Effecting School-Wide Change

As a non-tenured teacher, I am very careful whose toes I might be stepping on as I voice my opinions regarding topics for discussion past my immediate classroom design.  I am currently in my tenure year, thus leading to an even more sheltered Mr. Coffed than ever before.  For this reason, I would not consider myself to be meeting my full potential in taking on the role of a science educator leader.  This is the saddest and most unproductive part of the tenure process.  New teachers are told to “keep their mouths shut” for the first three years of their career as to not upset the “wrong people” and therefore not be granted tenure.  This is a messed up process.  Although new teachers may lack the experience that administrators or veteran teachers have, they enter a school with the most up-to-date teaching strategies in their arsenal of tricks, but are consequently told to shelter how much or when they can share them.  I feel very comfortable with my science department and we are quite the collaborative group, so to share these ideas for instruction with them is quite easy for me.  To share information or suggestions for improving instruction past this department, however, is not a comfortable thing for me to do at this time.  In order to sneak in a few suggestions, I rather frequently forward some of my ideas to our principal, who often reviews them and provides some feedback.  I have yet to see her use these ideas, however, and therefore feel as though they are just brushed by the wayside.  Effecting large-scale change in my school will be quite difficult without the support of administration.  If they were to jump on board with some of my suggestions, maybe more teachers would begin to stray from their old ways of teaching and enter a new form that presents high-quality instructional strategies.

What's Our Sputnik?

It is my opinion that Thomas Friedman makes quite a few very solid points in his op-ed entitled, “What’s Our Sputnik?” in The New York Times.  Although the U.S. is making strides towards the incorporation of STEM education practices in classrooms across the nation, we are still far from reaching the achievements that are made in classroom in other locations across the globe (i.e. China, Japan, Taiwan).  The level of improvement is just not equating to progress.  Instead, it seems as though America is just keeping its head afloat and other nations remain steadily ahead of us.  Honestly, I am unsure how to fix this problem.  As Friedman (2010) states, the United States’ primary focus seems to be on war, oil, and encasing itself in other nations’ problems, seemingly unaware of the severity of its own problems.  I agree with Friedman that these areas of influence are definitely concerns that we should be involved in, but our influence is consequently leading to the U.S. becoming, “huge enablers of bad governance” (Friedman, 2010) to other nations. 

Friedman’s strongest point is in his explanation of Taiwan’s improvement plan over the past few years; “they got rich digging inside themselves, unlocking their entrepreneurs, not digging for oil.”  In sum, the U.S. is a very prideful and selfish nation.  We will require another, “huge national effort” to revive our current state, but honestly, I do not see it happening.  The nation itself is greatly divided, far too political, and still far too selfish to truly care enough to do something about its steady decline.  A revolution in education, science, and infrastructure is required in order to get back on track and I feel as though it might be too late to reverse the effects that the past 50 years or so have had on us.  Is a change possible?  Yes, I would hope so.  I just recognize that the change would more than likely need to begin with enforcement from the government and, given the struggles that the Obama administration is having getting cooperation from Congress and the House because of the divide amongst those men, such enforcement is not likely to come down the line. 

Interactive Weather Maker

Although this assignment certainly came at a quite inconvenient time of the year, as we are trying to finish the school year, and I am buying a house and preparing for a wedding, the lesson went well all in all.  I found that my students worked well with one another using the interactive website that I provided to them (http://www.scholastic.com/kids/weather/).  On this website, they had the opportunity to manipulate different weather variables (i.e. temperature, relative humidity, and so on) in order to change the conditions found in a computerized environment.  Using this manipulation and trial-error technique, students came up with relationships among these variables.  Later in the class, they applied these relationships to the analysis of a real world case study.  Using a short excerpt for weather conditions of a particular area, they provided a detailed description of the weather conditions including the characteristics that were most likely involved.  They explored these deeper through answering questions (provided on the website) and following hyperlinks to research-based websites.  Lastly, they brainstormed a list of ideas for future preparation measures that could be provided to people in the location that they studied.

There were three different case studies in this exercise and six groups in the class.  In order to ensure that all groups were aware of the other case studies and to give groups the chance to share their analyses, one group for each case study took part in a group share exercise.  During this exercise, I witnessed some very high level reasoning and questioning that showed that my students had indeed grasped the concepts desired for the class.  More specifically, by the end of the class period, students were able to answer the following questions:

• How do variables such as temperature, relative humidity, wind, and pressure affect weather patterns? 
• Do these variables depend on one another? 
• What relationships are found among them; what happens when these relationships do not match up?
• What are the variables that cause adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms, and droughts?

Natural Disasters

It seems as though natural disasters are occurring non-stop as of late. Between flooding in Mississippi, tornadoes from Minnesota to Alabama, terrible snow storms in the Northeast, the Grimsvotn volcano erupting in Iceland, as well as volcanoes in Hawaii and Ecuador, and hurricane season approaching, our students are witnessing a spring season that is more naturally active than I can remember. They need to understand that this is the essence of nature, but they also need to understand why these events occur, however.  Through careful analysis of real world events and the data that go along with them, our students can become much more active participants and intellectuals in the science realm, equipping themselves to understand the world around them and remaining calm when natural disasters occur, knowing that nature works in cycles and we will reach a better stretch soon. 

If I were a teacher of Earth Sciences, I would focus on these natural disaster events, making science content learned in class authentic to students.  Modern day families seem to be more wide spread across the nation, meaning that events that occur far from our school in Corning, NY could easily be relevant to students who have family in the South, for example.  This could potentially bring interesting viewpoints into the classroom like, "my uncle was in that hurricane..." or "my relatives had to move out of there house because of the flooding in Mississippi" and so on.  These experiences could be shared with other classes as well, showing students that we need to be aware of events that occur around the globe, particularly those that occur within our nation. 

Additionally, I would collaborate with a social sciences teacher in my school to incorporate a cross-curricular natural disasters unit whereby students learn the science behind these events through data collection and an inquiry-based approach, and dive into learning about community organizations and relief efforts in the social sciences class.  We could even incorporate a problem-based learning experience that requires students to orchestrate a plan for hurricane/tornado/flood/snow storm, etc relief, including the science behind the event and coming up with "eye witness" accounts as if they were a part of it.  This could be a great experience and a wonderful chance to pull in multiple curricula.

Ask A Scientist

As many of us seem to be experiencing, the Ask A Scientist website is more like a "Post a Question to a 'Scientist' and hope that it gets answered" website, as answers to proposed questions are not being returned.  Regardless, I took some time this past week to merely talk with my colleagues at school regarding my question, namely our Biology teacher and 8th grade science teacher.  As I too would have guessed, mutations do happen quite frequently in our bodies, but are often manifested in non-harmful ways (i.e. freckles, "beauty" marks, etc), while others do not show at all (i.e. silent mutations).  Mutations that obviously do manifest as harmful are those such as cancers, which are commonly helped along by environmental influences. 

We copy 300 million cells per day via mitosis, so mutation is bound to occur, but it is not something that we need to dwell on.

Web 2.0

Prior to this week's application (2) assignment, I knew little regarding presentation tools outside of PowerPoint.  Now, do not get me wrong, PP is a great tool, but as I discovered this week, there are so many bigger and better tools out there!  This week I dabbled with Prezi and stopped right there.  I know that we were supposed to play around with a few other presentation models, but I absolutely loved how Prezi worked.  Not only is it easy to created text, images, and presentation flow, but it had a variety of models and templates from which to work from as well.  I have never worked with a presentation model like this one where individual "slides" can be panned in on at different angles, speeds, and sizes, so this was great!

The toolbar is not a typical "across the top" one, but is instead more modern looking and has many drop down sub-menus that allow one to investigate, crop, edit, and move various items in the presentation.  I find that becoming an expert at this presentation model will be challenging, but not as difficult as I had originally foreseen!

Heat Transfer

I set up this experiment by using only three insulators instead of the four that we were told to use.  I did this because of a lack of supplies, primarily beakers, and because of the need for a control in this experiment.  I used cheesecloth, a hand towel, and aluminum foil for my insulators.  The water that I used had an initial temperature of 25°C, meaning that this is the temperature that the water could possibly cool down to after being heated, if given enough time to do so.  I heated the water to 72°C and put 200mL of water into four separate beakers (instead of mugs).  I put each insulator tightly on separate beakers, put a rubber band around it, and waited 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, the control beaker’s temperature cooled to 39°C, the cheesecloth to 41°C, the hand cloth to 47°C, and the foil to 51°C.  Based on just this information alone, I could adequately conclude that the aluminum foil served as the best insulator. 

Additionally, however, I noticed that the beaker that had the foil over it also produced the most condensation.  Condensation decreased as the difference between initial and end temperatures increased.  This was due to the following reasons, as the water cooled, thus meaning that heat energy was released, condensation occurred.  But, as this cooling process continued, condensation exceeded the rate of evaporation, thus reverting water molecules that were in the gaseous states as a result of the hot water releasing steam back to the liquid state.  Because there is little room for these molecules to move, the water molecules, in the liquid state, stick to the sides of the beaker.  Therefore, the efficiency of each insulator was shown through the end temperature and the degree of condensation. 

All in all, this experiment was a simple demonstration of conduction and an easy way to test the efficiency of a variety of insulators.  Conduction occurs when heat energy is transferred from a warm area to a cooler area, from molecule to molecule.  In this experiment, heat energy was simply transferred from the water in the beaker to the outside environment.  The water was warmer than the outside environment temperature, and therefore “escaped” from the water into the air. 

It makes sense to me, and I could be wrong, to say that the reason that the foil was the best insulator is due to the fact that it is the most solid insulator.  In other words, the foil’s structural molecules are the closest together, thus trapping the heat energy, and any gaseous water in the beaker at the greatest rate. 

Although I did not test this, I would hypothesize that these insulators would work the same, or relatively similarly on alternative substances.  In other words, foil would keep heat energy in these materials most efficiently, just like it did for water.  The overall ability of these materials to retain heat, however, is a much more difficult question, as it brings in the concepts of heat capacity and the first law of thermodynamics.  A substance with a higher specific takes longer to heat up because more energy is required in order to raise its temperature 1°.  Due to this fact, a substance with a higher specific heat heats up slowly, holds a greater amount of energy, and cools down slowly.  Therefore, if we were to test the efficiency of insulators on alternative substances, such as spaghetti or a hot dog, those substances with higher a specific heat will naturally take longer to cool down.  

Engaging in Guided Inquiry with Marbles!

During this guided inquiry experience, I chose to discover answers to the following question: How do different surfaces affect the momentum of marbles?  Initially, my head started spinning with possibilities regarding this question.  Although I did not test this, I even played around with the idea of testing on hot and cold surfaces.  Instead, I took the generic route, due to a time crunch in the past few days, and tested two marbles, varying in mass and size, on four household surfaces; carpet, a bed comforter, a smooth hardwood floor, and a tiled kitchen floor.  As I brainstorm ideas for this experiment and started going through the different variables that would be relevant, I soon discovered that I would need to have a very specific set of parameters for each test.  For example, when I tested each marble, it was rolled, with no exerted force from me, down a folder that was propped up against a 1.5-inch book.  To ensure that the folder was placed at the exact same spot for each test, thus ensuring the same exact slope each time, I marked the sides of folder at 9.5 inches, designating where to place it on the book.  Additionally, I used this same mark as my placement from which to begin rolling the marbles.  I rolled each marble individually, and started with the front of the marble placed on the line on the folder.  Lastly, I placed a yardstick at the base of the folder (where it meets the floor).  I measured all tests in centimeters and kept record of how far the marbles rolled according to the rear of the marble.  I performed trials for each marble on each surface three times, then calculated an average for each.  I recorded this data in an Excel chart (found below, modified for formatting reasons). 

After compiling my data and performing each trial, I came to the following conclusion.  When these two marbles, varying in size and overall mass, are rolled from a constant position on the folder, thus allowing for acceleration to build up from a consistent distance, the marble with the greater mass will travel a greater distance on any of the surfaces tested.  This is primarily due to its higher mass, which causes it to gain more velocity while it is traveling down the slope of the folder, thus gaining more momentum when it hits the base of the folder.  This momentum is then carried off the slope onto whichever surface and is transferred to distance. 

In addition, after this experiment was complete, I found a few variables that were not efficiently controlled in this experiment that could very well have affected my results.  For example, the marble almost never traveled in a straight line.  Also, the marble did not always leave the folder at the same spot, thus causing it to travel a different path on the tested surfaces.  Both of these variances could have easily affected my results.  Now, I would not conclude that these variances would have affected my overall conclusions, however.  Regardless, if I were to perform this experiment again, I would modify by setup in order to account for these obstacles. 

In the classroom, students would highly benefit from an experiment on momentum like this.  The guided inquiry process, which only supplies students with a question to study, truly allows students to take control of their learning and make their own discoveries in science.  When this is achieved, the retention of knowledge is much more likely.  If this were a classroom activity, I might make the question more open to the use of a variety of materials.  For instance, rewording it to state, “How is momentum affected by different surfaces?”  This gives students the opportunity to still design an experiment, but does not hold them to using only marbles.  Additionally, if marbles were used, I would have students calculate the mass of each marble and analyze how the specific mass affects momentum (as observed through distance traveled).  Is there a ratio in play here?  To further analyze this question, a more varying range of marbles could be provided as well. 

Data: (in centimeters to the nearest half)

Blue Marble (on carpet)

1: 48.5

2: 43

3: 48.5

Average: 46.7

Green Marble (on carpet)

1: 61.5

2: 58.5

3: 56

Average: 58.7

Blue Marble (on comforter)

1: 10.5

2: 16

3: 16

Average: 14.2

Green Marble (on comforter)

1: 16.5

2: 17.5

3: 15

Average: 16.3

Blue Marble (on smooth floor)

1: 224.5

2: 232

3: 224

Average: 226.8

Green Marble (on smooth floor)

1: 270.5

2: 283

3: 278.5

Average: 277.3

Blue Marble (on tiled floor)

1: 169

2: 184

3: 172

Average: 175

Green Marble (on tiled floor)

1: 202

2: 215

3: 217.5

Average: 211.5

Thoughts on a Structured Inquiry Lesson

As I wrote in this week’s application paper, in reflecting on this structured inquiry lesson, I found that my students worked incredibly well in their small groups.  I tried something sort of differently with this lesson with regard to grouping.  Instead of completely directing the flow of the class, as I might have normally done with a lesson such as this, I designated leaders in each small group of 3-4 students to progress the group through a variety of tasks including brainstorming, analyzing data, constructing graphs, and answering critical thinking questions.  I saw true growth in my students through this exercise.  Not only was I impressed by the group leaders, but also by the attentiveness and respect displayed by other students. 

Many of these students brought relevant background knowledge into the lesson as well, which allowed them to relate our study of predator-prey relationships and natural selection to the natural world.  This lesson was aimed at interpreting how environmental influences might impact relationships in nature, and how these same influences may be positively or negatively impacting the process of natural selection, at an observable level.  This lesson served as a study that can be used for comparison reasons throughout the next few weeks as the topic of evolution is explored more deeply.  More specifically, my students walked away with knowledge of specific environmental influences that affect species in nature and how humans are both helping and hurting this impact.  We will further analyze how and if these influences are relevant to natural selection at a more large-scale and long-term level (i.e. extinction, genetic variation, long-term species adaptation). 

As my students progressed through this case study, of both moose & wolves and humans & the Earth, I could see the connections that they were making to how humans are largely adversely affecting the Earth, bringing up such topics as overpopulation, pollution, and global warming.  We were able to discuss, at the end of class, the implications that some of these influences might have on the Earth in the next 10, 50, 100, 1,000 years.  I think some of my students’ eyes were opened to how we seem to be pushing along the process of evolution, from a natural selection perspective, thus making it not entirely natural, as it was intended to be.

Melting Icebergs!

Melting Icebergs Experiment:

Question 9: Extended Questions

a. What happens if the polar ice caps melt?

Our polar ice caps comprise approximately 75% of Earth’s fresh water.  This being said, if the polar ice caps melted, it would have quite dramatic effects on the planet.  Most of our metropolitan areas are located along continental coasts.  Based on the experiment, as the polar ice caps melt, ocean levels will rise, subsequently flooding our shores first.  Although I do believe that global warming is a true concern for our planet and highly based on anthropogenic causes, I am unsure how relevant the melting of polar ice caps is to the general public when discussing possible implications of global warming.  Let’s think about it for a second.  Most of the world’s ice is in Antarctica.  With average temperatures around -37°C, the melting of this ice mass is unlikely.  But, even if a portion of the Earth’s polar ice caps melted, either in the Northern or Southern Hemispheres, this would still cause ocean water levels to rise a few feet.  These few feet could still be catastrophic, especially to these highly populated coastal metropolitan areas.  As these levels continue to rise, the addition of salt water to farmland could also be destructive to crop production.

b. What other questions do you have about this Science Inquiry Experience?

-       What is the current rate of polar ice cap melting?

-       How much does the Earth’s climate/average temperature increase each year?

-       How do carbon emissions increase each year?

-       Since the “green movement” that began a few years ago, including “green” appliances, vehicles, and other machinery, has the rate of global warming and/or carbon emissions decreased at all? How much more of this will it take to either stop global warming where it is or reverse its effects?

STEM Lesson Design Reflection

This past week’s lesson design assignment was not particularly challenging at first because I had many lessons already made to choose from, but once I figured out that we had to specifically relate it to a “historical background” benchmark and a unifying theme of science I had a much more difficult time coming up with a specific lesson to construct.  I guess I found this difficult because of the degree to which these standards were history/social studies based.  Once I found that a lesson on natural selection would be applicable, this assignment was simpler.  So, in sum, my feelings towards this assignment flip-flopped quite a bit!

On another note, however, I was very pleased to see that we were asked to construct a lesson using the 5 E’s format.  This is how I construct all of my lessons, as I was taught this method of lesson planning during my undergraduate education and teacher training.  It is so conducive to the administration and facilitation of inquiry-based and cooperative learning lessons.  The particular lesson that I constructed was a combination of two lessons that I currently teach, modified and condensed to fit an hour-long class period.  This was a great experience because it made me realize how these two lessons could easier be condensed and made more effective because of it.  I am interested to see how this new lesson will work in a real classroom setting.  I tend to be highly reflective during the lesson planning process, and have always had a knack for time management in the classroom.  For these reasons, I think that I produced a really solid lesson.  I cannot wait to implement it within the next two months!

To begin...

As this school year begins, I am extremely pumped to be such a great journey with my students!  Just as last year intrigued me because it was my first year teaching, so does this year, but for so many more reasons.  I strongly hope that I can apply knowledge and practices gained in this course directly to my classroom!