A conversation with Jim Greeno

On Thursday (1/22) the Science Club attended a luncheon with Dr. Jim Greeno. Listening to him talk about educational research "working in Pasteur's Quadrant," made me think about reframing the science investigations we do with our students. What type of scientists do we want our students to model?

The conversation largely focused on moving educational research from Bohr's quadrant to Pasteur's quadrant. BUT, towards the end our own J-C stole the show with a finely phrased question about another trajectory: moving from the Edison quadrant (this would be us practitioners, teachers) to Pasteur's quadrant. How do we make our daily problem-solving inform theory? (I do appreciate the implication that I am actually solving problems! I am but a generally confused student teacher:)) Can the Bohrs and the Edisons party together? Who is hosting? What do we tell the DJ to play????

Thank you Science Club for letting me take us off track, a bit. Next month we'll get back to the hands on stuff.
Courtney

Plants turn sunlight into food and provide the planet with oxygen in the process. WHOA.

Inspired to share our enthusiasm for environmental education, as well as what we learned at the Green City Teachers Course (a 5 week workshop offered by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society) Joanna and I led a science club meeting with the following agenda:

Getting Stoked on Nature: Inquiry

I brought in a collection of leaves, pods, rocks, vines, bulbs, twigs, beans and seeds, and spread everything out on a table before my fellow NSTA members entered the room. Upon arrival people naturally gravitated towards certain objects and were then asked to select one or two that they liked best. Each person had a chance to talk about their object/s, what they liked about it, what they thought it might be, what they were curious about, and as a class we generated a list of terms relevant to the items we were examining. This setting allowed us to manipulate the objects and get a real close look at them; for instance unsure about the name or purpose of a particular spiky object attached to a tree branch, we broke the object open to discover it was filled with small seeds. This discovery guided a discussion about how trees grow and reproduce. Overall, a class could have extremely rich discussions that stem from such a student oriented exploration and inquiry session.

Sun, Soil, Water and Air

Joanna taught Race for the Sun, a game that positions students as water, soil, or air molecules as a means of explaining how they participate in the process of photosynthesis. One player is the sun and another a plant attempting to grow. The water, soil and air molecules are active and link up when the “sun is out” and go dormant in “nighttime hours.” It is possible to introduce a natural predator or environmental change to the game, making it harder for the plant to photosynthesize and grow successfully. The game is extremely interactive and helps students see the order of operations involved in turning sun, soil, water and air into sugar molecules (food) to nurture the plant’s growth. While it is certainly possibly to play this in a classroom, is ideally played outside.

Link instructions - Race for the Sun is credited to the Teva Learning Center, www.tevalearningcenter.org

Green City Teacher Material

We looked at cross curricular ideas for garden based programming. Scroll down to the bottom of the page on the following site to see the awesome list.

http://www.growing-minds.org/plans/manual.php#chapter2

Eating Sunlight

We demonstrated how to sprout mung beans...an easy and tasty way to grow food for thought in the classroom.

Turn Green into Green

Furthered a discussion of fundraising possibilities for our trip to the NSTA Conference in New Orleans this spring. We determined a hypothetical budget for the entirety of our expenses.

Pictures From Today's Lesson- Taught by Maxx and Joanna

moon landingly cool, only mildly relevant

...and by "mildly relevant" I mean "having nothing to do with anything we've ever discussed as science club members." HOWEVER...I thought you all needed to know about this.

A friend of mine (from the future) just sent me a link to this commercial for the "shazam" application on apple's iphone. Granted, that may have sounded like I was speaking in oobleck, but just check this out.

Non-Newtonian Fluid Fun

Following the excellent Oobleck lesson by Gaelan here are some videos demonstrating more unusual properties of non-newtonian fluids and articles with some extra information-

Here are the General Chemistry Online and Wikipedia entries, along with an interesting article about space pens.

Fun on Spanish Language TV:




ACTUAL SCIENTISTS even play with this stuff:



A DIY version of the above experiment using a speaker:

Next meeting

I think we agreed to meet on October 23rd. We are confirmed for room 300.

GSE request for funds

OK - so here is the document describing how to apply to funds. It is interesting that it seems as though it is all oriented to social events and speakers. We are a very small organization and those don't seem like our foci. But if we (you!) made the request for materials in terms of community service - we can teach whatever we develop in a school - that might be a way to conceptualize the need for materials in a way that will be understood.

It seems to me that we have several ideas running here:
technology
museums - including meeting ed staff, etc.
nature related trips
practicing science teaching, seeing, trying more activities

I am happy to help with any of these - certainly I can "teach" additional activities or help you practice them. I can help set up trying these activities with kids. I used to have lots of connections with the major museums when I was in school - but I probably still know a few people who would help accommodate us.

Some of these things would be hard to fit into the two hours every three weeks I asked of you, but my impression is that for most of you joining this group really wasn't about saving the $31.

You are getting my stream of consciousness early morning thoughts here, but I can suggest two interesting trips that are much longer in duration. I am not sure I could go, but I can certainly give you "credit" for them:

Visit Cape May to try to experience the monarch migration
Visit Hawk Mountain where the raptor migration can be viewed

Blog Norms?

I'm curious what the protocols should be for this blog. When should a new post be made and when should comments be added to an existing post? I ask because it's easier to see when a new post has been made than when a new comment has been added. On the other hand it's probably better in terms of organization to add comments.

Second, what about names? Is the blog public, would people prefer their names not be published? There should be some way to accommodate those who want to stay anonymous.

Sorry about all this meta-talk, I guess it's kind of a hobby of mine.

MAKE Philly & The Hacktory

The mention of LEGO Mindstorms reminded me about MAKE:Philly and the Hacktory.

MAKE:Philly organizes DIY themed events in Philadelphia. Check out the website, especially the "resources" tab.

The Hacktory might be a little bit more relevant to our needs. They run classes and workshops for people interested in electronics, robotics, etc. I donated some equipment (read: trash) over the summer and met one of the people who runs classes there. He said there were a couple of classes that might be appropriate for kids. Anyone interested in making a trip and seeing what they have to offer?

Getting Started

OK - as requested, here is a blog to allow us to work out the details of our NSTA student group. There is some urgency to some of this because I just learned that if we want to apply to Lois's office for an funding, it has to be done by MONDAY.

So let's talk quickly about what we want to do and get a proposal together.

NSTA also wants us to have officers. It seems to me that a president as the go to person, a treasurer if we get funds, a communications officer and a publicity/publications officer might make sense. Obviously this could be a resume item for anyone seeking a specifically science-focused job. Why don't you e-mail me privately if you are interested in one of these roles? If we only have one applicant for each position, that person gets it. If we have more than one applicant we can have elections.

So here are some ideas I had, but I am really open to what you will find most useful:

1) More science activities, similar to class

2) Lego building/robotics - done much better than this summer!

3) Experience with Wisconsin Fast Plants that coud be presented in the regular class

4) Helping with science at Lea or Wilson - develop something together, then going to work with kids on the project

5) Working with PAS on their garden?

6) Visit museums - Penn museum new evolution exhibit, Academy of Natural Sciences, Franklin Institute, Wagner museum of science (I haven't been to this one), Wistar Museum, Zoo...

7) The fall area conference for NSTA is in North Carolina Oct 30-Nov 1.
http://www.nsta.org/conferences/2008cha/?lid=con
This might be a bit ambitious in the middle of a dense fall semester, but I wanted to put it out there

OK - so this is a blog! Please add your comments!
NancyLee