Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Online Science For 8th Grade Students?
Peterus7 writes "I'm a student teacher in an 8th grade science classroom, and have noticed that students are very motivated by anything online. After realizing that, I've been looking for ways to incorporate internet resources into my teaching, and trying to find cool citizen science projects, activities, and simulations that would be appropriate for a grade school science class, such as galaxyzoo and fold.it. So, I'm asking slashdot for more resources that could help bring science to their lives. Thanks!"
It sounds like you're motivated and genuinely want to help them learn, which is a great (and all too rare) thing in a teacher, but I'm a born pessimist, so I have to ask: are you sure "anything online" doesn't mean "anything that makes it easy to look like one's working while chatting on Facebook and playing Flash games"?
Get them to read Slashdot. I promise their lives will be much more fulfilling. :P
www.KhanAcademy.org FTW!
Do real experiments. The kids will remember that.
I've been out of school for quite a while but have kindled an interest in physics. I find that more and more there are Youtube demonstrations and lectures that are worthwhile. Also labs and hands-on science work is invaluable so I'd check out instructables.com because this not only can provide unique science opportunities, it also helps people in gaining engineering skills. BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Seriously, have them play with applets like this that show them how simple things can behave very differently from an initial guess would suggest. And motivate them with "further up ahead, people are doing awesome things!"
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
i don't know about you, but the "online" world is full of distractions.. i wouldn't depend on it for focused learning
http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://makezine.com/ http://www.instructables.com/ http://www.arduino.cc/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ And many many more, but those are my favorites.
Teach the kids about 3D printing (see http://reprap.org/ maybe even get one of the cheap printer kits or an UP! Printer if you have budget.
These things let kids unleash a form of creativity and spatial learning that is hard to find anywhere else. No need to actually teach them how to design 3D objects - they'll be scrambling to figure it out for themselves! Keen students will print their own 3D printers. Less enthusiastic ones will download from http://thingiverse.com/ and create "Mash up" objects.
Inevitably one of them will print a penis for shock value, but kids are like that.
For online curve and surface fitting, try http://zunzun.com - the site has no ads, fees, or requests for donations.
It may have text, but they need to learn to cite reliable sources for when they do serious research and for future education. Also the text they are reading will probably be deleted by an abusive admin.
If I'm not mistaken (I'm not from the US, we have a different grade system) ... this kids are 13-14 years old.
When I was that age, I was told I had to repeat the year because I had missed too many school days (I only attended like 20% of school days or so). I skipped classes that thought me only basic math and other things I already mastered, in order to have time to learn to code in C, read Dostoevsky, and work fixing computers and writing simple apps.
If at that age you are not motivated on your own, then school is simply not for you. Teach them how to drive a truck, bag groceries, or whatever, and stop spending everyone's money on teaching monkeys about Shakespeare.
By the time I was 23, I was a seasoned programmer, and was working as the youngest Senior Sysadmin I have know for a fairly big ISP. I didn't manage to do that thanks to school, obviously, and if I had stayed in school, it would have delayed me 10 years.
We need to redesign school so that it allows the truly talented to learn what he wants to learn, and the rest to just stop suffering and land a good job at a young age. Forcing kids to stay in school only manages to steal years of valuable work experience for all of us, both skilled professionals and unskilled workers.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
http://makeprojects.com/
I'm just "this guy", you know?
You may want to look at Scratch programming environment. While Scratch is a programming tool which lets kids make all sorts of stuff (animations, games, etc), there is a large number of kids who build science simulations with it. For example, you can look at this gallery of physics simulations and animations, all of which were created by kids. Most of the projects on the Scratch website have been created by kids and all projects are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, so kids in your class will be able to download the projects, examine how they have been built, and build their own projects upon existing work.
There is also a website for educators who want to use Scratch - you can ask for ideas and suggestions in the forums in that website.
[Disclaimer: I am a graduate student in the research group which develops Scratch]
Check out http://www.explorelearning.com/ for math and science simulations (aka Gizmos) with corresponding lessons.
1. The Today in Science listing of birth and death dates of scientists, and notable events. (For example, today is the anniversary of the publication of Einstein's paper on General Relativity, Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitästheorie.
2. Interactive science simulations from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
3. Science news articles at PhysOrg.com, New Scientist, and Technology Review.
AAVSO?
http://www.aavso.org/
American association of variable star observers?
Kids could observe, but its probably a heck of a lot easier to use the lightcurve generator. Don't tell them about the different kinds of variable stars, let them discover it for themselves.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Learning.com
Computers can be used to detect earthquakes:
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/03/quake_network
You can get a free sensor from the Quake Catcher network (or use a laptop).
http://qcn.ucr.edu/
Another subject that might be interesting: Fossils.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinofossils/Fossilhow.html
Bert
Maybe they like online stuff because they can sit with their screen away from you and play games? Coolest thing you can do online is definitely show them a cool experiment which will usually mean fire or an explosion. It's even cooler to do that stuff in person. The first day of chem class my teacher always takes a dollar bill, soaks it in a water and alcohol solution, and lights in on fire. She would also do a demonstration where she soaked the inside of one of those water cooler containers with the same solution and drop a match in it. That's the kind of stuff that gets kids excited about science.
There is an on-line physics resource at http://www.ap.smu.ca/demos
It explains various physics concepts and shows how teachers can teach them in class using real demos. There are also YouTube vids of each demo.
Full disclosure: I run the site and with much student help, produce and film the videos.
Take a look at the free materials from universities across the world on iTunes U. There are lectures and shorter segments that speak to a concept and show a topic. Here's a cool example of Roller coaster design from Open University: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=380227672
The American Chemical Society has programs for kids. [ http://goo.gl/805di ]
The world wide web is addictive and interesting because it entertains and informs you without requiring any effort or significant attention given on your part. It is actually very hard to learn anything substantial from just casually browsing the web in an "enjoyable" fashion--the only way to truly learn is to focus and think, rather than just passively reading, but the web is not at all conducive to this. Teachers, then, have the ever-harder job of teaching their students to extract meaningful information out of the ever-larger sea of noise. Web-oriented teaching methods are not some sort of Holy Grail, but are actually far from it, and to fall back on them as a means of gaining students' attention is irresponsible.
You can learn far better from a well-written book.
You may be interested in some of the games from the Virtual Immersive Technologies and Arts for Learning Lab (http://vital.cs.ohiou.edu/). Under software, you may find some games that would appeal to your class. I used to be involved in the VITAL Lab and found that the flash games worked best in classrooms. As far as I know, the program is no longer active (ran out of funding), but the resources are still available online for anyone to use.
I'd've suggested Instructables for some neat science related projects, and many others, but a lot of the recent stuff there has been too near the bone, and you'll have net filter issues. A shame, because it used to be good.
You'll definitely want http://www.periodicvideos.com/ and their sister site, http://www.sixtysymbols.com/ . Both are first rate.
I'm in college, we generally take online classes because its pretty much a guaranteed A, you can use your book, google, friends, cheat by one doing the work and getting the answers for the others, etc. It was the same way back in high school as well.
And if you want to keep their attention do what another guy said in here and do some cool experiments or subjects, involving things such as fire/explosions. I can tell you it is hard NOT to keep my interest when I was taking fire science classes. We were learning about BLEVE's, flashover, backdrafts, hazmat, etc. And what made them dangerous, how they worked, and all the science behind it. You'll be surprise with how much science you can pack into something such as one of those topics. We weren't able to do demonstrations for obvious reasons, but it didn't stop us from having a few examples thanks to youtube. And probably a few more than necessary for entertainment value to keep us interested.
Wathcing over our planet tutorial at the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/resource/tutor/planet/index_e.php
I'm not sure how directly applicable it is, but The Periodic Table Table at http://theodoregray.com/periodictable is a great science site.
It takes something on the face of it boring (the chemical elements as a simple diagram) and makes it really interesting. If it's not good enough to show to students directly then it should contain plenty of ideas for how to make elements interesting.
A couple of examples: get some tungsten and some magnesium of about equal volume and anyone will notice that one is much, much denser despite both being normal-looking metals. Get some indium and let the students bend thick metal rods with their bare hands.
You mentioned Galazy Zoo, but there's actually a larger effort called Zooniverse, which includes:
... and the other astronomy like stuff.
Besides that, a number of science agencies have various educational resources. From NASA, for 5th to 8th grade:
Other agencies have stuff too, but I don't know where it all is off the top of my head.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
even more medication desired/required? using the current 'math', megasloth et al has ALL the money, relatively, we, have none. we do however get to owe an unrepayable debt+usury, for our legacy? stand by for 10th grade? parochialisms?
so, we'll then expect to see you at any one of the million babys+ /us, beginning with disarmament?
play-dates, conscience arisings, georgia stone editing(s), & a host of
other life promoting/loving events. guaranteed to activate all of our
sense(s) at once. perhaps you have seen our list of pure intentions for
you
Hey! I'm just going through a teacher's program right now, and I've been looking for resources to use with smartboard. First of all, if you don't have a smartboard go here:
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/
Then try out:
Algodoo (costs about 25 euros): Great physics simulator. I would say it would be useful even for university students. You can, however, adjust the difficulty level. It's good for kinematics, some optics, buoyancy, some fluid dynamics and a few other things. I started off with making a piston pump system.
http://www.algodoo.com/wiki/Home
Crayon physics: Great for intuitively exploring some physics concepts. It costs about 20 bucks. It's similar to above but it's closer to a game. There are a series of challenges that you accomplish (try to move a ball to a star, overcoming a series of obstacles. Learn some physics concepts through osmosis.
http://www.crayonphysics.com/
Celestia: Great freeware for exploring our galaxy (and neighboring galaxies). It implements astronomy knowledge into a space simulator. It allows to you to visit out solar system and beyond. As humanity discovers more, you can update the planet (i.e. with new exoplanets). This one is super cool, a little like Eve Online but IRL. You can also install Star Trek universe updates if you are a trekkie, as well as Star Wars.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Ok that's the coolest stuff. There are other things out there but they aren't as impressive. ScaleoftheUniverse is neat, but limited in classroom utility: http://www.scaleoftheuniverse.com/
Bloodhound Supersonic Car http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education.cfm development includes educational materials. Plenty of real world problems to be solved.
While there's the risk that limiting yourself to the things you know could leave you with too little to work with, the much more likely scenario is that you're trying to teach the kids something that you don't know yourself, and that is most definitely not going to work. If you have to ask what to show them online, then you're clearly not familiar enough with the environment to be a good teacher in it. In the very limited time that you have the students' eyes and ears, show them in depth what you know. If you do that well, you won't need gimmicks. You do know why they need to know what you're supposed to teach them, right? Then why do you need more motivations that aren't apparent to you? There's nothing sadder and more ineffective than a teacher who teaches what he perceives to be useless.
(I'm not saying that the internet isn't a wonderful toolbox full of amazing science, just that you can't teach what you don't know.)
Why on Earth does the submitter's gender matter?
If you are just going to demonstrations, then I see no reason why kids should not just be watching videos.
There is a huge difference between seeing something live and watching a recording. We are all used to seeing amazing and impossible things on video for entertainment. Doing something real in front of a lecture has a far bigger impact. Plus students get the chance to ask "but what if you did X instead of Y" and see the results (assuming it is safe!).
ITSI-SU It's a non-profit group paid for out of H1B visa funds.
Various mechanical and electronic measuring tools abound for use with the PC and for manual use.
They need to learn how to use such tools no matter what sub-discipline they enter. Even if they never use such tools much, they must know they exist and how they work, because they will then know people can do work with those tools on such projects.
Tools to measure and compare distance, time, velocity, weight, PH, temperature, frequency, polarization of light, etc. are all absolutely needed to understand science. The kids love to get there hands on these tools because these are REAL.
Here is a video that my daughter put together on how to make a diffusion cloud chamber. It takes about 10 minutes to make and you need a keyboard air duster. With it you can see the tracks left by background and cosmic radiation. It is a pretty cool way to visually introduce particle physics.
"I.. have noticed that students are very motivated by anything online."
I call bullshit. You're noticing students motivated by non-school things, that happen to be online. Put school online and they will be equally disinterested as before. (Although you get to be that teacher going "Look! I'm hip! I get online! I'm so cool!").
Or, show me an experiment that an online program has better interest-level and/or student outcomes (from the same population of student).
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
you are welcome to try Bugscope, whose 12th anniversary was yesterday http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/
Cornell University hosts a great biology focused site (ecology and behavior mostly). http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci/ One of my favorites is NestCam, but eBird and Great Backyard Bird Count are also great.
Such as Facebook, twitter, farmville...
One of the best teaching resources, IMHO, is Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Highly recommended.
Take a look at the Science of Fringe: http://soinc.org/fringe : "Check this page each week starting September 23 for free downloadable Lesson Plans that mix "Fringe" science with elements of Science Olympiad Division C events like Disease Detectives, Forensics, Sounds of Music, Chem Lab, and Dynamic Planet. Teachers and students in Grades 9-12 can use the plans in the classroom as special projects, tied into curriculum or as Friday brain teasers. Every plan will include learning objectives, online resources, a hands-on activity, discussion suggestions, extensions, episode scenes of relevance, and National Science Standards Alignment. "
NASA has the best resources, but it can be tough to find them. My favorite, and most applicable for physical science (8th grade in most states), is the solar system simulator from JPL: Eyes on the Solar System But do search the link in parent, and be persistent as NASA's site sucks.
The best way to get kids attention is to start with something that defines intuition, and really focus the discussion on that to begin. Example: we all know that when you cool a substance, it goes from gas to liquid to solid. When you heat it up, it goes from solid to liquid to gas. Look at the noble egg—goes in the pan as a liquid, and as it heats.........wait, ok, well that's a bad example. We all know that when you something turns into a solid, it gets denser, and we know that dense things sink in less dense things, just like ice....wait, another bad example, darnit. On the ice one, some kids will get hooked just because it behaves opposite, other kids will find the consequences of this fact more interesting (that life could not have formed if lakes froze bottom-up, etc).
Each time you want to explain some new principle, the way to set it up is when this new principle is juxtaposed against some other principle the kids already know, but wins out because it's more significant. This is how many discoveries are made in science and why scientists consider the problems intriguing, why should kids be any different? Trying to explain these anomalies is where the aether theory and relativity came from, the photoelectric effect, discovery of the 4 forces (gravity pulls a feather and a hammer the same, how electricty & magnetism are manifestations of the same force, discovery of the weak and strong forces too), superfluidity, the transistor, etc. I believe it's also a good idea to introduce kids to these advanced topics early on, without delving too much at least explain the motivation behind them by telling them the problems they can answer.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Go to sites like nature.com/news , let the students read the latest and most interesting papers or blog entries and discuss them afterwards!
I'd use them to assign off-topic to all the posts concerning teacher pay, benefits, workload and state budgets.
Come on people. This teacher is just trying to do a good job and we have to turn into an on-line teaparty or NEA advocacy forum?
the internet open up their eyes
and open up their skies
just need some guidance.....try not to make bomb while learning chemistry....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project
These two sites talk about science errors in movies and TV shows. It's a great way to start a discussion because you're leading in with something fun and familiar, and possibly even something that they've seen and thought "oh no WAY could that work."
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Just rename it 'Defence Against The Dark Arts'.
Though probably mentioned elsewhere in the comments and though not web based:
Yenka, for electronics and engineering simulations...
"That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest-son-of-a-bitch in space! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going until it hits something! That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years! If you pull the trigger on this you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime!" -- Alliance Sergeant in Mass Effect 2
Three comments in, and it's a knife fight about the school system between the "Burn The Schools" crowd and the "Teachers and schools are noble places of unicorns and rainbows and they just need another fifty million billion zillion dollars" contingent.
My advice: Eff the Intertoobs. Take them out to see science and engineering in action. Go to a factory. Go someplace something gets built. Take them to some hub of commerce. Take to a stock exchange or a bank. Teach them that the numbers matter, that they have purpose and meaning. Show them the real world works, and not the filthy 1-dimensional world views you get in places like this. Field trips, my boy, field trips.
Look at the noble egg
No, not noble eggs. They don't combine with anything so you can't make a good omelet. :-D
There: use humor! Science humor!
Well, OK, maybe not. :-(
I know you are young and idealistic (and hopefully, a woman), but teaching is a political game, fraught with danger, low pay, and endless politics.
And, I guess, sexism.
Games like lunar launder are simple, and illustrate some important principals
An example implementation is here http://lander.dunnbypaul.net/
Some resources in the 'Starter' section of this page: http://www.gigaflop.demon.co.uk/links/education.htm
The University of Illinois Department of Physics has a good site for their outreach program, the Physics Van: http://van.physics.illinois.edu/ It's good if kids want to ask questions of professors and students in the department, or read previous answers to questions. It's also good if you or the students want to learn about demonstrations, some of which can be done at home.
Currently, I pay the bills as a graduate student by going to elementary schools to do physics demonstrations on behalf of my department (not at U of I). I don't know where you teach, but there is probably an outreach group nearby (at a University, National Lab, or even a corporation that employs research scientists) that can come to your school. I realize you weren't asking about live demonstrations, and I certainly think you're doing the right thing looking for good, engaging online activities, but I still think this bears mentioning.
Another thought is that because clear and accurate representation of results is so important in science, you might consider doing an activity that involves a computer visualization of some kind of measurement taken by the students. You could even have them publish it on the web. It wouldn't need to be anything super-fancy, just something to encourage creativity and careful thinking about what the results mean and what's important about them.
Good Luck!
Get them to find the most interesting things you can do with ammonia and iodine.
You should know the rest.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Well, nows as good a time as any to plug the Astronomy Based Webcomic I write for NASA Education/Public Outreach:
http://epo.sonoma.edu/EposChronicles/
Its targeted at middle school students
I would recommend Robert Krampf's website, which has lots of "Experiment of the Week" videos.
He also has the videos categorized based on the state science standards for a few states (Florida, California, Texas, Georgia). Even if you're not teaching in one of these states, you might find the categorization helpful for finding videos that are relevant to your curriculum.
http://thehappyscientist.com/category/state-science-standards
try out NetLogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/) - an agent based modeling language and ide. it's free and well developed. there are lots of science related models across many of the sciences (see http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/ for a list of models). it can be run online or downloaded and run as a stand-alone application. there is the added benefit of offering the kids the opportunity to learn a fun programming language if they so desire.
disclaimer: i used to work there about 5 years ago.
I've taught a course called Technology in Science Education, and my premise was that technology for the sake of technology is the wrong way to go - a sentiment I hear echoed here pretty frequently. HOWEVER, there's a reason we use technology - it gives us abilities that we don't commonly have. And this addresses that other common critique when someone wants a technology for education - it's not just a "Cool, see how this is on a computer now?" thing, or a replacement for hands-on experimentation, but rather a way to leverage more mileage vs a 1950's-style experiment. This is the way technology is used in scientific research, and a great way of thinking to instill in the kids at an early age.) I don't say, "This light bulb works great, but lets use a LASER INSTEAD! Muhahaha!" Ok, maybe I do, but that's jut me...) So, I came up with three major categories of technology that are likely to be useful in SciEd. (Not the only three, probably, and not every time - but if a tech fits in one of these bins it's worth a second look.)
1. 'Superpowers' - a technology gives us the ability to see something we couldn't otherwise see - slowing down the trajectory of a ball to measure it's x-y position in lots of time steps; using a spectrometer to separate colors (or focus on a small slice of wavelength) and find concentrations; authentic planetary models, with the ability to change the pace of time (and obviously the scale). Basically (and whimsically) think of any superhero/villain, and ask what science they could have done. Then find a technology that gives you that ability.
2. Data aggregation and representation - when the basic data (numeric or otherwise) are pulled together in one place that allows interaction, subtle connections can pop out (especially with good classroom scaffolding). My immediate go-to examples are a touch outside of science, but are at least illustrative. Simulate 1000 spins of a roulette wheel in Excel (or your favorite programming language or open source package... gotta CYA this statement since this is Slashdot...), connect it to the Martingale strategy, and show that statistics owns the day with gambling.
3. Administrative tools - self-explanatory, these help with administration of the class. Often scoffed at by people who have never taught, and aren't trying to tease out the nuance of 'what went wrong' on that exam, or when it only 'looks' like that got it. Things like choice-analysis from a multiple choice quiz for spotting persistent misconceptions, only-the-fly 'clicker' quizzes, etc.
My one strong caveat (I did say it was worth a SECOND look - which happens here) - once you identify a technology that might be of interest, the question should always be, "Is this worth it (time, money, pedagogy, etc.), and can I do the same thing low-tech?" This is where you cut out the "It's just like real life, but ONLINE!" instinct that sometimes pops up.
Even if the same thing could be done low-tech, it may still be worth adapting into high-tech - but make sure your reasons are good. Perhaps your school has a tiny science budget and the experiment would otherwise go unperformed, or if you want a quick aside or demo and can't spare the time in the lesson for the physical setup of the demo. In these cases, tech may still be the answer.
My two cents anyway!
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
Teacher Observation: Kids waste a lot of time on the internet.
Teacher Conclusion: Kids like everything on the internet.
I think pondering what is wrong with the above will help a lot more than a list of science websites.
http://www.cyberlearningstem.org/ is the website for a recent conference on STEM cyberlearning tools (CyTSE). A lot of really great presenters from academia and industry came together to show their latest and greatest efforts. You can find a lot of good links on the site back to the original projects at http://live.cyberlearningstem.org/
Here is a site full of applets demonstrating various topics in math, physics, and engineering:
http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html
Some of it might be a little beyond the background of most 8th grade students, but they are all very visual and do not require understanding of the topic to play around with, so I imagine it could really spark some curiosity in some of the students (it would have for me, at that age). On the downside, it's java-heavy, so some browser configurations might not allow these to run.
There are also a ton of links at the bottom to other math and physics related sites that are supposed to be helpful for teaching, too.
The on-line math and science materials from Shodor (www.shodor.org) are wonderful. Interactivate and the MASTER tools are used by many students and teachers to explore the world from a dynamic, interactive perspective. The materials are free and run on any computer that runs JAVA in the browser, and some run in "java webstart mode."
I would also recommend the materials from a Nobel Prize winner, Carl Weiman, at phet.colorado.edu.
Good luck!
Have the check out Julius Sumner Miller.
Save money on your cell phone bill: Republic Wireless
have your students look into distributed computing, and pick a project, then run work units and compete against each other, or join each class as a team and have thoes teams compete. BOINC comes to mind. I would get them to learn a little about distributed computation, pick some task that would take one student a day to complete, then have them break it down into N-1 student chunks of work, and have the last student act as the co-ordinator, moving data back and forth and compiling the complete and final answer. https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/ LLNL has a nice introduction. you could also show how different living organisms like bees and ants work together. An example of a large project that would take one student a long time would be to build a model of the International Space Station. Building each single peice wouldn't take a student that long, and then they can put all the peices together in class, and now you have some more artwork to hang in the class room too.
A great place to visit is www.shodor.org/interactivate for online tools that are keyed to the states' standards. These exercises contain information for the instructors and the students. Interactivate has been awarded many awards for their quality. We even use them at the university level.
D. E. (Steve) Stevenson, Ph.D. Emeritus Associate Professor,School of Computing,Clemson University.
The Learning and Education group for EOL is working on a set of tools and applications designed to make EOL more accessible and useful for education audiences. EOL itself is an amazing (and growing) international effort to bring together biodiversity information from around the world on one website, with a webpage for every described species on Earth. EOL is open and free with all content licensed under the Creative Commons. Check out http://educaiton.eol.org/ for more info on how students and teachers can use EOL... There is a "build your own fieldguide" tool that is just about ready for public release. Some sample guides are currently available to show you the idea.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
After 175 comments and relatively very few online pointers (given the 20+ years of the use of ICT in Education), my guess is that the OP is somehow disappointed. Lemme provide some comforting thoughts:
1. There are literally thousands of online resource indexes related to the OP's question. There's not lack of online information and resources, but a painful and blinding abundance of it. Hence, the problem is how to distill all these resources into something useful (especially for a novice like a student teacher).
2. There is a lot of material online, but very few well-documented and research-based instructional and learning models pertaining to the use of computers in education. In the age of computers, smartphones and tablets, there's much more available information about what to learn with them and how to use them, but very few pointers to why an experiment should be done on computers instead in the real world.
3. The theories of learning and perception are shifting themselves, because the new generations grow up with computers and use them as a new, independent sensory input for an emerging new IT-related human sense. Just watch some of the videos featuring the use of XO laptops in third-world countries (or even toddlers' use of computers on youtube) and you'll realize that these kids do develop an additional sense, a kind of a "third eye". I don't think educational theory will ever catch with that evolutionary trend.
4. "Science" is a blanket term that tends to encompass a wild variety of subject matters. Unfortunately, there are no recipes in teaching "science". You cannot blindly transfer the same teaching/learning models and strategies from e.g. classical mechanics to optics and then to cell biology. This is one of the reasons teaching is and IMHO will remain partly a science, partly a craft and partly an art.
Therefore, dear OP, a list of "online resources" won't help much. Double-blinded studies will not teach us much. We need first to understand the emerging child-computer ecology (which is tantamount to approaching an alien language) and then slowly, step by step, largely by trial and error, devise new strategies able to exploit the ever-developing man-machine interaction into the 21st century. However, the technologies themselves change too fast for a carefully planned research. Therefore, the utilitarian argument will always prevail: we must use computers in schools, although we don't really understand why, because the world the kids will grow up into depends on them and because they'll probably be required as a professional background skill. Many Computer Science Departments already got the message and have turned their curricula into apps user training (Office, Autocad, Matlab etc).
To sum up, the first question to be addressed is "what do you want your children to learn and why". When you've figured that out, there are hundreds of options regarding "how" and "what means, including software". Will it work? To my knowledge, there are no guarantees.
If you are interested, we could set up an online discourse environment for your class to work on the materials and interact with myself and my students about this work. We've designed the materials so that they align with the Ontario curriculum, which is very similar to most U.S. curricula, and each component includes a design challenge based on real-world problems for the children to work on.
My name is Dr. Donald N. Philip, and I can be reached at don.philip@utoronto.ca
... this site is aligned to the state standards for PA. Some of this may work for you, and I know there are others simulations on the site. Learning Science.org I use it at least once a week for 7th and 8th grade science. I'd love to trade ideas if you feel up to it. I struggle with the same thing. Leave a msg. Heybiff.
Even the Sun goes down.
I just started to put a new website for home science projects online about a week ago. I'm still trying to learn Drupal, but I'm making progress.
I put up a "wish list" on the site just now, and I'm accepting ideas for projects other than the ones I had in mind. If it's science related, and won't get DHS all worked up I'll consider it. The first simple project I'm working on is a tutorial on electronic breadboards since I'll be using one a lot for other projects.
www.propellerscience.com
Go to Wish List from the left nav menu.
THX
-Andy
I used to work for an organization whose entire goal is to bring math and science into the classroom via computational means. Check out several of their projects:
Interactivate
CSERD
Petascale
MASTER
antipaucity
Sophia is a free social teaching and learning application that is like a mash up of the connectivity of Facebook, the video value of YouTube, and core academic content taught by real teachers, tutors and experts in an engaging format
If you happen to be teaching electronics, I absolutely love http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-index.html, they have very excellent interactive simulations of every circut component (and many simple circuits) that you can think of.
Also in the vein of electronics, it might be cool to have kids to a takedown of some electronics device and identify the components they find inside. There are a lot of good guides online for taking down and identifying parts in devices. You could probably go to best buy/cell phone store/etc and get a ton of non-functional old devices which would be perfect for disassembly. You could even have kids pull a couple parts out and test them to see if they identified them correctly. You could get them googling part numbers on ICs to identify them - think about taking apart a phone, have kids take it apart and attempt to identify the radio or the CPU, or figure out where the power comes in. Maybe this is a little to specific for 8th grade, but I always loved looking around inside devices, it's a good lesson in how things are made.
Also, if you can take field trips, I think a field trip to a factory would be awesome.
My suggestions:
Car factory where they make bodies - nothing is cooler than watching welding robots in action, if you can get someone from the factory to explain how the robots are programmed, etc, all the better. There's also a lot of very interesting precision measurement going on in a body plant, and I suspect learning about accurate scientific measurement is a pertinent topic for kids that age. Might be hard to get a group of kids in there, but it would be extremely cool.
Semiconductor factory: Probably even harder to get into than car factory, but appropriately more awesome. I suspect certain factories may even have already set-up tours.
Nuclear plant or research facility: I used to work at the cyclotron at MI State, and I can tell you they did a wicked awesome field trip. I've also been on a tour of a nuclear plant and it's very cool. These kinds of places are generally happy to do tours and may already have a system in place to make them happen.
I co-founded Wikipedia partner site http://en.wikibooks.org/ for exactly this type of use. There are some high school science books already on there which you can reference, or even better, have your students edit and expand themselves. This can be done with a whole class or just for a group of top students or for extra credit. I believe this is the best way to capitalize on the online aspect, not just passively reading someone else's material, but actively participating in creating and editing the learning texts.
Couple internet use with building PowerPoint presentations for science topics that are not amenable to lab activities. Here are some of the topics that my students were required to build presentations for:
1. Inhabiting other planets (Students had to select a planet and formulate a plan to inhabit that planet)
2. Energy resources
3. Environmental Issues
4. Mining (Students selected a mine operation and had to sale their refined ore as a commodity)
5. Telescopes (there are so many different kinds of telescopes - students had to pick a telescope and sale the idea to the class acting as NASA)
What is important is that students are given specific instructions on how to build a presentation and what the criteria is for each stage in the presentation. Their work must be checked and given (or not given) credit along the way or THE PROJECT WILL FAIL. Students must be required to turn in something at the end of each period. Sometimes it might merely be an outline that shows progress (PowerPoint has this feature) from which you may give the students feedback. Students must have had some background information about the subject ahead of time. Students hate doing research and it is important that they be required to turn in their research before they put together their presentation. Students can work in groups of 3 or less. Outline exactly what must be in their presentation with a rubric. Here is an example
Title page: 10 pts
Table of contents: 10 Pts
Description of topic: 10 pts
Function of topic: 10 pts
Benefit of topic: 10 pts
problem with topic 10 Pts
How problems may be overcome: 20pts
Conclusion: 20 pts
Make sure that the audience evaluates the presentations or they won't pay attention. For each of the presenters, the students in the audience must make an assessment. They might have a budget and they have to justify how much they are willing to spend on each topic. Student presentations are ranked according to the amount of money they are awarded and given a separate grade for their ranking. Audience members must show their budget calculations. If their awards are not sufficiently justified, they will be penalized. Make it very clear what a justification looks like:
1. Name of topic
2. Strengths of presentation
3. Weakness of presentation
4. Award amount
Students are not limited to one slide per criteria section. The idea is not to cram as much as they can on one slide. Pictures and color are helpful but fonts must be easily readable. Students are not allowed to read their slides and must make eye contact through the entire presentation. The PowerPoint is not their presentation, it is an aide to their presentation. The entire unit should only take two weeks maximum. Students who are absent for presentations must get together with the presenters and fill out the necessary paperwork for their justifications.
Students receive several grades for this type of project:
1. Research on topic
2. Outline of presentation (there may be several of these)
3. Presentation of topic
4. Justification of award (as audience member)
5. Calculation of budget (as audience member)
6. Ranking of topic
I found that my students greatly benefitted by producing these types of presentation and since they established a relevant connection between science and society, this provided a dimension to the science classroom that is as important as the practice of science. We can't build a nuclear power generator or take samples from the surface of Venus in our science classroom but we can show what real scientists have discovered and how these topics are woven into the fabric of modern society.
Questions: contact me at earthnskynlight@msn.com
Hey guys, thanks for your comments, I haven't had time to read them all, but will attempt to start sifting through them over the weekend. A few things I wanted to clarify: I appreciate the plethora of worksheets, activities, etc. available online. That's very useful to a beginning teacher, since I don't have a very large library to choose from, and these things can save me the effort of trying to come up with one on my own. However, what I was looking for (and mind you, I haven't had time to sift through everything) is cool stuff that can really help them get involved in science that they can do online. If I'm teaching them a course on galaxies, and I break out galaxy zoo for a day, I think that would have a pretty cool impact. Plus, it's something that they can do on their own time if they want to. I also feel that kids should learn how to use the internet for more than facebook and youtube, but that's a whole new subject. Also, someone called BS on me saying kids were into online stuff, saying that they wouldn't be into school related online stuff. To that, I reply that they were doing a demo of standardized testing software, and the class was silent, eyes glued to the screens. It might have been the novelty of having smartbooks in the classroom, but I felt that if I could perhaps offer some more online resources and additions to their standard fare of worksheets and labs, I could give them a more thorough education. Thank you for everyone for posting. Some of the posts I've clicked on have been very insightful, and I deeply appreciate the time and effort you have put into them. If you have any suggestions, email me or stop by my blog. Thanks.
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