Clear Learning Outcomes

[Author's note:  These subjects have been taken from the goals in America's Lab Report, a groundbreaking report from the National Research Council.  The text and images explain how authentic online science lab experiences meet those goals.]

Design of lab includes clearly stated learning outcomes.
Every one of these virtual labs has a full activity plan to support teacher and curriculum writers. The first image above is the header for the plan and includes the purpose and goals of the lab for use by the teacher. The second image is taken from an introduction to one of the lab units and will be seen by both students and teachers.

Are There Stars Out Tonight

Are There Stars Out Tonight?

[Author's note: This is chapter two to "Why American Can't Think," a book in progress. This chapter discusses the attitudes of American society toward scientists and how that affects our schools.  Should it be longer? What's missing? Comments are welcome.]

Have you seen the magazine and newspaper articles? They cite PISA and TIMSS scores, and how low those of the U.S. are. These international science tests may be a harbinger of future woe. We may draw two conclusions from these low scores. The science literacy of our citizenry is declining, and we won't have enough scientists to compete in the future world economy effectively. Both conclusions have severe consequences that should be recognized and acted upon soon.

Science literacy affects us all because we must make important decisions individually and as a people that depend on understanding basic science. Just look at the climate and energy debates for examples of group decision making. Our individual buying patterns affect everyone. Should you buy an SUV or a compact car? Buying tobacco products supports the tobacco industry and provides money for them to market to our youth. Informed individual decision making helps us all to enjoy better lives.

Studies suggest that science literacy in the United States is low and is declining. Why? Some say that the quality of science classes is lower than before. Others point to the increasing complexity of science. I'd like to discuss another potential cause, not to say that these others don't contribute.

When I was young, Albert Einstein was all the rage. He was still alive then and was lionized by society. For roughly a hundred years, a series of scientists and inventors had been held up as role models. James Watt, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Simon Newcomb, and a host of others became celebrities of their era. In later times, Jonas Salk, Linus Pauling, James Watson, Francis Crick, Edwin Hubble, and Richard Feynman became their modern equivalents. These people populated the sky of science. They were our science stars.

Think carefully. Can you name an acclaimed living scientist, one with awards such as the Nobel prize?

Probably not. Our science stars have gradually faded from the sky until it's now virtually empty, black, and barren. You can still find plenty of scientists with these prestigious awards. They're just not known to non-scientists. Science stars used to provide some balance against movie stars, sports stars, television stars, music stars, and even political stars.

Having met Richard Feynman and having taken a course from Linus Pauling, I can attest to the remarkable character of these brilliant people. They enjoyed doing science immensely. Their enthusiasm was infectious. They're just a couple of the famous ones. I have met many others, not as well known, whose zeal for science is so great that just spending time with them gives you an interest in finding out more about science. What is it that attracted these very smart people to science? Why do they enjoy it so much? If your science classes were much like mine, the answers aren't obvious.

I find it disheartening that we don't see scientists' images on the cover of Time magazine. (Actually, James Thompson was on the Aug. 20, 2001 cover. In 1961, Time featured sixteen scientists on its cover as “men of the year!”) We don't hear them on widely-viewed television shows. Where is the role model for future scientists today? Is it any wonder that our youth focuses on entertainment, sports, Wall Street, and, to a lesser extent, politics?

Without prominent role models to interest young people in a career in science, what's left? The science classes that every student takes must step up and provide engaging, interesting, and accurate images of doing science. To their credit, many science teachers take this challenge on successfully. However, the challenge is a big one in the face of declining budgets and growing class sizes.

One part of the problem is the nature of science. In the pressure of meeting standards, passing high-stakes tests, and improving all sorts of test scores, the focus has shifted even more than ever toward the output of science: the laws, equations, vocabulary, and procedures that can be memorized and repeated on tests. A simple, basic fact known to most elementary school students gets lost: science is fun!

Most of today's science teachers don't really understand science, especially the nature of science. I'll return to this topic in a later chapter. For now, understand that new generations of science teachers are learning their science from teachers who don't understand it. And the cycle repeats. As a result, students, especially in middle and high school, lose any interest that may have been germinating in their minds and turn to other, more exciting fields.

The twin problems of no prominent scientist role models and rather lackluster science classes have reduced the quantity of high school graduates who go on to major in science in college. This issue is particularly significant in our graduate schools where an increasingly higher percentage of graduate students come from other countries. According to the National Science Foundation, “Among first-time, full-time graduate students, enrollment of temporary visa holders increased at a greater annual rate in 2007 (8.3%) than did that of U.S. citizens and permanent residents (1.7%)” [NSF Report NSF 09-314, June 2009] The same report shows that in 2007, the number of U.S. citizens in graduate studies enrolled for the first time in physical sciences was 4,089, while temporary visa holders numbered 2,622, about one-third of the total. In engineering, the numbers are 12,267 (U.S.) and 15,998 (visa), which is well over one-half of the total.

Scientists get their real training in graduate schools with that training being extended for the more challenging fields in postdoctoral fellowships. Again, far more than half of all science and engineering postdoctoral appointments, 58%, are held by temporary visa holders. Simply stated, we are not able to fill up our graduate and postdoctoral positions with our own graduates. Graduate schools around the country must find the necessary people to fill these ranks in other countries. While we should have our graduate schools accepting foreign students, it should not be out of necessity.

The nature of science eludes people because it's not a simple formula or set of rules. After all, the word science comes from the Greek and means “to know.” Science, however is not about knowing, it's about how you find out what you know. If you read about what scientists do, you'll find out that they don't simply apply a straightforward procedure to their work, although they have evolved plenty of those for use in their studies. They're constantly on the lookout for something that doesn't fit the known patterns. Scientists are tinkerers. They're saying, “Hey this idea worked here; will it work there?” You find this same curiosity in artists.

The big difference with scientists, is that they must test their ideas out on the real world. They make measurements. Newton, Pasteur, and Pauling made measurement after measurement. They also used the measurements of others. I don't think that Picasso or Beethoven made measurements and compared their data with that of others.

These practitioners of such disparate professions as art and science all had one thing more in common: they all require great discipline. You can't just throw paint at a canvas or mark notes at random on a sheet and create great art. Years of practice lead to a discipline that allows you to do your work well. So It is with science. Scientists learn to make meticulous notes on their work, how to do literature research, and of course learn the procedures associated with their particular discipline.

Young people see great success in sports or entertainment and think that they too can do that. It looks easy – and fun. They look at what scientists do and think that it looks hard and not so much fun. They're wrong on both counts, but their community of peers, teachers, parents, and role models aren't disabusing them of these incorrect viewpoints.

I knew two brothers in high school who were quite talented in baseball. One was a pitcher; the other was a catcher. Their father had arranged things that way. In high school baseball, they were the best in the league. The high school girls were impressed, and their future in sports seemed certain. The world of professional sports demands a great deal, however. One of the brothers, the pitcher, was able to get a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers and played for a few years in its farm system. The other couldn't even get that far.

The life of these professional athletes and entertainers includes many hours of practice, far more than most people realize. It may be easier to win a Nobel prize than to become a hall-of-fame athlete. The following table illustrates this point. Only Laureates in chemistry, physics, and medicine are counted. The special election of 2006 is not included in the baseball list, neither are executives.

Year	Number of Nobel Laureates in Science and Medicine	Names	Number of Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees	Names
2001	9	William S. Knowles Ryoji Noyori K. Barry Sharpless Leland H. Hartwell Tim Hunt Sir Paul Nurse Eric A. Cornell Wolfgang Ketterle Carl E. Wieman	4	Bill Mazeroski Kirby Puckett Hilton Smith Dave Winfield
2002	9	John B. Fenn Koichi Tanaka Kurt Wüthrich Sydney Brenner H. Robert Horvitz John E. Sulston Raymond Davis Jr. Riccardo Giacconi Masatoshi Koshiba	1	Ozzie Smith
2003	7	Peter Agre Roderick MacKinnon Paul C. Lauterbur Sir Peter Mansfield Alexei A. Abrikosov Vitaly L. Ginzburg Anthony J. Leggett	2	Gary Carter Eddie Murray
2004	8	Aaron Ciechanover Avram Hershko Irwin Rose Richard Axel Linda B. Buck David J. Gross H. David Politzer Frank Wilczek	2	Dennis Eckersley Paul Molitor
2005	8	Yves Chauvin Robert H. Grubbs Richard R. Schrock Barry J. Marshall J. Robin Warren Roy J. Glauber John L. Hall Theodor W. Hänsch	2	Wade Boggs Ryne Sandberg
2006	5	Roger D. Kornberg Andrew Z. Fire Craig C. Mello John C. Mather George F. Smoot	1	Bruce Sutter
2007	6	Gerhard Ertl Mario R. Capecchi Sir Martin J. Evans Oliver Smithies Albert Fert Peter Grünberg	2	Tony Gwynn Cal Ripken, Jr.
2008	9	Martin Chalfie Osamu Shimomura Roger Y. Tsien Françoise Barré-Sinoussi Luc Montagnier Harald zur Hausen Makoto Kobayashi Toshihide Maskawa Yoichiro Nambu	1	Rich "Goose" Gossage

How does the joy of discovering something hitherto unknown or seeing something no one else has ever seen compare with hitting a home run at a major league baseball stadium? I'm not sure, but the likelihood of doing the former is greater than the latter.

Recently, a 14-year old girl discovered a new type of supernova (an exploding star). As reported by the Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/19/741195/-Teenage-girl-discovers-new-type-of-supernova), Caroline Moore of Warwick has been scanning images of the sky as member of the Puckett Observatory Supernova Search Team. They have four automated telescopes scanning the skies and photographing galaxies. Caroline discovered SN2008ha, which is a Type I supernova based on its spectrum but is much too dim to be a Type I supernova. It's also too bright to be an ordinary nova. I'm sure that she was very happy to have found a supernova at all. Just try to imagine her delight when she heard that she was the first one to find his entirely new type of supernova.

There's not much to be done in schools to create the next science icon except to encourage more students to try a career in science. However, we can make a greater effort to make school science past sixth grade more like it was in earlier grades in terms of engagement and more like real science in terms of the nature of science.

Our science classes must spend more time on science and less on learning seemingly endless lists of words, laws, equations, and procedures. If the science is real and is interesting, the rest will follow naturally. A later chapter addresses the role of the science lab in making this outcome happen. The following from John Dewey seems appropriate to close out this chapter.

[John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 221, Macmillan (1916) (reprinted by The Free Press, 1966).]

Since the mass of pupils are never going to become scientific specialists, it is much more important that they should get some insight into what scientific method means than that they should copy at long range and second hand the results which scientific men have reached. Students will not go so far, perhaps, in the "ground covered," but they will be sure and intelligent as far as they do go. And it is safe to say that the few who go on to be scientific experts will have a better preparation than if they had been swamped with a large mass of purely technical and symbolically stated information.

© 2011 by Harry E. Keller, Manhattan Beach, CA U.S.A.
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Mastery of Subject Matter

[Author's note:  These subjects have been taken from the goals in America's Lab Report, a groundbreaking report from the National Research Council.  The text and images explain how authentic online science lab experiences meet those goals.]

Enhance student understanding of specific scientific facts and concepts and the way in which these facts and concepts are organized in the scientific disciplines.

In order to use science lab experiences to aid subject matter mastery, labs must have supporting material that helps students. At the upper left, you can see a reduced image of a warm up page. This page includes a brief description, goals and objectives, and a series of questions designed so that students begin to think about the topic and, possibly, to challenge their preconceptions. At the upper right is the beginning of a post-lab quiz that helps students to consider the science investigated with the experiments. Students can review their experimental work and support materials during this quiz.
The lower image shows the vocabulary and scientist mini-biography taken from the same Cell Respiration lab. The vocabulary list links to a hyperlinked list of all words related to this lab.
Not shown above is the Procedure page, which has additional background material on this lab, a procedure discussion when warranted, and information on errors, graphs, apparatus, units, and more. Also not shown are the fully worked out solutions for all quiz questions and the Solution Strategy page that explains principles in more detail and provides some sample worked-out problems.
All of this material creates a greater mastery of the science illustrated by the experiments being performed by the students.

Definition of "Laboratory Experience"

Definition of a Laboratory Experience

"Laboratory experiences provide opportunities for students to interact directly with the material world (or with data drawn from the material world), using the tools, data collection techniques, models, and theories of science."

This definition forms the critical basis for all of the goals specified in America's Lab Report according to Prof. Susan Singer, the lead author of the report. All data from science labs must originate in the material world. That definition does not provide for data that originates from a programmer's pencil: simulations.

Simulations can have pedagogical value, but this value does not include substituting for true laboratory experience no matter how well designed or well integrated the simiulation is.

I will be providing examples of online activities meeting the goals of America's Lab Report that all use data that originates in the material world. In some instances, the online activities have been augmented by hands-on experiments that provide another dimension of experience to students.

Books about Marketing

If you've created something you'd like to sell or are even considering creating some such thing, you'll immediately run into the issue of marketing.  Few software developers know anything about marketing.

If you find yourself in this predicament, don't despair.  There's a great resource, the ESC Marketing Book Club.  For just $35 per year, you can join the Educational Software Cooperative at http://www.edu-soft.org and participate in this excellent online activity.

Al Harberg runs the online club and summarizes each new book he selects.  People then enter into a discussion of the topic, sharing their own experiences with software and marketing.

Why try to figure out all of those marketing books yourself?  Get the Harberg Digest online plus other members' insights.  Go to the website now and join.

While you're at it, check out the ESC blog at http://educationalsoftware.blogspot.com/.

For a summary of books already reviewed, see http://www.edu-soft.org/content/index.php/esc-book-club.

See you there!

First Steps

[Author's note: This is chapter one to "Why American Can't Think," a book in progress. This chapter discusses my own beginning interest in science and the start of science education in schools. I've just expanded it to include some science. Should it be longer? What's missing? Comments are welcome.]

School ruins summer. Growing up, as I did, in a sleepy beach community, the summer was the time, well, to go to the beach. For a nine-year old child who just finished fifth grade, it was a great time to forget about school and have fun. So, what was I doing in summer school?

My parents had put me in that veritable prison. It might have been to get me out of the way so that my mother wouldn't be overwhelmed by handling my six-year old brother and my three-year old sister as well as me. Here I was, imprisoned day after day with the summer just outside of the school windows. Fate plays strange tricks with life. And so the long-past summer, that had threatened to be interminable, introduced me to science.

Probably because of some teaching fad of the time, I walked into an unstructured class in a large uncrowded room where students did various projects. Projects? Where were the tests that I had become so good at taking? I had learned that only test scores really counted, and I had learned how to do well on tests. It's a wonderful skill for your school years and not much use afterward, except for taking the exam for a driver's license and the like.

We could do projects because the class was small, only about a dozen students with two teachers. Not really poor or wealthy, our town got by, but had great schools anyway. This was California before the tax revolts of the 80s. Rated near the top in the country in education, California's education system has been devastated by the tax-limiting proposition 13, and now it's near the bottom.

Students in my class had to present their projects to the class at the end of the semester. Some did creative stuff; others were involved in play acting. I was lost. Nothing that the others were doing held any interest for me. I found a book; maybe a teacher handed it to me. It was about science experiments, and it fascinated me. I wanted to do those experiments.

My scope was limited by the materials at hand. We did not have any chemicals or fancy equipment. After all, this was fifth grade. We were only ten years old, although I was nine due to skipping third grade. I ended up working with flasks, stoppers, tubing, and other similar stuff to create demonstration experiments showing some basic principles of science such as air pressure making a fountain. It was fun seeing what I could do with a few simple pieces of apparatus. I tested each demonstration in the days before the presentation, worried that I'd flop. Everything worked fine, and I was happy to have completed my assignment and to get out of school for the remainder of the summer.

My experiments used atmospheric pressure, the pressure of the air all around us. I didn't know it then, but this pressure results from air having mass. A great column of air extending far up sits above us, pressing down with its weight. My experiments worked with two fluids, water and air. Fluids transmit their pressure equally in all directions. So, the force of all of those kilometers of air push down, up, sideways and affect everything.

If you take a empty plastic soda bottle and put some hot water (possibly from the tap) into it, shake it up, and cap it, you'll see the effect of atmospheric pressure. As the gas in the bottle (a mixture of air and water vapor) cools, the pressure in the bottle declines while that of the atmosphere outside the bottle stays the same. The bottle collapses from the pressure, equivalent to that caused by a column of mercury about 3/4 of a meter (about 30 in) high (101 Pa in SI pressure units). It's equal to the pressure of a hefty man standing on a square about 9 cm (3.5 in) on a side.

Another thing that I was to find out later relates to why a gas gets smaller when it cools. I put a technical explanation in Appendix I that deals with something called “kinetic-molecular theory.” Simply, this theory was supported by lots of experiments and suggested that matter (gases anyway) consists of lots of very small individual particles constantly in motion, whose speed increases with temperature.

It was to be four more years after that fifth-grade class before I found myself in a science class. As odd as it may seem today, I had no science in grades 6-9. That's right, even in my freshman year of high school, science was not offered. Today, some high schools require three years of science to graduate and recommend four. Science has been growing as an important part of school curricula for a long time.

Science had to be introduced to an educational system that had focused on arithmetic, language, classics, and history. The first formal science classes in secondary schools appeared in the 19^th century. In Great Britain, we have information from F. W. Westaway, who wrote in 1929, “Down to the middle of the nineteenth century, science was the veritable Cinderella of the British school curriculum. Science itself was making headway, but science teachers were few, and those few were engaged in fighting down opposition all round.”

You can imagine the conflicts as science threatened to remove, for example Greek, from the curriculum. Students had been learning Greek for, well, forever. Why change? We can guess that the impetus for change came from the Industrial Revolution. Inventors, such as James Watt with his improved steam engine, had proven the value of a scientific education. The schools had to educate students to play a role in helping their nation succeed. These schools weren't quite sure how to teach science, and the point remains contentious today. Initially, schools taught secondary science much as they taught history or mathematics. The courses were all lecture, reading, tests, and the like. Introduction of lab exercises came later.

In 2005, the National Research Council wrote in “America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science, “Since laboratories were introduced in the late 1800s, the goals of high school science education have changed. Today, high school science education aims to provide scientific literacy for all as part of a liberal education and to prepare students for further study, work, and citizenship.” This newsworthy report goes on to say, referring to science laboratories in schools, “During the 1880s, the situation changed rapidly. ... Johns Hopkins University established itself as a research institution with student laboratories. Other leading colleges and universities followed suit, and high schools—which were just being established as educational institutions—soon began to create student science laboratories as well.”

From these few references, you can deduce that science began to take its place in secondary education in the mid-19^th century and that science labs were first introduced very late in that century. We can surmise that science labs provided a vital opportunity for students to do science. When learning English, students “do” English by writing essays. My own lifelong love of science was sparked by the opportunity to do science in that fifth-grade summer school so long ago. Science became real, not just a collection of facts and words. Finding out about the world and discovering new concepts thrilled me to the core. I was hooked.

© 2011 by Harry E. Keller, Manhattan Beach, CA U.S.A.
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Wake Up Call

[Author's note: This is the prologue to "Why American Can't Think," a book in progress. This prologue puts our current education situation into historical perspective and sets forth the purpose of this book. An image of Sputnik I will appear in the appropriate place. Comments are welcome.]

On October 4, 1957, America woke up to a changed universe. For the first time ever, an artificial satellite revolved over our heads. The fast-moving object reappeared in the sky every 96 minutes. Launched by the Soviet Union in a display of technology and propaganda, it shook Americans to the core. The Russians called it Sputnik; it weighed 181 pounds.

I was a high school student at the time and recall vividly the impact this event had on our small beach community. It was as though the Russians were about to invade right where we lived. People across the entire country were stunned. How could this happen? Weren't the Americans well ahead of the Soviet Union? We were first with the atomic bomb and first with the hydrogen bomb. We had many ex-Nazi German rocket scientists working for us. We were America!

The Soviet Union wasn't through with us however. On November 3, they launched another satellite into orbit. This time, it weighed over 1,100 pounds. Clearly, they'd have little trouble launching a powerful nuclear weapon into the United States if they chose.

Two months later, the United States attempted to launch its own satellite, Vanguard. In a public relations disaster, the rocket exploded on the launch pad. Even had it succeeded, it weighed only three pounds and would have been too little too late. As it was, the failure made things worse, much worse. A public relations problem had escalated into a major national issue.

The army came to the rescue on January 31, 1958. Werner von Braun's group in army research managed to launch Explorer I, a 30-pound satellite, into orbit. The space race was on.

Ultimately, on March 17, a Vanguard satellite was successfully launched. During 1957 and 1958, eight launch attempts were made for Vanguard. This was the only one to succeed. In a strange twist of fate, Vanguard I is still in orbit and is the oldest such satellite, the others having long ago fallen out of lower orbits.

Among all of the hand-wringing and finger-pointing, one fact stood out. Our schools were training fewer scientists than would be required to meet the challenge. Congress and the nation responded with fervor.

At that time, schools had been adjusting their curricula to meet the young students' social, personal, and vocational needs. Suddenly, pressures that had been building to make curricula more rigorous surged. Funded by the National Science Foundation, new materials for science education were created in physics, chemistry, and biology. Science education had become an important part of the space race, which culminated in a manned moon landing when Apollo 11's lunar excursion module descended to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969. The Soviet Union never managed a manned moon landing.

Vanguard Satellite, Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

It's notable that America responded to this event so dramatically. It wasn't Pearl Harbor, but America marshaled its resources almost as though it were. Congress did not seriously challenge the channeling of resources into the race for the Moon. The American people cheered from the sidelines, watching anxiously at each flight of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. They mourned the loss the Apollo 1 crew, Grissom, White, and Chaffee.

Today, we haven't awakened to a Sputnik-like tsunami of technological or propaganda superiority. Instead, we're seeing the steady erosion of our ability to build new science and new technology as other countries seek to emulate our prior success and gain for themselves the advantages that flow from dominance in these fields, including a higher standard of living for their people and a stronger economic and military presence.

Without a single event to focus the attention of our citizens on the seriousness of the situation, we are having difficulties finding the resources required to improve our science education. We won't see it happen through the forces of the free market because public education is run by the government. The tax revolts of the 1980s have ensured that many of our schools will gradually decay in their ability to deliver quality education, especially in science. Only a few wealthy communities can fund their schools beyond the amount received by statute.

Yet, even substantial increases in funding will not repair the damage accumulating over more than two decades. Class sizes have exploded. School physical facilities have decayed. Teacher recruitment has lagged; most districts have difficulty in hiring really good science and mathematics teachers.

Certainly an effort has been made. Yet, after over 20 years and billions of dollars, where's the improvement? Optimists may note that things aren't much worse, but they didn't count on the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Science education will not improve because of committees, reports, plans, or grants. We desperately must have real innovation in science education. More of the same just won't work.

The global economy makes our situation even more desperate. Even if we do avoid slipping backward or even make some forward progress, we'll be moving backward with respect to our important global economic competitors. We have to do more than just maintain our position.

This book explores the nature of science education, its special aspects, its history, and the means to repair it. Our work will be difficult because we're seeking to improve science education on a reduced budget. That task will take all of our intellectual resources and will require overcoming the built-in inertia of our education system.

© 2011 by Harry E. Keller, Manhattan Beach, CA U.S.A.
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Why Think?

Why Think?

[Author's Note: This text is taken from the current draft of "Why Can't America Think?" This book is being written to document the problems and solutions of science education in the United States. I encourage anyone reading this text and those that will follow to comment on and improve this book. I look forward to this effort to improve our country and the world. This is the preface to the book.]

What a bizarre question! Doesn't everyone think? Isn't that exactly what brains are for? Don't we think every time we make a decision?

The answer is that everyone doesn't think. Even fish and birds have brains but don't really do much, if any, thinking. Most decisions are made based on feelings, not thought.

Yet, we do muddle through and may live very nice lives doing things just as we wish. Very many people leave the thinking to the thinkers. Why burden yourself with the study necessary for being a philosopher or scientist or engineer?

The world has changed. To have a better standard of living, you must have better training. To advance to higher-paying jobs in your profession, you must do more than just your job, narrowly defined, well. The extra pieces required to advance generally include communication skills and thinking.

In addition, nations now find themselves in greater competition than ever before. To achieve a good life for its people, a nation must train those people to compete against those who are also being trained to compete. This battle will not be won by those who deliver packages or make fast food or sell clothing in retail stores. It will be won by those who operate at a higher level creation and discovery. Without sufficient numbers of well-educated people, a nation will settle into a lower level of success.

These two selfish reasons for improving education miss another very important issue. In a modern society, companies seek to sell you all sorts of stuff – and politicians sell themselves. You're being constantly bombarded with messages designed to reach the parts of your brain uninvolved in thinking. You're being asked to buy based on sexual attraction, beauty, power, social acceptance, and the like. Almost always, the product or service being offered delivers none of these things or delivers it less well and at higher cost than alternatives.

If you can think, then you provide three benefits: better jobs for yourself, greater contributions to your society, and the ability to dissect messages from vendors so that you can optimize your life and not be taken in by marketing schemes designed to pick your pocket.

We should all wish to have better thinking skills and should very much wish for our children to have even better ones. Some parents work hard to help their children learn to think, but most depend on their schools to perform these tasks. Today, as indicated in a number of studies, our schools are letting us down.

Training in thinking is too important for our children and the nation's children to let such a situation stand. There's been much heat and light expended on improving education over the last 40 years, but little in the way of real results. This book opens up some new ideas for improving our educational system so that we can climb to the top once again without expending vast amounts of blood and treasure. Those expenditures will doom us, but using our heads well will give us the best of all worlds.

I've taken a personal approach to this book and relate my own experiences along with the words of some very smart people to deliver a prescription for change. In my mind, much of what we must do for education can be deduced from rather simple principles. I hope that you'll agree and begin to work in your own communities to change how we do education.

© 2011 by Harry E. Keller., Manhattan Beach, CA U.S.A.
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Book Review: Teaching Lab Science Courses Online

This book basically is a very long advertisement. You will find some useful information here if you ignore the blatant bias toward the company that the authors founded.

I am a scientist with a B.S. from Caltech and a PhD from Columbia university. I was chair of the Northeastern Section (3,500 members) of the American Chemical Society and an assistant professor at Northeastern University. This topic is very important to me as I believe that online education is our future.

This book makes many excellent arguments for online science labs but fails to consider more recent innovations than lab kits.

It also focuses on just college students when a discussion of K-12 education would fall within the title's purvey, "Teaching Lab Science Courses Online."

At the end of this review, I'll briefly discuss real alternatives to this book's conclusion that you must pay dearly for lab kits in online education.

College students fall into two groups with very different education requirements. The science majors should have every opportunity to experience real laboratory situations. The majority are non-science majors who must be exposed to scientific reasoning and the nature of science as much as possible at the least cost. Lab kits are very expensive, often well over $200 per student. Lab kits limit the range of experimentation because of the liability issues discussed in the book. Our students deserve better. Students can find ways to game the system and not even open up their lab kits at all. Pictures of the experiments can provide some proof, but the student can "photoshop" their own image into the pictures and so avoid having to do any real science at all. At the end of this review, I'll mention alternatives not in the book.

The book discusses simulations and virtual labs and explains some of their shortcomings. It does not mention that such experiences, when presented as labs, completely misrepresent the nature of science. Nevertheless, the book clearly explains that simulations are not authentic science investigation experiences and won't be until long in the future if ever.

Next, it discusses Remote Access Laboratories (RAL). It misses the essential point that students are not collecting their own data using their own judgment and care. These labs are distant and disconnected from the student experience. Only the more sophisticated students will benefit from this sort of experience.

The hybrid lab experience also comes under analysis. This "straw man" lab is readily shot down as being expensive, not timely, and still quite costly.

Kitchen labs also come under criticism with the focus on science majors. For the non-science major, they can readily be an excellent part of science instruction. The problem faced by education institutions is how to provide the remainder of the instruction. The book also decries the high cost of kitchen science labs, a false charge, especially when compared with the cost of lab kits.

The book then discusses the "commercially assembled lab kits." It mentions three suppliers and specifically recommends one, Hands-On Labs. I have personally interacted with all three suppliers. Is this book really a very long commercial?

Very importantly, this book completely ignores an important and viable alternative to lab kits, while emphasizing the kit positives and downplaying their negatives. For over a decade, prerecorded real experiments have been available at much lower cost and much greater science learning capability.

The book goes on to list the rather obvious requirements for an online science course. This list may be useful to the novice but should be well known to any experienced instructor.

Much of the book is devoted to running an online science course, including how to avoid cheating on lab reports. That's a difficult proposition that would be made easier were the data not capable of being copied. Even hands-on, in-school labs have this problem.

"Possession of a lab kit does not guarantee that students will actually perform their lab work, but because lab kits are not cheap, it is likely that students who purchase them will actually perform their own lab work and not waste such an expensive investment." This statement is utterly untrue. Students spend much more money on tuition yet constantly seek ways to "game" the system to get better grades. If a student can buy a grade by purchasing a lab kit and doing nothing more, you can be certain that many will.

The book mentions "access dates." Yet, lab kits have no built-in method of tracking actual usage.

The remainder of the book retraces the discussion of various approaches to online science education, again leaving out the one real alternative, prerecorded real experiments. It constantly harps on LabPaq as if you had no other choice.

Let's face it. Online education is the future. We don't know exactly how that future will play out, but it must happen. Science happens to be a particularly difficult part of that future. If you're willing to pay for them, lab kits can play a role. However, they have their problems. The cost is one problem. Another is monitoring students. There's also the rather cookbook nature of most kits, the included manual with strict step-by-step instructions, as they must be for liability concerns.

This book is very correct in its condemnation of simulations. They have their place in learning, but it's not as lab replacements. Furthermore, this entire book places little emphasis on middle school high school, and non-science major college science instruction. But that's where our nation's primary problems lie.

For those who are not majoring in science, all of the equipment manipulation and detailed procedures are unimportant. What must remain after the course is not how to operate a burette but how to think as scientists do, understanding the nature of science, and appreciating the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work. Long after students forget the stages of mitosis, they will be able to use their newly developed thinking powers to improve their lives. They'll have Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" well in hand.

How can this all be accomplished by middle schools, high schools, and colleges (for non-science majors)? Reduce the number of hands-on labs. Use kitchen labs for kinesthetic experience if the course is online. Add in the excellent learning experience of prerecorded real experiments. They come with highly interactive software that has students taking their own individual data from real experiments while using their own care and judgment. The data are not predetermined. The experience truly is authentic.

Importantly, this experience can improve the educational experience while reducing costs and raising achievement.

This approach is unique, patented, and a decade old. Over 100,000 students have already experienced this approach with great success. Colleges, high schools, and middle schools, both online and traditional, are using it today. Don't be pushed into spending big bucks on lab kits until you've analyzed the alternatives. This book left one out, and the HOL people know about it. Ask why they don't want you to know.

© 2011 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Pay Teachers More

Today, I ran across a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times that surprised me. Mr. Kristof usually writes about things happening around the world. I think that the situation in Wisconsin motivated him to devote a column to this important topic. You can find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html.

What I found fascinating about his column is how well he makes his point, marshaling evidence from many sources. He points out that one excellent teacher can raise the lifetime earnings of each student, on average, by $20,000. For class sizes of 20 (small these days) and a lifetime career of 30 years, the impact on our economy of a single excellent teacher over that teacher's career is an amazing $12 million. For the superb master teachers, it's even more: nearly $20 million.

Each year such a teacher works adds future value to our economy at a rate that's eight times greater than a teacher salary of $50,000 for the excellent teacher, and that ratio assumes only 20 students in a class. In New York City, typical classes exceed 30 students and so increase the ratio by 1/2 to 12 times greater.

Doubling teachers' salaries would still provide us with a great deal if we only had great teachers. But, we don't. Mr. Kristof then turns to teachers' unions and nails it. He says that they have misused their clout to ensure job security for teachers instead of better pay. The former rewards poor teachers. The latter attracts good teachers.

He goes on to explain more about our underpaid teachers. Starting teacher pay today averages $39,000 according to Kristof. Increasing it to $65,000 would allow us to fill our teacher vacancies from the top third of college graduates instead of getting nearly half from the bottom third. He suggests that it would be enough to turn our education system around as long as politicians and others stop using our teachers as verbal punching bags.

© 2011 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Take a Closer Look at Science Education

With Jerry Brown taking over as governor of California and Mayor Bloomberg appointing Cathleen Black as chancellor of New York City schools, the time is right to review what's happening in science education in these two very large school markets. New York City has over 1,000,000 students in its schools, about 1/3 in high school, and the California high school population is estimated at a bit over 2,000,000.

In addition, Texas, no lightweight in education, has begun its RSSM (Request for Supplemental Science Materials), which seeks to certify 100% web-delivered materials for all of the high school science students in the state. Every Texas student must take four years of science, so all 1.3 million high school students are covered by this new requirement.

With so many articles bemoaning our nation's science education, what is to be done? New national science curriculum standards are being readied right now as is a national education technology plan. Neither of these will have substantial impact on the quality of science education. They may help a bit around the edges. Textbook manufacturers and others who create curricular materials will find their work a bit easier if they can begin with a single set of standards instead of 51. Technology does have great promise, but implementation has its problems.

I'm going to digress from my usual approach of leaving my business out entirely or leaving any commercial comment until the end because the situation is so dire. We've dropped from the first-place science education country in the world to somewhere in double digits depending on which data you use.

You cannot ignore the fact that all of the paths to success in science education that are being tried have been tried before. Why should they succeed now?

Some say that science education is being hamstrung by poor math and language arts skills and seek to improve science education by focusing on those areas. That idea appears logical but puts the cart before the horse. After all, science can be taught without complex language or advanced math skills. It's just not the way people usually teach it. Besides, science can be the trigger to engaging students in learning better math and language arts skills.

I created Smart Science® education just to deal with these issues. I looked at highly rated schools and found their science programs often lacking in basic science understanding. They did quite well in producing students who have memorized the materials: words, formulas, and procedures. But, their students did not understand the nature of science and often lacked decent scientific thinking skills.

My analysis indicated that these students simply did not have enough true science investigation (lab) time. Oh, they may have had plenty of science labs, but those labs were either verification labs (answer told to them ahead of time) or technique labs (focused on learning a particular technique). Students did not go into the lab wondering what they'd find.

Even in cases of investigation, the time and availability of materials and apparatus prevented a complete investigation. In addition, many great labs were being eliminated due to new safety requirements and increasingly tight budgets.

I chose to attack our science education failings right at the lab level. Anyone can provide memorization classes and create memorization software to aid in that course of action. However, creating great science labs is not so easy. You must have a number of factors such as:

1. Low cost, or the labs won't be used in most schools.
2. An unknown outcome of the experiments
3. Enough experiments to allow exploration and discovery
4. Data from the material world with systematic and random errors so students learn the nature of science.
5. Students collecting their own individual data point by point while exercising their own care and judgment to extend their understanding of the nature of science.
6. Data analysis made on students' own data to engage students by providing data ownership.
7. Certainty of experiment operation so that entire periods aren't wasted with totally failed experiments.

These criteria can only be fulfilled with the support of technology. Consider a couple of technologies that are being promoted to improve science education, simulations and probeware.

Science animated simulations use a formula to produce data for students to study. In general, they do not produce a data table of individual data points. These simulations violate criteria 4, 5, and 6 above. Using a simulation to mimic a true science lab tends to leave a very inaccurate impression of science in the minds of students: precise and easy. Science is just the opposite. Teachers should reserve simulations for understanding content and not attempt to use them to replace labs, where the nature of science is one of the major outcomes sought.

Probeware provides an efficient way to collect data from the material world. However, this approach violates criterion 5 above and may run into criterion 7 due to failure of the experiment or of the electronics. It also does not truly meet criterion 1, low cost. Probeware should only be used in advanced classes where students have already mastered the concepts of the nature of science to a reasonable degree. Unfortunately, even in advanced classes, the students often enter without having had the opportunity to master those concepts.

Only Smart Science® education, with its patented approach, meets all of the listed goals.

1. In large school districts, purchasing contracts allow students to do entire labs of many experiments for on the order of 25 cents per lab.
2. The labs do not disclose the outcome before the experiments are performed.
3. Each lab has a number of experiments, sometimes more than twenty, to allow a full investigation.
4. All labs use filmed real experiments as the source of data so students get a true feeling for real data with the same sorts of errors they'd get themselves.
5. Each student must collect individual data and cannot simply copy someone else's data; their own care and judgment affect the results.
6. Students analyze their own data; they even determine how much data to take.
7. Prerecorded experiments ensure success.

There's simply no other system for science investigation that matches Smart Science® education.

The above does not preclude traditional hands-on experiments. Rather, it embraces them. Many Smart Science® labs have a hands-on component so that students can have a kinesthetic experience and have the opportunity for experimental design beyond that available in prerecorded experiments.

Furthermore, Smart Science® labs are suitable for homework. Students can do a hands-on lab in school and then go home and expand that experience enormously with the platform-independent, 100% web-delivered Smart Science® system.

We must improve science education dramatically. All of the paths being trod today are old ones being revisited except for this one. The Smart Science® approach as been adopted from very successful programs in the past. These programs were successful in outcomes but were incapable of scaling to the entire population because of their high cost and difficult training requirements for teachers.

Those impediments can now be overcome with technology. The patented technology of Smart Science® education does exactly that.

Other measures must also be taken to succeed. For example, we must recruit the best possible science teachers and provide them with excellent tools for classroom use. Yet, these measures will take time. Implementing Smart Science® education can be done immediately so that its benefits can begin to be felt today.

The Smart Science® technology currently has implementations for grades 6-13. We have designs to add grades 1-5 so that this remarkable technology be used throughout every student's education beginning at first grade and continuing through the first year of college. We also can expand its capabilities to augment the lab experience beyond the freshman year of college.

Smart Science® education can revolutionize science education.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Educational Software Cooperative

Sometimes something just makes sense.

People who write software for education have a large hill to climb, especially if they're doing it alone or in a small group.

After all, how many people can write great software, understand the pedagogical aspects of good educational software, run a business, do market research, perform marketing, make sales calls and close sales, design web sites, establish marketing channels, write contracts, negotiate deals, perform bookkeeping, handle all tax filings, and so on?  What is the minimum number of people required to do all of these functions well?

If you don't have these skills and don't have associates who can fill in the blanks, then you'd better have enough money to hire those who do -- or have a great support group.

The Educational Software Cooperative with a blog at http://educationalsoftware.blogspot.com/ is just such an organization.  Members include developers, publishers, distributors, and users of educational software.  While anyone can participate in the group on its public forum, the real advantages stem from its members-only forum.  That's where Al Harberg hosts his world-renowned ESC Marketing Book Club.  Each month, Al selects a book on marketing.  He provides excellent summaries of the topics in each chapter, a sort of "Reader's Digest" of great marketing books.  Members comment on their perspectives of the current topics.

You cannot help but gain great understanding of marketing educational software this way because Al goes out of this way to interpret the books specifically for educational software developers.

Each year, the ESC presents an award for Outstanding Achievement in Educational Software.  The submission rules are being revised for the 2011 award, and the 2010 award will be announced soon.

I just makes sense for anyone who's involved in educational software in any capacity to join this stellar group of dedicated professionals.  The membership fee is very modest; you can't lose.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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What is Science?

For those educators out there, please understand that I know that doing science and doing science education are very different. In many ways, the latter is more difficult than the former.
I'll quote a person whom I met and spent some time listening to. I only know him though his works, although my time watching and listening to him at Caltech brings the written transcripts of his words to life in my mind.

Richard Feynman, speaking to an NSTA meeting, said, "In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, and that's all right. It's a good idea to try to see the difference, and it's a good idea to know when we are teaching the tools of science, such as words, and when we are teaching science itself." You can find his complete transcript at http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html.

I've found this concept very difficult to explain to people, even those who teach science. I happen to believe very strongly that understanding this difference, really understanding it with all of its implications, is critical to teaching science.

If you do not understand the difference, you can readily fall into the trap of teaching the tools of science and not teaching any science at all. The tools of science are easier to teach and to test for than is science.

So, when you teach students how to do a chemistry lab procedure, you're teaching a tool of science and not teaching science. When students learn the phases of mitosis, they've learned no science at all. Learning that planets and moons travel in elliptical orbits is not learning science -- unless you figured that out all by yourself.

How do you know when you've learned some science? Feynman has a test you can apply. Like all tests, it's not absolutely perfect, but it will work when words are involved, especially for young children. Here's his test.

Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.

This is vintage Feynman, clever and succinct.

However, this idea will not completely explain science to those who don't really understand it. Some will insist, for example, that science is observation. Like words and procedures, observation is an important tool of science. But observation is not science. Here's Feynman again.

Suppose I were told to observe, to make a list, to write down, to do this, to look, and when I wrote my list down, it was filed with 130 other lists in the back of a notebook. I would learn that the result of observation is relatively dull, that nothing much comes of it.

It's not enough to observe and record. You have also to think. In addition, you must realize that many observations do not lead to new ideas.Too often, science classes force students to make lists, to observe, without thinking. My son's high biology teacher had students fill a notebook with tree leaves. And that was the end of the exercise.

Frequently, teachers have their students perform some activity and make a record. Then, they take students figuratively by the hand and show them how these observations lead to some wonderful conclusion about science. Everyone says, "Wow. That's wonderful." This approach leads students to believe that every observation leads to science. Not so.

To do science, you must engage your mind scientifically, and you must be patient. To teach science, you must help students learn how to engage their minds scientifically and to be patient. Few science classes provide these insights to students, except possibly as just words. Fewer give many real opportunities to learn these concepts by the work the students do.

Yes, I know that there's not enough time, not enough money for equipment, etc. It's hard enough to get students just to listen and to learn the tools of science (words, formulas, procedures, etc.). But that attitude (which is correct as far as it goes) misses the real point. Once students begins to understand science, they become engaged. Then, the learning of the tools becomes easier and sticks better in their minds.

It's like activation energy. It's a tough push up the steep hill initially, much tougher than the gentle rolling hills of learning tools. But, once you get to the top, everything goes forward much better and faster.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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iPad and Science Education

The noise over the iPad is deafening.  Steve Jobs and Apple have really created a huge stir and executed a major marketing coup.  However, what is there behind all of the hoopla for science education in ordinary classrooms?

Take the iPad apart one feature at a time.

Price: At $499 for the minimum configuration, it's more costly than some laptops and many netbooks.  Yet, it delivers less performance. 

User Interface: You have to love the user interface, which blows away the others for many applications.  On the other hand, the screen keyboard won't be good for extensive typing, the kind that many teachers assign to their students.

Ports: The few ports make it harder to use this platform with the popular probeware.  I'm sure that Jobs & Co. did not plan the iPad for use in school science labs.  My personal opinion, backed up by some studies, is that probeware gets in the way of learning science by focusing on procedure and automating data collection.  Although many like this approach, I think that it's exactly backward.  You should automate the procedure and focus on data collection and analysis.

 Software Support: The iPad does not support either Flash or Java.  While I have little use for Flash, which infects too many web sites with annoying animations, many educators have found use for Flash animations that help explain difficult science concepts and provide quality visualizations for students.  These students won't be able to view them on their iPads.

The situation with Java really bothers me.  Java provides much more capability than Flash with its limited Actionscript scripting language.  You can find some excellent science learning software written in Java because of its multi-platform capability and the fact that you can write serious software with it.  One example, of course, is my own Smart Science® education system.

Interaction with Screen: For data collection from the screen, you might think that liberation from the mouse would be a good thing.  However, the finger tip has two serious problems as a data collection device.  It's big compared to the pixels on the screen.  You cannot position your fingertip to within a pixel.  Then, even if you could, your finger is opaque.  You cannot see where you're pointing.

Although the touchscreen on the iPad is wonderful for doing many things and for a gesture interface, it fails completely when you try to collect data by pointing at a specific pixel.

The bottom line here goes something like this:  The iPad is a wonderful technological advance but is not ready for mainstream science classrooms.  It costs too much for what it brings to those classes and lacks some really important features.

I do believe that someday, maybe sooner that we expect, tablet computers will be found in the hands of every student in many of our K-12 classes.  The things that will be done in support of learning will be truly extraordinary.  It's not the little red schoolhouse anymore.  And this learning will be available regardless of economic circumstance.  No longer will too many of our young people be denied a great education based on where they are growing up.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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The Mars Rovers and Science Education

What does the Mars Rover program have to do with science education -- aside from studying the Mars Rover program?

It makes a useful analogy to science labs in classrooms around the world. That may seem a bit far fetched. As you read this analogy, don't assume it's crazy. Read to the end before passing judgment. You may be surprised at how apt the analogy is.

When NASA designed the Mars Rover program, it had a number of goals and restraints. Assume that it could consider just about any approach and then had to adapt to the goals and restraints, a brainstorming session. What were the range of options available?

At one extreme would be no trip to Mars. At the other extreme would be a manned trip to Mars. In between is the idea of a remote robotic explorer.

At one point during your brainstorming session, a software developer jumps up and proclaims that you can have a software program that includes all known information about Mars. This program can then simulate the data that a trip to Mars, manned or unmanned, might produce. The program not only could produce data but even could put together simulated images of the Martian surface. Just look at the benefis.

• low cost (compared to a Martian trip)
• complete safety (no astronauts at risk)
• short time (writing software instead of building equipment and sending it to Mars)

At another point, a rugged test pilot stands up and says that the only way to explore Mars is in person. Simulations are for wusses and robots are for geeks. Lots of people like this idea, but it has some problems.

• very high cost (compared to a robotic mission)
• extreme danger (never been done before, may not be able to return, etc.)
• very long time horizon (years of preparation, very lengthy trip)

When discussing the options, the simulation idea comes in for some criticism. The scientists tell the software developer that simulations won't generate any real science. They may look real, but they certainly will not match what the actual science will be on Mars. How can they publish papers on Mars using investigations of a simulation?

The scientists carefully explain that computer science is not science in the usual sense. It's actually an engineering discipline that produces tools used by scientists and by society.

In the end, of course, the robotic mission wins out as the least expensive real science option for exploring Mars. The scientists have a number of options regarding how to handle the data from the mission. It could be streamed live continually (sort of), or it could be stored on the rovers and sent later. The received data could be stored in a database and available for retrieval at any time in the future, sort of prerecorded for use by many different people at many different times.

While bringing NASA into this discussion does exaggerate the situation, it also shines a very bright light on how best to teach science, especially the use of science labs. In today's discussions of science labs in science courses, you'll find two extremes: those who insist on 100% hands-on labs and those who, with equal vehemence, insist on using simulations instead.

Fortunately, some are finding middle ground. At MIT, they're working on the iLabs project, which allows real-time remote robotic experimentation. Unfortunately, these labs are mostly engineering labs, and the likelihood of covering a reasonable range of science labs with this technology is very remote at this time.

The fact that all Mars Rover data are stored and usable by many scientists in many locations opens up a different approach: prerecorded real experiments. Images, videos, data, and other information can be stored for retrieval by students. The science certainly is as real as hands-on and remote robotics approaches.

The pedagogy depends on the software and the instructors. People who write the software and create the experiment videos cannot also create the instructors. They can only provide software that's easy to use and instructions for correct usage. Better science teachers know how to incorporate science lab experiences into their classes.

Data collection forms a very important aspect of the science lab experience. Data should not be precollected or automatically collected. Just as in a science lab, students should take their own individual data point by point. Each point represents not just the experiment but also student care and judgment, an important factor in understanding the nature of empirical data.

Each video should tell a story and provide means for collecting experimental data. If the video itself doesn't tell enough of the story, then the lab units should be supplemented with text, diagrams, animations, and videos that complete the story: tell the students enough so that they truly understand the details of the experiment.

Finally, sufficient supporting materials should be provided so that both students and teachers are able to succeed. This approach and list form the basis for Smart Science® education, a system of more than 150 lab units for use in science courses from grades 6 through college.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Hands-On Labs are Not the Answer

From the beginning of science labs in education in the mid-1800s, they've been hands-on labs. Until the latter half of the 20th century, the only other sort of lab was the paper-and-pencil lab. Some of you may not have encountered these desktop labs.

In a paper-and-pencil lab, the instructor hands out copies of laboratory "data," which may have been created from equations and not taken from real experiments. Students then fill in provided tables with the data and calculations based on that data. Finally, they answer questions about the results.

What are the benefits of paper-and-pencil labs?

• low cost
• minimal time required
• high safety
• lab technique does not affect results

What are the problems with paper-and-pencil labs?

• no experimental design
• likely to have unreal data
• no kinesthetic experience
• no visual experience
• data not dependent on student technique
• data not dependent of student judgment

I'm sure that you can add to these lists. You'll note that these features, except for lack of visual experience, match those of computer laboratory simulations being hawked by a wide variety of vendors, instructors, and amateur scientists. With simulations, the visual experience is generally poor, being limited to cartoon-like animations.

With so many defects in these labs, whether pencil-and-paper or simulations, you can see why so many educators have pushed back very hard to the point where they insist that only hands-on labs can be appropriate for science education. It's a natural reaction by those appalled by the large infusion of simulations into the laboratory part of many science curricula.

However, these hands-on purists are throwing out the baby with the bath water. By denying any lab but a hands-on lab, they're making advances in science education difficult and limiting their student experiences severely.

They should be searching for means to make new advances in technology available in science education. The goals must include the following.

• lower cost of true science lab learning experiences
• improve safety of science lab experiences
• expand range of science lab experiences available to students
• use student class and homework time more efficiently
• provide exposure to the nature of science and all that it implies

Hands-on labs can be great learning experiences. Those that extend over many periods and involve iterative redesign and exploration can open up new vistas in students' imaginations. Instructors should not give these up entirely. However, recognize that such experiences are time-consuming and expensive. Usually, they require that students work in groups, and some in any group may opt out of the experience, just tagging along for the ride.

On the other hand, many hands-on labs are merely exercises in lab technique. How many students will find pipetting techniques valuable in the future? Other hands-on labs have been structured as "verification" labs, a class of labs that was railed against by F. W. Westaway nearly a century ago and by Carl Sagan much more recently. Students know all of the science and the numerical result expected before entering the lab. They are simply to verify this information.

Technique and verification labs do not teach science. They are a waste of time and money. Worse, they give students the impression that science is dull and uninspiring.

What's to be done? One way to view the options is to look at the Mars Rover program. It's real science, and not science pedagogy. So, you must be careful about drawing too close of an analogy. I'll be posting more on this analogy soon.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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