Ask a Scientist - Peer Collaboration

        As an aspiring science teacher to elementary students, I rarely know everything about the subjects I have yet to teach.  While text books are a great source of information, sometimes the best learning comes from ones peers.

       We are finding out in school now how important academic conversations are having on students abilities with content.  So in learning myself, I asked an open-ended question to my colleagues that may not be answered with a simple yes or no from a google search.  I asked, Could cancer cells adapt to the point where it infects bacteria and therefore become an airborne agent?

      Cancer is a very important issue as it is taken the lives of many in my family, including my father.  Growing up not knowing how hereditary it is has made me lean towards science in my youth for answers.

      After discussing with my colleagues and professor I have realized that a healthy persons immune system would be strong enough to attack any bacterial cell invaders.  This idea that a healthy person could fight it off is reassuring, but it led to deeper questions from my colleagues who asked, "What about the exploding number of people who are not considered unhealthy and have compromised immune systems?"

     These hypothetical questions really help develop our critical-thinking and is something very important for our youth to develop.  Some colleagues even developed thick plot lines for movies based on this idea.  I like knowing that all it takes is to be around the right person when ideas are being shared for something remarkable to happen; whether it is finding the answer, or simple making a movie to entertain.  When questions are asked, things are put into motion.

The United States History - Using "Prezi" as a Medium

Prezi is a new generational platform that uses the cloud to save your powerful looking presentations.  Instead of creating hundreds of slides in PowerPoint, Prezi uses one large canvas that lets the user zoom in and out, almost infinitely. This lets people tell a story across a landscape of infinite space.

While fonts are limited and it takes some time getting used to, the benefit of using google image search to easily input any picture desired makes this program a goldmine.  There is no copying or pasting in this program, just simply drag the image from the toolbar and you can have your way with it.

Many videos show a wheel that is used to help guide your editing.  However, in the program I could never get this magical icon to pop up.  I had to use everything manually, and with some time, was able to produce the same results without it.

Creating my first presentation, I was not able to use all the features Prezie offers, yet, I was still able to create a spectacular and captivating presentation that I believe is an accurate description of how the Americas became populated.  The idea stemmed from questions my students had during a history lesson.

What the program did best was to allow me to use a map to tell a story.  Often this is difficult when students have limited experience with the geographical references.  Prezi becomes even more powerful in describing things in relation to each other.  It is hard to describe a molecule or how infinite space is.  This platform would be excellent at showing the planet and then zooming out to see the sun, solar system, milky way, next galaxies and so on.  Working backwards one could show a human, then zoom in to the fingernails and show organ systems, organs, tissues, cells, molecules and then finally atoms.  This process would really help students visualize how small/big things can be.

I truly think Prezie is a highly engaging tool that could be used in a wide variety to teach all kinds of concepts as well as have students make their own masterpieces.  With the use of cloud technology, these student presentations can be shared more easily than a PowerPoint on a flash drive.

Lastly, I am using blogs in the classroom, and this format allows my students to create Prezies and post them to our class blog.  I am really excited to see how this works out in the class.  If you have any experience with this please let me know, I would love to hear your experiences and ideas!

The United States History - shortly told to explain the overall picture to my 4th / 5th grade combo class

Genetically Modified Food

One content area I think is extremely important in science and to gain interest in students is the food we eat.  It is something we all relate to, but not many know how it is being produced.  I would want to awaken student’s interest and motivation in science with the food they eat.

Showing a film like Food Inc. is one way to scare a bunch of kids to turn to vegetarians, but it is not only the meat industry that is creating poor quality food.  Students need to weigh the idea of genetically modified seeds and their impact on food.  Is it good that we all have huge seedless watermelons for cheap? Or bad that we are not getting the simple bacteria needed to help build our immune system. 

Since I work with 5^th graders I would only show part of the film that deals with the seeds farmers use. I would want them to discuss the benefits and repercussions. I also think its important to see how it works.  For an activity I would have students grow plants in the class, but half of them use some kind of Miracle Grow to see the advantages.  Do the plants taste the same? Even if they do is this something you want in all foods?  

Teaching students to be ready for the 21st century is teaching them to think about the world around them.  Farming and food consumption is looking to be a huge topic for the next generation.  There is no common ground or fair regulations and needs to be heavily reformed, monitored, and improved. 

Below are some resources one could use to help stimulate classroom activity.

Resources:

http://www.pbs.org/pov/foodinc/lessonplan3.php

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/tdc02.sci.life.gen.lp_bioengfood/

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotechnology/sakko.html

Insulation

This week I conducted an experiment on how well items insulate heat.  As we know hot molecules are in constant search for colder ones until an equilibrium is reached at what we call room temperature (Keenan Fellows, 2013).  The hot air rises out from the water and cold air storms in, this is called convection.  One can feel this first hand when touching something metal in the room.  Because metal is such a good conductor of heat the heat from ones fingertips is drawn out and into the chair.  The release of heat in ones hand makes the object appear to feel cold, even though it is the same temperature as every other object in the room (Tillery, Enger, & Ross, 2008,). 
 Knowing that metal is a good conductor, I knew it would be a very poor insulator.  I tried to use more materials that resembled a houses insulation like fiberglass.  Something that had small pores but did not feel cold to the touch, like a shirt.  However, I stretched the shirt out and with too big of holes it was not a good insulator.  I would like to try to put a shirt loosely over the mug of hot water just as the shirt hangs loosely over us, keeping us warm.

I would also like to try other items out in the mug instead of water.  It would be interesting to see if a denser subject would lose its heat slower than water.  thick syrup or thin watery spaghetti sauce would be interesting to test.  This would make the project more engaging for students as I would want to apply it to their lunches.  How can we keep moms chicken noodle soup warm until lunch?  I would want students to create a lunch box that will be able to keep something warm for up to two hours.

I would want students to not only explore but to engineer a design using the concepts gathered.  I would want them to be able to tell me why a material is a good conductor or a good insulator.   I learned that a good conducer is often a poor insulator.

Pendulum in Motion

Dealing with a 4/5-combo class this year directly correlated me with a pendulum in motion.  I felt one with the experiment as I constantly feel like a pendulum myself.  To test the theory that momentum = mass x velocity, I used string, 3 weights of different masses, and a hook in my ceiling.  Since I did not have a ruler on me, I measured the string from elbow to middle finger, and the dropping point was a Elbow to fist from the ceiling.  I had to be creative.  Luckily in school I found that taping the string to the edge of a desk works perfectly while using a yard stick to keep an accurate dropping point would suffice.

My results are listed below and were on par with what I expected.  I knew that a heavier mass would create more momentum.  What I would want to know and test with the students is to find graph the curve to be able to predict what the resting point would be from multiple weights or string lengths.

The experiment went well but it was a lot of waiting time.  I may predict boredom will set in with my type of students.  Not only that but the accuracy of knowing when does is the object finally at rest.  Towards the end the weight tends to circle around in motion for a few minutes allowing students to grow impatient.

To bring technology in I would want groups to test multiple scenarios, then as a class graph it on Excel and see if we could predict what would happen if we changed the variable.  To make the experiment more exciting I would want to keep the kids busy while waiting for the pendulum to come to a rest, or possibly give them shorter string than what I used.

For students I would want them to learn how to graph data, interpret data to infer predictable outcomes, that gravity is the friction in play, and understand Newtons law that an object in motion will stay in motion unless a force is applied.

Before testing this experiment with my class, I would love to hear from you what to watch out for, and how to better this experiment to keep them busy while watching the pendulum.  in which ways could I make this more exciting?  possibly using action figures as the mass?

Getting Teachers on board with Inquiry Science

            At our school, not many teachers have experience teaching science.  To become a team leader, I, with the help of another teacher, have created an upper grade, 3-5, science team in which we will be conducting inquiry based lessons every Friday.  We used to have interest groups (cooking, PE, art, etc..) occurring the last 45 minutes of the week.  This year we are switching to STEM focused interest groupsTo get teachers on board, we have made it as simple as possible for them.  Each teacher will have a specific content that they will teach all year compiled of 3-5 lessons.  The students will rotate between teachers every two months.  This way each teacher has time to practice teaching the same skills, and conducting the same lessons throughout the year.  The preparation will be minimal and PLC meetings will focus on reflection of our lessons.  By practicing the same few lessons all year, teachers will become comfortable implementing inquiry based lessons. 

Goodnight Glacier

Most would believe when an iceberg melts in the ocean the water will raise a slight amount, so slight that it would not make a difference.  But what happens when all the icebergs melt? will we have global flooding?  The truth is that when an iceberg is sitting in the water it is already displacing a volume of water equal to its weight that is needed for it to float.  When it melts, surprisingly enough the water will not rise.

Does that mean global warming is a hoax and there is no way for world wide flooding?  Absolutely not.  Sure, the icebergs already in the ocean melting will not effect our ocean levels, but what about all the ice above the water?  What happens when all the landmasses fall into the ocean?  That is when panic sets in. The Environmental Protection Agency claims the sea level has risen 7 inches in the past 100 years.  While that might not sound like much, think about how much pollutants we bring to the planet that were not around 100 years ago.  To what power will that number be multiplied in the next 100 years?

What I would want to know, and maybe others out there could help me, is to figure out how much ice is  currently on landmasses like Greenland that is in risk of melting.  Not only am I curious about how much ice is out there, but also how much water will it displace when it melts into our ocean.