The Digital Science Laboratory
- 1. Digital Science Lab Ed Walsh, Cornwall Learning
- 2. Introduction Ed Walsh • Science Adviser in Cornwall, providing support and guidance. • Series Editor for Harper Collins GCSE (C21) and KS3 Science resources, contributing author for Pearson Edexcel Physics resources and ASE Secondary Science Teachers Handbook • Seconded to the National Strategies 2008-10, working on projects such as APP, GCSE criteria, Curriculum Pathways at KS4 and Narrowing the Gap • Science teacher for 20 years, including 12 as team leader. • CPD provider at ASE Annual Meetings, BETT and the Education Show
- 3. Purpose To share some effective ideas for developing teaching and learning using digital technologies To identify how they can support effective classroom practice To identify curriculum opportunities from the secondary science curriculum
- 4. Criteria Applications • Needs to be cost effective. • Needs to support the curriculum – both the subject and ICT • It needs to be reliable However… • This is not a top ten, neither is it a buyers’ guide • It is less to do with what the most outstanding practitioner might aspire to than identifying effective starting points for a wide range of practitioners.
- 6. What it is: www.wolton.net/quake.html EQuake3D http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/ What it does: Displays the location and strength of earthquakes occurring in the last seven days Why use it? Indicates how frequent earthquakes are and the locations relative to land masses. Uses current information How could it be used? • Use display to show strength and location of earthquakes • Follow up with USGS information • Ask for suggestions about correlation of earthquake location and edges of tectonic plates
- 9. Modelling
- 10. What it does: Displays an animated diagram that shows how the scientific model explains the observed phenomenon Why use it? To ‘bridge’ between the concrete model the student has seen and the conceptual model the teacher is offering To support explicit use of modelling – evaluating the model How could it be used? • Ask students to investigate a phenomenon, such as the creation of a magnetic field by a solenoid. • Ask students to investigate factors such as strength and shape. • Offer conceptual model, such as magnetic lines. • Use diagram to reinforce and as basis for questions such as: • How does this represent the strength of different parts of the field? • How does it indicate the direction of the field?
- 12. What it does: Enables students to bookmark web pages and tag them with key words. What I use: Delicious.com, which has the feature of ‘Stacks’, to categorise links. Why use it? To encourage students to keep track of useful websites they have found in their research and to be able to refer to them either at school or home. How could it be used? • When students are researching material for GCSE controlled assessments in science, they are permitted to work in collaboration, without direct teacher supervision and away from the centre. • Bookmarking enables them to keep track of useful sites (and the references).
- 14. Using handheld games machines What it does: Enables short video clips to be easily accessed, images captured and text viewed. Why use it? To provide students with portable and user friendly ‘mini computer’, enabling them to independently access content and store images. How could it be used? • Pupils are asked for ideas about how speed cameras work, access information about speed cameras and suggest how they could model one. • Pupils set out the rulers at 1m intervals; one pupil runs, another two photograph the running pupil at agreed points and the other measures the time interval between the images. • Ask pupils to use the formula on their data and explore the accuracy of the procedure by question and answer.
- 15. Star Map
- 16. www.stellarium.org What it does: Enables objects in the Night Sky to be identified and their apparent motion modelled. Why use it? To provide a basis for explaining various observed features. To enable variables, such as time, to be manipulated. How could it be used? • Students could be shown a simple model of the Sun-Earth system and reminded of the rotation and orbiting. They could then be asked to suggest on the basis of that what the apparent motion of the stars will be. • The programme can then be used to explore such questions as: • What is the apparent motion of the stars? • How would the sky appear if there was no atmosphere? • Which stars (and planets) may be visible this evening?
- 18. Temperature probe Which freezes quicker, hot water or cold? Which freezes quicker, pure or salt water? How do different insulators affect the cooling rate of water? How does a greenhouse gas affect the extent to which energy is absorbed? Does the colour of a car affect the extent to which it heats up on a sunny day? What temperature changes take place during a chemical reaction? How can the stratification of air cause different temperatures?
- 19. What it does: Enables temperature(s) to be measured, displayed and graphed. Why use it? To produce a real time display of changing temperature To produce data that can be processed How could it be used? • Ask students to predict the relationship between temperature and time and the shape of the graph. • Ask for a justification of the prediction. • Run the experiment and ask questions such as: • What’s going on now? • Is this what we expected? • Why should this be happening?
- 22. What it does: Enables short video clips with rich questions to be gathered, shared and easily accessed. Why use it? To have a supply of ‘rich questions’ readily available as extension work or to stimulate discussion. To provide challenge and fun as well as a whole team focus on learning. How could it be used? • Ask students, teachers and non-teaching staff periodically to come up with rich questions to share. • Store on a shared area (or online) either categorised or as a ‘lucky dip’. • Use with groups of students at start or end of lesson, end of topic or revision.
- 23. USB microscope
- 24. What it does: Enables real time magnified images to be displayed on a screen and more images and video clips to be captured Why use it? Show students the kind of images they should be seeing or may have seen previously Provide a sense of awe and wonder How could it be used? • Ask students to gather, set up and view slides of cheek cells. • Run mini-plenary, in which ‘one I did earlier’ is displayed and key features pointed out. Alternatively…. • Use to capture video clip of crystal growth, for example, or pollen tube growth.
- 25. Create a graph
- 30. What it does: Enables students to enter data, manage its display and revise it. Why use it? Makes it easy for students to produce a graph, modify it and print it out or save it. How could it be used? • Ask students to gather data from an experiment, such as seeing how high the first bounce of a ball is if dropped from different heights. • Ask students to select type of graph, enter data and preview. • Peer review graphs, commenting on, for example, clarity, labels and use of origin. • Ask students to revise graph, then download and print or save. • If appropriate a line of best fit can be drawn.
- 32. Oscilloscope on tablet PC
- 34. What it does: Enables a tablet PC to display sound as a waveform, showing amplitude, time base and analysis of frequency. Why use it? Illustrates the relationship between a sound and the height and length of the waveform. Also relates frequency to pitch. How could it be used? • Use an instrument such as a recorder to play and demonstrate a single note. • Ask students to predict the effect of playing: • A higher note • A louder note • Ask students to predict the effect of playing a scale on the frequency/time graph • Ask students to predict the effect on the graph of playing the same note on a different instrument
- 35. Contact details: Ed Walsh E-mail: edmundwalsh@hotmail.com Website: www.edmundwalsh.co.uk Blog: www.collinsnewgcsescience.co.uk/whatschanging