Hands on Science Learning

An anonymous reader writes "Now that school is starting up, the perpetual challenge of making learning interesting and fun is back. The YesICan! Science project at York University has tried to help by creating activities for students which involve real-time (or recent) science experiments. For example, the current activity involves measuring the size of the moon using measurements of the solar position from a Russian nuclear icebreaker on its trek to the North Pole. Another had a webcast from the International Space Station. Are there other such resources out there to help bring real science into the classroom?"

Comments

Do the same in computer science classes

[jukal]

One audience where we would like to target openchallenge is universities and schools in general.

So, if there is any teachers reading this article, I invite you to visit the challenge list regularly to see if there is anything your students could do as their coursework. Instead a solution for a theoretical task, your students could also solve someone's real problem and have it published under open source.

The real question...

[neksys]

The real question: Are there any affordable ways to make science interesting and fun for students? Webcams on the ISS are one thing, but not every school can afford such endeavours. The sad fact is that many school districts in Canada, especially in the West, are doing without many necessities for their science programs - the money just isn't there. How can science be brought into the classroom in a fun way that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? These are public schools, after all - and untimately, we're the ones who pay them. Lets make the most out of what we can afford.

Re:The real question...

[meridoc]

Experiments don't have to be huge, fancy-schmancy deals that take all day and have millions of data collection points. They can be more like snapshots. Try:

• Go outside (or stay inside with a tarp and high ceiling). Fill an empty film cannister 1/2 to 2/3 full of water. Drop half an Alka-Seltzer tablet into the cannister, and cap it tightly. QUICKLY put it down on the ground and back up. As the tablet dissolves, it'll fizz-fizz. The quickly-expanding gas will pop the top off the cannister. The experiment shows how gases expand. Alternatively, you can take a wide-mouthed balloon and put it over the cannister mouth to catch all the generated gas.
  
• Get slinkies and go to the staircase in the building. While in the hallway, you can have the kiddies make transverse waves and compression waves. Explain that big waves are loud noises (amplitude), and more nodes in a given length of slinky make for a higher pitched "sound." Then get a violin and/or guitar and play with pitches. Back to the hallway to make propagating waves (short, quick snaps at one end travel to the other and bounce back). This is how slinkies work on the stairs, transferring the energy. (Note: this experiement will stretch out the slinkies).
  
• Get a simple cake recipe. Divide up the kiddies into groups. Have each group omit one ingredient. You can do the baking if the kids are too young. Find out what ingredients do in the kitchen. (You might want to try the book How to Read a French Fry (and other links in that article) to get some ideas.)
  
• Take your fingerprint (finger on clean glass) and blow it up with the photocopier (alter some lines if you wish). Get some other fingerprints (about 20 is good). Make up a mystery (theft of magnifying glasses works). Have small groups match a found fingerprint to the suspects' fingerprints using transparancy sheets and markers (you mark only the ends of some lines). Have a discussion on whorls, loops, arches, and so on.
  
• Do a unit on the weather. There's usually lots of it. Cloud types, weather symbols on TV, how tornados form, what a front is, etc. Have the kids make their own "TV" forecast.
  

It's just thinking of things to do once you have a topic. Chances are, if you ever thought, "gee, I wonder how that works," the students in your class will too. Look it up!

Should school be fun?

[taliver]

All right, I'm going to go out on a limb here. Why should everything be fun? Sure science can be fun, but there are plenty of times that the non-fun things must be done before you can enjoy the truly fun things in science.

Now, I really mean this towards all subjects. There are certain things that children should know, and sometimes learning them just isn't fun. What if the question was, "How can I make all food taste like candy so children will eat it?" Perhaps kids should be taught the value of learning and discovery outside of the "Hey, that's pretty nifty" look of a pretty demonstration. Science is not simply a fireworks exhibit, and I'm not convinced that showing children pretty pictures makes them want to go out and learn and perform science any more than watching a trip up Everest makes me want to be a mountain climber.

Occasionally things in life are boring. Education should not always be fun and entertaining, Especially since a lot of teachers slice out the meat of the learning since it just isn't "fun."

Re:Should school be fun?

[Khalidz0r]

Well, I think it should ..

Being something you do, you should at least have an interest in it in order to do it well, if something isn't interesting then all you'll be doing is gulping information from one side, and throwing it away from the other side. This is *not* useful, and it is just *not* what we want.

Are we really studying to simply "suffer"? I guess not, we study and go to school to "learn", so it rather be useful. Not a waste of time with no real value.

Thanks for reading ...

And yet we wonder why children have no attention.

[taliver]

So, let's assume I've grown up with instant gratification. If I'm not having fun at every instant in my life, something must be wrong, right? I watch TV and play video games. If I'm at school, they are either playing nifty cartoon things or letting me dress up and crawl around like I was part of history, or I get to throw things around and pretend I'm learning science. What? I need to do some paper work that doesn't involve nifty artwork and pictures? I don't think so.

And when they have to discover things on their own, are they going to know how to do any background research? That's often not any fun...

Why don't children have any attention span? Because we don't expect them to have one, nor do we expect them to develop one.

Now, I know I'm starting to look like a "It's supposed to hurt" kind of educator at this point. Thta's really not what I'm saying. I believe that learning can be "fun", but moreso, that it can be deeply satisfying. Many athletes who have great fun at their sports absolutely hate practicing, but they do it anyway, knowing the payoff is worth it.

Here's one area where the sports coaches know what they are doing better than the educators. Walk out to a football practice sometime and tell me if you really think those students are enjoying what they are doing every minute.

Dr Evil was: Re:Should school be fun?

[Bazzargh]

Quite right. The true purpose of science is as a tool for evil overlords, not as kids entertainment.

Anyway, every kid knows that the guys in white coats have a reduced life expectancy due to explosions in undersea bases. What kind of career choice is that?

Hands on stuff is it!

[meridoc]

Getting kids involved with something "real" (insert "tangible" or "active" if you like) is one of the best ways I've found to get them interested (as a student and an instructor). Here's some stuff I did while teaching at summer day camps at the Capital Children's Museum a couple of years ago:

• Baking muffins to learn why breads have holes, and figuring out why one recipe used baking soda and one used baking powder (kitchen chemistry, as well as some acid-base stuff);
  
• Figuring out whether normal, dried or soaked popcorn kernels pop best (including taste-testing), and freezing ice cream using baggies, rock salt and ice (solids/liquids/gases)
  
• Making three kinds of "slime" (or gak or flubber) and explaining what non-Newtonian fluids are (my second-graders showed up some adults!)
  

Try these sites to get some ideas:

• The JASON project was started by Dr. Robert Ballard (the guy who discovered the Titanic and other sunken ships)
  
• Local colleges and high schools often present chemistry shows (or physics/science shows). Here's a plug for my alma mater: Lawrence University). I swear the show is more entertaining than the description on that page.
  
• PBS is full of things, including a show called ZOOM!, the ever-popular Newton's Apple, and wacky Bill Nye the Science Guy.
  
• At the U of W Madison, Prof. Shakhashiri created THE definitive books of demonstrations (Caution: he's kind of dry, but the demos are great!)
  
• Science museums also often have some sort of hands-on stuff. Go ahead and "borrow" from them! Here's the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Science Museum of Minnesota
  

Good luck!

Real experiments

[parvati]

One of the things I *hated* about my high school science classes (and some of my college classes) was that everything we did had been done before. Some of this was ok--looking at things through a microscope, for example--but when we had to do experiments in which we knew what the outcome would be, it seemed utterly pointless.

And then I took an Advanced Biology course. Our teacher found out that the town needed someone to survey a particular stream that ran through the town--look at the organisms present, measure turbidity, etc. She offered up our class, and that's what we did during most of our lab days (along with a fair number of our after-school hours) that year. At the end we wrote up a report and presented it to the town, and they used it to determine what sorts of development could be allowed in areas near the stream. It was pretty damn cool. I'm not saying that that class was the only reason that I'm currently in a PhD program for biological sciences, but it was definitely the first of a select few career-defining experiences.

My point here is that while repetition is the mainstay of real world science, it's not what should be used to pique interests. To the teachers out there: don't just order lab books full of tried, true and deathly boring experiments that have been done by a hundred previous classes. Come up with something that might actually make a difference--no matter how small its eventual impact on the world as a whole, its impact on budding scientists is massive.

The Little Shop of Physics

[PineHall]

Check out The Little Shop of Physics. "The Little Shop of Physics is a collection of hands-on science experiments that are designed to be used by students at all grade levels, K-16"