Teaching Science

I refer to the posting by Katryce on wikipedia. It was gratifying to find support from Katryce who also shared similar views about the internet might contain a lot of information but not necessarily good quality information.

In my practical experience, I observed a teacher who used the internet as a source without checking the veracity of the information which resulted in students learning (on their own, I might add) a few misconceptions in science.

KL

I refer to Toby’s blog on the interactive game which I also tried. It was an interesting problem solving exercise in a simulated environment. If the purpose was to teach problem solving skills, it would be great use of the game. But if its used to illustrate principles in physics, I wonder what are the justifications for not actually setting up a board and some wheels and let the students experience reality?

I think this would be another example of simulations being treated as real results.

KL

This is a reaction to Maree’s second question from her blog about any worthwhile experience in ICT.

For a person who has never blogged before, I was rather pleased with myself that I have finally managed to work out how to link pages to words. I admit it was by trial and error (I even recall being told how to do it in the tutorial, but it was too brief to have any long lasting memory). Is it worthwhile? I’m not completely convinced being able to link pages will be a deciding factor in my career but I suppose anything is a start if you started from nothing.

Also, some readers might have noticed that the quality of the blogs have been slowly but progressively improving as my skills improve.

KL

During my practical experience, I had the amazing opportunity to use a interactive whiteboard. For those of you who are not familiar, its the size of a small chalk board that can display your previously beautifully prepared lesson using powerpoint software. The interactive whiteboard is interactive in that you can draw “electronically” on your display and if the correct software is used (such as SMART notebook), you can even move objects around on the screen.

It offered some amazing advantages over the traditional whiteboard, I was able to very quickly produce my lessons. Scribing time was significantly reduced. It even allowed students to directly enter their experimental results onto the power point slideshow and enhance their own class presentations. I could keep an eye on the students instead of having my back to them. However, the use of the interactive whiteboard was still mainly as an instructive tool, not a constructive tool.

So I decided to produce a lesson where the students could move items around on the screen to produce their own presentation. Armed with this new student centered learning based, constructionist lesson, I was very pleased with my apparently clever use of the interactive whiteboard. Unfortunately, the students were used to a diet of spoon feeding and were very unenthusiastic about having to move things around. They soon were using the SMART board to doodle and became unfocused on the task.

So, while it is all very nice to sit in a lecture and pontificate on the merits of constructionism and using technology, a lesson that I learnt was that if the students have not been taught how to learn in a constructionist way, and are more used to being instructed, then suddenly thrusting them into a student centered learning environment is not always the best strategy.

Similarly, I observed a class where the teacher decided to ask students to research ear implants on the internet without giving them any scaffolding. Again, the students quickly lost interest and started surfing the internet for more interesting sites.

My point is that while a student centered learning environment, where students can construct their own knowledge is the ideal, it takes time and effort to form such a class. Similarly, in a university course where students are used to (and have been subjected to several years of) reception learning, to suddenly thrust them into an environment of self-directed learning without any scaffolding is going to yield interesting and perhaps disappointing results.

KL

Another last minute post on teaching science and using digital technology.

I refer to Pea’s speech “the Pros and Cons of Technology in the Classroom” where Dr Pea refers to several examples of the CoVis project (where students receive real time weather data and climate data), the TERC’s Global Lab (where student researchers from over 30 countries work jointly on global and climate change) and Project GLOBE (where students from 40 countries collect and pool data on their local environment). In the article, Dr Pea categorized each of these examples into different categories of radical innovation, learners producing and publishing knowledge and establishing new learning communities, respectively.

However, I propose that these examples all share a common characteristic, the science experiments in all three examples produce real data that is used by real people. In other words, the data is relevant and relevance is important because it increases student motivation and meaningful learning.

The advantage of the internet is that it enables students to see the relevance of their work. From my own humble experience of 5 weeks in a practical class, I relied heavily on the internet as a source to illustrate the relevance and importance of every science lesson. For example, in teaching digestion to a year 7 class. The text book merely provided the diagram of a rat’s digestive system with text on the functions of each component. However, there were no reasons provided to the students on why they needed to look at a rat’s digestive system. So I took pictures of a real rat digestive tract and compared them to models of a human digestive tract so that students could see the similarities. I then asked the students why do we compare the two tracts and they could then see the relevance of studying the rat’s digestive tract.

Similarly, when a student asked why do we need to study electric fields, I was able to produce (again thanks to the internet) a picture of a shark hunting in deep water. I asked the students to brainstorm on how the shark finds its way around in the dark and eventually they found out that a shark can sense electric fields. I also included pictures of the effects of other natural occurring electric fields such as the aurora borealis and lightning storms.

Admittedly, I didn’t need the internet to accomplish all this and a bit of prior knowledge on the biological world certainly helped me. But with the internet, the images were far more vivid and exciting and of course, much easier to access than holding up a library book.

KL

Computer simulations are very valuable tools in science education. In teaching some concepts such as tectonic plates or population dynamics (changes in the number of individuals within a species in an environment) where setting up laboratory experiments are virtually impossible, simulations would be the method of choice.

However, simulations (by definition) are not real, they are predictions based on a set of very well defined science rules. Some authors and teachers, however, seem to blur the distinction between simulated results and experimental results. For example, in Pea’s speech “The Pros and Cons of Technology in the Classroom” Dr Pea cites the use of the Jasper Series interactive videos to address real life problems. While these simulations can help enhance problem solving skills, they do not provide “real solutions” only theoretically workable solutions. In other words, I am pretty confident the simulated results will occur, but I cannot be absolutely sure they will occur if I am presented with the real situation.

There are a lot of science simulation programs available. They are all great tools in demonstrating a science concept but some teachers then feel there is no need to actually do the experiment anymore after they have shown the simulation to the students! In other words, they treated the simulation as if it was a real experiment.

Thus, in the classroom, the science teacher could propose the experiment, for example building an electrical circuit, then ask the students to run the simulation to see if it would work in theory, then build the circuit itself. Not only does this help the students cement ideas and concepts, it teaches students to understand and the importance of being able to predict results.

KL

Compared to my days as a science student where the only source of information comes from textbooks, the teacher and the library, students nowadays have access to much more information via the internet and can retrieve information with much greater ease than ever before.

However, in my humble opinion, while the quantity of available facts and beliefs have increased, the quality of the data has not improved. Constructionist approach to teaching relies on students to create and discover their own knowledge but there is the likelihood of students forming ideas based on false scientific ideas which disguise themselves as real facts. An example of this might be the science of intelligent design, where a completely unscientific, religious belief is represented as scientifically proven facts!

Thus, the emphasis on learning nowadays should shift away from simply knowing about facts and figures (this has become as simple as using a calculator) to teachers teaching students how to critique and analyze information on the internet. Of course, a solid grounding the scientific laws and theories would help students in deciding on what is “good” science and what are mere myths.

KL

Just a quick comment to Chris’s opinion. I agree there does seem to be a lot of computer savvy people who cannot accept computer illiterate people. Prensky, for example, would like us to believe that teachers who do not use computer are bad teachers and are completely out of touch with their students. I wonder though if computers can really magically transform people with poor communication skills into wizards that razzle dazzle students. Perhaps its more likely that poor communicators will still remain so, only now, they have a new media to confuse students.

Referring to Jonassen, D. (2008), Meaningful Learning with Technology, the chapter included the message that technology should be used a support to help learners, not as delivery tools for teachers to instruct. I found this idea to be insightful since it clarifies my opposition to Prensky’s ideas. If you recall from my previous ramblings, I criticized Prensky for introducing algebra as games. Based on Jonassen’s ideas, presenting algebra problems as games is still just presenting algebra, albeit gift wrapped in a very fun and pleasing paper. Another of Prensky’s example was by solving problems, students gained fuel to fly further into space. These are all still problems being presented to students.

I believe Jonassen’s use of technology to support learning as the better view, where students can play around in a virtual world of science, with unlimited computer generated resources, where reaction times (for experiments) can be made faster, where there’s no need to do lab cleanup later. However, I am not aware of any good simulation lab software or any good simulation environments. For example, in teaching marine ecology, it would be great to have a simulation marine environment.

KL

I refer to chapter 1 of Meaningful Learning with Technology, 3rd Ed. by Jonassen, D. (2008). Overall, I found this article insightful and useful. But as I was reading the introductory chapter on attributes of learning, I could not help but recall that all the elements- Active, Constructive, Cooperative, Authentic and Intentional could be found in the animated cartoon Pokemon.

In Pokemon, Ash (our young protagonist) travels the region with his pet monster (a pokemon called Pikachu). He makes lots of friends on the way, battles evil thieves, and discovers the mysterious world inhabited by pokemons. At the end of each episode, he learns something new about himself, his friends and pokemons.

Thus, his learning was active, he doesn’t sit at home, reading texts and just take exams on pokemon, he goes out onto the field to experience the world; his knowledge is constructive, at the end of each episode, he reflects back on what happened and learns something about himself, and growing as a person; His goals are intentional, he battles to become the master trainer of pokemon, it is his motivation; the lessons are authentic (as far as fictional cartoon worlds go) in that he encounters problems and issues that he has to solve, they are not exercises in a book; and his learning is cooperative, he has friends, peers, and his best friend Pikachu who support and teach him.

I know Pokemon and science teaching really shouldn’t be on the same page, but before this is dismissed completely, please take a moment to consider many children stories do contain these elements, its just somehow we forget about them when we grow older.

KL