Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing

The classroom buzzed with excitement. Tables grouped together were neatly covered with plastic table cloths and paper towels in preparation for the grand experiment. It was the moment students had anxiously anticipated for over a week and, with just an hour in the school day remaining, it had finally arrived.

Was the new iPad cart about to be taken for a test drive? Was the virtual field trip to the rim of an active  volcano about to begin? Were students going to watch the latest Khan Academy video? No, no and no. Today had nothing to do with state-of-the-art technology or digital media. Today was about something seemingly classical from the age of the Renaissance and Leonardo DaVinci. Today students would explore anatomy in the most interactive, hands-on, multi-sensory way possible: Dissection.

While web-based, student-manipulatable models and flashy apps pop up more and more in cyberspace, none of these things can match the power of doing science. For the study of life science and the anatomy of living creatures, this is best accomplished when students are given the opportunity to dissect a formerly living being to see up-close and first hand the insides of a complex organism; whether it be a rat, fetal pig, frog, or in the case of Burlington Public School fifth graders, squid.

Real dissections:

• Provide opportunities for students to steer scientific exploration and investigation.
• Give students a multi-sensory experience that is more likely to stick in their memories.
• Engage students in skillful procedures prevalent to many potential career choices.
• Compel students to step outside their comfort zone of learning.
• Break misconceptions about size or scale of plant or animal anatomy.

Virtual dissections often tout such advantages as "cleaner than classroom dissections," with steps able to be undone should one make a mistake. Both of these arguments may be true, but are they sound arguments at all? Science is messy. From error-riddled data to the arguments of varying validity posed to explain away natural phenomena, the suggestion that science is all neat, clean and organized is fundamentally wrong!

I am not suggesting such forms of learning do not have some place in education. In fact, before performing this dissection with students, Mrs. Jamie Jaffe (to which I owe thanks and appreciation for sharing her classroom with me!) previously showed selected portions of the public giant squid dissection at the Melbourne Museum in Australia seen here. This gave students an opportunity to overcome the preliminary squeamishness around the visual appearance of a dissected squid as well as a model of professional biologists at work performing procedures they would later have to do themselves.  A few of the facts shared in the video dissection were even referenced during the actual dissection. Still, the idea that such technologies might somehow replace such opportunities in our science curriculum should be treated with great skepticism and as a disservice to our students. After all, there "ain't nothing like the real thing."

Celebrate the Solstice! - Sundial Activity and More

Cross-posted on the Burlington Science Center blog.

There is plenty to celebrate the week before holiday break, but among the many religious traditions don't forget to take pause on December 22nd to celebrate a very special day in Earth's orbit with your students or children, the winter solstice!

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year for the northern hemisphere (top half) and marks the start of what we consider winter. For residents of Burlington, the sun will shine for only 9 hours and 5 minutes. Amazingly the day is even shorter the further north you travel, with anyone unfortunate enough to be above the Arctic Circle receiving no sunlight whatsoever! The length of our day is affected not by our distance from the sun but the tilt of Earth's axis. The axis is an imaginary line running from Earth's north pole to its south pole that spins or rotates around. Unlike a top that spins standing straight up, Earth rotates slightly sideways at a 23.5 degree angle. This is roughly the angle one might make to form a peace sign with their index and middle finger.

During the Winter Solstice the earth's north pole is pointed away from the sun, causing the northern hemisphere to receive fewer sunlight hours and less solar energy from the sun. Meanwhile, the south pole and southern hemisphere of the Earth is pointed directly toward the sun and receives their longest day of the year! For southern hemisphere residents, December 22nd is the summer solstice! Because Earth points in one direction over the course of an entire orbit (revolution), we in Burlington point away from the sun in the winter months, but point toward the sun during the summer months. Besides sharing some of the information above with your students or children, consider taking time during the final day or two of the 2011 school calendar to do one or more of these fun solstice activities.

Make a Sundial Class Activity - Produced by the Science Center and specifically designed for Burlington residents, this is a science activity where each student creates and uses their own sundial to tell time using the sun. Students will recognize how their shadows change in length and location over the course of a day. The link connects to a student worksheet and sundial template. Appropriate for grades 3-5. Some cutting is required. Grades K-2 may adapt for younger grades by having kids trace their shadows at different times of the day and answer similar questions posted on the student worksheet.

Computer Simulations and Animations:

Earth in Motion: Seasons - Follow Max around the world and learn about how the tilt of Earth and one's location on Earth influences the seasons (and how Max should best plan his trip!) via Teacher's Domain.

Seasons Interactive Animation - Best used as a class demonstration on an interactive whiteboard. Allows students to mark and predict where Earth will be in its orbit around the sun during each month.  Courtesy of Freezeray.

There Goes the Sun - For more information on the historical perspective of the Winter Solstice and how ancient civilizations commemorated the day, check out this New York Times OpEd piece written by Richard Cohen. Note: most of the material here is not suited for elementary students but is a curious peek into human past traditions!

iPad Apps for Science Educators

On Friday, December 9th I sat in on the Burlington High School Science Department meeting that centered around their use of the iPad 2 in their 1:1 science classrooms. Now almost four months into the pilot program I thought the meeting would give me an opportunity to check the pulse of an initiative that I have been widely insulated from despite sharing the same building. The following apps were all recommended at different times by Burlington science teachers who had become familiar with the apps through their own use in the classroom.

Air Sketch: An app allowing teachers or students to write on their iPad from anywhere and have their work show up on their classroom's interactive whiteboard. What is nice about this app is that there is no extra software to install. The app works by drawing to a blank slate on a website. Teachers pull up a web browser, open the custom link given to them by Air Sketch, and the screens are mirrored. The downside to this is that teachers can not flop back and forth between using the iPad and their IWBs tools to draw on the same screen. Air Sketich comes in a free version and a pay version that more features.

Noise Sniffer: Using the microphone on the iPad, Noise Sniffer measures the decibel levels of the volume in a room or the voice of an individual. While the feature is relatively limited (the app does not collect and chart data for example) teacher's saw this as a great tool to have visible to presenters during presentations. By demanding students bring their voice above a certain decibel level teachers were able to battle a classic presentation problem with students who speak too softly during sharing opportunities.

Vernier Video Physics: Great tool for physics teachers with capabilities that allow students to review classic kinematic scenarios or create their own with customizable variables and the ability to plot travel paths of projectiles as well as pause the motion of objects and analyze their motion and the vector forces acting on them.

Science 360: Used primarily as an "inquiry exploration" app, biology and chemistry teachers will find a literal array of science content in the Science 360 sphere that can be used as a tool to hook students interest into an ever changing mix of science content.

Noterize: Used primarily as a service for students to be able to take notes that include photos taken with the iPad. Two teachers shared that the iPad's camera does an excellent job of taking photos through microscopes that can be added into the Noterize notes. Teacher's also liked Noterize for its ability to handle PDFs. (Note: Now called "PaperPort."

Other Notable Recommendations:

Quizlet: Quizlet was highlighted as the best of the flashcard making tools available. While not an app by itself, teacher's liked the ease of making flashcards and how students would share flash cards easily with one another using Quizlet.

"Molecules", "iCell" and "Virtual Dissection" were also mentioned but without much discussion. The environmental science teacher planned on using the "7 Billion" and "Our Choice" iPads app in her class as topics pertaining to the focus of those apps came around in the curriculum.