Paper presented to the
Internet Society International Conference
Geneva, Switzerland, July 1998
TRACK 4: Teaching and Learning (98069)
| Timothy Frederick SLATER Montana State University Department of Physics Bozeman, Montana 59717 USA Tel. 1.406.994.3560 Fax. 1.406.994.4452 e-mail: tslater@physics.montana.edu URL: http://www.math.montana.edu/~tslater/ |
Kelle HILL-SLATER LaMotte Elementary School 841 Bear Canyon Road Bozeman, Montana 59715 USA Tel. 1.406.582.7387 Fax 1.406.994.4466 e-mail: khill@imt.net URL: http://www.mcn.net/~lamotte/ |
Everyday more and more classrooms get access to the Internet and the World-Wide-Web. Simultaneously, more and more busy classroom teachers have to figure out just how in the world to use such an enormous technological resource in their classrooms. The difficult and critical question for each "connected" teacher immediately becomes, "I'm on-line, what do I do now?"
Recent science education reform movements across the globe emphasize that students should be actively conducting scientific investigations rather than passively listening to a teacher lecture about science facts. Through the WWW, gigabytes of earth science, physical science, and life science digital images and database information sources are readily accessible by K-12 teachers and students through the Internet. For example, immediately available on-line are today's weather maps, current images of the Sun, real-time orbital plots of the NASA Space Shuttle & Mir Station locations, and world-wide earthquake reports. Many national and federal agencies, global corporations, and college/universities have enormous WWW sites filled with data, images, resources, and software routines. Most of these exciting on-line resources readily useful for scientists. However, to be effective in an educational environment, teachers need to create a simple structure for students to navigate.
Using a modified Learning Cycle Instructional model and the advantages of hypertext presentation, a series of 80 WWW-based instructional units have been developed at Montana State University for K-12 students. These exemplary instructional materials development libraries include the Yohkoh Public Outreach Solar Physics Project (http://solar.physics.montana.edu/YPOP/); the Network Montana Earth System Science Project (http://www.math.montana.edu/~nmp/); and the NASA CERES Astronomy Project (http://www.math.montana.edu/~ceres/).
KEYWORDS
science education, astronomy, space science, earth
science, real-time science data, K-12 teaching and learning, Internet-based
public outreach.
US science education reform movements emphasize the processes of scientific inquiry over the rote memorization of facts. A common strategy for approaching this process-oriented goal is to use "authentic tasks." Authentic tasks are specifically designed to address real-life problems that scientists face, weather forecasting, earthquake locations, ocean current evolution, among others. In contrast to traditional and occasionally trivial tasks, these authentic tasks are typically complex, somewhat undefined problems that require students to apply, synthesize, and evaluate various problem solving approaches. Authentic tasks often involve sustained work, are broad in scope, have multiple-entry points, use scientific methodology, and encourage discussion and collaboration among peers.
An "authentic" task for a contemporary scientist is to use electronic information to solve problems (eg. remote sensing, seismic networks, radiosondes, computer models). Reflecting on authentic tasks and coupled with major advances in instructional technology and hypermedia, contemporary hands-on instructional activities often require students to electronically acquire, manage, and synthesize information in the classroom. Several US curriculum development efforts, including: the Network Montana Project (http://www.nmp.umt.edu); the Montana State University NASA Center for Educational Resources project (http://www.math.montana.edu/~ceres); the Yohkoh Solar Physics Public Outreach Project (http://solar.physics.montana.edu/YPOP/); and the Shodor Educational Foundation (http://www.shodor.org), among others, are developing hypermedia earth science instructional units that require students to access Internet-based data resources. For each of these WWW based curricula, the use of technology in authentic and meaningful ways, data analysis, management, and communication, is explicit and ubiquitous.
The Internet undoubtedly provides enormous resources for schools. For most users, the initial use of the World Wide Web (WWW) is as a living and unbounded encyclopedia. Yet, the WWW wasn't designed as an encyclopedia, it was designed to help scientists work collaboratively over long distances. Fortunately for us, the WWW provides schools with access to the same high-quality data and computer analysis tools that research scientists use. Much of this data is brilliantly colored, immediately relevant to students, and updated every few minutes. It is the real-time, or up-to-the-minute, data that seems to be most effective at captivating students. This paper describes some of the data resources available, provides a brief tutorial on how to use the data and analysis software, and suggests how to integrate real-time scientific investigations into classroom instruction and assessment.
The National Science Education Standards (NSES) (http://www.nap.edu/ readingroom/books/nses/) published by the National Research Council in 1996 clearly indicate that science should be taught using unifying themes and concepts. The theme of "Change, constancy, and measurement" states that most things in the Universe are in the process of changing. Changes commonly occur in the properties of materials, positions of objects, and functions of systems. Natural changes in nature can vary widely in rate, scale, and pattern.
Scientists consider most patterns of change to be either trends or cycles. Trends are one direction changes that can be linear (like continental drift), exponential (like population growth) or sequential (like metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly). Cyclical changes occur when something is repeated over and over again. Examples include the changing phases of the moon and the seasons. Mathematics is the language describing changes in nature and is essential for the measurement process. Using a patterns of change theme naturally integrates the skills and concepts of science and mathematics. Moreover, analysis of such data allows student to experience authentic scientific discovery.
The WWW provides hundreds of immediately useful resources for teaching
students about patterns of change. Listed in Figure 1, is a sample of the
many available, some of which come from government agencies: the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA http://www.nasa.gov); the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA http://www.noaa.gov); and
the United States Geological Survey (USGS http://www.usgs.gov) for example.
Many more data resources come from commercial industries: The Weather Channel
(TWC http://www.weather.com); Cable News Network (CNN http://cnn.com);
Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI http://www.esri.com); and
Lockheed-Martin (http://www.space.lockheed.com). Yet another source of
WWW data sites are the hundreds of college and university WWW sites found
all over the world.
TABLE 1 - Examples of Real-Time Data Resources
|
Real-Time Resources |
Sample URLs |
Lesson Ideas |
| Weather Maps | http://www.weather.com/ weather/maps/ |
Create weather forecasts that describe why certain predictions are made. |
| Live Weather Cameras | http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/ wxnet/wxcam.html |
Students should guess what the sky and ground looks like and check their predictions. |
| Sea Surface Temperatures | http://www.ssec.wisc. edu/data/ |
Determine patterns of changing ocean temperature to predict the best fishing locations. |
| Earthquake Monitoring | http://www.geophys.wash ington.edu/us.epi.gif |
Outline patterns in earthquake locations to map major fault lines. |
| Snow, Water, and Ice | ftp://ftp.nohrsc.nws.gov/pub/ products/west/wuw_new.gif |
Predict when and where flooding is likely to occur. |
| Space Weather | http://www.sel.noaa.gov/ today.html AND http://www.windows.umich. edu/spaceweather/ |
Predict when is the best time to observe the Aurora Borealis. |
| Monitoring the Sun | http://umbra.nascom.nasa. gov/images/latest.html |
Measure the rotation rate of our nearest star. |
| Northern Lights (Aurora) | http://space.rice.edu/ ISTP/rt.html |
Create a multimedia presentation to accompany a report on aurora. |
| Satellite Locations | http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/ RealTime/JTrack/Spacecraft.html AND NOAA.html |
Measure the orbital period and calculate orbiting altitudes for major satellites. |
| Ozone Monitoring | http://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov /eptoms/ep.html |
Determine the extent of seasonal variation in the ozone layer. |
| World Population | http://www.census.gov/ | Mathematically model national and world population growth. |
| Martian Weather | http://www-mgcm.arc. nasa.gov/ |
Track weather systems on Mars and monitor temperature changes. |
| Planet Locations | http://www.fourmilab.ch/ solar/solar.html |
Determine when is the best time to view or travel to other planets. |
| Moon Phases | http://tycho.usno.navy.mil /vphase.html |
Predict appearance of the Moon on successive nights even when cloudy. |
Note: The Physics and Astronomy Education Group at Montana State University (USA) maintains an updated real-time data resource WWW site at URL: http://www.math.montana.edu/~tslater/real-time/
All of the same principles that identify high-quality, hands-on/minds-on science education apply to WWW-based science investigations. The best projects are relatively unstructured and will most certainly extend beyond the immediate scientific background of the teacher. Such an opportunity to learn along with students is an opportunity not to be missed. Sometimes, working with real-data is a leap of faith, but most teachers who try open-ended science investigations find them incredibly exciting.
Students should be provided a time-line, milestones, and reasonably well-defined task. Best for schools with extremely limited Internet access, highly structured projects describe how many images should be analyzed, how and when the analysis is to be done, and provide a strict template for completing a final report. When situations warrant, teachers can access data and save it to disk or print images for students to analyze at their desks. This is the only option for teachers who are using their home WWW access or the school's single connection before school starts. More preferable is for students to have the responsibility to gather their own data regularly, store it on a floppy disk, use WWW resources to gather background, and immediately analyze their data on a computer.
Real-time data analysis is appropriate for individual students working on complex science fair projects and multiple-classroom projects. In general, students need to be introduced to data-sources and some of their interesting attributes. This depends, of course, on the age of the students. As with science fair projects, it is often helpful to provide some project ideas for students rather than asking them to come up with their own initially. An advantage to assigning projects is that the teacher can select interrelated projects for groups of students. For example, one group of students might be monitoring sunspot activity on our Sun. The teacher would need to ensure that students could identify a sunspot and access solar images and factual information; both archive data and today's data are available at several WWW locations. A second group might monitor the intensity of the northern lights (aurora borealis). It doesn't take much data to demonstrate that solar activity often precedes the appearance of the northern lights by about 3 days. It is assumed for these projects that school computers are at least a 486 with 4 Mb RAM, a SVGA monitor, CD-ROM drive, and Internet access (either direct or via a modem). Standard software requirements will be a word processor, a spread sheet, and a WWW-browser. The classroom ready materials will require at least one computer in a classroom with access to a student computer laboratory with eight computers available at a minimum of two days per month.
Pedagogical Strategy I: The Learning Cycle
The Learning Cycle follows ideas originally popularized by Piaget to enhance the development of student reasoning strategies. The three-phases of the Learning Cycle are (i) Exploration, (ii) Concept Introduction, and (iii) Concept Application. Briefly, students participating in the exploration phase are gaining experience with new ideas or observations through their own actions. Paramount in this exploration is that students receive only minimal guidance from the teacher and are subject to no specific expectations or outcomes. Karplus specifically states that the experience should be designed to raise questions or complexities that cannot be resolved with accustomed problem solving strategies or learned reasoning patterns. The exploration phase of the Learning Cycle capitalizes on the strategies of discovery learning (heuristic, inductive, inquiry-based).
The second phase of the Learning Cycle is commonly known as Concept Introduction. This part of the Learning Cycle most closely resembles didactic instruction and is a form of social transmission. Students are presented with a definition of a new concept or principle that helps students to apply a new pattern of reasoning to experiences. This teacher-centered instruction encourages students to use scientifically accurate vocabulary or models.
Familiarization is the goal of the third phase of the Learning Cycle, Concept Application. This is the hierarchical learning strategy championed by Gagne. During Concept Application, students apply new patterns of reasoning to additional and related situations. It is now fashionable to include activity extensions and cross-curricular connections in this phase of the Learning Cycle.
As an example, consider students exploring NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs of Mars. First, students view on-line movies that show the dynamic Martian polar ice caps and explore and describe changes. In the second phase, students are provided instructions on how to use image analysis techniques to make the same measurements that research scientists make. In the final phase, students use these techniques to analyze the dynamic polar caps on Earth. In this format, teacher-facilitators guide the development of accurate scientific conceptions and technical science process skills actively generated by students and reinforced by application.
Pedagogical Strategy II: The Investigation/Experimentation Model
Scientists pursue the patterns of nature by asking and answering questions. Closely tied to the aforementioned "authentic" tasks, the Investigation/Experimentation Model mimics the systematic process of scientific inquiry. Like the Learning Cycle, it too is a three-phase model, (i) Investigation, (ii) Experimentation, and (iii) Extension. The first phase asks students to look for patterns and potential relationships among natural phenomena or data. Often, students in this phase work in collaborative groups, sharing ideas, generating possible hypotheses, and rearranging data presentations. Students work in the same mode as contemporary scientists formulating ideas about manipulated, responding, controlled, relevant and irrelevant variables for study.
The second phase of the Investigation/Experimentation Model is Experimentation. In this phase, students formalize a question to address. A study is designed, conducted, and results are analyzed using the traditional scientific method. The key part of the phase is that teams of students are answering their own questions instead of the traditional verification and error analysis laboratory. It should be clearly noted that students just beginning to use this model often require guidance and suggestions from a teacher-facilitator. The generation of answerable scientific questions is frequently a difficult task for students. The phase is concluded when students report the method and results of their experiment through written, oral, poster-style, or multimedia-based presentations.
The third phase of the Experimentation/Investigation Model is Extension. The point of this final phase is to provide a mechanism and allocate time for students to inductively explore generalizations of their own experimental results, to formally and constructively critique other students' work, or to conduct further experiments regarding identified weakness in their studies. The important component of this Extension phase is to simulate the ongoing authenticity inherent to scientific investigations.
An illustrative example would be for students to view current AVHHR images of flooding and to make predictions about where and when certain areas might be impacted in a variety of hypothesized ways. Under the guidance of a contructivist teacher, student collaborative research teams begin to study the situation and make frequent research reports to classmates. The students, working in teams, download satellite images, calibrate pixel sizes, and stack images to make animations. Such an approach will encourage students to readily formulate and investigate their own questions, especially when used with interactive forms (cgi scripts) to share data with remote locations over the Internet.
Pedagogical Strategy III: The Role Playing Model
Role-playing has long been a successful tool in active learning environments. It is particularly useful in problem solving situations where there are multiple-correct approaches and solutions. As an example, suppose students were trying to select locations for possible mining on the Moon. A committee of students would judge student proposals that typify the use of Clementine or Lunar Prospector data from http://www.nasa.gov/.
Nuts and Bolts of Data Analysis
There are four basic software tools that are useful in analyzing real-time data from the WWW. There are a number of places to acquire or purchase software although the ones listed here are mostly free to educators. The most basic is a WWW-browser (e.g., Netscape from http://www.netscape.com and MS Internet Explorer from http://www.microsoft.com are the most common). These are used to access, view, and save images and resource pages for analysis. Second, computers need to have a graphics program to color images or convert between image formats (e.g., Paint-Shop Pro from http://www.pspro.ml.org/ for PCs and GraphicConverter from http:// www.hern. hawaii.edu/ hern95/ rt010/ tools/grasoft.html for Macs are the most common). Third, an image processing software program that automates measurements, counting, and animation is useful. The most common to is NIHImage from http://rsb.info.nih.gov for Mac and ImagePC from http://www.scioncorp.com for PCs. Finally, spreadsheets are an enormous resource for organizing and displaying data and are generally part of most basic software installations.
To date, most schools can not provide individual Internet access for every student. Fortunately, real-time data analysis doesn't require constant Internet access. Students can have an assigned time to go to a connected computer and gather the current image or data files or, much preferable, the teacher can save the data each day before the students arrive or after they leave. Some students might devise a way to make this process more efficient or even automate it! That is what scientists often do.
In terms of prerequisites, students might need to be taught how to use
a WWW-browser, but this skill is becoming much more common in contemporary
students. For certain, students need to be reminded how to effectively
search and find computer resources, which resources are appropriate, how
to save images by holding down the mouse button, and how to save and print
files. A great technique often over-looked by adults is called "backing
off an address." It is highly likely that you can find even more images
and information by removing the last directory, or words enclosed between
the "slash," from the address. For example, you might find a
great image of the planet Uranus from the Hubble Space Telescope at http://oposite.stsci.edu
/pubinfo/ PR/97/ 36/content/ 9736aw.gif. Even more images are found by
removing the last three directories (PR/97/ 36/content/ 9736aw.gif)
from the address and looking at http://oposite.stsci.edu/ pubinfo/PR/.
Once a series of images have been obtained over several days or weeks, there are four powerful procedures that can be done on the smallest of computers to conduct the analysis: trend analysis, animation, enhancement, and measurement. These processes will often lead students to investigate additional questions or more conventional graphing or modeling approaches if the teacher allows the analysis to be pursued.
The most basic analysis is trend analysis. In trend analysis, students look at two or more images, either from print-outs or on the screen, and look for changes. When looking at United States weather maps, most atmospheric features move from west to east, but at highly varying rates and evolutions. Students can calculate the rates of change by measuring the number of miles a front moves and dividing by the number of hours between images. There are non-subtle hints of geography and map reading skills as well as arithmetic skills throughout these measurements.
Animation is a technique requiring the use of a computer. At the most basic level, students can stitch together a series of images into an animated GIF (correctly pronounced with a hard "g" as in "gift") using programs like GifConstruction from http://www.pspro.ml.org/ wg/animation.html. At a level offering more user control, the previously mentioned image processing programs provide the user complete control of animations made from a series of images. Students then have the power to make movies just as good, and sometimes better, than local TV weather broadcasts. The Network Montana Project provides step-by-step instructions on how to use image processing programs at http://www.math.montana.edu/~nmp/materials/ess/step_by_step/. Some WWW sites, such as the Yohkoh Public Outreach Project (http://www.spasci.com/YPOP/) and The Weather Channel (http://www.weather.com) provide daily data already formatted as most recent movies. Furthermore, the computer also allows students to "enhance" images. By changing the colors used to display the images, different aspects and features become more prominent. Most graphics programs and image processing programs allow users to quickly change image colors.
Measurement is at the very heart of integrated mathematics and science. Occasionally, a scale is provided on maps. More often, however, the student must indirectly determine the scale of the image. By hand, the student needs to use a ruler to measure across a known distance in cm. This known distance might be the diameter of a planet or the distance across a continent. Then, the image scale is just the known distance divided by the ruler distance. So, to measure any feature in the image, just multiply the measured distance in centimeters and the image scale to get the actual size. For example, if Aaron is looking at a picture of our Sun that measures 15 cm across, then the image scale is just the diameter of our Sun divided by 15 cm ( 1 400 000 km 15 cm = 93 333 km per cm). Accordingly, if Aaron measures the size of a sunspot to be 1.2 cm, then the actual size of the sunspot is ( 1.2 cm * 93 333 km per cm) 112 000 km.
Similarly, on the computer, any digital image must be calibrated before features can be measured. For NIHImage or ImagePC, the image must be converted to PICT or TIF image format using a graphics program such as previously mentioned Paintshop Pro or GraphicConverter. After the picture is opened, the user draws a line across a known distance (the map scale, the diameter of a planet, or the distance between two cities). Then, the known units followed by the known value is entered so any feature can be measured by just drawing a line across the feature. The exceptionally powerful part of using the image processing software for measurement is that the scaling holds true no matter how much the image has been magnified or enhanced.
Conducting scientific investigations using real-time data allows for multiple-entry points for students with different backgrounds and aptitudes. This means students can tackle projects with varying levels of complexity and duration. Accordingly, assessment strategies will likely be very different from conventional multiple-choice tests focusing on facts. The easiest way to assess student learning is to have students create a report that describes what the student did and what the students learned. This can be done as a written research report, a colorful poster, an electronic presentation, or as an oral report. Using a checklist, the teacher can evaluate the degree to which the student used appropriate research strategies, the progress the student made from his or her starting point, and the extent to which conclusions are based on the data presented. This is a great opportunity to employ a robust combination of performance and portfolio assessment techniques.
Hypermediated environments provide students with access to data to conduct such investigations and, hopefully, to learn more science. Recent programming strategies such as Java Scripting now allow for instructors to include assessment items and collect student assessment data continuously and unobtrusively. Multiple-choice examinations can easily be administered and scored in a hypermediated environment (a description of how to implement such procedures is beyond the scope of this article). Although it is more difficult, submission of graphs, E-mailing of brief essays, and administration student-selection tasks through on-line drag-and-drop interfaces to be graded by computers using fuzzy logic technology is in the near future. Video-teleconferencing packages and video-cameras are inexpensively available and hold promise for immediate student feedback and expert tutorial sessions. Student assessment strategies are clearly the next boundary for educational technology to overcome.
The implementation of hypermedia lessons provides a mechanism for utilizing current scientific data into the constructivist classroom. The activities can be easily aligned with authentic tasks to conduct actual scientific investigations. Students can actually check the accuracy of their own weather predictions and analyze seismograms from yesterday's earthquakes. The power of hypermedia has significant ramifications for today's students. However, the format of the instructional activities do need to be grounded in a sound pedagogical foundation. Without such a framework, the resources can become nothing more than "gee-whiz" science exhibits. During the teacher-lead development of the Network Montana Project materials, the teachers' discretions were used to determine which instructional model to employ. It is not yet clear if one instructional model is more effective in hypermedia format than another. If our primary instructional goal is for students to gain knowledge through social experiences with teacher-facilitators and student peers by managing information and forming accurate scientific conceptions, then the Learning Cycle might be the most effective. Alternatively, if our primary instructional goal is for students to mimic the real tasks of real scientists, and if the electronic data accessed is identical to that accessed by real scientists, then the Investigation/Experimentation Model might be the most effective. It is not known if a Role-Playing Model reduces the perceived authenticity of WWW data or images being used. There is no indication, as yet, if knowledge level concepts are emphasized more or less than synthesis level concepts with these instructional models in hypermediated environments. Further, there is no strong indication regarding the efficacy of the enhancement of interest, attitudes, or value for scientific inquiry among the aforementioned instructional models in these hypermediated environments. As Internet and WWW resources are becoming pervasive in K-12 classrooms, it is vital to conduct systematic studies to identify the most effective instructional models utilized in hypermedia. However, it is clear that hypermediated instruction has significant benefits and can be used easily in a variety of settings with students at all levels. Most importantly, it provides all students with equal access to real data being used by real scientists right now.
When thinking about teaching science and patterns of change using WWW resources, it is important to take the perspective that not all of the students in your class will learn exactly the same list of facts. Scientific data from the WWW allows students to explore real scientific data and test real hypotheses in meaningful ways. It encourages students to "do science" instead of simply memorizing scientific terms. Indeed, knowing scientific vocabulary is important; however, under the guidance of a facilitating teacher, students naturally learn vocabulary in the process of conducting a scientific investigation. The goal of increasing the cognitive level of learning science is accomplished by students actively constructing their knowledge through motivated investigation.
Timothy Frederick SLATER is a research assistant professor of physics at Montana State University in the USA. His electronic mail address is tslater@physics.montana.edu. He maintains a Real-Time Science Data Access Page at http:// www.math.montana.edu/ ~tslater/real-time/. Kelle HILL-SLATER is a library and computer technology teacher for a rural K-8 school near Bozeman, Montana. Her electronic mail address is khill@imt.net .
Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Dr. T.F.
Slater, Montana State University, Department of Physics, Bozeman, MT 59717
USA, Telephone 1.406.994.3560 and e-mail: tslater@physics.montana.edu