Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Online Science For 8th Grade Students?

Posted by timothy on from the alton-brown-rocks dept.

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!"

12 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. KhanAcademy by EliotVU · · Score: 5, Informative

    www.KhanAcademy.org FTW!

  2. Get offline and do experiments by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do real experiments. The kids will remember that.

    1. Re:Get offline and do experiments by fermion · · Score: 5, Informative
      It is true that a science teacher should include practical experiments, if the kids are going to do the expeiments themselves. If you are just going to demonstrations, then I see no reason why kids should not just be watching videos. I believe the computer simulations are way underrated in a world where schools are more fearful of letting kids do anything useful.

      These practical experiments will give the conceptual basis of what will be tested if the kids ever take an AP Science exam. They do not need to be fancy. Heat water measure rate of change. Build a gravity accelerated race track, film the cars, and analyze using free video analysis software. Run 1mw laser though pieces of plastic. And, the most important experiement of all, give them measuring instruments, let them measure things around the room, and then compare results. They will be amazed at how different everyone's mesasurements are. At that age, mean, mode, median, and rage are valid math concepts.

      As far as online goes. Look for any and all animated experiments. PHET has many of them. You can download videos of experiments, or have the kids make them, and make scatter plots relating various variables using Tracker Video Analysis. The construction of these graphs meet many objects for high school math and science. I have found online sources to simulate any experiment that I want to do. Most of these are accesible to almost any age group by simply by adjusiting pre-lab instruction and post-lab assessment

      Just like in any expeiment, the pre- and post-lab are the thing. Most kids will lean very little from a lab without a pre- and post-lab. Doing the lab is only going to be so successful. The required analysis of what the student has observed is a key learning process. In any lab, online or not, know the concepts that are to be taught, and how they will be reinforced and assesed. For instance on PHET you can make resistors catch fire. Why do they catch fire? Will they catch fire faster if the resistance is increased of the potential or current. This creates an exciting learning activity.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    2. Re:Get offline and do experiments by Angostura · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I remember our science teacher getting a very large steel drum, putting some water in it and heating, then quickly screwing on a tight-fittning cap and dousing the thing in iced water. It collapsed on itself in a satisfyingly noisy way, showing just how substantial atmospheric pressure is.

      One more vote for real experiments.

    3. Re:Get offline and do experiments by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Our teacher would always have a "demo" if everyone was in their seats on time and quiet when the bell rang.

      Some of the 'epic' ones I still remember:
      Coiled a gas tube through a beaker. Filled the beaker with liquid nitrogen, so then we had liquid natural gas (not sure what they run to chem labs). He lit the beaker on fire and then dumped it on the floor. It was like watching a bead of water skitter across a hot skillet, except it was on fire.

      They also got 2 massive blocks of dry ice. Lit up magnesium and put it in the center. We then removed the dry ice and what was left was a solid chunk of carbon. Magnesium is so insistent on burning that it ripped the oxygen from the CO2 to sustain itself.

      One day we went out to the football stands and he had a rig setup that would drop a bowling ball straight down just as another one shot off the side. Used to show shit falls just as fast even if it's moving sideways.

  3. 3D Printing & modelling by vik · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. Scratch ? by unmadindu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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]

  5. Re:Anything Online? by frosty_tsm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They may like teaching, but many of them (that I've seen) don't appear to be good at it. If you don't have patience, you really, really shouldn't be a teacher.

    I think we need to make teaching more attractive as a career to build a bigger (hopefully better) pool of applicants to pick from. Regardless of what Fox News says, they are underpaid considering the job requirements and stress they deal with.

  6. Physics Simulators by Jessified · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

    1. Re:Physics Simulators by syousef · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't forget these:

      http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~marschal/clea/CLEAhome.html - If you have smart 8th graders, they can do simulated astronomy and learn how we know some of the things we know

      Stellarium and Skycharts (Cartes du Ceil) are among the best sky simulation and mapping software and well worth a look along with Stellarium. Or try Kstars on Linux
      http://www.stellarium.org/
      http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/download (newer more comprehensive
      http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/oldversion/index.html - Version 2 (older, easier on the PC)

      NASA World Wind
      http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/

      Hubble for pretty pictures and the stories behind them
      http://hubblesite.org/

      If they don't mind math try a gravity simulator
      http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/articles/what.html

      Various Roller Coaster Simulators

      Rasmol Molecule simulator
      http://rasmol.org/
      http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/

      Scorched Earth style artillery games may get their imagination fired (but be careful as political correctness may mean you're fired)

      Much more. No time to post right now though.
      http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  7. Bad Premise by dcollins · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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
  8. Re:Anything Online? by tnk1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not the money that's the problem really. Oh sure, the newbies make shit money, but they eventually do all right.

    The problem is the job itself, and its not getting easier.

    I am given to understand that garbage men make a pretty decent wage. However, the reason that many don't consider that a field worth aspiring to is because as a job, it fucking sucks. The same thing goes for teaching, only the suckage comes from a different set of causes.

    Personally, from my observations, schools would benefit more from hiring more people to help, than they would benefit by paying existing teachers more money. There is no lack of people qualified to do something in a school. What there is a lack of is people hired to do that work. Workloads are high, and classroom sizes are getting bigger. They need more people, but the fact of the matter is that the very unions with their tenure and working to increase existing teacher salaries means that the number of open positions for people who train to be teachers is pretty small. They can't very well hire more people if they have to either give them tenure or worse, not be able to keep them on because otherwise the union will force the district to hand out tenure or to let them go.

    Teachers may well be a little underpaid, but what they are mostly is *under supported*.