with a team of scientists, grading the game on each of its scientific themes. When it comes to biology, and particularly evolution, Spore failed miserably. According to the scientists, the problem isn’t just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong–it’s meant to be a game, after all–but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong.

Manure

How does the game’s creator Will Wright respond to the controversy? Well despite the scientific inaccuracies in Spore, he concludes:  “It’s manure to seed future scientists” (as quoted by Highfield, 2008). Some quotes are so good they don’t need further commentary.

Enjoyment

Of course there is also the issue of how enjoyable this game is. Here is a clip from the New York Times (Schiesel, December 2008):

BEST DISAPPOINTMENT: SPORE If Electronic Arts has learned anything from its experience with Spore, it ought to be that a software company should just let its games do the talking, rather than relentlessly hyping a game for years before its release only to deliver a one-note electronic toy in the end. Spore would not have fizzled so quickly if expectations had not been so ludicrously inflated to begin with. Perhaps more important, it showed that maybe even a game god like Will Wright, the game’s creator, can stand to be reminded of the basics once in a while. Spore was great at letting the player create something from nothing. But in the end it just wasn’t that interesting to play with. Making cool stuff is a great part of video games, but the play, more than in any other media, really is the thing.

Promoting Spore

Yet, many people are willing to promote Spore because it has science in it and is therefore thought to be educational. It is not difficult to find quotes like this:  “With its educational subject matter, Spore is the kind of game any parent should be pleased to find their child absorbed in” (Alderman, 2008).

Conclusions

Since all of the pre-release and release hype, not much has been written about Spore. Pretending to be good science and actually promoting accurate science are different entities, and many in the media will take superficial views. There is a good chance that the media writers also hold serious science misconceptions, so they don’t even know when something is inaccurate. Therefore, it is up to scientists and science teachers to help the public understand which products are good educational tools for promoting science education.

References

Alderman, Naomi. (September 8, 2008). Spore: the game where only the fittest survive. The Guardian, Feature Pages, p. 3.

Bohannon, John (October 24, 2008). VIDEO GAMES:
’Spore’ Documentary Spawns Protest By Scientists Who Starred in It. Vol. 322. no. 5901, p. 517
DOI: 10.1126/science.322.5901.517a

Highfield, Roger. (September 9, 2008). How evolution inspired a computer game. The Daily Telegraph, Science, p. 27.

National Public Radio. Talk of the Nation, September 12, 2008. Spore’: Does Evolution Really Happen Like That?

Schiesel, Seth. (December 21, 2008). The Zombies Look Better Every Year. The New York Times. Arts and Leisure Desk; VIDEO GAMES; Pg. 24

Snider, M. (September 9, 2008.). Social networking goes gaming. USA Today, Retrieved December 24, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.

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:

Adaptive Curriculum’s “The Properties of Acids”

Adaptive Curriculum’s “The Properties of Bases”

Adler, Kris Lesson Plan: The pH scale. 

Whether at the high school or middle school level, students studying graphs of motion are often confused. One area of confusion occurs in the difference between distance-time graphs and displacement-time graphs. Virtual activities can cause more confusion, unless the right ones are chosen.

Distance-time graphs are a part of many middle school math and science curricula. A Google search for “distance-time graphs” reveals about 10,500 websites with many Java-based and Flash-based online activities. The problem for physics learners and teachers is that in many cases, the developers call their graph a distance-time graph but in reality they are displacement-time graphs.

Here are some examples of (otherwise) good websites making this error:

Moving Man 

Football (soccer) Distance Time Graph

GCSE Bitesize 

There are a few good sites that accurately portray distance-time graphs.

“Crocodile-clips” is a simple, free site where students move a helicopter and create a real-time distance-time graph. It doesn’t matter if the helicopter is moved away from or closer to the starting point. The true distance traveled is displayed on the graph. It is simple but effective.

Commonwealth Curriculum Pack (CCP) is a more involved site. I used this with my mixed age physics class last week and it made the point and kept their interest.

This site uses the context of the 100-meter race to show different arrival speeds. Quickly, my students learned that the steeper the slope (gradient), the greater the speed of the runner. Then we viewed several nice animated sequences of interpolation, which they then interpreted.

PBS Teacher Line http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/resources/activities/race/readings/race.htm.

Students observe stick figures run 400-meter races. They can see the runners move at actual speeds or average speeds, so this serves as a good way to help students understand instantaneous speed versus average speed.

Motion graphs will probably always be confusing for some students. We can reduce confusion with distance-time and displacement-time graphs by using internet resources that accurately portray the difference.

Additional Resources

Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object: “Truck On: Position and Velocity-Time Graphs” 

The Physics Classroom Tutorial: Distance and Displacement

This week, I had the good fortune to meet with Conrad Storad, who is well known in Arizona for his children’s book Don’t Call Me Pig! We didn’t talk about javelinas, but we did talk about science education. Conrad reminded me and my dean (Mari Koerner) about the widespread use of the ASU science magazine, Chain Reaction, by middle grade children in Arizona.

Conrad and his staff, who produce the ASU Research magazine, also produce Chain Reaction. At their website, teachers can request class sets of Chain Reaction magazine, and it is all free. The magazine issues are thematic, with the following topics developed: urban ecology, solar system, Sonoran Desert, Weather Station, and Biotechnology. For teachers outside of Arizona, there is the electronic option, downloading the stories from the website.

On the website are the science standards (see Teacher Tips) addressed and some complimentary activities. But the best part is the lively presentation of the science content in the articles. Conrad has data that suggests that language arts teachers commonly use the magazines as a way to bring nonfiction reading in the classroom. This seems like a great tool for teachers to compliment other forms of instruction.

For example, after students used Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object “Greenhouse Effect,” they could follow it up with reading of “carbon-dioxide-questions” from Chain Reaction’s issue on Urban Ecology and in the process learn about ASU plant biologist Tad Day.

Duke and Bennett-Armistead summarize six reasons for having students read nonfiction as a normal part of instruction.

1) Provides the key to success in later schooling 


2) Prepares students to handle real-life reading 


3) Appeals to readers’ preferences 


4) Addresses students’ questions and interests 


5) Builds knowledge of the natural and social world


6) Boosts vocabulary and other kinds of literacy knowledge

Whatever type of instruction is used in a classroom, Chain Reaction can be a useful resource for middle grade science learning and literacy. It brings science alive and helps students meet real scientists. 

About the Images

First image: The cover of Chain Reaction’s issue on Urban Ecology. 

Second Image: A scene from Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object called “Greenhouse Effect,” This scene is summarizing the results of an interactive experiment where students compare the warming of the air in a container with a lid to a container with no lid. 

 I was teaching a middle school lesson on static electricity on Halloween so I dressed up as “StaticElectricity.” We did the usual activities with balloons, such as picking up paper, rice crispies, and coffee grounds. I used water balloons, but of course, we filled them with air. I liked their shape better, but some students had difficulty blowing them up. One variation that one of my university students found was to draw two circles on opposite sides of a balloon. After that, one side was rubbed on hair, and the other was not. Students could accurately predict that the circle rubbed would pick up stuff, but most did not accurately predict about the other circle. It didn’t pick up anything, as the balloon was an insulator and the charges stayed where they were placed.

I found a good applet on static electricity. It is from PhET, the makers of The Circuit Construction Kit, which I positively reviewed in a previous blog. It is fine for a teacher to demonstrate that electrons move but positive charges do not, however, as a student activity it has limited potential. When you start, the balloon has no net charge. When you rub it on the wool sweater the balloon picks up electrons (shown in blue) and the sweater loses electrons. Now the balloon will stick to the sweater because positive and negative charges attract. if you move the balloon towards the wall it repels the electrons in the wall and it sticks to the wall. 

Other Resources for Static Electricity

Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object “Electric Force“ 

Kurtus, Ron. (2008). “Basics of Static Electricity.”

NASA, “Cling On“

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.

The reviews are coming in about the new game SPORE, and they are less than inspiring. Along with its restrictive DRM policy and the weak reviews, I am not going to purchase this software for me or my sons. While I did use and write about Creator Creator, my writing about SPORE is not based upon first-hand use.

The review are in….

Chad Sapieha of The Globe and Mail writes: “…dull and repetitive play makes evolving your own species more frustrating than fun.”

Lou Keston of the AP press writes: “No single element of ‘Spore’ is revolutionary in and of itself. Each of the levels feels like a simplified version of a game you’ve played before.”

Matt Peckham, in his blog for PC World, describes it this way: “…the game’s still a few chromosomes short of a genome.”

Seth Schiesel of the New York Times, writes, “Beneath all the eye candy, most of the basic core play dynamics in Spore are unfortunately rather thin.”

Chris Kohler of Wired wrote about the top ten things he learned from playing SPORE. Number one on his list, “Spore is kind of boring.”

And speaking of learning, is this a tool for science education?

While science was theoretically the driving force for SPORE creator Will Wright, the descriptions of SPORE do not indicate this will help people learn science. When the science is discussed it sounds more like misconceptions, rather than accurate understandings, are being fostered.

For example, notice how the science is described in these two reviews:

Thierry Nguyen of 1up.com states, “If you really need a quick one-line summary of what Spore is, I guess I’d describe it as ‘intelligent design via minigames.’”

Matt Peckham describes early parts of SPORE this way: “Consuming bits of matter builds up your DNA, which you can then spend on new parts available inside a simple design tool that pops up whenever you choose to mate.”

The notion of evolution as making choices, as deciding to come out of the water to be a land creature and therefore deciding what appendages to gain, and the thought that the more DNA you eat the more evolved are so wrong that I wonder why Will Wright considers this to be science inspired? Hopefully, the travel in outer space and the ecosystem building are more accurate. But for me, I am in no hurry to find out. 

Image Notes

1. I was in New York City last week, and decided to visit the neighborhood where I was born (lower East Side). I took this picture of the giant SPORE ad then. The text reads “Mitosis Happens.”

2. The image below is from the Activity Object “Natural Selection” from Adaptive Curriculum. 

Resources

Evolution Facts and Misconceptions, Adaptive Curriculum.

Evolution Resources, Kevin Miller

Most Americans know the story of the powerful John Henry, the man who drove steel into rock. There are many versions of the story and songs that have been passed from generation to generation. For example, listen to a version sung by Van Morrison. With a huge sledgehammer, John Henry drove steel spikes into rocks, as his partner turned them in ¼ rotations with each strike, to help make way for the westward moving railway lines. A salesman had a steam-powered drill that he said could do it faster than a human. John Henry challenged the machine, and with a fantastic display of energy, John Henry beat that machine. We could probably find scores of John Henry teachers in schools, those who, if pitted against a computer for helping students to learn, would handily win. John Henry won the competition but sadly died of exhaustion in the process. I don’t think the experienced teacher would suffer from exhaustion, but I do know many new teachers who are exhausted and overwhelmed by the demands of teaching. 

Today, railway workers use powerful drills to make holes in rocks; someday, teachers will make computers a powerful core tool in student-centered learning.  But it hasn’t happened yet.

While most of us can adduce examples of great things happening in schools with technology, and while students certainly do use computers as tools, such as in writing, presenting, and researching, there is a sense that we haven’t pushed the envelope.

The fault doesn’t lie with the teachers. A recent National Education Association (2008)/American Federation of Teachers survey indicated that (a) there were not enough computes in classrooms “to use computers effectively for classroom instruction;” and (b) training in technology focused more on non-instructional uses of computers. Teachers in the survey were not technophobes, they almost all had internet access at home and 95% answered that technology improved student learning, 89.1% indicated it made student learning more enjoyable, 86.4% said it saves time on the job, and 87.5% said it improves job effectiveness. These results suggest that if computers for student use were provided and better training in using computers for instruction was presented, teachers would make greater use of computers to support student learning.

As schools try to do so many things for so many different children, effectiveness and efficiency are not as easily discerned as they are for drilling a hole in rock. Even as the effectiveness and efficiencies are developed and revealed, the traditions and culture of “the school,” will not change easily. I predict that virtual schools will be the catalyst to transform schools and let teachers drop their “sledgehammers.”

Virtual schools will demonstrate the efficiencies of the extensive use of computers to support student learning. When today’s students show a great proclivity for learning with computers, when parents and students want more and more online classes, when more and more students start attending virtual schools, and when student learning is discovered and efficiencies are dramatically demonstrated, then finally physical schools will have to start rethinking the role of computers in student learning.

Of course, traditional public schools may be the last to change their ways. Charter schools and private schools will be in the vanguard, because if they don’t, many will fail and close their doors. In Arizona, a state that is second to California in the number of publicly supported charter schools (Center for Educational Reform, 2008), charter schools are struggling to compete primarily because they are trying to do the same things with less money. When I see charter schools with untrained teachers and inexperienced teachers, and large class sizes that resemble traditional classrooms, I wonder why anyone would send their children to these schools. I also read about closures of private schools (i.e. Goodman, 2008), most particularly Roman Catholic schools, because the expenses are growing faster than the tuition.

Look to see the charter and private schools emulating the successes of the virtual schools. We will see some charter schools go completely virtual and we will see many more online classes, especially in areas where it is difficult to get qualified teachers (such as Advanced Placement Chemistry, Physics, or Calculus).

The revolution I am most interested in will eventually happen in the “bricks and mortar” classrooms. Parents, teachers, students, and administrators will continue to value the physical presence and great influence of a teacher, but at the same time will also seek the learning gains and efficiencies of computer-based learning. As virtual experiences become a significant part of the classroom enterprise, teachers will increasingly assume the role of the “guide on the side” (rather than the “sage on the stage”), students will have enhanced motivation, and the work of the teacher will be easier. All this will encourage many more teachers to remain engaged in the profession.  In a similar way to railway workers using mechanical drills to make their work easier, computers will be core tools in student learning, and virtual schools will start the revolution.

About these images:

The first image is from the Library of Congress. it shows Fred Dapp in a rock-drilling competition between 1880 and 1900 probably in Colorado.

The second image is from Adaptive Curriculum’s Activity Object “Nuclear Energy: Fission” showing a scene from an activity with a nuclear submarine.