Nov11

Interdisciplinary/Integrated Science

I always look forward to the NSTA journal issues that have a theme with the words integrated or interdisciplinary in them. Interdisciplinary is one of those words that is hard to define, but we "know it when we see it." The article Thinking, Teaching, and Learning Science Outside the Boxes in the February 2009 issue of The Science Teacher does provide a definition as well as a discussion of its importance and even a "taxonomy" of levels of disciplinarity (yes, I know that's not a real word!), showing that it's not an either/or dichotomy. The challenge is to make the connections authentic and purposeful, rather than contrived and trivial.

The lessons described in this issue are anything but contrived and trivial! Solving the Mystery of Mock Mummies goes beyond creating "mummies" as a arts-and-crafts activity to fact-finding on the process of mummification, a study of artifacts, observations, and inferencing. A key component is having to interpret the work of others. In addition to the online resources mentioned in the article, SciLinks has websites under the keyword "archaeology." Although they are in the 9-12 group, some of the sites would be appropriate for middle-schoolers, including Animal Mummies in the Cairo Museum, and In Vesuvius' Shadow. It would be interesting to connect these activities with an ancient history class.

My students were fascinated by amber and the insects inside, and the activities in Amber: Using "Tree Tears Turned to Stone" to Teach Biology, Ecology, and More! would certainly capitalize on that interest. (I also saw this topic as a rationale to visit jewelry stores selling amber for pieces to wear to class!). If your students are interested in more information, try Fossil Amber, Amber: Window to the Past (also recommended in the article), and Oldest Gecko Fossil Ever Found, Entombed in Amber. In Search for the Golden Moon Bear, the authors describe a Reader's Theatre project, in which students wrote and performed an original script based on a science-related book. I've seen many elementary classes use this technique to improve fluency and comprehension, but I'm excited by the idea of middle-schoolers writing and performing, especially if they can share what they're learning with a younger audience. The article has step-by-step directions, but if you need more information, check out the resources at Readers' Theater.

Helping students see the connections between science and "real life" is the theme of several articles. In Cell Towers and Songbirds, students look at the possible consequences of the technology that seems to be indispensible these days. The Global Warming Project could be adapted for high school students with the question: What is the impact of most students driving to school rather than carpooling or using the bus? And Time's Up, Turkey: Pop-up Thermometers takes a look at a technology that will be in use later this month in many homes.

Regardless of what grade level you teacher, two articles would make excellent discussion starters at faculty meetings: The Great Divide: How Mathematics Is Perceived by Students in Math and Science Classrooms shows how there may be confusion between how common concepts (such as data collecting and analysis, graphing, measurement, and unit analysis) are taught and used in science and math classes. And Physics or Stamp Collecting? Pitfalls of the Hierarchy of Disciplines is a thought-provoking article that discusses how we communicate the importance of science to students and some of the misconceptions that students may develop.

Published: Nov-11-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Aug28

More Resources from PBS

I've just heard of a few new resources from PBS. They've recently redesigned the PBS Teachers page (it seems to be the month for redesigning sites -- have you seen the new SciLinks site?). PBS provides many free resources in science and technology, including lessons derived from programs such as NOVA and Nature, "interactives" (which are online animations and simulations), and projects from member stations, searchable by grade level and topic.

I'm especially fascinated by the Activity Packs, which are "widgets" you can add to a webpage or social media site such as FaceBook, making them available to students and parents. (I've included a short cut link - from the main PBS Teachers page, scroll down the right to find it). These widgets look like sidebars and have links to video clips and other resources on science-related topics such as medical research, weather, inventions, and forensics.

Another new feature from PBS is the PBS Digital Learning Library, a repository of digital resources that will be made available through local stations beginning this fall. According to the press release, the project is being piloted at this time by a number of public television stations. (The press release has the list.)

Published: Aug-28-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Jul29

Bits and Pieces for July

One of the folks I follow on Twitter recommended the Sixty Symbols website. It is a collection of videos about the symbols of physics and astronomy in which experts from the University of Nottingham share their knowledge and passion for their subjects as they explain what the symbols mean. The videos are just a few minutes long. These are the same folks that created the Periodic Table of Videos. Wouldn't it be neat to have students create something like this rather than the traditional element reports?

I was also poking around the Vocabulary Sushi website. The vocabulary on the site is not limited to science vocabulary, but if any of your students are preparing for the SATs, ACTs, or other standardized tests that include vocabulary, this may be of interest. The words are presented in the context of actual news stories from around the world, rather than simply matching words and definitions.

I admit that I was not familiar with the NSTA Recommends website until it was mentioned in one of the journals. We know that NSTA publications will be relevant and worth reading, but what about materials from other publishers? This part of the NSTA site has educator-written reviews of publications on many topics. There is a search feature so that you can get to titles of interest. You can export the search results to Excel to create your personalized reading list.

Published: Jul-29-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Jul23

Connecting with Technology

Having been a technology coordinator in a previous career, I saw two different interpretations of the theme.

Several of the articles deal with connecting students to the technology in their lives. For example, Breezy Power--From Wind to Energy and How Do Windmills Generate Power? show how students (and teachers) can learn about this renewable energy source. For more background information and ideas for student activities, enter "wind" as a keyword in SciLinks. The author of the article Designing Payloads describes how an elementary classroom connected with university faculty and their resources to study the atmosphere, using high-tech tools and applications.

I was visiting a class where the students defined the word technology as the "tools and strategies that people use to solve problems." The teacher posed the questions: Can the tools be simple and non-electronic to be considered technology? Do the strategies have to be brand-new, or can they be tried-and-true ones? If your answer is in the affirmative, then two articles in this issue definitely relate to technology! Larger Than Life: Introducing Magnifiers discusses ways to introduce this essential tool to younger children (or older ones who have never used one before). Older children may be interested in how magnifies work (a great introduction to a unit on optics), so check out these resources on lenses in SciLinks. And studying plants (Flower Power) is a tried-and-true strategy for helping students learn about scientific processes such as observation and classification. Use "plants" as a SciLinks keyword for more ideas.

Another interpretation of the theme can be using technology to connect students with each other and the world around them. If you’ve never tried Wonderful Wikis and Internet Forums, read about how a fourth-grade teacher uses these to engage students in thinking and writing, to foster writing skills, and as a formative assessment of learning. If your district does not allow the use of these tools, show this article! Likewise for YouTube in the Science Classroom. (This author shows how to access and use the videos, even if the site is blocked in your school.)

For more info on using the newest technologies in the classroom, check out the website of the EdTech Innovators, two science teachers with lots to share.

Science and technology are human endeavors. So be sure to wrap up your reading with Teaching the Human Dimension of Science and Finding a Place for Girls in Science. I love the cover of this issue--forty years after a teacher told me that "little girls" did not belong in science. But I'm curious as to why--in 2009--we're still trying to find a place for girls.

Published: Jul-23-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

May15

Summer Activities

One of the arguments against year-round schools is that "kids need a break." But isn't it ironic that by the end of July, we see articles in newspapers or blogs on the topic of what to do when kids say they're bored?

Schools often send home a summer reading list. But you can go beyond this with suggestions for inexpensive resources and science-based activities that parents (or other caregivers) can suggest for children or ones that they can all do together. Many teachers put these suggestions on their own websites or on the school website, in addition to sending notes home. The advantage of teacher suggestions (rather than generic ones in the newspaper) is that they can be tailored to a specific age group and connected to the school curriculum.

Get Ready for Summer from the Reading Rockets website has a "beach bag" full of ideas to include in your suggestions for younger children, including science-related ones.

Are there topics you couldn't get to this year or ones that your students found especially interesting? Perhaps you could suggest some books or websites that address these topics for students to explore on their own. Use SciLinks to identify websites by topic and grade level. Or you could suggest books and websites related to the topics you will address next year, giving students the opportunity for a preview of coming attractions.

If you address a note to parents, here are some websites that have some simple science activities that adults and children could do together. Home Experiments and Kitchen Science Experiments have both demonstrations and experiments. Experiments from Science Bob also has lots of demonstrations as well as a section on "make it an experiment" with suggestions on how to extend the demonstration into an investigation. And The Exploratorium is always a good source for hands-on science activities.

You could also include links to local library and to nearby museums, zoos, and parks. Many of these organizations have free or inexpensive summer programs for children and families.

Several districts I worked also shared the teachers' summer suggestions with daycare providers and community groups that ran summer activities or day camps for kids. Giving your local public library a heads-up would also be helpful if older students come in and say they have nothing to do.

Published: May-15-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

May12

Word Play

Sometimes you see a new application on the web and think "This is cool!" - and then as a teacher you wonder "How can I use this?" I recently was introduced to Wordle, a free, Internet-based application. Wordle takes words from a document or list that you input and creates a "word cloud" graphic in which the size of the word is proportional to its frequency. You may have seen these word clouds on some news sites. You can tweak the layout and color schemes and choose whether to include numbers and whether to remove common words (e.g., is, the, are, of).

Just for fun, I pasted NSTA's position paper on Scientific Inquiry into a wordle. I tweaked the color scheme and font, and here is what was produced. NSTA Inquiry Wordle

Cool, isnt' it? It's interesting how some words stand out. You may have seen these word clouds on some news sites. There are some shortcomings, though. You can't save a wordle directly to your computer. You can print it, so I used the PDF feature on my print dialog box to save it as a PDF file. Or you could use a screen capture utility. You can explore various layouts, fonts, and color schemes, but you can't edit the list after the wordle has been created. So I would create my list or document in a Word file and then copy/paste. If you have a list of words and want some to stand out, you'll have to enter them multiple times in the list or go to an advanced feature http://www.wordle.net/advanced where you can enter a word and a number (e.g., science:4). You can save your wordle to a public gallery, but there is no search feature. Some of the entries in the public gallery are not very good (and there is no spell-check), and the site has no filter for language that may be inappropriate for a classroom. If you want a two-word phrase to appear, you would have to insert a tilda (e.g., simple~machine) which will not appear on the graphic.

But even with these caveats, I've seen (or can think of) ways that Wordle could be useful. Students could copy and paste a writing sample to see the frequency and variety of words they are using (and you can get a frequency chart, too). By changing the frequency of words in a list, you could create a graphic that illustrates essential, important, and nice-to-know vocabulary for a unit. At the beginning of a unit, a teacher I know asked students for words related to the topic. He asked them again at the end, and has the pre- and post- graphics to show informally how students perceptions and knowledge have changed. Students could create them to illustrate their notebooks. Or you could solicit words on a topic at a faculty meeting or in-service event and create a graphic to share and discuss.

My hopes for the next version include the ability to upload a frequency chart (with the word and a number) and the ability to save in a graphic format to use in other applications or documents.

If you'd like a copy of the NSTA Inquiry wordle as a pdf file, click here. I also made a wordle from the position statement on Elementary Science (to share at an event next week). Help yourself, and feel free to add a comment with any other suggestions for how this could be used.

Published: May-12-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Feb28

Science Across Disciplines

In a presentation I attended last year, Dr. Rita Colwell, the former director of the National Science Foundation, described 21st century science as "international and interdisciplinary." Interdisciplinary is one of those words that is hard to define, but we "know it when we see it." The article Thinking, Teaching, and Learning Science Outside the Boxes does provide a definition as well as a discussion of its importance and even a "taxonomy" of levels of disciplinarity (yes, I know that's not a real word!), showing that it's not an either/or dichotomy. It would be interesting to compare our unit plans with this taxonomy.

Other articles in this issue illustrate activities at these levels: studying biofuels and nanotechnology, building rubber-band cars, integrating science and the arts, and collecting and analyzing hydrology data. These are very powerful kinds of investigations, not simply contrived or superficial collections of activities. Scan your back issues of NSTA publications for more excellent examples. If you need some web resources to get similar units started, check out the Scilinks categories Alternate Energy Sources, Nanotechnology, and Leonardo da Vinci.

I'm sure that most of us have tried some level of interdisciplinary studies. But there are some real challenges (especially at the secondary level). Trying to find common planning time with other teachers is difficult. (Wouldn't it be a great use of professional development days to actually research a topic and plan some units as an interdisciplinary team?) The students in a science class might report to 2-3 different teachers in math or other subjects. But my favorite is teachers who say "We already so this." I know that this is certainly true in many cases, but I wonder if having students draw a picture, calculate an average, or write a report represents the highest levels of true interdisciplinary instruction (I'll have to check the taxonomy.)

I had the opportunity last week to visit several high schools. Although it was for a different project, I kept my eyes open for ideas for interdisciplinary activities. For example, I saw an opportunity for connecting an American history unit on 19th century industrialization and inventions with science units on electricity, machines, and energy. In another class, a student asked "So how does all of this fit together?" I suspect that when we do interdisciplinary studies, we as teachers see the connections and we assume that the students will, too. But we need to show the students how things are connected and model how to make the connections.

It also occurred to me that elective courses are where many students start to see the connections and applications -- robotics, graphic arts, technical writing, computer applications, marketing/advertising, culinary arts, etc. And yet often these courses do not "count" much for the GPA or honor roll and are the first to go when there are budget cuts. Hmmm.

Having read this issue, I realize now that when my colleagues and I did our "interdisciplinary" field trip every spring, what we really had was a collection of parallel activities. What we needed to do was identify a theme, a problem, or an essential question to connect the activities. We could still do the same activities, but the theme or question would would focus the students' attention better and help them see the connections.

Please feel free to share any themes or questions that you have used to plan interdisciplinary learning.

Published: Feb-28-09 | 0 Comments | 384 Links to this post

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