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.
With the dawning of the age of Spore (September 7, 2008) and its potential to help students learn about ecosystems, evolution, genetics, animal behavior, anatomy, and outer space, I decided that my son and I should take a peak at the free version of Creature Creator. How good is this software? Will it play a role in science education?
I won’t generalize from Creature Creator to Spore, as the former seems to be just a teaser. So I will try to limit my review to Creator and see what value it has for science education. We can wait for Spore, and see its value later.
It was fun to create different organisms in Creature Creator, to name them, to see them dance, and even to see what their offspring would look like. It was intuitive and easy to do; my 11-year-old son had no problems doing any of this without guidance. But after you create them, what can you do? It seems, to the disappointment of my son, not much. Trying to figure out something more to do, I took a video of my creation and put it on YouTube. This is my first uploaded movie, so I felt a bit of accomplishment (My Creature).
Spore promises to grow organisms from a single cell. Not so with Creature Creator, where you produce an adult by sticking various anatomical parts together, starting with skulls and progressing to horns or feathers. While there is some picking and choosing from different parts, and there are very good 3D graphics, at times it felt like a somewhat sophisticated Mr. Potato Head.
Okay, maybe that is because I used the free version my anatomical choices were limited. For example, I had to choose from only carnivore skulls, when what I really wanted was an omnivore. What was impressive and instructive was manipulating anatomical parts once they were selected. For legs, I could decide the length, where to put the knees and hips. I found it quite interesting to see how the placement of the hips had a profound effect on the stature of the organisms.
I can see some uses in science education for Creature Creator. The first thing that comes to my mind is scientific nomenclature, where after students learn about naming conventions of genus and species, they create their own organisms and give them Latin sounding names (like Harry Potter spells), as I did for my green, observant creature, Virenta observicus. I could also see creating a bunch of organisms and using them in classification schemes such as making a dichotomous key (see Animal Classification) to separate or identify them. Within anatomy, concepts related to structures and functions, comes into play as learners look at different choices and select the structures that optimize the functions they want their organisms to have.
Spore itself is promising four activities: (a) CREATE Your Universe from Microscopic to Macrocosmic, (b) EVOLVE Your Creature through Five Phases, (c) EXPLORE Other Players’ Galaxies, and (d) SHARE with the World. It is intriguing to see what will be unleashed. It is being called an “asynchronous sharing” game because you can do your own thing when you want to and make contributions to the universe. Certainly, Electronics Arts has muscle in graphics and programming, and after three years of development, it could be a pretty exciting project. Perhaps there will be learning about science concepts such as ecosystems, evolution, genetics, animal behavior, and outer space. Time will only tell.
Ironically, Creature Creator may be more useful in the classroom than Spore because it is easier and faster to use.It doesn’t involved immersing yourself into a virtual world for 15 to 20 hours. Students can make fun creatures within one class period and teachers can use this to teach important concepts. As a simple to use free or inexpensive tool, Creature Creator, can be put to immediate use for school or homework. If you have some ideas, please share them.
“Teaching means creating situations where structure can be discovered.” –Jean Piaget
Many science teachers struggle with the idea of free exploration. Free exploration takes advantage of the natural tendency for children to just mess around with materials, without following any rigid procedures. If you have ever watched a child playing in sand, you have seen free exploration.
I have observed some preservice teachers struggle with a hands-on science lesson because they pass out the materials to the children and then they try to explain what they should do with them. More experienced teachers know that once children start to interact with the materials, they begin to tune the teacher out. A better strategy, therefore, is to explain to the children all that they need to know before passing out the materials.
Free exploration purposely allows students to mess around with the materials. It is a shame that for so many teachers, science experiences are always canned (first do this, and then do this). I have no objections to well articulated experiences that lead to discovery, but students also need opportunities to mess about. Each time they change something and see the result, they are developing ideas and approaches that will deepen their abilities to design and understand experiments.
The virtual world can be a great place to mess around without causing a great mess! The activity object, “Space Objects Interaction Explorer,” presents a great canvas to mess around with. Students are presented with two celestial objects, larger than the other. By changing the size and direction of the arrow, they control their initial velocities. Then they hit the play button and the objects move according to their initial velocities, and their motion is immediately influenced by gravity. Lines are drawn as the planets move so the orbital paths are evident.
Experienced teachers also are aware that challenges can really keep students engaged, such as with GEM’s Bubble-ology, where the teacher walks around and says, “Okay, let’s see who can produce the largest bubble!” or “Wow, great! Now, can you blow a bubble within a bubble?”
In “Space Objects Interaction Explorer,” the first challenge is easy. Make the objects collide. A fiery explosion rewards success, but there is no big bang—of course, contrary to Hollywood misconceptions, sound does not travel in the vacuum of outer space.
The second challenge is to make the smaller object orbit the bigger one. Most children can’t do this at first, but neither can most adults. It is interesting that most adults know what an orbit is, but they can’t at first produce one. It is very different being able to define the term orbit versus being able to explain why an object orbits another. Through trial-and-error learning, both children and adults can get one object to orbit the other—and develop intuitive ideas about orbits.
Inevitably, the first orbit produced by the learner is not a circle but an elliptical orbit. The third challenge is to achieve a circular orbit. When this task is completed it helps students really understand that orbits are an interplay between velocity (moving tangentially to the orbit) and gravitational interaction. Then, when orbits are explained, students have the experiences to understand why they occur.
The fourth challenge involves three objects and asks that two of the objects orbit the largest one, which I will call the star. In putting this together, students (and adults) usually place one object closer and one farther from the star. And they initially make the farthest one have the bigger initial velocity. When they hit play, the nearest object crashes into the star and the larger object shoots out of the star system. Through trial-and-error learning, students will get it right, and later when they learn that Mercury is the fastest moving planet, it isn’t just an isolated fact to be memorized, but becomes an example of a concept they already know.
The last challenge is, appropriately enough, the most difficult to achieve. Appropriate because the really smart kids that solved the other challenges with great speed are fully engaged as everyone else catches up. The challenge is to make the small object orbit the medium object as the medium object orbits the largest object, or in other words, they are challenged to create a moon that orbits a planet, while the planet orbits the star. Students can, of course, adjust the position and velocity of the objects, as well as their masses. Success with this challenge isn’t easy and it takes a lot of messing about, but it is fun to see the interactions and patterns drawn of the paths followed. And when success arrives, it feels sweet!
References:
Adaptive Curriculum. (accessed August 7, 2008). Space Objects Interaction Explorer. https://www.adaptivecurriculum.com/us/details/USSSM150202
Barber, J. (1987) Bubble-ology (Great Explorations in Math and Science). Berkeley: Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California. http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/gems/
Hawkins, D. (1965). Messing about in science. Science and Children, 2(5), 5-9.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1967). The Child’s Conception of Space. New York: W. W. Norton.
Paul Marshall shared an early version of his doctoral thesis with me that is important for science teachers teaching about moments, torque, and levers. His thesis compared physical and virtual environments for balance beam learning. The balances used are made from strips of wood with a fulcrum in the middle and weights that are hung from nails at fixed distances on either side of the fulcrum.
Marshall’s work is impressive and his writing style is refreshingly communicative without the vague obscurity of many contemporary researchers attempting to sound intellectual. Marshall presents key aspects of the long history, starting with Piaget, of balance beam studies. This is important for his coding scheme of the results. In this way, he goes beyond whether there was a difference in physical versus virtual representations of the balance beam on pretest-posttest content gains. I won’t attempt to describe an entire doctoral dissertation in a blog—but I will point out some salient findings.
In Marshall’s own words, “The main question to be addressed by this study was again whether using physical rather than virtual materials while completing the learning task would produce measurable differences in learning outcomes between the groups.” The subjects were 32 college students who worked in pairs on the physical or virtual tasks. They were given the pretest and then asked to explore the balance beam so they could perform better on the posttest. Students were limited to a maximum time of 30 minutes for the explorations. I consider this a “free exploration” situation rather than the typical “guided-inquiry” approach.
The results are similar to a study I described by Klahr, Triona, and Williams (2007). In both studies, all of the students had higher posttest scores, but there were no differences between the physical and virtual groups. Because all the interactions on the task were videotaped, Marshall was able to look at the type and duration of experiments. The physical group did an average of 28.8 experiments versus 37.2 for the control group, but these differences were not statistically significant. The mean time for physical experiments was 24 seconds versus 28 seconds for the virtual group, again not statistically significant.
Marshall classified the student experiments by how rich they were for providing useful data. There were no differences between the physical and virtual groups on this measure. Marshall also classified the experiments based on the Vary One Thing at A Time (VOTAT) protocol (Tschirgi, 1980). Again, there was no significant differences here either.
“In summary, there is little evidence that using physical materials in the balance beam task has a significant effect on participants’ choice of experiment search strategies. This contradicts predictions that subjects using the physical materials might engage in greater and more fluid collaboration with physical materials.” Once again, although for most teachers the virtual environment would be easier to implement in a classroom, the data suggests no significant differences between physical and virtual groups.
Marshall’s study went on to analyze the conversations between the pairs working on the physical and virtual tasks. There were no statistically significant differences in the amount of dialog that was coded as hypothesis, summary of data, prediction, alternate hypothesis, critique of a hypothesis, agreement with a hypothesis, extension of a hypothesis, justification by several experimental results, plan to test hypothesis, discussions about testability, arguments against a justification, or requests for explanation.
The virtual group, however, did have statistically significant more talk about suggestions of new experiments. This result was expected because when one student controls the mouse, there is more need for conversation about what they should do next.
The physical group had statistically significant more talk about description of results. Marshall suggests that this may have been because in the virtual situation both students could easily see what was happening, but in the physical situation, when both were sitting next to each other, each had slightly different perspectives.
“It must be concluded that using physical materials has little effect on learning about the concept of balance as presented in this study.” Marshall’s study adds to the nascent number of studies suggesting that virtual tasks make equivalent gains to physical tasks. Interesting wrinkles are the increased talk for planning experiments in the virtual environment and increased discussion of results in physical situations. Opportunities to extend all elements of discussions in all situations need to be explored.
References:
Klahr, D., Triona, L.M., & Williams, C. (2007) “Hands on What? The Relative Effectiveness of Physical Versus Virtual Materials in an Engineering Design Project by Middle School Children,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(1), pp 183-203.
SCIENCE EDUCATION, CRITICAL THINKING, and INQUIRY SKILLS
My wife suggested that we have lunch at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was no game today, but there is a Friday’s Restaurant where you can eat in the outfield and look out onto the field 364 days of the year.
Along the walls of the first and third base lines sat batteries of large spotlights on wheels shining on the field. These were brightly illuminated, so much so that they were hard to directly look at even though I was 400 feet away. I asked our server, a baseball enthusiast, about the lights and he told us that at some times during the day, parts of the field were in shadows, and these artificial grow lights were supplementing the natural light.
Looking out over the game-less baseball field, I thought about what our waiter said. I observed that every bit of the grass field was now being illuminated by the natural intense Arizonan sunlight.Yes, this was mid-day and the sun was high in the sky, so I can accept that there would be shadows in the morning and evening. If we accept the idea that the light needs to be augmented, it would seem to me that the artificial light would benefit the grass more if it was only turned on in the mornings and late afternoon and directed at parts of the field that were actually in the shade. If you have ever experienced the intense, Arizona, mid-day, July sun shine on you, you know it packs serious energy. If the grass receiving this sunlight hasn’t slowed its photosynthesis because it is in survival mode from the intense heat, it seems safe to say, that the grass at this moment is optimally photosynthesizing with this intense natural light source.
So, it seems like an incredible waste of energy to shine grow lights during midday. In Arizona, utility rates are cheaper before 9:00 AM, which is another reason to shine the lights on certain parts in the morning. I won’t even delve deeply into the idea of whether parts of lawn that get shaded during different times of the day need light augmentation (my small lawn, which is the same Bull’s Eye Bermuda species as the stadium, does quite well with some parts getting lots of shade and I can assure you that professional ballplayers are no match in the trampling department to my energetic sons, their friends, and our young sheltie). Nor, will I delve deeply into the possibility of using reflectors to reflect natural light, for instance from the base path areas to areas that are sometimes in the shadows.
Eating my tilapia tacos, I thought about developing workforces with critical thinking and inquiry abilities and the importance of high quality science education.If we apply critical thinking to the case of grow lights at Chase Field, what argument can be made for grow lights to enhance the midday sun? Then after logical discussion, we should ultimately test our assumptions. The grounds crew could choose three of the shadiest areas, illuminate one with grow lights only when it is in the shade, illuminate one with grow lights only when it is in the sun and don’t artificially illuminate the other, and then compare the results. And as Sean, in the movie Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2001) said, “Never argue with the data.”
Are we helping students leave our science classrooms being able to critically think, to have mindsets favorable to inquiry, and sufficient inquiry abilities? The grow lights at Chase Field may be a small example of misdirected technology, but many other technologies are certainly high stakes. Hopefully, we can work to avoid misdirected technologies through developing critical thinking and inquiry abilities in the future workforce. And to use a baseball line from Field of Dreams (1989), “If you build it” they will have tools for life long learning and decision-making.
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.
Wiley, D.(2000). The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Agency for Instructional Technology and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Available at Reusability.
As a long-time advocate of hands-on science (Perspectives of Hands-On Science TeachingHaury & Rillero, 1994), I believe that hands-on science with physical entities is an important part of science classrooms. As examples consider science experiments where students hold and manipulate physical things, such as spring balances, magnets, and earthworms. I believe virtual experiences are a compliment – not a replacement for— physical experiences and other forms of instruction.
There are of course situations where physical hands-on science experiences are not possible. Some science experiences may be too dangerous, too long, or too expensive and therefore virtual experiences can be a great way to provide the experience without the “too” problem. There are also some educational contexts where physical hands-on science can be problematic. For example, at an NSTA conference one of the teachers who was very excited about how Adaptive Curriculum worked in a prison for adolescents. She told me that it was against prison rules to allow any physical hands-on materials into the classroom. Thus she was very interested in virtual experiences. While most science teaching situations are not this extreme, it is, however, the norm, rather than the exception that a lack of funds, material, equipment, or preparation time limits the quality or the amount of hands-on experiences we provide.
Perhaps I had a misconception about virtual experiences. I just assumed the physical experiences would be better than the virtual experiences. But then I came across a research study published in a top science education journal entitled: “Hands on What? The Relative Effectiveness of Physical Versus Virtual Materials in an Engineering Design Project by Middle School Children” (Klahr, Triona, & Williams, 2007). According to the authors, “Thepurposeofthisstudywastodeterminetheeffectsofputtinglearners’handsonvirtualratherthanphysicalmaterialsinascientificdiscoverycontext.”
The study compared constructing physical and virtual mousetrap cars and the learning outcomes. Pretests were conducted on student knowledge and constructing an optimal distance car. Based upon pretest-posttest gains on the content exam students were either classified as “learners” or “non-learners.” In the physical group there were 14 learners and 14 non-learners. In the virtual group there were 16 learners and 12 non-learners. Although the physical group outperformed the virtual, this was not a statistically significant difference.
When it comes to the designing the Optimal Distance Car test, all groups designed cars that went farther from pre to post test. There were no significant differences between the groups. Of course, educational researchers don’t usually get too excited about finding “no statistically significant difference.” In this study, it is interesting, however, because it suggests that the learning may have been equivalent.
The authors of the study point out that the virtual experiences were far easier for the teachers because they didn’t have to gather and distribute materials and find special hall locations for the students to conduct their tests. The study also suggested efficiencies for the students. Half the students in each group had limited time to build their cars; half had a limit on the number of cars they could construct. When time was limited, virtual group tested more cars (average =20.1) than physical group (6.1), which was a statistically significant difference. When number of cars was restricted to six, virtual students did it in less time (6 minutes versus 20 minutes). Being able to do more in the same time or the same in less time, both with the same learning outcomes, does indeed help show the value of virtual experiences.
But in my opinion the value of virtual science experiences, is still as a complement to the physical experiences rather than as a replacement. I don’t know of studies that support this opinion but I suspect that most science educators would agree with this position. So for me, we should focus less on “Physical Versus Virtual Hands-On Science Experiments” but more on how virtual experiences can enhance overall science teaching and learning.
References:
Klahr, D., Triona, L.M., & Williams, C. (2007) “Hands on What? The Relative Effectiveness of Physical Versus Virtual Materials in an Engineering Design Project by Middle School Children,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(1), pp 183-203.
As a long-time advocate of hands-on science (
Haury,
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