I was excited to see this recent posting from my institution, CU Boulder. If you’re a teacher looking to teach climate change in the classroom, a group of scientists, science education researchers, and middle and high-school teachers have developed and refined a set of problem-based lessons:

Visit them at LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu

They say:

The result is a set of model lessons that focus on the following single driving questions:

• Evidence of Climate Change — How would we know if Colorado’s climate is changing and how will it affect me?
• Mountain Pine Beetles — Why are our forests dying?
• Zoo Poo — Does burning poo at the Denver Zoo reduce CO2?
• Modeling Climate — What makes you hot?

Your students are already using tools like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, they’re often using them when you’d rather they’d be doing something else (like paying attention in class). How can we turn the potential obstacles of Web 2.0 and social media into an opportunity for effective teaching and learning?

I recently gave an overview talk at the American Association of Physics Teachers, sharing some techniques instructors are using for communicating with their students and each other, including class blogs, real-time aggregated conversations in class, tweeted answers to student questions, dedicated YouTube channels, wiki-based class contracts, and more. I did a lot of research for this talk, and wanted to share the fruits of my labor on this blog. I argued that by using these tools, rather than ignoring them, we can help students gain social media literacy skills. Thus, we may choose to leverage social media to promote conversation about things that we care about, using platforms that students find familiar and fun.

Below is the Prezi that accompanied this presentation.  I also recommend you check out the Diigo list of social media links that I made for the presentation — here you’ll find examples of class blogs, research articles on social media, and more. It’s a really useful list.

I wrote out the salient points from the presentation in my other blog at the Active Class.  I cover how students are using social media, strategies that instructors use to combat digital distraction in class, and then how they are using it to promote student/student collaboration, student/teacher communication, and their own professional learning.

And to end the presentation, I quoth:

If you want your students to tweet you well, then you need to tweet them well

Model good behavior in these forums, and participate in them. Don’t ask your students to do something that you’re not willing to engage in yourself.

Again, check out the Diigo list of social media links!

Another post on today’s sessions at the AAPT…

In one talk on “epistemological priming” (Paul Hutchison, Grinnell), he made a compelling case for the fact that students aren’t using their everyday reasoning in physics class.  He asked them the question, “If you throw a ball horizontally, and a ball straight down, which will hit the ground first?”

Amazingly, a full 40% of his sample said that the one thrown horizontally will hit the ground first!  Any third grader, he said, will give the correct answer to this question (that the one thrown straight down will hit the ground first). So, the ones who give this “silly” answer, he says, are framing this task as an “answermaking” task – where their job is just to get the right answer and use whatever tricks they need to get there.  Since this question has some resemblance to the common physics demo, where a ball is thrown horizontally or dropped vertically, they try to make an answer from that previous information.  Those who answer correctly are in a “sensemaking” mode – they are reasoning through the question, in a variety of ways.  They think their task in physics class is to make sense of what is happening.  They found that they were able to prime students to answer in a certain way depending on how they led into the question.  Different types of initial questions primed the students to think about the thrown-ball question in one of those two ways.  This is good news, it means that if we want students to  engage in certain kinds of activities on the homework, perhaps we should make the first couple questions on the homework strongly leading in that direction.

A follow up talk by Mary McDonald, also at Grinnell, was cancelled, unfortunately, but she investigated what kinds of activities during groupwork can create an answermaking versus a sensemaking frame.  This would be helpful in determining what sorts of things we could emphasize when we’re watching students working together in groups, so that they engage more in making sense of what they’re doing.  My friend Sandy Martinuk (University of British Columbia) has created some interesting work in this area too – he found that students don’t connect what they’re learning to real-life when they’re doing a problem solving activity, even if it’s real-world (like context-rich problems).  They still seem to be engaged in answermaking in that task.  When they’re creating or inventing something by working together, however, they seem go to more into a sensemaking frame of mind.

Luckily, Sandy reads my blog, and hopefully can correct what I believe is a somewhat muddled description of his results!

Phew… end of Day 1… It’s been a very long day.  Stay tuned, tomorrow I’ll be presenting two talks — on clickers, and on social media in physics classrooms.  I’ll do my best to summarize those here!

I’m at the American Association of Physics Teachers meeting, and will be trying to liveblog some of my observations from sessions while I’m here.  The absence of wireless may dampen the true “live”-ness of the liveblog, but I’ll aim for semi-live blogging – ie., I’ll post stuff from my hotel at night, before I collapse with exhaustion.

The University of Maine PER group (Brian Frank and Adam Kaczynski) showed us a few  of their studies on how students reason in tutorials.

For one, in tutorials, we expect students to articulate their reasoning, and argue and debate ideas.  But this isn’t always easy to do, working in social groups.  Brian Frank showed us some results from one group of girls, which I think must be pretty common.  One student said that she thought that they would see one kind of result when they did the experiment later in the tutorial.  Another disagreed.  The first student sort of laughed uncomfortably and said, oh, “I don’t know.”  She tried several times during the tutorial to bring up her concerns and confusion about that part of the tutorial and the other students either changed the subject, said it didn’t matter whether they all got the same answer, and that student always sort of deflected the potential conflict or loss of face by turning away, playing with her hair, or laughing.  This was a lost opportunity for the students to discuss and articulate their ideas.  I bet this happens a lot.  If articulating and attending to peers’ ideas are important for tutorials, we need to find ways to make this happen in the classroom.  I know at the University of Colorado we have successfully addressed this problem, at least in part, by using undergraduate Learning Assistants to circulate, ask questions f students, and model the kind of reasoning and discussion that we want from our students.

Adam Kacyznski also showed us some data on the fact that students aren’t necessarily using the resources available to them to solve the tutorial problems.  They try to solve inconsistencies as they work through tutorials, but not necessarily between ideas in the tutorial, but rather between their own formulations of the question.  They don’t bring up alternative ideas until that’s modeled by the instructor.  So, students aren’t necessarily being independent learners in quite the way that we expect them to in the tutorials.

Both of these studies suggest what we already knew, but with some more precision – the deep thinking that we expect students to do is difficult, both intellectually and socially.  In the Q&A, it was mentioned that the structure of the tutorials can be complicit in creating this kind of direction – if the answers come later in the tutorial, then students might avoid spending the time to talk about their reasoning because they know it will be resolved later on.

I wanted to let you know about a blog post that I recently created over at The Active Class, on the use of blogs and wikis in K12 classrooms. There are some nice summaries of one small research study that looked at what worked (and what didn’t) in teachers’ uses of these tools, with some general themes and best practices. This is part of a series of posts from my attendance at the tech ed conference ISTE.

Here is an excerpt:

These examples were successful because they were authentic and had a clear objective — a final project, or sharing of information for future assignments. One failed project is noteworthy — the teacher asked students to create a wiki about skin diseases, with each student covering a different disease. Students did not engage in any discussions on this project, because there was no real reason for them to care about reading, and commenting, on each others’ posts. Similarly, individual student blogs were not very successful, in part due to logistics of maintaining many separate blogs and commenting structures, but also there was little incentive for students to participate in the discussion.

Read the whole post here

This is a post geared more towards parents than teachers because, after all, parents are the ultimate teachers, right?  It’s summer, and kids get to turn their brains off for three months.  Well, mostly.  Connie “The Science Club Mom” shares her experiences on how to do some fun science projects for kids as part of a geeky-cool science club over the summer.

———-

If your child is a fan of the cartoon “Phineas and Ferb,” then you’ve probably heard the show’s theme song and its siren song calling, “There’s 104 days of summer vacation, and school comes along just to end iiiiiiiiit…”

In a related vein, at my daughter’s school’s year-end awards ceremony, the (somewhat crotchety) gym teacher “Mr. Downer” announced (much to the kids’ dismay) that all the parents had agreed that there would be no TV or videogames that summer. Only reading and outdoor play. I got his point but was silently thinking, “Bite me.”

Still, “Mr. Downer’s” point is a fair one. What’s a hard-working, well-intentioned-yet-pressed-for-time parent to do to keep their kids’ learning going over the summer? Some of our kids will go to camp over the summer. Others will ship off to distant relatives’ homes for July. (Atlanta! Chicago! Jamaica!) There will be beach trips and pool trips and days spent at amusement parks. But what about reading? Learning those multiplication tables and double-digit subtraction? Is the time right for teaching Susie and Johnny the Great Authors? Didn’t I once read something, somewhere, about a “Shakespeare for kids” audiobook?

One thought is to form a summer science club for your child(ren), his/her friends, neighborhood kids, and anyone else who might want to tag along. A quick Internet search of “kids’ science books” brought up a wealth of reading material, including The Everything Kids’ Science Experiments Book by Tom Robinson (2008), which we used last summer. We also bought Neil Ardley’s (1993) 101 Great Science Experiments: A Step-by-Step Guide and (my daughter’s pick) My Big Science Book by Simon Mugford (2003). Want to make white carnations change color? Build a turbine out of bendy-straws and toothpicks? Make something called “magic milk”? These books will tell you how to do it. There are also plenty of other science experiment books as well. I also picked up You Can Be a Woman Marine Biologist by Florence McAlary and Judith Love Cohen (2001) since I’m trying to convince my girly-girl daughter that growing up to be a scientist is more interesting and practical than, say, a princess.  [[Note from Stephanie: Also consider all the books from the Exploratorium, such as "Exploratopia" or "Science snacks" or their websites for easy at-home activities such as Science Explorer or Science Snacks]].

The one down side (to me) of planning engaging science experiments from scratch is that you have to assemble all the materials yourself, which can entail a bit of running around. Who wants to spend an entire Saturday morning driving to five different stores to buy coated wire, batteries, small light bulbs, molding clay, food coloring, wire strippers, bulb-holders, thread spools, and poster paint? (For the record, “magic milk” probably only requires the purchase of food coloring, since you likely already have milk, liquid dish soap, and plates in your home.) So for the tired, overworked, and otherwise lazy among us, there are the pre-packaged science kits. For Christmas 2009, Santa brought my daughter the Scientific Explorer’s Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists, and we’ve done a number of the experiments from that, including making color-changing volcanoes. The nice thing about kits like these is that they provide you with many of the harder-to-locate items, such as polyacrylamide crystals and red cabbage juice. (When was the last time you picked those up from your local grocery store?) I’m also a fan of the Ein-O-Science line of science-in-a-box kits for about $8 each.

A handmade rocket

Ah, but have I mislead you? I started off discussing summer science bridge activities and instead lead you into a review of products that can be used for in-the-house science. What about the summer? What about the outdoors? Nature? The sun? Summer brings great opportunities for doing outdoor experiments. I’ve bought various Steve Spangler items including an air-burst rocket ($32.95; requires a bicycle-pump); solar bags ($12.95; they also sell string to go with these, but you can use any old string from your house, including kite string which works just fine); the solar race car ($10.95; they have other little solar robots too);  and sun sensitive paper ($6.95 for a pack of 15 sheets; they also sell sun sensitive fabric, but I haven’t tried it yet). The solar bags and rocket were especially fun, and can tie in with a science-related discussion (“What makes the rocket fall to Earth?” And “What makes the solar bags rise? Answer: Once the bags are filled with air, sealed off, and placed in the sun, the air molecules inside them begin to move around, causing the bags to rise.”)

To return to the original point of this posting, as parents we have to keep the learning going over the summer. But it doesn’t have to be dreadful. A little planning + purchases of key items + a bunch of kids = learning disguised as fun. The kids might even forget about the TV (for a little while).

Connie_The_Science_Club_Mom is a content writer for Online Schools and Online MBA who gives advice on the pursuit of education and living a healthy life. In her free time she enjoys planning science experiments and trips for her girls’ science club.  Email her directly at scienceclubmom (at) aol (dot) com.  Image courtesy of Connie.

I blog on using technology to enhance student engagement over at The Active Class. My most recent post was about Ubiquitous Presenter — a free way to add interactive ink to your slides.  Here is an excerpt:

When the screen lights up, students take it as a cue to tune out.  We’ve all had this experience — we scan the slide, and while we wait for the presenter to read through their bulleted list, we daydream about what we’re having for dinner tonight.

We can combine the best of traditional chalk with Powerpoint, and use programs that allow you to ink up your Powerpoint interactively. This digital+interactive blend is the driver behind Smartboards and other interactive whiteboards, and with a tablet PC you can also add drawings and other annotations to slides.  I wanted to highlight one particularly  useful (free!)  tool that was designed by science education researchers, specifically for educators.    Ubiquitous Presenter is a free tool designed for use with a Tablet PC, to interactively ink slides, AND allow students to add their own ink from their seats.

Check out the whole post for more.

My fellow bloggers have got some good articles too, about how to use technology to add life to your lecture.  One recent post by SidneyEve Matrix suggests using the short 5-minute snazzy Ignite presentation style to jazz up your lectures and student presentation.  As an Ignite fan, I love it!

Got some topics or questions you think I should cover on that blog?  Please, let me know!

A while back, a teacher on a listserv asked for some ideas and resources for teaching the science of the phases of the moon.  Veteran teacher Eric Plett shared this great hands-on activity that I thought merited a blog post of its own.

1.  Darken your room and get a bright light source like an overhead projector.  Turn it on and project it toward your students.

2.  Give each student a tennis ball (or a white Styrofoam ball that you can buy at Michael’s is even better).  Have them hold the ball out away from their face and slightly above their heads (so that they don’t immediately experience a ‘lunar eclipse’).

3.  They can start with the ball opposite the light source – full moon phase.  Then while maintaining the ball position they turn their bodies to see the phases of the moon.  Have them turn in unison and you can call out the phases that they will see.  They can experience a solar and lunar eclipse when the ball obstructs their line of sight to the light and when their heads block the light hitting the ball.

Says Eric: “It was a great ‘real’ experience for my students and they not only knew the phases but the why behind them.  It is usually an epiphany for them.”

Another activity on the moon is on one of my Science Teaching Tips podcast, from the Exploratorium, about the relative size of the full moon:

When the Moon Hits Your Eye.  What coin would just barely cover the full moon? You may be surprised. TI director (and recovering astrophysicist) Linda Shore explains how our brains distort the actual size of the moon.     Download mp3

[UPDATE]

Since I posted this, I got several comments on my Facebook page from readers:

David Colarusso says:  I used to do this with my astronomy students, but might I recommend tangerines over tenis balls. It helps with the digestion of a new concept if you can actually digest the subject of your study.

Paul Doherty says:  Hi Steph,  I go out during the day when the moon is in the sky with a white ball. I hold it up in the sunlight right next to the moon in the sky….it has the same phase as the moon.  for the same reason.

Helen Fields says:  “We did this in my earth science class (with a white styrofoam ball, ’cause you can put a pencil into it and hold it that way) in about 1994 and it was great – I still remember the phases of the moon that way. “

If you fill a glass bottle partway with water, and hit it with a spoon, you’ll hear a pitch. If you dump out some of the water, and hit it again, you’ll get a higher pitch. Less water, higher pitch. That’s because the frequency of sound is related to how quickly the sound wave can make a “round trip” through the thing it’s traveling through. If there’s less water, it takes less time for it to make the round trip, and the pitch goes up. (Look up “resonance” if you want to know more.)

The very cool thing is that you can actually make a whole xylophone this way if you tune the bottles just right — go to Phil Tulga’s website for instructions.  I used these instructions for a demo that I did at the Exploratorium, and we played a duet of Yankee Doodle.  Very fun!  But boy, am I not musically inclined.  Also, high-schooler Sarah Tulga, who collaborated with her dad on publishing the very helpfulwebsite with the tunings of the water bottle xylophone, now has her own website on the science of sound. Check it out at sarahtulga.com.

But now, instead of hitting the bottles, blow across the top to get a tone (like you used to do to annoy your parents when you had an empty coke bottle). The bottle with less water will now have a lower pitch. That’s because now the sound is traveling through the air in the bottle. The more air, the more time it takes the sound wave to do the round trip, so the lower the pitch.

This type of sound we get from blowing across a bottle is called Helmholtz resonance. Back in the 1800′s Herman von Helmholtz made sets of these “Helmholtz resonators ” (shown here in the picture). These were the first frequency analyzers! Each bottle will only resonate (make a sound) when the right frequency sound is played into it. So if an orchestra played a chord, Helmholtz could run around and put his ear to his resonators, and determine which notes were present in that sound.

So with the same set of bottles, with decreasing amounts of water, you can play two different sets of notes — one by blowing, which decreases in pitch, and one by hitting the bottles, which increases in pitch!

Many teachers know the value of finding those surprising science experiments and demonstrations that hook kids’ attention.  One popular one is to have kids predict whether soda cans will sink or float, which turns out to be a nice hook for ideas of density.  Kids generally figure that if one thing of a kind sinks or floats, so will all the others.  So when the regular soda sinks, most will predict that all the other ones will sink too.  Much to their surprise, the diet soda generally floats.  Why?  Regular sodas are loaded with sugar, and that increases the density of the soda.  Diet sodas have aspartame, and a lot less of it per volume (take a look at the side of the can).  Steve Spangler’s site has a nice description of this activity.

I want to say more about the soda can activity (and why it is, in a way, a bit of a lie!) but first a few asides:

- This is, of course, also a great lesson in why sugared sodas are so bad for you.  That’s a lot of sugar.  Another astounding experiment I saw in this regards was to have kids weigh a piece of sugared gum, like Bazooka.  Then chew it, while the teacher talks about density and weight and stuff.  Then weigh the gum again.  It is surprisingly lighter.  Where’d all the weight go?  Look and see how many grams of sugar are in the gum.  That’s now in your belly.

- Kids have a lot of trouble with density.  They often think that “light” things float and “heavy” things sink.  Take a piece of soap and show that it sinks.  Break it in half and ask them to predict whether it will sink or float.  Many will predict that it will float, and will be visibly astounded when it still sinks.

- Another great density experiment is to take a piece of aluminum foil.  When it’s flat, it sinks.  When it’s crumpled up, it holds air, and floats.  More info here.

- Lastly, I’m forever enamored with the work of Dan Schwartz, who has kids invent the solution (for example, the formula for density) before telling it to them.  He calls these invention activities “Preparation for Future Learning” and there’s a lot of evidence to show that they’re effective.  For example, for density, he shows kids a bunch of cars with clowns in them and asks them to come up with a “crowded clown index.”  The index has to differentiate between, for example, the small cars with many clowns and the small cars with few clowns, as well as a large car with few clowns and a small car with few clowns.  Even if they don’t come up with the standard formula for density, students are ready to hear the expert solution, and also understand why density is a useful construct.  This goes along with the idea of giving a need for a vocabulary word before introducing the word itself.

OK, so now for why the soda can trick is (sort of) a lie.  It doesn’t always work.  It’s important to test the cans before you do this as a classroom activity (unless you want to turn it into an investigation of ‘why didn’t we see what we expected?’).  There is some variability in how sodas are canned, both within and across brands.  Is the advertised volume actually in the can?  (The only way to know is to open the can, though you can also weigh the can, as long as the same mass of aluminum is used).   Sometimes there might be extra air in the can, turning what should be a “sinker” into a “floater.”     Also, sometimes a bubble can get trapped under the can (so tip it sideways).   The temperature of the water also changes its density, so conceivably the temperature of the water could change the outcome of the experiment, though I’d be surprised if this was a large effect.

So, it’s a bit of a “lie” because you never know, perhaps you chose a floater and a sinker that float and sink because of different amounts of trapped air in the can, rather than because of density.  One could imagine turning it into an inquiry experiment, where students try to confirm the teacher’s hypothesis that the floating and sinking is due to density differences — a simple weight and volume determination of the soda in the can could do the trick, and would be a great experiment for students to suggest.  After all, don’t believe it just because teacher said so!

Image from Ngchikit under CC Share Alike (more info here).