Great Science Labs Take Great Effort

Clear Learning Outcomes

2011-10-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

`[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 andcurriculum 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

2011-10-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

Are There Stars Out Tonight?

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

Have you seenthe magazine and newspaper articles? They cite PISA and TIMSSscores, and how low those of the U.S. are. These internationalscience tests may be a harbinger of future woe. We may draw twoconclusions from these low scores. The science literacy of ourcitizenry is declining, and we won't have enough scientists tocompete in the future world economy effectively. Both conclusionshave severe consequences that should be recognized and acted uponsoon.

Scienceliteracy affects us all because we must make important decisionsindividually and as a people that depend on understanding basicscience. Just look at the climate and energy debates for examples ofgroup decision making. Our individual buying patterns affecteveryone. Should you buy an SUV or a compact car? Buying tobaccoproducts supports the tobacco industry and provides money for them tomarket to our youth. Informed individual decision making helps usall to enjoy better lives.

Studies suggestthat science literacy in the United States is low and is declining. Why? Some say that the quality of science classes is lower thanbefore. Others point to the increasing complexity of science. I'dlike to discuss another potential cause, not to say that these othersdon't contribute.

When I wasyoung, Albert Einstein was all the rage. He was still alive then andwas lionized by society. For roughly a hundred years, a series ofscientists and inventors had been held up as role models. JamesWatt, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Simon Newcomb, and ahost 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 peoplepopulated the sky of science. They were our science stars.

Thinkcarefully. Can you name an acclaimed living scientist, one withawards such as the Nobel prize?

Probably not. Our science stars have gradually faded from the sky until it's nowvirtually empty, black, and barren. You can still find plenty ofscientists with these prestigious awards. They're just not known tonon-scientists. Science stars used to provide some balance againstmovie stars, sports stars, television stars, music stars, and evenpolitical stars.

Having metRichard Feynman and having taken a course from Linus Pauling, I canattest to the remarkable character of these brilliant people. Theyenjoyed 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 justspending time with them gives you an interest in finding out moreabout science. What is it that attracted these very smart people toscience? Why do they enjoy it so much? If your science classes weremuch like mine, the answers aren't obvious.

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

Withoutprominent role models to interest young people in a career inscience, what's left? The science classes that every student takesmust step up and provide engaging, interesting, and accurate imagesof doing science. To their credit, many science teachers take thischallenge on successfully. However, the challenge is a big one inthe face of declining budgets and growing class sizes.

One part of theproblem is the nature of science. In the pressure of meetingstandards, passing high-stakes tests, and improving all sorts of testscores, the focus has shifted even more than ever toward the outputof science: the laws, equations, vocabulary, and procedures that canbe memorized and repeated on tests. A simple, basic fact known tomost elementary school students gets lost: science is fun!

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

The twinproblems of no prominent scientist role models and rather lacklusterscience classes have reduced the quantity of high school graduateswho go on to major in science in college. This issue is particularlysignificant in our graduate schools where an increasingly higherpercentage of graduate students come from other countries. Accordingto the National Science Foundation, “Among first-time, full-timegraduate students, enrollment of temporary visa holders increased ata greater annual rate in 2007 (8.3%) than did that of U.S. citizensand permanent residents (1.7%)” [NSF Report NSF 09-314, June 2009] The same report shows that in 2007, the number of U.S. citizens ingraduate studies enrolled for the first time in physical sciences was4,089, while temporary visa holders numbered 2,622, about one-thirdof the total. In engineering, the numbers are 12,267 (U.S.) and15,998 (visa), which is well over one-half of the total.

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

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

The bigdifference with scientists, is that they must test their ideas out onthe real world. They make measurements. Newton, Pasteur, andPauling made measurement after measurement. They also used themeasurements of others. I don't think that Picasso or Beethoven mademeasurements and compared their data with that of others.

Thesepractitioners of such disparate professions as art and science allhad one thing more in common: they all require great discipline. Youcan't just throw paint at a canvas or mark notes at random on a sheetand create great art. Years of practice lead to a discipline thatallows you to do your work well. So It is with science. Scientistslearn to make meticulous notes on their work, how to do literatureresearch, and of course learn the procedures associated with theirparticular discipline.

Young peoplesee great success in sports or entertainment and think that they toocan do that. It looks easy – and fun. They look at whatscientists 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 incorrectviewpoints.

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

The life ofthese professional athletes and entertainers includes many hours ofpractice, far more than most people realize. It may be easier to wina Nobel prize than to become a hall-of-fame athlete. The followingtable illustrates this point. Only Laureates in chemistry, physics,and medicine are counted. The special election of 2006 is notincluded 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 thejoy of discovering something hitherto unknown or seeing something noone else has ever seen compare with hitting a home run at a majorleague baseball stadium? I'm not sure, but the likelihood of doingthe former is greater than the latter.

Recently, a14-year old girl discovered a new type of supernova (an explodingstar). 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 asmember of the Puckett Observatory Supernova Search Team. They havefour automated telescopes scanning the skies and photographinggalaxies. Caroline discovered SN2008ha, which is a Type I supernovabased 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 wasvery happy to have found a supernova at all. Just try to imagine herdelight when she heard that she was the first one to find hisentirely new type of supernova.

There's notmuch to be done in schools to create the next science icon except toencourage more students to try a career in science. However, we canmake a greater effort to make school science past sixth grade morelike it was in earlier grades in terms of engagement and more likereal science in terms of the nature of science.

Our scienceclasses must spend more time on science and less on learningseemingly endless lists of words, laws, equations, and procedures. If the science is real and is interesting, the rest will follownaturally. A later chapter addresses the role of the science lab inmaking this outcome happen. The following from John Dewey seemsappropriate to close out this chapter.

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

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

Mastery of Subject Matter

2011-10-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

`[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 studentsto consider the science investigated with the experiments.Students can review their experimental work and support materials duringthis quiz.
The lower image shows the vocabulary and scientist mini-biography takenfrom 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 questionsand the Solution Strategy page that explains principles in more detail andprovides some sample worked-out problems.
All of this material creates a greater mastery of the science illustratedby the experiments being performed by the students.

Definition of "Laboratory Experience"

2011-10-04T09:13:00.001-07:00

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 ofthe 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 orwell 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 materialworld. In some instances, the online activities have been augmented byhands-on experiments that provide another dimension of experience to students.

Books about Marketing

2011-09-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

[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 ruinssummer. Growing up, as I did, in a sleepy beach community, thesummer was the time, well, to go to the beach. For a nine-year oldchild who just finished fifth grade, it was a great time to forgetabout school and have fun. So, what was I doing in summer school?

My parents hadput me in that veritable prison. It might have been to get me out ofthe way so that my mother wouldn't be overwhelmed by handling mysix-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 ofthe school windows. Fate plays strange tricks with life. And so thelong-past summer, that had threatened to be interminable, introducedme to science.

Probablybecause of some teaching fad of the time, I walked into anunstructured class in a large uncrowded room where students didvarious projects. Projects? Where were the tests that I had becomeso good at taking? I had learned that only test scores reallycounted, and I had learned how to do well on tests. It's a wonderfulskill for your school years and not much use afterward, except fortaking the exam for a driver's license and the like.

We could doprojects because the class was small, only about a dozen studentswith two teachers. Not really poor or wealthy, our town got by, buthad great schools anyway. This was California before the tax revoltsof the 80s. Rated near the top in the country in education,California's education system has been devastated by the tax-limitingproposition 13, and now it's near the bottom.

Students in myclass had to present their projects to the class at the end of thesemester. Some did creative stuff; others were involved in playacting. I was lost. Nothing that the others were doing held anyinterest for me. I found a book; maybe a teacher handed it to me. It was about science experiments, and it fascinated me. I wanted todo those experiments.

My scope waslimited by the materials at hand. We did not have any chemicals orfancy equipment. After all, this was fifth grade. We were only tenyears old, although I was nine due to skipping third grade. I endedup working with flasks, stoppers, tubing, and other similar stuff tocreate demonstration experiments showing some basic principles ofscience such as air pressure making a fountain. It was fun seeingwhat I could do with a few simple pieces of apparatus. I tested eachdemonstration in the days before the presentation, worried that I'dflop. Everything worked fine, and I was happy to have completed myassignment and to get out of school for the remainder of the summer.

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

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

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

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

Science had tobe introduced to an educational system that had focused onarithmetic, language, classics, and history. The first formalscience classes in secondary schools appeared in the 19^thcentury. In Great Britain, we have information from F. W. Westaway,who wrote in 1929, “Downtothemiddleofthenineteenthcentury,sciencewastheveritableCinderellaoftheBritishschoolcurriculum. Scienceitselfwasmakingheadway,butscienceteacherswerefew,andthosefewwereengagedinfightingdownoppositionallround.”

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

In2005, the National Research Council wrote in “America's Lab Report:Investigations in High School Science, “Since laboratories wereintroduced in the late 1800s, the goals of high school scienceeducation have changed. Today, high school science education aims toprovide scientific literacy for all as part of a liberal educationand to prepare students for further study, work, and citizenship.” This newsworthy report goes on to say, referring to sciencelaboratories in schools, “During the 1880s, the situation changedrapidly. ... Johns Hopkins University established itself as aresearch institution with student laboratories. Other leadingcolleges and universities followed suit, and high schools—whichwere just being established as educational institutions—soon beganto create student science laboratories as well.”

Fromthese few references, you can deduce that science began to take itsplace in secondary education in the mid-19^thcentury and that science labs were first introduced very late in thatcentury. We can surmise that science labs provided a vitalopportunity for students to do science. When learning English,students “do” English by writing essays. My own lifelong love ofscience was sparked by the opportunity to do science in thatfifth-grade summer school so long ago. Science became real, not justa collection of facts and words. Finding out about the world anddiscovering new concepts thrilled me to the core. I was hooked.

Wake Up Call

2011-06-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

[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?

2011-05-25T04:58:00.000-07:00

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.
Follow this author on ETC Journal

Book Review: Teaching Lab Science Courses Online

2011-05-06T11:47:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

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

2010-07-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-07-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-30T17:55:00.001-08:00

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

2010-01-30T09:59:00.000-08:00

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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Are Science Labs Vanishing from K-12 Classes?

2009-11-18T10:40:00.000-08:00

The pressures on science teachers just keep increasing. Authorities have been taking away their labs for years.

High-stakes testing requires time for the test and for preparation. Where does that time come from? Often, it comes from the lab time because labs are inefficient at learning content, the main focus of high-stakes tests.

Safety regulations have increased considerably in recent years. Now, you cannot have mercury in your classroom at all, for example. States and districts have banned experiments considered hazardous, an action that further limits the ability of teachers to provide lab experience to students.

Budget cuts have hit science departments particularly hard. The cost of providing expendibles and maintaining equipment for experiments has forced the removal of many excellent lab experiences from curricula.

Because many science teachers have been asked to teach in unfamiliar areas, they aren't prepared to develop and run effective labs in these areas. As a result, they do fewer labs.

At the same time, authorities are asking science teachers to provide more lab experience for their students. They rightly argue that such experiences, if done well, can help generate enthusiasm for science, help in understanding the nature of science, help improve scientific reasoning skills, and generally improve student outcome in science courses.

I say that these contradictory trends can only be resolved by the innovative use of technology, and I have chosen to work toward that end. My efforts are beginning to bear the fruit of interest from major online schools, large school districts, and important publishers.

Here's a comparison of the different means that people now employ to provide lab experience to high school students. The list includes hands-on experiments, simulations, large online databases, remote robotic experiments, and prerecorded real experiments. I have been working on this last item.

Type	Cost	NOS	Time	Safety	Design	Kines.	Range
Hands-on	high	high	long	low	high	yes	mid
Simulations	free to mid	none	short	high	low	no	very large
Online DBs	free	mid	mid	high	none	no	small
Remote Robotics	free to low	mid to high	mid	high	low	no	small
Prerecorded Real	low	high	short	high	low	no	very large

NOS means "Nature of Science"
Design means "opportunity for experimental design"
Range means "range of experiments available"

Clearly, the choices you make for science labs depend on your goals for the labs. If cost is your primary consideration, then you'll minimize the number of hands-on labs you do. For example, you can use free simulations while sacrificing quality and the nature of science.

Remote robotics and large online databases can be used but, due to their small range, can only fill in for a small amount of a typical high school science course at best.

In my opinion, there's really no contest. Trim down the number of hands-on labs by eliminating those that cost too much, take too long, or don't work well to teach an understanding of the nature of science. Replace these labs with prerecorded real experiments. Pay close attention to the four lab integration goals of America's Lab Report. Ideally, increase the number of investigation experiences by adding more prerecorded real experiments. Find a place in your course for one or two ongoing investigation projects each semester. These projects may involve online databases, remote robotics, hands-on work, field trips, and even prerecorded real experiments or some combination.

You can improve the student investigation experience and handle budget shortfalls too.

© 2010 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Simulations are Not Science

2009-11-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

Simulations, especially animated simulations, are a great learning tool. They can help students visualize and understand difficult concepts in science classes. Interactive animated simulations can engage students with the concepts. However, you must be careful when inserting simulations into science labs, that is, into student scientific investigations.

Simulations in science have a long and highly-reputed history. They're really the output of calculations from a model. Newton used them to help him investigate his ideas about gravity. He even invented new mathematics to aid in his work. Until recently, the work involved in modeling (simulations) was intense and lengthy. Computers have changed all that. In fact, the first computer was used for simulations.

You might say that simulations are a hallowed tool of science, but they aren't science themselves any more than microscopes, telescopes, or spectrophotometers are science. Scientists don't investigate simulations; they investigate the universe and all of its contents. They may make models of their theories and spend considerable time adjusting these models to see how they may fit with real-world data.

Simulations in science education are another matter entirely. The issue of the appropriate roles of simulations in the science classroom has become very important lately due to the lowering costs of computers and the number of new science simulation options being offered to educators. How should one take best advantage of this sudden abundance?

An example may aid in this discussion. Consider projectile motion, one of the earliest and most common science simulations. For the simplest case of a projectile in a vacuum and a uniform gravitational field, there's no problem writing the equations of motion or calculating the projectile path and impact point. The projectile position is a simple function of time and starting parameters such as initial height, angle of launch, launch energy, and projectile mass.

Indeed, the equations are so simple that a student can perform the calculations necessary to determine the projectile path for a given set of parameters in minutes with a hand-held calculator. A beginning student of computer programming can write a program to print tables of the position in a very short time. All that an existing computer simulation does is save time and, if animated, display the projectile motion.

All of these approaches begin with an assumed equation of motion. Should students be working to discover this equation or using it in some other fashion? Are they investigating a mathematical formula or learning about gravity and motion?

An instructor might have students investigate the motion of real projectiles with the goal of elucidating ideas about motion. Then, these ideas could be used to create a mathematical model. The model can be used to generate data to compare with the real data. Error analysis will help to determine whether discrepancies are within the precision of the real experiments or whether the model has flaws that require revision of the original ideas upon which they were based.

This approach uses simulations in an entirely suitable fashion, one parallel with that which scientists use.

On the other hand, an instructor might decide to use an animated simulation of projectile as the object of student investigation. An entire set of questions could be posed for resolution by the process of trying different parameters in the simulated model. The intended object may be science, but the actual investigation is of some equations, and error analysis, etc. do not enter into this activity at all.

Unless this instructor issues a very strong caveat, students may develop a misunderstanding of science when performing this exercise. The equations have unlimited precision, unlike the real world. They also represent an idealization of the real world.

The gravity field is not uniform. The projectiles do not move through a vacuum. Imprecisions exist in the measurements of the parameters. Investigations of the real world will illuminate these issues and help students to understand science. Science courses are not simply about memorizing content. While simulations may help with content, they have to be used very, very carefully in the investigation part of the course or not at all so that they don't interfere with the important learning that should go on here.

Educators should stop using simulations as the objects of investigations and very carefully use them to augment investigations appropriately or not at all.

These statements should not be interpreted as a license for hands-on purists to decry the use of virtual labs in science courses. Hands-on experiments have their own problems and will be the subject of a later blog entry.

Smart Science® education has found one way to thread the path between the science learning benefits of hands-on experiments and the efficiency benefits of virtual labs.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Balloon Boy Hoax??

2009-10-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

The nation and its news channels were transfixed by a saucer-shaped hot air balloon traveling across Colorado. It purportedly might have contained a six-year old boy.

While the sheriff's office tracked the balloon, and many news channels trumpeted the "news," no one even thought to figure out whether a boy could be inside of this device.

Is our entire nation crazy, or do we, as a nation, simply lack simple scientific reasoning skills?

The first question anyone with any reasoning skills should ask is, "Can such a device lift a six-year old?" This sort of question is readily answered with available information.

At sea level, a hot air balloon might have a lift of 0.025 lb/cu ft or a bit more if the air is hot enough. For a boy to be alive inside of the balloon and not fall out dead or nearly so, the air could not be hotter than the estimate of 300° F. At Fort Collins, the lift would be substantially less because of the one mile altitude.

The balloon owners could readily provide the authorities with the dimensions of the balloon. We can see from images that its diameter is about 15-20 ft and its height around 6 ft. A few simple back-of-the-envelope calculations show that this device will have a lift of about 50 lbs at sea level and less at one mile high. Its own weight might be around 10 lbs. To be inside of the balloon, the child must have some structure on which to sit. That structure would also have weight, maybe around 10 lbs more.

The net lift of the balloon would be less than 30 lbs. If you know of a six-year boy who weighs less than 30 lbs, then he is very underweight for his age. But that's not all. According to reports, the balloon reached a height of 15,000 ft, about 2 miles above the starting altitude. With a six-year old boy as ballast, it could never have even come close to that height.

This hoax was more than just a publicity stunt. Perhaps inadvertently, it was a test of our population's ability to think. How could a large group of law enforcement officers and a fair number of news organizations not have considered the scientific rationality of the claim of a boy in such a small hot air balloon? Have we trained our citizens so poorly that those who present the world to us cannot ask and answer the simplest and most basic questions?

Shame on all of them for not bothering to spend just a few minutes thinking -- or at least asking someone who can think to do so. The question was obvious. Can a six-year be inside of that hot air balloon? The answer takes only a few minutes for any reputable scientist to answer.

If our students learned more about what science is all about, then they might have been able to answer this question or at a minimum to pose it. We most seriously must have an improvement in our education system right away. Real science labs will help to prepare a sufficient fraction of our people to confront issues such as this one so that we won't be duped repeatedly.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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School Science Labs

2009-07-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

A recent article in District Adminstration magazine (http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1742) discusses the aging science labs in schools across our nation and the cost of upgrading them all.

The article points out that science standards have been raised recently while lab facilities have been left to deteriorate. The costs of fixing the existing labs run between $150 and $200 per square foot meaning that an adequate lab space for 24 students will cost around $250,000 to upgrade.

In these days of plunging school budgets, this allocation of funds is simply not possible.

However, there's another answer. Scale back the full upgrade of the lab spaces so that only inexpensive, safe, and efficient hands-on labs are done. Safety equipment may be partially eliminated. Gas would no longer be required. Bunsen burners come from the 19^th century and are really archaic today. Highly chemical resistant desktops could be replaced with less expensive alternatives.

Why can we make this adjustment? Because the primary advantages of hands-on labs are two-fold.

They provide a kinesthetic learning experience, rounding out the other learning in science classes.
They allow students to do experimental design and redesign.

Any other purpose cited for having hands-on labs either can be handled in other, safer and less expensive ways or is not really necessary for high school students. The two purposes listed above are easily achieved in a facility that is no more complex or expensive than a kitchen. While such facilities are more expensive than ordinary classrooms, they fall far below the cost of a fully-equipped science lab.

What do you then do to provide the science experiences not capable of being provided in a kitchen? After all, simulations will not do. They misrepresent the nature of science and can even deliver erroneous results. The data all come from a programmer's pencil, which cannot represent the real world and may have other flaws as well.

The answer comes from a breakthough technology: the Smart Science® education system. This system uses prerecorded real experiments to deliver the materal world to students online. For more information, see www.smartscience.net.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Science and History

2009-06-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

F. W. Westaway wrote the book on Science Teaching (of that title). He concerned himself in this treatise of nearly 500 pages with every aspect of teaching science (in 1929). With respect to history, he makes a very interesting comment.

If the science teacher is lucky enough to have a history colleague whose sympathies are primarily on the side of the creative genius, whether of science or art or literature or music, his task will be comparatively easy. But there are still history teachers and history books that give prominence to such stories as those of a ruffianly baronage, of court intrigues, and of military and political adventurers. The stupendous events that have really made the world what it is are almost unknown to many of our children. The names of the great pioneers and discoverers, me things they have done, of what races they were, and how though separated by nationality each has built on the work of the rest: these are the things that history should teach. The year 1848 is mentioned in the history books as memorable for political "revolutions": how few of them mention that that was the year when Pasteur discovered the properties of asymmetrical crystals, a discovery which led to the birth of bacteriology, and thus to modern surgery, modern medicine, and other discoveries unrolling in almost endless series? Our historical perspective has been all wrong. There are still people who would place Maryborough and Napoleon, Richelieu and Palmerston, in the same rank as such mighty creative geniuses as Newton and Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Beethoven.

It's a very different view of history than what I was told during my schooling.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Westaway Comments on What Physics Is

2009-06-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

F. W. Westaway wrote many books. The most useful of the lot may be Science Teaching. Just about every imaginable aspect of teaching science in early 20^th century England is covered.

Help all the boys to acquire the art of reading. Let the old catch-words, " weigh, weigh, weigh ", give place to " read, read, read ". That weighing and measuring is the very life-blood of scientific method is, of course, true, but let the boys know all about the thing they are measuring and weighing. Too, too often, physics is treated just as if it were mathematics; a boy takes readings mechanically, settles down to arithmetic and algebra, and labels his work " physics ".

Ignoring the rather gender-biased notion that the students are all "boys," Westaway has found a true kernel of wisdom here. Science is not about weighing or performing mathematical tricks. He suggests that students read about the subject under investigation. He even says that students should, where possible, read the works of the original science investigators.

While Westaway is in favor of using students own experience to help them understand science, he recognizes the impossibility of carrying this approach through an entire school life of science. Eventually, students simply don't have the requisite experience and can't acquire the equivalent on their own or through lab work. Then, they must do the next best thing. If possible, read what the scientist responsible for the discovery said. Alternatively, find a good reporter of the work.

That's much more interesting than reading a textbook, in my opinion.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Interactive Does not Mean Experiential

2009-06-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

Many supporters of using simulations to replace science labs point to their interactivity and equate that aspect with the simulation being "experiential." How interactive are simulations anyway? And, is being experiential the best criteria for deciding whether an activity can stand in for a science lab?

Simulations roughly divide into two types: data simulations and procedure simulations. The former focus on generating data for students to use. The latter emphasize step-by-step procedures and generally result in much less data than the data simulations do.

A very early and still popular data simulation involves the trajectories of projectile motion. Various projectiles are fired with different forces with a varying angle. Students observe an animated version of the projectile motion, and the simulation provides data for the student to use. This simulation, although rather simple, provides an excellent model of data simulations in general.

Of course, the equations for this situation are quite easy to calculate if you ignore air resistance, wind, projectile shape and size, and the like. Students have essentially unlimited ability to vary parameters and see what happens to the trajectory. Many people would consider this simulation to be interactive and experiential. But is it?

The same people will tell you that reading a book is not interactive nor experiential. Consider simplifying the simulation solely for explanative purposes. Reduce the parameters to just the launch angle and the precision of the angle to one degree. Allow a range of 0º to 90º. Those choices allow for 91 experiments. The simulation remains interactive in the same sense as it was previously.

Suppose, however, that you recorded those 91 experiments and stored them on a DVD. Now, the student interaction consists of selecting the angle from the DVD menu and watching the experiment play. The data and action remain the same, but the interactivity seems a bit diluted, and the experiential aspect is rather unclear.

Take one more step. Capture the image at the end of each experiment. That image will have all of the data and a static image of the projectile trajectory. You're only missing the animated aspect. Everything you require to understand projectile motion remains. Put each of these images on a page of a book. The student only has to look up the desired angle in the table of contents and turn to the page. Are those actions interactions?

The book contains exactly the same experimental information as the data simulation did. Yet, just about anyone would agree that reading a book is neither interactive nor experiential. Therefore, neither is the data simulation.

Meeting the demand for science education in the 21^st century requires better tools than data simulations. Like books and DVDs, simulations may have their place in education, but not in substituting for lab experience.

You'll also find plenty of procedure simulations, especially in chemistry. These simulations require students to use their mouse cursor and mouse buttons to move (drag and drop) images of experimental equipment and materials around on the computer screen. In some simulations, you simply must click on the correct items in the correct order to succeed. Others require that you drag an item to the correct place, and drop it there. Some have predetermined quantities of chemicals, while others allow you to "weigh" a chemical by typing in the desired mass.

As a concrete and simple example, take the analysis of hydrates experiment done in nearly every high school. In the hands-on version, students dry and weigh a small porcelain crucible. They add the hydrate salt to the crucible and weigh again. Next, they cover the crucible, and heat it with a flame long enough to drive the water of crystallization from the salt. After allowing the crucible to cool, they carefully use crucible tongs to move it to the scale for a final weighing.

The change in mass provides a measure of the mass of water lost. The difference in mass between the dehydrated (heated) crucible and the empty one provides the mass of the dry salt. Students are given the molecular formula of the dry salt and proceed to calculate the number of molecules of water in the crystal hydrate for each molecular formula amount of salt.

With a procedure simulation, students place the cursor on the bottle of salt, click to open it, move it to the scale, and so on. In many simulations, they cannot begin until they click on a safety goggle icon indicating that they have put their safety goggles "on." All of this moving about of the computer equivalents of cardboard cutouts has little to do with science.

While scientists may indeed perform operations like these, they aren't the central activity of science. In very many cases, lab technicians perform these activities for the scientists who are engaged in posing new questions, designing new experiments, analyzing data, and preparing papers describing their results. They document the procedure sufficiently well that it may be reproduced in another lab, and that's it.

All scientists should be able to perform the basic operations of their chosen discipline, and schools should be able to graduate future lab technicians. For these people, procedures and their ability to perform them are very important. For the remainder of the students, it's all a huge waste of time. After all, how many students will graduate and find that they must know how to operate a stopcock to perform a titration?

Procedure simulations miss the point of science labs entirely. By focusing on the procedure, they obscure the real science that should be the center of the experience.

The people who promote these simulations point to the value of simulations in training airplane pilots. And that's exactly where procedure simulations have value, if they have any. If a student performs a really good procedure simulation before going into a real lab to do the same procedure, then that student is better prepared and will be more likely to succeed. The procedure simulation does not replace the actual lab, it prepares for it.

Simulations of either kind, data or procedure, should not substitute for actual labs. Data simulations may be useful for visualizations rather than for producing data. Those data are too precise to be of much use in developing a sense of the nature of science anyway. Procedure simulations may be of use in preparing students for a real lab they're about to do. Neither should be considered "experiential."

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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A Bold Initiative

2009-06-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

I was recently informed that a large high school in a very large district has decided to transition from its current hands-on labs to Smart Science® labs. The department chair has determined that Smart Science® labs are much more effective than the usual hands-on fare.

The Smart Science® labs do include some at-home hands-on experiences blended into the overall system. They are included so that students can experience some experimental design issues not available in virtual labs, so that they can have kinesthetic learning experiences, and so that they can have their own personal experience with the care and effort required to carry out scientific investigations.

The prerecorded real experiments provided with the Smart Science® system provide a broad and thorough scientific investigation experience.

This blended combination of inexpensive, safe hands-on experiments with virtual prerecorded real experiments presages the future of science education. Expect to see more schools adopting the same program soon.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Proving Theories

2009-04-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

F. W. Westaway's book, "Science Teaching," is full of excellent advice for science teachers and is just a pertinent today as in 1929 when it was published. Here's a nice nugget from the footnotes.

We may perform an experiment to verify a law, or to confirm the possibility of the truth of some hypothesis. But if we could "prove" theory to be "true", the theory would become identical with objective reality and cease to be "theory" entirely.

This simple prose explains why we can only disprove hypotheses and never prove them. We only "confirm the possibility of truth."

In the Smart Science^® system, we have the option for teachers of presenting pre-written hypotheses or predictions to students. The students collect data from the prerecorded real experiments and/or from their hands-on experimentation and use those data to eliminate or disprove individual hypotheses or predictions.

It's quite possible that more than one hypothesis remains. Depending on the list, all may be eliminated. In any event, students are expected to defend their choices when writing their lab reports.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Some Advice on Teaching Science

2009-04-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

Frederick W. Westaway gives lots of advice on teaching science. Regarding experiments or labs, he provides plenty as well. Here is some.

Beware of the pseudo method of discovery. "Pour H₂SO₄ on granulated zinc, and you will discover that hydrogen is given off "!

Beware of verification methods. "Show that ferrous ammonium sulphate contains one-seventh of its own weight of iron." This is simply asking for the evidence to be cooked.

When a boy works an experiment, keep him just enough in the dark as to the probable outcome of the experiment, just enough in the attitude of a discoverer, to leave him unprejudiced in his observations.

Do not adopt the heuristic extremist's principle that a pupil must not be permitted to take anything second hand. Life is too short.

Do not make the fatal mistake of thinking that all boys have an instinct and imagination for making discoveries, or can be made first-class workers in the laboratory. In any average science class, be satisfied with 25 per cent of α's, 50 per cent of β's, and 25 per cent of γ's, but do not stick labels on the γ's for all the world to recognize them.

Teach boys the virtue of recording all mistakes as well as successful results. Tell them that all science workers make mistakes: that that is almost the normal thing! Faraday, the most resourceful experimenter that the world has ever seen, said that he learnt far more from his mistakes than from his successes. A boy's laboratory note-book containing no mistakes is never a true record of the work he has done, and it is morally wrong to let it be presented as if it were such a record.

The pupil's notes should tell a plain tale to people who were not present when the record was made, and they should be written up in the laboratory, in ink, when the work is in progress.

In the laboratory, a teacher should have everything in readiness before a lesson is due to begin, including instructions as to the procedure to be followed in all experiments to be performed. If these instructions are given orally, they are forgotten; dictated, they take up much time; written on the blackboard, they are not permanent, and have to be written up again for a future lesson. Typed instructions answer best.

Whatever general method of teaching you adopt, do everything possible to economize time. It is bad economy — it is worse, it is sheer waste of time, to say nothing of a lack of ordinary teaching intelligence to worry beginners about, say, the difference between density and specific gravity, or " pressure at a point ", or the number of stamens in a flower.

Of course, Westaway, in 1929, had no idea that simulations would become popular 80 years later. As you read his words, you have to conclude that he would not have liked his students doing simulations in place of the real thing. Demonstrations may not allow students to do the experiments with their own hands, but at least they're real. With a good teacher, they can provide a good learning opportunity, provided that the class is not too large.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Thomas H. Huxley Speaks to Us

2009-04-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

Frederick W. Westaway, in 1929, spoke clearly to us today about science education in his book, Science Teaching. He quotes Thomas H. Huxley, also known as "Darwin's bulldog," at length about science education. Huxley foreshadows Piaget's constructivism in 1869!

Huxley said: "It appeared to me to be plainly dictated by common sense that the teacher who wishes to lead his pupils to form a clear mental picture of the order which pervades the multiform and endlessly shifting phenomena of nature, should commence with the familiar facts of the scholar's daily experience; and that, from the firm ground of such experience, he should lead the beginner, step by step, to remoter objects and to the less readily comprehensible relations of things. I conceived that a vast amount of knowledge respecting natural phenomena and their interdependence, and even some practical experience of scientific method, could be conveyed, with all the precision of statement, which is what distinguishes science from common information. And I thought that my plan would not only yield results of value in themselves, but would facilitate the subsequent entrance of the learners into the portals of the special science."

You have to wonder why education has the continual rediscovery associated with it. If Huxley clearly enunciated this principle of founding learning on the experience of students, why did Piaget have to rediscover it?

This concept of beginning with what students already know from their experience has become the bedrock of many teachers today. Yet, it's treated with the attitude that it's something new when it was truly explained 140 years ago!

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Canon Wilson

2009-04-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am privileged to be reading Science Teaching by F. W. Westaway, published in 1929. In it, he summarizes the history of science teaching and begins by dividing this subject into two eras: before and after 1867. Why pick that date? That's when Canon Wilson wrote extensively about teaching science and broke with millennia of tradition. The following quote comes from Westaway quoting Wilson.

The lecture may be very clear and good; and this will be an attractive and not difficult method of teaching, and will meet most of the requirements. It fails, however, in one. The boy is helped over all the difficulties; he is never brought face to face with nature and her problems; what cost the world centuries of thought is told him in a minute; his attention, understanding, and memory are all exercised; but the one power which the study of physical science ought preeminently to exercise, the power of bringing the mind into contact with facts, of seizing their relations, of eliminating the irrelevant by experiment and comparison, of groping after ideas and testing them by their adequacy in a word, of exercising all the active faculties which are required for an investigation in any matter these may lie dormant in the class while the most learned lecturer experiments with facility and with clearness.

How ironic to see very similar ideas being written 142 years later by the National Research Council in America's Lab Report. What Wilson is referring to is the value of experimentation in learning. In order to gain the true benefits of science education, students must confront complex and ambiguous situations with true real-world data that is not clear-cut and obvious.

"Experimenting" with equation-derived data is insufficient. It's even wasteful of time that could be spent experimenting with real-world data.

Students must a) experiment, and b) collect data from the material world. Providing a safe, efficient, and inexpensive means to this end has been the driving force behind the creation of the Smart Science® system. No other organization has put the necessary time and effort into such a creation. They all take the easy way out with cartoon-like simulations that give you the same data always. There's no imperative to collect data point by point in a simulation. It makes no sense.

To put the case very bluntly, the time reserved in a science course for laboratory experience must not be replaced by simulations. They are destructive of learning science if used in this fashion. Simulations, like any tool, must be used properly to have a positive outcome. Students have to know that the simulation they're running is not an experiment or a "lab." They must know that it's an artist's conception of certain equations that represent the current consensus of scientists and that even so, they may contain errors or "bugs."

If your data source is the real world instead of algorithms, then these problems vanish.

The Smart Science® education system blends prerecorded real experiments with safe, effective, and inexpensive hands-on experiments to provide an optimized learning outcome. No other system available today can make that claim.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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On Science Teachers

2009-03-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Teachers are both our problem and our solution. How will we resolve this conundrum and improve education dramatically? The answer is not obvious here in the United States.

Recently, we went to a very poor neighborhood where 98% of the children have free or subsidized lunches. We were invited by the science chair to present our Smart Science® system, which we are offering for free to a limited number of schools in truly poor neighborhoods. A chemistry teacher and the department chair had seen our system and were very enthusiastic about it.

About a dozen science teachers showed up for the meeting and demonstration. They were going to see the system that would ordinarily cost their school thousands of dollars annually, the system that is being used by most online organizations already and by a growing number of traditional schools. This is the only complete online system to deliver an online science lab that meets the definition and all goals of America's Lab Report.

Sadly, what happened was too predictable. A few teachers (three as I recall) were very enthusiastic and couldn't wait to begin using it. The bulk of the teachers were unreadable. Several teachers, however, began to pick at minor issues while suggesting that the students would find this system difficult to use for one reason or another.

Well, tens of thousands of students of all learning and ability levels have already used the system successfully. The user interface and help materials have been honed over the ten years that this system has been in use.

Clearly, the teachers themselves have trepidations regarding the use of technology. That's the teacher part of the problem. You'd expect science teachers to be very accepting of technology.

However, the three teachers who were enthusiastic demonstrate the teacher part of the solution. Without teachers, the technology would not be accessible to most students as a learning tool.

Teachers who are willing to try new ideas and evaluate them on their actual in-class performance are the ones that help education move forward. Then, there are those teachers who are acting as gatekeepers, barring new ideas from their classrooms and prejudging them based on their own subjective evaluation, usually quite incomplete.

We have a crisis in education now. In California, the state is loosening class sizes and allowing them to rise to 41 students. Our teachers deserve better! Yet, such classroom overloading can even be ameliorated with proper application of technology. I hope that it's obvious that improper use of technology will likely exacerbate the problem instead.

Realize that, if forced to use new ideas, teachers have the means to guarantee failure in their own classrooms, fulfilling their prophecies of doom. For this reason, we must have teachers accept the new ideas before asking them to use them.

I know that the Smart Science® system is not a panacea for education. Yet, it does provide a unique ability to allow students to experience real science experiments and to perform labs as prescribed by the sages at the National Research Council in perfect safety and at very low cost, sometimes as little as as 20 cents per lab per student working individually. These are complete lab experiences with many experiments, pre-lab and post-lab assessments, extensive support materials, and online lab reports.

How do we get resistant teachers to change their attitudes? Until we do, we'll be stuck with 19th century education. We should have a positive and accepting means of successfully encouraging otherwise recalcitrant teachers to use new ideas, to give them a truly fair chance. Then, all teachers would become part of the solution and none would be part of the problem.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Gov Dumps Science

2009-03-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

Last month, a news article said that Governor Schwartzenneger planned to drop the high school graduation requirements in California from two science courses to one. He was responding to the current huge budget deficit in the state.

At at time when we must have more college graduates and more people trained in science and engineering, this response is exactly backward. Many other states have set the number of science courses required for high school graduation to three!

Why choose science? How will reducing science graduation requirements save money while reducing English or math will not?

Two factors seem to be operating here, and it's not possible to tell from the news which is primary in the Governor's decision. Science courses, unlike the other core courses, have an extra cost component in their laboratory work. The cost of supplies and equipment, even after severe cuts, remains at around $7 per pupil. Further expenses come from hazardous waste disposal, insurance costs, laboratory space maintenance, and teacher time lost to lab preparation and clean up.

The other potential cost comes from teacher certification. Certified science teachers have become rare, especially in physical sciences. Many schools have to pay more to get certified science teachers; other schools must provide waivers to allow uncertified teachers to run these classes.

The truly unfortunate part of the Governor's plan is that alternatives exist that save money and improve science education at the same time.

Just imagine that half of the expensive, dangerous, and ineffective hands-on lab experiences in a high school science course were replaced with low-cost, save, and highly effective laboratory experiences. Imagine that the cost is just a few dollars per student. With online preliminary (formative) and subsequent (summative) assessments added, administrators and teachers would be able to track student performance and provide accountability.

You don't have to imagine all of these ideas. They exist today in the Smart Science® education system; see www.smartscience.net.

The Smart Science® system is the only one to meet the definition and all goals of America's Lab Report. Curricula using this system as the primary lab experience have passed the College Board's AP audit for all three AP laboratory sciences. Yes, full approval, even today.

It's a shame that the Governor and his advisers don't consider alternatives before floating such draconian proposals. Write to him today!

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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UC a-g Requirements

2009-02-04T08:24:00.001-08:00

In California, the University of California has mandated some special requirements for high school students who'd like their high school transcripts to be accepted for admission to any college or university in the University of California system.

Mostly, these requirements seem reasonable. They keep standards up.

Then, there's requirement "d." It covers laboratory science and makes the following statement. They say that a qualifying course must:

include hands-on scientific activities that are directly related to and support the other classwork, and that involve inquiry, observation, analysis, and write-up. These hands-on activities should account for at least 20% of class time, and should be itemized and described in the course description.

In case online schools miss the point, they restate it as follows:

Online courses may be approved for credit toward the "d" requirement if they meet all the guidelines outlined above, including a supervised hands-on laboratory component comprising at least 20% of the course (e.g., UCCP courses).

I see no explanation or rationale for these statements. In fact, they have the common problem that they state means rather than ends. Therefore, a rationale would be difficult to defend.

Contrast the statements in America's Lab Report. The National Research Council wisely added a parenthetical option.

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.

Later, they point out that only laboratories, as defined, provide opportunities for students to develop an understanding of the "complexity and ambiguity of empirical work." These experiences also promote a greater understanding of the nature of science and help students develop scientific reasoning skills.

America's Lab Report also points out that, for most American students, the science laboratory experience is "poor." So, why does the UC promote the continuing use of poor experiences for students in order to enter their institutions? There's nothing in the oversight of science courses that prevents the lab experiences from being the usual "poor." Instead, there's just the outdated requirement that all lab experiences be "hands-on."

From this requirement, we can deduce that a student who puts remote monitoring equipment in a volcano and then records and analyzes the data from it would not qualify. No, the student would be forced to be physically present at the volcano site and take all data manually right there.

With cruelly tight school budgets, California should be seeking ways to provide excellent science laboratory experience without the high costs of traditional science labs. At the same time, the UC should be doing what it can to ensure that student science lab experiences are better than "poor."

It's time to leave behind the 19^th century experimental experiences that most students must endure. We have great tools available today that can improve learning and allow for accountability. I'm not speaking of the fake science of simulations. Simulations belong in the same category as videos and demonstrations. They can help students to visualize concepts. They don't provide an adequate science experience.

Although it predates America's Lab Report, the Smart Science® education system follows its guidelines and is the only online science lab system yet to do so.

California can help its schools save money and improve science education at the same time by using this remarkable patented technology in its schools. At least, the UC should get out of the way and allow high-quality innovations such as this one to be used in schools.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Failing Economy and Education

2009-01-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

Our economy is a disaster. Education has been a problem for a long time in many areas due to budget problems. Physical plants are deteriorating. Class sizes have increased. Teacher salaries have stalled making recruiting difficult, and that's really unfortunate because the one factor that has been proven to make a difference in learning is the teacher.

Good teachers create learning. However, you can overwhelm even the best teachers if you allow class sizes to expand and the environment to fall apart. Budget shortfalls continue to cause these effects.

We can do one thing to help. We can find innovative ways to support our great teachers.

The Smart Science® system helps in many ways. It allows teachers to provide great science experiences at low cost, without safety problems, without set up and clean up, and in larger groups than would be otherwise possible.

Others will argue that you can do that with any simulation. Not so! Simulations do not provide great science experiences — ever. Check out America's Lab Report for the truth about simulations.

The continuing education problems and the current economic crisis provide a great opportunity to move education into the 21^st century. We must harness our wonderful American inventiveness and entrepreneurship to change education now.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Obama and Education Innovation

2009-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

The following quotes are from Obama's site.

"We are a people of boundless industry and ingenuity. We are innovators and entrepreneurs and have the most dedicated and productive workers in the world."

"To make America, and our children, a success in this new global economy, we will build 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries."

The problem with these two quotes is that they are from unrelated portions of the site. The Obama team has yet to combine these sentiments into one strategy for education. Also, nowhere is the concept of 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to be found. A brand-new science lab looks much like those of the 19th century except for cosmetics. Similarly, new libraries are bookshelves with some computer terminals added. Neither will be the norm by middle of this century.

Let us send forth the call now for "boundless industry and ingenuity" to be applied to education. Smart Boards aren't enough. We must have real changes if we're to educate the current generation of students and have a great citizenry. The government should take a lead in supporting education entrepreneurship because no one else will.

© 2009 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Using Science Labs to Teach Science

2008-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

If you walk into a typical physics or physical science classroom that's about to have students do a simple pendulum experiment, you're likely to see the formula for the period of a pendulum on the board. What you're unlikely to see is any discussion of experimental error or of how to make scientific observations.

Because it's so crucial to learning science, I'm going to discuss how to teach science using science labs. I'll use the example of a simple pendulum experiment because it's well understood. (By the way, those science teachers who make the extra effort to do experiments correctly deserve our praise and support.)

In a typical class, after explaining exactly what a simple pendulum is, teachers will show the formula for the period of a pendulum. They may have to explain about period and frequency. They will then point out the the formula for the period of a pendulum does not include the mass of the pendulum bob and that the period increases as the square root of the length. The effect of amplitude may not even be mentioned.

The experiment directions have been carefully written so that students make no mistakes. They start the pendulum moving with small swings and time ten swings. The length, mass, and period are recorded in the student notebooks. They then take measurements using other lengths and masses.

For many students, this experience is quite unsatisfactory. They've been asked to obtain a specific result. If they do not obtain the desired result, their grades suffer. Of course, many students appreciate the opportunity to get out of lecture and do something with their hands. Some even enjoy the detailed task of counting and recording. Neither of these rationales has anything to do with learning science. An excellent opportunity to learn science has been wasted.

Now, imagine another scenario that does play out in some of our science classes but in too few. The teacher begins by explaining some vocabulary such as period and frequency and eliciting some answers from the students. Next comes a discussion of what a pendulum is and some history about Galileo watching a chandelier. The teacher guides the discussion into how Galileo timed the period of the swinging chandelier. They didn't have clocks then so he must have used his pulse. What was his precision?

None of this discussion reveals the dependence of the period on pendulum length or mass or even on swing amplitude. Next, the teacher presents the class with the experiments they will do. What are the independent variables? Of course, there's the parameters of length and mass. What about amplitude? The dependent variable will be the period.

How will students measure pendulum length? What is the position at the top from which they will measure? What is the bottom position? Why choose these positions? Student ideas should be heard on all of the significant experimental details.

How will students measure the dependent variable? For the simplest case, students will time a number of swings. The class can discuss how many swings. What are the pros and cons of more or fewer swings? Should you use the lowest point or highest as the trigger? Different students may choose different strategies and discuss the outcome after the lab is over.

For students who also have the Smart Science® Pendulum Investigation lab unit, they can analyze data collected at intervals of 0.10 seconds. With many more points, they'll have greater precision. To get that precision, they must find a way to extract the period from the pendulum bob positions. That could be quite a challenge if they wish to use all of the points to maximize precision.

An advantage of the virtual lab will be in seeing the shape of the curve produced when position is plotted against time. As students take each data point, the graph develops and students see a sine wave appear. Notice that the sine wave comes from the data rather than vice versa as in simulations. Simulations are backwards and should not ever be the object of student scientific investigations.

Teachers can lead discussions about the implications of this wave shape for when the pendulum is moving fastest and when its moving slowest. The relationship with kinetic energy can readily follow. For more advanced classes, the nature of acceleration during the swings can be discussed and can lead to analysis of the changes in force because force is directly related to acceleration.

Students collect their data as they have planned, carefully entering the numbers into their laboratory notebooks for later analysis.

Once the students have their data and have analyzed it to come to specific conclusions, it's time for the class to compare and discuss the results. The teacher acts as moderator while calling on different students to present their data and conclusions. Teachers should guide students carefully to accepted conclusions while emphasizing the nature of scientific investigations. Empirical work is subject to errors and ambiguity. What possible variables were not controlled or measured? How might they have influenced the conclusions?

At the end, the students will remember the subject matter much better for having discovered it this way instead of simply being told the "facts." However, much more importantly, they will gain a better understanding of the nature of science, of how science works, and of what scientists actually do. As a result, we can hope that more of them will choose science or some related area as a career. We can hope that as future citizens, they'll better be able to make the decisions that we expect our informed citizenry to make.

We're facing an uncertain future. We cannot know what tomorrow will bring. We do know that having a good understanding of science will add another tool to everyone's mental tool kit to help them when the unexpected does happen. In the meantime, having Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" will help them every day to live better and happier lives.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Education Innovation on a Small Scale

2008-12-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

I recall writing multiple-choice tests as professor and penalizing students for wrong guesses. If they didn't know the answer or couldn't narrow down the choices, they should just leave the answer blank. Students didn't like it.

Richard Hart of Nine-Patch Multiple-Choice, Inc. has turned the idea around. You get no points for a wrong answer, and you get points for not guessing — just not as many points as you'd get for the correct answer.

Here's his description of the process from his web site.

Read the question and see if you can use it to report what you know or can do.
If yes, then compare the answer you have in mind with the printed answers.
If you find a match, you are probably right. Mark it.
If there is no match, you may want to omit, to avoid making a wrong mark.
You get one point for a right mark and one point for not making a wrong mark.”

In case, it's not obvious, the students all begin with a 50% before they've answered a single question. Fifty percent is still an F in most classes, but it's a lot better than beginning with 0%. (By the way, he provides software to make it all much easier for the incredibly low price of $29.95 for an unlimited single-user license.)

At this point, you may think that all that's happened is a shift of grading emphasis. Look again. The idea is that students must report their self-confidence by marking only what they know and admitting what they don't know by leaving those answers blank.

You could even expand that concept in the multiple-choice domain by allowing students to mark more than one answer. Suppose a student has eliminated two of the four answers and still can't decide. If the student marks both answers, then that student in communicating more information to the instructor. If one of those answers is correct, then the student gets some credit.

Imagine a multiple-choice exam where all questions have all answers marked before the students begins to answer the questions. (This is not Richard Hart's approach and only a hypothetical extension.) The students' task is elimination of incorrect answers. Every incorrect answer indicated adds to the student score. Erroneous marks result in zero points. A 25-question quiz with four choices per question would have a maximum of 75 points. Making the entire quiz blank would give a zero because every right answer would have been marked as wrong. Leaving the quiz with all answers marked would give the student 25 points or 33.3% of the maximum possible score because all correct answers are marked correct.

Now, imagine a multiple-choice test where questions may (or may not) have more than one correct choice. Suppose that every question on a 25-question quiz has all four answers correct. Then, the students begin unknowingly with a score of 100. Every answer that they mark as being incorrect reduces that number. If, on average, the number of correct answer per question is two, then the students begin (again unknowingly) with a score of 50. Taking the marks off of all incorrect answers results in a maximum score of 100. In this scheme, every choice of every question counts.

Ideas like those of Richard Hart and the extensions that I've suggested may seem very small in the overall scheme of building better education for our students. Everything is important in learning. Details count. Every positive innovation is a step forward. A version of this sort of multiple-choice scoring is the basis of a company with a patent on its "Confidence-Based Learning." Their market is corporate training and seems to be paying well if their web site is any indication.

Even small ideas can have big outcomes.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Fixing Science Education

2008-11-26T07:16:00.000-08:00

Why is the United States falling behind in science education?

Class Size
Reading newspapers will provide a number of potential answers. For example, many decry the large class sizes. Prof. E. H. Hall of Harvard University wrote at the end of the 19th century that science labs must have no more than twelve students to succeed in teaching science. One teacher, no matter how skilled, could not provide inquiry-based learning to more than twelve students at a time.

Today's science teachers tell us that they have problems with more than 16 students in a science lab. Studies of accidents in science labs suggests that more than 24 students causes the accident rate to rise precipitously. Inadequate space in science labs also increases accident rates.

Unless you abandon science labs in science courses, you must have small lab sections - or an entirely different approach.

Teacher Training
Few science teachers these days understand science despite their education school training and lots of professional development. Even sending science teachers to spend summers with research scientists doen't necessarily solve this problem. Often, the teacher becomes a lab technician rather than a real research assistant.

The teacher training being practiced today misses the important point of science, is costly, and is time-consuming. Moreover, high turnover of teachers means that constant training is required to ensure that most science teachers have been trained. Finally, training rarely instills into teachers a true understanding of the nature of science.

Professional development is necessary to keep us from falling further into decay but is not the solution by itself.

Little Depth
Too many science classes spend very little time of each of many topics. This fact comes from overly ambitious standards, usually imposed by states. So many topics are specified that less than a day can be spent on each one. This sort of curriculum favors rapid memorizers and completely ignores aspects of science that are really important: the nature of science, scientific reasoning, data analysis skills, and understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work.

Students spend too much time in their science classes listening to teachers talk or watching them demonstrate. Conceivably, they could spend all of their time just preparing for, doing, and discussing excellent labs and have a much superior learning experience. Such a curriculum would necessarily limit the number of topics. Of course, the labs would have to be well-designed and sequenced. Preparation would have to include some purpose and connection to students' own lives.

Curricula have been designed and redesigned without notable success in widespread results. Something is missing.

Unprepared Students
Most students seem to arrive in their science classes with inadequate reading and mathematics skills. Great efforts have been put into improving these skills so that students can do better in their science and history classes as well as in their post-graduate lives.

The problem remains. In education, you must take your students as they are. Science courses must find ways to teach science while simultaneously enhancing reading, writing, and math skills. Science, like history, has much to offer other than simply skills. It has, literally, the world to offer. Well-designed science classes with great teachers will get students excited about learning science. Then, they'll have the motivation to improve their other skills so that they can understand the world around them.

Real Innovation Required
The current ideas are the same old ideas in new packages. Despite tens of billions of dollars and decades spent on them, the results are pretty much the same, and things are getting worse.

The usual ideas involve more teacher training, funding smaller science classes, redesigning curricula, and applying more effort in language arts and mathematics classes. Yet the science learning problem remains endemic in our nation's classrooms.

Something new, something completely different, would seem to be required.

Let's face the facts here. Unless students have exciting science teachers who understand science deeply, they will not learn science the way it's being taught today. Some may learn enough science vocabulary, enough laws of science, and enough formulas to pass their tests but even those students will not understand science and are unlikely to select science as a career.

An American Answer
Fixing science education in America requires an American perspective. We are a country of innovation, of entrepreneurship, and of hope.

We will not reduce science class sizes significantly soon. Schools have no money for more teachers, more buildings, or more lab equipment. We must find a way to teach great science courses to large classes. In New York City, class size is capped at 34 students. Because of budget considerations, classes with fewer than 30 students often are eliminated.

Teacher training cannot solve the problems by itself. It takes too much time to get all teachers through training, including new ones. There's little follow-up to ensure that teachers apply their training. For example, one teacher was sent to SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator) to learn about a computer system being made available to schools around the country. He returned to tell the community about the great experience he'd had. However, this program was never presented to any students.

School administrators should have a way to determine whether professional development is being utilized in classrooms.

Only one approach provides any hope of solving all of these problems - technology.

Using Technology
You can object that lots of technology has been applied to improving science education without success. However, the use of technology so far has mostly been pedestrian rather than innovative. For example, what is probeware but a computer and probe replacing a dedicated instrument such as a digital thermometer, a pH meter, or a colorimeter. Using probeware adds nothing new to the learning.

We've see many efforts to use simulations to help students learn science. These programs take time and require computers. They may be no more effective than a good video presentation such as the PBS Nova series or programs on the Discovery Channel that take fewer resources.

Some teachers substitute simulations for science labs. These simulations are one form of virtual activity that generates its data, objects, and phenomena using computer algorithms. While they are a valid interactive substitute for videos, they're not science labs. The National Research Council defined a science laboratory experience in America's Lab Report as follows.

"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 clearly excludes simulations. By this definition, a simulation is not a lab of any sort and therefore not a virtual lab. The purveyors of simulations would have you believe otherwise.

On the other hand, lots of alternatives exist for providing true virtual science labs. For example, Mohave Community College offers an oceanography course that includes real-world case studies using current oceanographic data including ocean predictions, satellites and water vapor content. MIT is working on iLabs, a system for providing access to expensive equipment for students to do experiments over the Internet.

These alternatives are limited in scope and cannot provide a full lab program for science students. We must have more. Taking the concept of remote, real-time labs one step further provides the answer.

The Smart Science® core learning system does just that. It prerecords the real experiments that might have been done remotely and many that just couldn't be done in real time. It then provides highly interactive software that allows students to collect their own personal data from these experiments. It also delivers extensive learning support and monitoring capabilities while capturing all student and teacher online interactions in a server database.

Solving the Problems
How can the Smart Science® system of integrated instructional lab units solve all of the problems of science education?

1. Class size.
Teachers can monitor students working on computers much more readily than those working on hands-on experiments. By rotating students between safe hands-on experiments and computer-based experimentation, a larger number of students can be managed.

Class sizes still should be reduced. The immediate benefit of using this specific technology is that larger class sizes can be accommodated right now without sacrificing the quality of the lab experience.

2. Teacher training.
Because the background material, the goals of a lab, the support material, and all other required pedagogical material can be included within an integrated instructional lab unit, the amount of teacher training required is reduced considerably. The teacher still must be good at teaching but won't necessarily have to be a science expert.

3. Little depth.
One problem with providing more depth in science classes is providing experiences that go into a topic in greater depth. Science labs provide that opportunity. However, the typical science labs (cookbook with answers known in advance) do not. In addition, science labs tend to use lots of resources: time, money, and space.

Excellent, online true science labs can fill the void here and allow great science course design that includes more depth for important topics.

4. Unprepared students.
Computer-based systems allow students to work at their own pace. They can sense that students must have remedial work and indicate those students to the teachers or even provide it to them directly. Explanations of mathematics are available. Vocabulary words are available. In short, every support imaginable can be made a part of the computer system.

Ready Now
The best part of this solution is that it's ready today at a very low cost, and that cost will go down as usage increases. A student can use this system today in an entire course for less than the cost of a lab book.

See www.smartscience.net for more information.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Finding Out

2008-11-22T11:29:00.000-08:00

Science is really the activity of finding out about the world.

Other disciplines have finding out as their goals. For example, mathematics finds out about numbers and mathematical relationships. Psychology finds out about the way people think. Sociology finds out about human relationships.

Science seeks the find out about the world, and the world doesn't yield readily to inquiries. If it did, anyone might have made Galileo and Newton's discoveries. For that reason, science has developed methods of making these inquiries that involve provable hypotheses and reproducible results.

Scientists employ a different way of thinking than most other people do. Of course, it's not their sole thinking tool. Like others, they use hunches, instinct, and emotion. Unlike many others, they check their thoughts against reality in specific ways. Science requires both creativity and rational thought to explore the world and make new discoveries.

Carl Sagan used the phrase "baloney detection kit" to explain what makes the scientific approach different. Scientists must infer conclusions from uncertain data. They must avoid allowing their own personal bias to influence the results while allowing their imaginations to seek out different and unexpected conclusions.

I'd like to see all science students complete each science class with a step up in their "baloney detection kit" capabilities. This understanding of the nature of science, of scientific thinking, and of the complexity and ambiguity inherent in data from the real world is an important outcome of science courses. In too many courses, it gets lost as students struggle to memorize new vocabulary words, learn new laws with their equations, and manipulate formulas.

The science lab should be the time-out period from the words, laws, and formulas. It should be the time when students confront the complexity of extracting data from the real world and finding explanations for those data. Teachers should prepare students for this experience not by telling the answer that they're expected to find, but by explaining about concepts such as inference. Give them the foundation they require, not the edifice itself.

Online courses cannot lose this aspect of science courses. Of course, many science courses handle labs poorly. That's absolutely no excuse for online science courses to use those poor lab experiences as their standard -- easily exceeded. The standard must be the best science courses.

The best science courses, as indicated in America's Lab Report, routinely have students collect their own real data from the real world, analyze those data, and discuss their conclusions with the rest of their class. They don't collect data from simulations.

Online science courses can have real experiments with interactive, personal data collection. A number of means exist for that purpose among which is the Smart Science® system's integrated instructional lab units (www.smartscience.net). There's no excuse for settling for simulations instead of real labs in online courses. Combining real virtual labs with hands-on, at-home labs works very well to provide a full science learning opportunity to students. Do not substitute fake labs and fake science for the real thing.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Necessary, Not Sufficient

2008-11-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

If you have read a few of my posts, you'll note that I feel very strongly that students should have some real science experiences in their science classes. With more and more hands-on labs being pushed aside by virtual labs, I'm concerned about the nature of those labs. If simulations are used as lab substitutes, students lose an imporant opportunity to learn science.

They may learn about science, the vocabulary, laws, and theories of science, but they won't have the opportunity of understand the nature of science.

Nevertheless, simply using real experiments from the material world will not suffice. This fact is the second important conclusion of America's Lab Report (recommended reading). The first important conclusion is that science lab experiences must use the data, objects, and phenomena of the "material world" in their investigations.

What is required in addition to reality? I see two broad areas where additional requirements lie. The first area is in the presentation of the lab units, and the second area concerns how the lab fits into the course.

When preparing for a science lab experience, instructors should allow students to own, at least in part, the work they're about to do. Put the lab into context as solving a problem. Have students do some "research" on the problem. They might talk, read, or do some simple exploratory experiments. Don't just tell them the answer. Allow them to think about it, to mull it over. Then, they'll have some reason to do the lab other than you telling them to.

After the lab is completed, and students have done some analysis, get them together to talk about it. What conclusions have they made? Did all students come to the same conclusions? If not, why not?

In the post-lab post-mortem, you should ask students to identify what they observed directly and what they inferred. Find out how much they think can be inferred from observations. Talk about the quality of data. If possible, talk about data that did not fit expectations and discuss why. Was it experimental error, experimental design, or something else?

What you do before and after a lab can elevate or depress the value of the lab. It can change the lab from a dull, repetitive experience into an exciting investigation.

The second area for making a lab useful in a course requires that you properly integrate the lab into the course. Labs should not take place before a proper learning foundation has been laid. They also should not occur long after the topic has been introduced. Students should see the lab as a natural part of the course flow.

America's Lab Report focuses on four goals for integration.

Science lab experiences must (1) "be designed with clear learning outcomes in mind," (2) "be thoughtfuly sequenced into the flow of classroom instruction," (3) "integrate learning of science content and process," and (4) "incorporate ongoing student reflection and discussion."

Always realize that one of the clear learning outcomes that, according the the NRC, can only come in real lab experience is "understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work." Inasmuch as possible, this should be a learning outcome of every science lab experience because lab time is limited and precious. This goal may not be realized with only a few opportunities to experience it. Don't squander those opportunities on simulations masquerading as science labs. Reserve use of simulations and other visualizations (interactive or not) for non-lab class time.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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The Nature of Science

2008-11-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

Mrs. Smith blogs at mrssmithteachersscience.blogspot.com and discusses the nature of science. She takes seven aspects of the nature of science from Lederman, NG and JS Lederman. (2004) Revising Instruction to Teach the Nature of Science. The Science Teacher. 71: 36-39.

These are important enough to repeat here. Here is one great thing about the Internet. You don't have to go read The Science Teacher to get these significant nuggets of information.

1) "Students should be aware of the crucial distinction between observation and inference."

2) "Students should understand the difference between scientific laws and theories."

3) "All scientific knowledge is, at least partially, based on and/or derived from observations of the natural world."

4) "Although scientific knowledge is empirically based, it nevertheless involves human imagination and creativity."

5) "Scientific knowledge is at least partially subjective."

6) "Science is socially and culturally embedded. [It] affects and is affected by the various elements and contexts of the culture in which it is practiced."

7) "Scientific knowledge is subject to change."

She does a nice job of explaining each, so I won't repeat the effort. I'd like, however, to point out that understanding the nature of science is one of the seven America's Lab Report goals for science laboratory experiences and is one that is best satisfied by students performing investigations in the real world, not in simulations.

Three of those goals (mastery, teamwork, interest in science) are well handled outside of a lab setting. Good labs simply add to them.

One goal (practical skills) can mostly be done outside of labs. The single exception is the skill of operating lab equipment. That's not really a part of learning science anyway.

The remaining three goals are best accomplished in a lab setting. They are developing scientific reasoning, understanding the nature of science, and understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work. America's Lab Report explains that the last goal can only be accomplished well within true science lab experiences as it defines them. That definition clearly excludes simulations.

Simulations are great learning tools, if done well and integrated into the curriculum well. They do not work as substitutes for science lab experiences. Student scientific investigations will not be scientific if their object is made up.

Of course, students must prepare for real investigations, and various exercises can help them do so. Among these are simulations and other activities.

You can still do virtual labs that provide access to data from the real world and do some hands-on labs too. But, please don't call a simulation a science lab. Thank you.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Mrs. Smith Teaches Science

2008-11-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

I just ran across a nice blog called Mrs. Smith Teaches Science.

Several rather insightful comments suggest that Mrs. Smith understands many important facts about teaching science and is willing to learn more.

She only goes a bit astray in the area of virtual labs. The acid-base simulation she refers to in her post at http://mrssmithteachesscience.blogspot.com/2008/11/virtual-acid-base-titration-lab.html is just too unreal to be used as more than a demonstration. With a real alternative available, why not go for that instead?

The simulation is created by a Java applet. That's certainly an improvement over the typical Flash animation simulation. However, it still has the problems of all simulations.

1. Ownership. Students don't really own their data. Sure, they can calculate the concentration of the unknown. However, they can do that with a completely paper lab.

2. Faith. Students see a drawing of the equipment and materials. Nothing looks real. They have to believe that the underlying algorithms work correctly for any choice of parameters. The data may fit some equation, but would a real titration fit?

3. Connection. Students cannot connect well to drawings. It's a gut thing. When you're doing an experiment, you should know that you're investigating the real world. After all, that's what scientists do.

4. Complexity and ambiguity. True science faces complex situations where investigators may come to different conclusions. Exposure to these situations will occur in real labs but not in simulations. Adding in fake error is insufficient -- because it's fake.

The Smart Science® learning system may be commercial, but it's not expensive. The cost per lab per student for access to a full course of virtual/hands-on labs (access only, not materials) is generally less than a dollar and usually much, much less. (Price depends on grade level, type of school [online, traditional, college, K-12], and number of labs.)

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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The Impossible Dream

2008-11-06T17:23:00.001-08:00

Note: Above image taken from the Internet.

Ever since I can remember, I've loved a great challenge. What greater challenge than impossible? Basically being an optimist, I refuse to believe that I cannot rise to any challenge.

It's been my great fortune to have faced a number of "impossible" challenges and have succeeded. Of course, I did get to select the challenges.

What makes a challenge impossible? For me, it's an expert or knowledgeable person saying so.

However, none of those challenges were grandiose in scope. They were modest challenges that might take a few weeks or months to complete.

My current quest is much larger and qualifies as a "dream." It's my impossible dream.

About a decade ago, I took a long hard look at science education here in the United States and saw some problems. My children had taken the requisite series of science courses. What I saw bothered me. Then, I read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. I have an extensive science background. After all, I was a university chemistry professor and the chair of the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society.

I also have an extensive software background and was a software development manager for a large computer manufacturer. I spent many years as a contract consultant bidding and writing software for Fortune 500 companies. I was doing one for Sun Microsystems when I became aware of a new and yet-unreleased language, Java.

From these small beginnings came my dream. I wished to reform science education and bequeath to everyone an excellent science education along with Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" that he says all scientists have.

With little money and great hope, my partner and I began to design software and courseware. We decided to concentrate on the student laboratory experience for several reasons. It was the part of the science course that held the most promise for learning to think scientifically, and it was the part of most science courses that failed to work.

We spent uncounted hours in libraries reading about science education in books and journals. We investigated the history of science education with special emphasis on science labs. We searched for the latest in technology applied to science labs.

Our astonishing conclusion was that science educators had essentially solved the problems of how to provide great science education over 100 year ago! Basically, they chose to have students learn science by doing science. Their solution had a small problem, however. It required very small classes of twelve of fewer students and highly trained, experienced teachers. These two requirements put the cost of these classes beyond the reach of most schools.

Most modern approaches to teaching science, at least the lab part, attempt to achieve learning science by doing science without fulfilling these two requirements. In some cases, they succeed by dint of very good organization and great classroom discipline.

My colleagues and I sought to overcome the two problems with technology, specifically Internet technology. We chose this path because it could deliver a great result at low cost and because we understood the technology already.

We went a step further and decided to avoid using simulations. We chose to provide students with real experiments instead and to build in scientific thinking as well. We even obtained a patent covering these two essential ideas, that is to say the implementation of them.

We call the resulting mixture of software and courseware the Smart Science® core learning system. You can find out more at www.smartscience.net.

Why shouldn't students have access to excellent science labs no matter what community they live in? Students should learn to think scientifically. It's a great tool to add to your mental toolbox. The more that they can step away from rote memorization and explore the world through the processes and tools of science, the more likely they are to learn and to come to appreciate science.

I have just given you a glimpse of my impossible dream. I'd like to provide great science to our children at low cost and help them to think better and understand the world better too.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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When is a Lab not a Lab?

2008-11-05T03:44:00.000-08:00

Unlike the old query, "When is a door not a door," this one is serious.

In education, science labs have traditionally meant spending time at a lab bench or hunched over a microscope or performing some other "scientific" activity. Later, students had to write about their activities, sometimes in a predetermined format.

Many of these lab experiences were the sort that Carl Sagan condemned in "A Demon-Haunted World."

"There were rote memorization about the Periodic Table of the Elements, levers, and inclined planes, green plant photosynthesis, and the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. But there was no soaring sense of wonder, no hint of an evolutionary perspective, and nothing about mistaken ideas that everybody had once believed. In high school laboratory courses there was an answer we were supposed to get. We were marked off if we didn't get it. There was no encouragement to pursue our own interests or hunches or conceptual mistakes."

Almost all of us are familiar with those cookbook labs. Most of us found them wanting, except as a means to escape the ennui of lectures. While they may have been interesting exercises in learning about new ways of doing things -- using a bunsen burner, operating a microscope, weighing with a triple-beam balance, recording data correctly, and so on -- it was not intellectually stimulating. Some of us may have internalized that experience as emblematic of science. Too bad!

In a few classrooms, practicing technique was jettisoned in favor of challenging students to find out. Students are given problems to solve and guidance as they design experiments to find the answers to their challenges. They try out their ideas and collect data. After interpreting the data, trying out different ways of looking at it, they may redesign the experiments or create a presentation of their results. They do science.

The first experience may be done in a lab, but it's not a "lab." The second is.

Our challenge today stands as finding ways to use technology, especially Internet technology, to bring real lab experience to students. We must do so to raise our science education standards and to lower costs (both time and money) of providing quality science experience to our students.

Several people are making the effort and doing so seriously. Unfortunately, too many have fallen back to the relatively easy simulated labs that have populated our science education landscape. These simulations are not labs. They define the answer to our title question.

The path to a real solution cannot be easy. I can attest to that fact because I've been working on on solution for ten years. We've made a great progress (see www.smartscience.net) and have much more to do. In order to provide adequate kinesthetic experience and experimental design opportunities, we blended virtual and hands-on experiments into "hybrid" labs. Someday, I hope to provide the latter in a fully virtual environment.

You can help. Don't use simulations as labs. Use them as learning tools for concepts, as visualizations. Scientists don't investigate simulations. Your students (or children or friends) shouldn't either.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Science Takes Imagination

2008-11-04T04:59:00.000-08:00

Scientific method, as usually taught, is a linear process requiring no imagination or creativity. While large parts of science are pursued by simply seeking an empty place and filling it with data, much more is necessary. The "scientific method" turns out to be more about how results are reported than how science is conducted.

Students should develop an appreciation of this aspect of science, a part of the nature of science. Give students advance notice about problems they're to solve. Let them consider how to research the problem. Should they read, talk to others, or collect their own data? Perhaps, they'll do all three.

Whatever you do, make sure that students rely on real data from the real world. They should be encouraged to think for themselves. Rather than telling them their ideas are wrong, ask them how to test them. Provide a little guidance, but don't give them the total answer. Help them interpret their data, but don't interpret it for them.

You'll be developing scientific imagination and creativity, the basis for all of the great advances in science. You'll also be encouraging the love of science and the joy of doing science.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Complexity and Ambiguity

2008-11-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

One virtual science lab system appearing on the market now attempts to help students to understand the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work by using an animated cartoon figure, an "avatar" in their words.

The avatar discusses problems with an experiment and asks about how to resolve them.

The fact that this approach uses audio, the avatar's voice, and a semblance of a person does not make this approach significantly different from a discussion in print of the same material. It's just an animated book. In either form, these canned examples can, at best, be considered an introduction to the topic.

Students must experience complexity and ambiguity for themselves. The best such experience will always involve students' own personal data taken from the real world and not from a simulation.

The experience is necessary but not sufficient. Without post-lab questioning and discussion, the nature of science may not be noticed by most students. Students should be asked whether science is exact, what science can infer about unseen objects and phenomena, whether different scientists will necessarily come to the same conclusions from the same data, and so on. They also should explain their answers.

Simulations do not lead to this sort of questioning. Real experiments are available both through hands-on "kitchen" labs and in virtual form. You don't have to resort to simulations for reasons of cost, safety, or time (or any other similar reason).

If a science lab experience really has the purpose of illuminating the nature of science, of bolstering scientific reasoning, and of illustrating the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work, then students must engage the real world and think about both during and after their work.

Don't waste your students' lab time on fake science.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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What is a Science Simulation and Why?

2008-11-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

Scientists use simulations. Therefore, goes the argument, students can use them in place of science labs. Looking at what simulations are and why scientists use them illustrates the problem with this logic.

A simulation is a model of something. Creating that model does not require a computer. Simulations predate computers by a very long time. One oft-used simulation has students shaking up a box of coins and removing those that land tails up. It's supposed to model radioactive decay.

You can calculate the distance-time relationship of a falling ball and compare to reality. The ideal simulation will not match the real ball due to both random and systematic errors. A Styrofoam ball may be very far from the calculated values.

Scientists know that their models are not perfect and use their own experience and sophistication to seek the aspects of their models that match reality and to understand those that differ. They use models to test their hypotheses when those hypotheses involve difficult formulations requiring extensive calculation.

Scientists do not investigate simulations. The science simulation is a tool. Scientists manipulate simulations to determine how well they fit the real world and then adjust their theories accordingly.

In order to use a simulation in this fashion, you must first investigate the real world and collect data. Then, you create your simulation and compare it to those data.

K-12 students generally don't possess this level of sophistication. Their "models" will be relatively simple equations or theories.

Having these students investigate simulations not only doesn't provide good science for them, it can result in an erroneous view of the nature of science. Here are some examples.

1. Science is precise, producing data without any random errors.
2. Interpretation of data is obvious.
3. Scientists all agree on everything scientific.
4. Experiments produce accurate results.
5. Background and culture do not affect the conclusions of scientists.
6. Science is a linear activity requiring no imagination or creativity.

This list can readily be expanded.

Even though scientists use simulations, they do not investigate simulations. Students shouldn't either because such investigations do not advance their understanding of science and are likely to make it worse.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Science Labs, Why Bother? What about Virtual Labs?

2008-11-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, science labs can take up lots of time and money in a school. Students spend much of that time setting up and cleaning up. Teachers also have considerable preparation time moving equipment from storage for this once-a-year usage, mixing solutions, calibrating equipment, and even checking that equipment still works at all.

Repair and replacement of capital equipment takes money. So does replacing consumables. Sometimes, the experiments fail to work as planned. You get the idea. It's a lot of trouble.

Is the effort worth the results?

According to America's Lab Report, it often isn't. Unless teachers spend even more time integrating the labs into their courses and making sure that students aren't just doing cookbook procedures to find a result they've been told ahead of time, then the lab experience will be "poor."

Before deciding whether to use virtual labs, you should know why you're using any labs at all.

America's Lab Report sets up seven goals for science lab experiences. Three of these are definitely not limited to labs. They are (abbreviated) Mastery of Subject Matter, Teamwork, and Interest in Science. One is Practical Skills (of all sorts including the display and interpretation of data). The other three are more or less best learned in real experiences: Nature of Science, Scientific Reasoning, and Complexity and Ambiguity of Empirical Work. The last of these, according to America's Lab Report, can be learned only by true science lab experiences, which require data, objects, and phenomena from the material world. The other two, while not absolutely requiring true science lab experiences, also should have these experiences for best learning.

As long as we accept America's Lab Report, then the answers to the title questions become apparent.

We bother with science labs because they provide learning of some critical science understanding. Moreover, this understanding stands the students in good stead throughout their lives and even gives them, in Carl Sagan's words, a "baloney detection kit." Nearly a century ago, John Dewey pointed out that our citizens should have an understanding of science, that such understanding would improve our democracy.

Removing potentially good science labs, and replacing them with fake science such as simulations, makes a travesty of the entire science curriculum. Many online science courses do just that.

Just because you're online, does not mean that you're out of luck on true science lab experience. Take advantage of the alternatives to simulations, some virtual, some not, and some combined.

For more information, see www.smartscience.net.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Incredible History of Science Labs in Education

2008-10-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

Science laboratories in education were first used sometime in the late 1800s. Since then, their purpose has changed. A very brief discussion of the purposes of this pedagogic tool will help understand the present ambiguous state of science labs and why the debate over their use in online learning creates such different opinions.

John Stuart Mill and William Whewell, in the middle 19th century set up definitions of science as an inductive pursuit with careful observations. From these facts, scientists cautiously draw conclusions, set forth hypotheses, and test them.

Science courses in schools at that time only taught rote memorization of words, laws, and formulas. Students sat in lectures and read textbooks.

The first chemistry laboratory at Yale (1847) was strictly for the use of scientists. Students were not allowed into it.

In the 1880s, universities began to allow students into their laboratories for the purposes of advanced scientific study. Soon, student scientific laboratories sprang into being - even in some high schools. We can imagine that these laboratories concentrated on teaching procedures and techniques that would be essential in a continuing scientific career.

However, some educators saw a larger need for students to understand science rather than just to learn about science and master the procedures and techniques then in use by scientists. They began to find ways for the science laboratory to become an opportunity for students to experience scientific discovery.

Prof. E. H. Hall of Harvard University was an early proponent of this concept in the United States. F. W. Westaway, a well-known science education advocate, also suggested that students should discover science instead of being told about it.

Despite these educators and others, laboratory experience persisted as cookbook procedures that emphasized technique and process. Why? Because teaching discovery labs takes inordinate resources. The instructor must have deep knowledge of the subject to be able to answer unexpected questions and guide students on their quests. Classes must be very small. Prof. Hall specified twelve students. Cookbook labs require very little in comparison from educator or educational establishment.

In the early 1900s, a liberal philosophy overcame education. Suddenly, social relevance became important. Laboratory experiments were abandoned in favor of "interesting" content. Of course, the pendulum has swung back again.

Faced with the necessity of providing laboratory experience to burgeoning classes along with state-mandated lengthy curricular requirements, educators again fell back on the old standby of prescribed laboratory activities. The big change: now they were projects lasting across several laboratory periods.

The Sputnik launch powered new interest in science in the 1950s. Government money was made available to schools to upgrade science facilities. Aside from an enlightened few, the rigid cookbook labs continued to dominate education.

Despite decades of recent effort and billions of dollars, we still see little change in the way science labs are used in 6-12 science education. The labs are infrequently integrated into the curricula. They rarely involve inquiry, exploration, or discovery. Too many science teachers view them as a necessity without any real purpose. The United States, in recent years, has consistently placed low in international tests of student science comprehension.

The growth of inexpensive access to the world through the Internet has the potential to change all of that. Internet technology can be used, as any tool might, well or poorly. Putting simulations on the Internet masquerading as labs takes away time and energy from true lab experiences and results in a poor science experience.

We have the technology to put real experiments on the Internet. I know because I've done it 150 times already. Each of the prerecorded real labs has a number of real experiments ready to use. These labs don't use simulations; they don't use Flash; they don't fool students into believing that science is absolutely precise.

Blending appropriate hands-on activities and projects with prerecorded real experiments that allow students interactively to collect their own personal data will build the best possible science experiences for our students.

Take a stand today for the ideas of a century ago that could not be implemented for ordinary students because of limitations in technology. We have it now. Let's get the schools to use it.

See www.smartscience.net for more information.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Simulations Teach the Concept But Not Science

2008-10-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

At "The Principal's Blog," I read the following comment. "When I asked a conference participant, who happened to be an engineer, if he believed the simulation would be as good as the real experience, he felt like it would certainly teach them the concept."

You cannot disagree with this thought. Simulations, like books and videos and lectures and more, can "teach them the concept."

However, learning science is much more than learning concepts -- words, laws, formulas, relationships, and so on. Those are learning about science. Students must also learn science itself. Only by doing science do they learn science. Simulations do not allow students to do science.

This concept should be simple. Unfortunately, few people (other than scientists) really comprehend the essence of this matter. After all, most people took typical science courses in which they were not allowed to learn science but only learned about science.

Once you understand science, it becomes another way to view the world parallel to the ways you may be used to. Understanding science enriches your life and provides you with what Carl Sagan called a "baloney detection kit." You become more immune to predatory loans and other snake oil sales.

Understanding science will also help our country's students achieve better results on the international science exams we all read about in which we rank 27th or so.

So, how do students do science? By having science lab experiences that allow them to inquire, explore, and discover the real world. Simulations can help with concepts. They do not help with learning science. Only by applying the processes and methods of science to material world data, phenomena, and objects can they learn science. The National Research Council said as much in America's Lab Report.

Well-designed hands-on lab experiences work well if properly integrated into the curriculum. So do prerecorded real experiments with highly interactive software allowing students to collect their own personal data. The latter can be found, at low cost, in Smart Science® integrated instructional lab units. See www.smartscience.net for details.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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MIT's iLabs are Great -- or Are They?

2008-10-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a great concept just arrives too early or too late. I'm looking at the MIT iLabs project. NSF has kicked in $1 million to make it work for non-MIT students, i.e. regular students. The interface currently in place is too difficult for those below genius IQ to master.

However, I'm not writing to criticize the iLabs interface. I'd like to think really hard about exactly what they're doing and what Kemi Jona would like to do with the NSF money. He talks quite glibly about creating an eBay of online real-time programmable labs.

The iLab requires remotely programmable equipment with the ability to put results on an Internet link. That fact limits the range of experiments possible. Such equipment necessarily costs lots of money. Few schools will have that sort of equipment available to share.

Furthermore, the student will see the equipment as a black box and must have lots of additional instruction to appreciate fully the nature of the experiments being done. The information coming back from the equipment (as currently structured) is a string of numbers, not very exciting to the average student.

I see little chance that the iLab concept will expand to cover much of science education. If it remains viable, it may be a great experience for some students as a part of their science classes.

Consider that each time an iLab experiment is performed, all of the information becomes digitized before being transmitted. This information could be archived on a server database and provided to others on demand. Such a scheme would allow greater use of the equipment because if someone requests the same identical experiment, it will be immediately available from the database.

If some object to the repetitive nature of this scheme, you can readily record the same experiment several time to allow for normal experimental variation and chose the one for replay randomly. Take that concept one step further record all of the experiments that students might request. Then, the expensive equipment must be used only for a short period of time, rented if you will. The cost and feasibility of the entire operation goes way down and the likelihood of success goes way up.

You can also provide additional information in the digital feed such as images of the equipment while operating, images of the inside of equipment, and so on.

Moreover, you can embed the experience in a full learning scaffold so that students are forced to think about the experiment, must make predictions and analyze results. It can include post-lab assessments and online lab reports as well as substantial supporting materials.

Once you've created the system to store and deliver these experiments along with the learning support, there's no reason to limit the experiments performed to just those that can be run on programmable apparatus. After all, the programmable apparatus was only used so that experiments could be run on demand. With some clever video techniques and highly interactive software that allows students to collect their own personal data, you could cover all science areas that involve experiments and data collection.

Now, you have all of the benefits of the iLabs without the great expense or the problems associated with running an eBay-like facility for schools. You also have a much greater range of science that can be done. You have to wonder why the iLab people aren't proposing this marvelous extension of the iLabs idea when the technology to do it clearly exists.

Perhaps, it's because it's already been done - ten years ago!

Just take a look at www.smartscience.net.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Yet Another Simulated Lab

2008-10-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

There must be gold in them thar hills.

I just took a look at eduweblabs.com. Their demo is of the precipitation of chalk.

This new entry into science lab simulations raises an important question. What is the purpose of virtual science experiences? (I hesitate to call them "labs.")

The primary purpose of this particular one is to teach students lab procedures. There's no science in this example at all.

I have no problem with helping students understand lab procedures. I do have a problem with confusing lab procedures with doing science. As Albert Einstein so clearly proved, you can do great science without even going near a lab. Many scientists who do have labs use lab technicians to do the experimental work.

Here's my take on the potential purposes of virtual science experiences.

1. Learn lab procedures, techniques, and safety.
2. Visualize science processes such as plate tectonics, galaxy formation, molecular reactions, etc. that help students with concepts and cannot be viewed directly.
3. Perform real science experiments that aren't being done in classrooms due to cost, safety, time, space, or complexity.

Only the last item involves doing actual science and must, of course, use data, objects, and phenomena from the material world to be valid. Otherwise, the science experience really is just some combination of items 1 and 2. It should not be considered as a valid use of precious class lab time.

Some percentage of many science classes is devoted to lab work. That percentage might be 20% or 25% or some other fraction. During that time, students must experience science so that they can -

1. Develop an understanding of science,
2. Practice scientific reasoning, and
3. Understand the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work.

Using this time for other purposes diminishes the opportunities for students to gain these critical insights. Curriculum developers (including teachers who create their own curricula) must decide how much of their class time will be devoted to true student scientific investigations. That time must not be replaced by fake science in the form of simulated "labs."

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Alternative to Virtual Labs: Don't Do Them??

2008-10-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Chad Orzel blogs at http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/23911. He discusses the use of virtual labs in AP science courses. In the end, he suggests that "I should also note that there's a clear alternative to teaching AP classes via "virtual labs": don't teach them. It's not the end of the world, after all."

In an earlier paragraph, he explains his position.

"In the end, though, I think that computer-based exercises are no real substitute for actual lab experience. Unless, that is, you can program the computer to have something really bizarre and inexplicable happen in one out of ten simulated experiments... Some of the chemical reactions should fizzle, some of the pigs being dissected should be missing vital organs, some of the physics data should just be screwy. That's what science is really like, after all."

Of course, he's speaking strictly of simulated science labs. Having the fake stuff he mentions doesn't really resolve the problem of simulations as lab substitutes. Here's a few of these problems.

Errors of science. Sometimes, a simulation will produce results that are simply inaccurate and misrepresent the real world. Let's face it, programmers make errors and so do software designers.
Precise results. The extreme precision (and accuracy) of simulation incorrectly gives students the impression that scientists work with the same sort of data. All a scientist has to do is ask the right question to probe the secrets of the universe. Nothing could be further from the truth, and students should not be misled.
Cartoons. The objects that students see in simulations are generally drawings and convey a cartoon-like quality. Students can be forgiven if they don't believe that what they're doing relates to the real world.
Failures. Simulated experiments always "succeed." Of course, the results are determined by an equation or algorithm and may not match real world data. Still, much learning can take place when an experiment doesn't quite work out. In a classroom, there's often not enough time to explore a failure. In virtual classes, students can look into the problem more deeply.

We've ended up with dueling professors. On one side, they argue that virtual labs have many benefits, especially for those in underserved areas. On the other, they argue that students arriving in college with no real lab experience are unprepared even for first-year, let alone second-year, science courses with their labs.

Wouldn't everyone like to have the best of both worlds? How many AP science students go on to take second-year science courses anyway? Wouldn't a one-semester lab-only course fill any gaps a student had in lab technique and safety?

I can tell you that you can have it both ways and at low cost as well as safely, efficiently, and effectively. Simply find an appropriate mix of hands-on labs (the inexpensive, safe kind) and prerecorded real experiments in a virtual setting with software that provides a highly interactive environment for collecting personal data.

My own answer can be found at www.smartscience.net. Curricula using this technology have passed College Board audits for all three AP laboratory sciences.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Science Teachers Have It Tough

2008-10-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a blog about the problems that science teachers have. You'll find it at http://halljackson.blogspot.com/2008/09/interactive-labs.html.

"Science teachers have it tough. They have one of the most costly subjects in a school to teach, yet get a very small budget."

Ms. Jackson is totally correct in this statement. If we all can assume that textbooks are a similar cost in all courses, then which courses have as much capital equipment and expendables/consumables? All right, which of those are required courses? You just have to come up with science.

Of course, science teachers reach out to free (and low cost) simulations. And, that's great!

A serious problem arises, however, when they substitute those simulations for lab experience. Some of the key reasons for lab experiences in science classes are as follows.

Understanding the nature of science.
Developing scientific reasoning.
Understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work.

That all may seem a bit abstract. However, these goals are critical for any student in a science class. Leaving a class without advancing these goals means that the time in the class was wasted.

Really! Who cares if you can list the first twenty elements in the periodic table or recite the level of taxonomic classification or name the eons, eras, and epochs of geologic time? You can look that stuff up. The real question surrounds the use of this information. And, not just use but wise use.

The three goals above are from America's Lab Report. In that same report, the National Research Council states that the typical American student's lab experience is poor. Their reasons include the lack of meeting these goals among others. They point out that in order to be a science laboratory experience, an activity must use data from the "material world." Simulations do not.

These days, science teachers can find more and more options other than simulations to provide quality lab experience to their students. One such option, the Smart Science(R) core learning system, although not free, is inexpensive and meets all of the goals of America's Lab Report as well as its definition of a science laboratory experience. Students work with real experiments at a cost of pennies per experiment. By blending inexpensive and safe hands-on experiments with these prerecorded real experiments, our overtaxed science teachers can produce great science classes and have their students leave the class understanding what science is really all about. At the same time, they can demonstrate a cost savings to their department head or principal.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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NACOL on Online Science Labs

2008-10-17T12:02:00.001-07:00

The North American Council for Online Learning has published NACOL Goals, Guidelines, and Standards for Student Scientific Investigations. I am a member of NACOL and of the committee that produced this document.

You'd expect some pretty savvy thoughts about online science labs here. After all, these are the online learning people. You do get a strong pitch for online education and the potential to build really great science courses.

Their document relies heavily on America's Lab Report published by the National Research Council. Yet, it ignores the central message of the report. After lamenting the state of science labs in education and the state of research on this subject, the report begins with a definition of a science laboratory experience (called a student science investigation, which means the same thing, in the NACOL document). The report recommendations depend upon that definition.

“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.”

The parenthetical phrase allows the use of such virtual experiences as analysis of large online scientific databases despite the emphasis on "interact directly with the material world." As long as the data come from the material world, they might form the basis for valid "laboratory experiences." If not, they do not. It's really that simple, and the report explains why.

The NACOL document, by ignoring this basic premise of America's Lab Report, devalues its discussion of the other recommendations of the report. Someone could read the entire NACOL document quite carefully and come away with two inaccurate conclusions.

1. (NOT TRUE) The NACOL document is true to America's Lab Report.

2. (NOT TRUE) Simulated labs are an excellent substitute for traditional labs.

While NACOL Goals, Guidelines, and Standards for Student Scientific Investigations provides a vigorous argument in favor of online science instruction, it omits a critical factor required to make that instruction valid and opens the door to fake simulated labs. As its sole serious defect, I would like to see it corrected as soon as possible and have communicated my opinion to NACOL in all possible ways. So far, they have not responded.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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What About Lab Kits?

2008-10-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

Several companies promote their science lab kits. Some suggest that unless you use (their) lab kits, you are providing poor science to your students. That's simply not true.

I have encountered three such firms (I'm sure there's more out there) all based in Colorado. What is their attitude toward science education and how can they help your students have a better lab experience?

Here they are.

Quality Science Labs, LLC
eScience Labs, Inc.
LabPaq

At-home science kits simply will not provide a complete science experience for students. The reasons are simple.

1. Safety.

One recommended AP Chemistry lab dissolves copper alloy samples in concentrated nitric acid. Even in a supervised and fully-equipped science lab, this experiment is dangerous. At home, you shouldn't even think about it. Besides the danger of the nitric acid, the reaction produces poisonous nitrogen oxides and should be run in a fume hood.

Homes simply are not equipped to handle this sort of experiment.

This issue is hardly unique to this particular experiment. Many chemicals are dangerous. Some experiments involve high temperatures or voltages and even radioactive materials.

Without the ability to use a wide range of equipment and materials, students have limited investigation options.

2. Cost.

The copper alloy experiment requires that you weigh the samples very precisely because you're measuring the percentage of copper in the alloys. It then requires that you dissolve them, dilute them precisely with a volumetric flask, and measure the light absorption with a spectrophotometer. Analytical balances and volumetric flasks are expensive. A spectrophotometer definitely will not be found in any lab kit due to extreme cost.

Many other experiments require expensive equipment such as microscopes, pH meters, and the like. Without this equipment, students ability to investigate may be severely limited.

Some people hold that simulations can fill in the gaps. I've dealt with that area in previous posts. Simulations (algorithmic generation of data, objects, and phenomena) absolutely cannot substitute for science lab experience.

Given that at-home labs cannot fulfill completely the goals of science lab experience, what do the science lab kit providers above say about the idea of augmenting the experience somehow?

LabPaq

Here's a headline from the web site of LabPaq.

"Created by Science Professors Because There's No Substitute for Hands-On Labs"

This sort of absolutist philosophy really has no place in the dialog regarding online education and science labs. Of course, there are substitutes. Furthermore, hands-on labs are not necessarily the best labs. Much depends on their design and other factors. For example, can the student write a passable lab report without even touching the materials? How much opportunity does the student have for experimental design? How much science can the student investigate?

eScience

Here's a quote from Nicolas Benedict of eScience.

"We can make predictions based on these models, but in reality it is only through hands-on experimentation that actual interactions can be documented."

As I interpret this quote, Dr. Benedict also eschews virtual experiences. Does that mean that he views the Mars Rover program as not being science? No one's hands are on the surface of Mars. The data come to the scientists after a rather long delay.

I would correct this statement to replace hands-on experimentation with the more reasoned wording in America's Lab Report. “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.”

As long as the data are from the material world and students use the tools, etc. of science to analyze those data, you have a true science learning experience. Hands-on, although nice, is not necessary.

Quality Science Labs

John Eschelman, the president of Quality Science Labs makes an effort to provide a total science experience and is open to using virtual experiences in conjunction with his own labs.

You won't find dogma on his web site. He simply explains why his kits save time in preparation and that they have complete lab lessons ready to use. Nowhere does he make the statement that only a hands-on lab is good science. If you are looking for lab kits, he has them along with full instructions and questions that help focus learning.

Summary

If you're going to buy a lab kit, I think that you should do so from a provider who has a reasonable attitude about the value of lab kits, someone whose goal is supporting your student(s) in learning science. Check out their sites and public pronouncements to see whether they think that only hands-on experiments are any good and whether they recognize that virtual experiments also can be great science.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Blending Virtual and Physical Experiments

2008-10-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

One complaint about virtual labs, no matter how good, is that they miss important learning experiences. While I believe that this complaint is exaggerated, it does have some merit. Mostly, virtual labs lose the kinesthetic experiences: weight, smell, texture, and so on.

With current technology, doing open-ended experimental design in a virtual setting is quite difficult if not impossible. You come much closer to this goal with "hands-on" labs - if properly designed and implemented.

For these two reasons, a full set of science lab experiences during a course should include some traditional (hands-on) labs. The open question remains: what fraction of lab experience should be virtual and what should be traditional? Note that by virtual I do not mean simulated. Simulated "labs" should be an oxymoron. You should never see "simulated" as an adjective for "lab" because simulations are not science and are not valid substitutes for science investigations.

The Smart Science(R) team has taken the approach of integrating (or "blending") virtual and "hands-on" experiments into single lab when it makes sense to do so. We have plenty of purely virtual labs as well as purely "hands-on" labs as well as the blended labs, which we refer to a hybrid labs.

We aim for a total science investigation experience that includes as much hands-on work as is reasonable for someone working at home. Teachers, schools, and districts may make changes to this system so that it more closely matches their requirements.

The resulting hybrid labs may be viewed in two ways. Either they have hands-on lab that is extended with virtual experiments, or they have a virtual lab that is extended with hands-on experiments. Remember that the virtual experiments are real. They're just prerecorded. Students take their own personal data.

In this manner, we fill the hands-on experiment gap. Due to time, safety, cost, space, and other considerations, students don't investigate fully. They may do a single experiment, for example. By providing a rich set of virtual (but real) experiments, we allow students to investigate more completely.

We also, as indicated above, fill the virtual lab gap by allowing students the opportunity to have a kinesthetic experience and to do experimental design to a greater extent than allowed within the virtual framework.

The resulting hybrid lab potentially provides a far superior learning experience to even a well-designed traditional lab. It beats typical traditional labs and simulations by a mile!

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Real Science Labs for 25 Cents

2008-10-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

Late in the 20th century, a revolution took place in communication, and we called it the Internet. Then, came Java, a language designed to take advantage of the Internet, especially recognizing that different operating systems and browsers would be used by different people for Internet access.

One of the early educational applications of Java on the Internet was the science simulation. You could find all sorts of Java applets for stuff like projectile motion and Brownian motion. Most were free. Of course, simulations of science were already available long before - even on floppy disks.

Over a decade ago, as I sought a means to use new computer technology to help improve science education, the simulations turned me off completely because they weren't science. Simulations are equations and algorithms, the stuff of mathematics and software engineering. Using a simulation to perform a "science investigation" turns out to be more like an investigation of mathematics or a stroll into the mind of a programmer. Some simulations contain serious science errors They all mislead students into believing that science is a precise endeavor without any ambiguity in analyzing results.

Furthermore, most of these simulations use Flash animations that are really cartoons and project that unreality to students.

Still, people use them. After all, they're cheap, they're safe, and sometimes they illustrate stuff that you cannot demonstrate in the classroom (very small, very large, or very dangerous).

There's about as much value to a simulation as to a video or animated book. Those are learning tools, but they are NOT science labs; they are NOT student science investigations. You may well ask, "What exactly is a science lab?" You'll find an excellent answer in America's Lab Report, written by the National Research Council and available at http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11311.

The short answer is that a science lab involves data, objects, and phenomena from the material world. Once again, you may ask, "Why is that necessary?" The answer to that question is a bit longer. America's Lab Report holds the answer. It contains seven goals for science lab experience. It says that one of the goals is special: understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work. That goal is special because only science lab experiences as defined can bring direct contact of students with the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work. Students can only achieve this goal by doing science in the real (material) world.

Other of the seven goals, such as learning scientific reasoning and understanding the nature of science, are most efficiently learned in the lab but also can be learned by other means. Still other goals, such as mastery of subject matter or teamwork, don't really require labs at all but should, nevertheless, be goals of lab experience.

If you've read this far, you may be wondering when the 25-cent labs will appear. I really couldn't explain properly without a definition of a science lab experience - the real thing, not fake simulations. You could just dismiss it all by saying that you can get simulations for very small prices.

Here's the key idea for providing really inexpensive and great science experience to students. Use prerecorded real experiments. Set up some science experiment, for example dropping a ball to find g, the Earth's gravity. Use video and still cameras, as appropriate, to film your experiment. Change the parameters of the experiment, and film it again. Keep it up until you have lots of experiments "in the can." For dropping the ball, the ball may change for each experiment. You could compare a bowling ball with a basketball, a softball, a volleyball, and so on.

The next step is really important and is a part of the patent issued to us. You write software that allows students to view the experiments and to take data interactively frame by frame. You may have to do some editing of the film to make the collecting personal data by students easier and more precise.

It can be quite expensive to do some experiments and especially do many more variations than are ever done in an ordinary classroom lab. But, you only have to do them once. Then, the cost is amortized over all of the thousands of students who will use the labs.

The primary costs of providing these labs become support, servers, and Internet access. The above is a cursory description of the experiment part of the Smart Science(R) core learning system (www.smartscience.net). We bundle multiple labs into packages that we sell for a fixed price per class or per student. For classes using 20 of these integrated instructional lab units, the cost per student could be 25 cents. It could even be lower in high-volume cases.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Get Government Out of Our Schools and Into Entrepreneurship Support

2008-10-13T09:35:00.001-07:00

We don't have to have federal government intrusion into our schools with No Child Left Behind.

However, we do have a sort of education crisis today with soaring dropout rates and very small numbers of students choosing a future in science or engineering. Most ideas for fixing our education system involve lots of time and really lots of money. We have too little of both.

Yet, we have a strong and innovative citizenry who are able to participate in entrepreneurship. Our federal government should be working in this area rather than trying to create its own bureaucracy to fix education. They can't do it. Since around 1980, the government has spent billions of dollars fixing science education; it's still poor.

It has been my joy and my pain to have built an exciting new way to deliver excellent science over the Internet. I have a patent. My associates and I have built 150 integrated instructional lab units based on our technology that cover all of the major sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, earth). We have many prestigious customers now and may actually be able to pay ourselves a very small salary soon.

I have learned that funding for education entrepreneurs is very hard to find. Consider the usual sources.

1. Venture Capital: These people are positively allergic to education business plans.

2. Angel Investors: These are hard to find and especially so with respect to education investment.

3. Foundations: Unless you're non-profit, forget it.

4. Government Grants: These have become more scarce lately. If you're not grouped with a university your chances decline. Not having a professional grant writer also lessens your chances. They require lots of bookkeeping when you get them. Finally, there's a long wait. If you fail, then it's usually another year before you can try again.

Government grants for education entrepreneurs should take priority over studies and other non-productive activities. If you have a prototype, you should be evaluated quickly and funded or not. Prototypes should be strongly encouraged.

There should be a way for government investment in education companies so that grants aren't the only option. They're doing it with banks now.

Although I like charter schools, giving them money makes little sense because the impact is so local. Our federal funds should be spent on ideas that will be quickly and broadly applicable.

I just happen to believe that my own Smart Science(R) core learning system is one such idea. I've spent ten years building this system that now is being used by such notable organizations as Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Apex Learning, K12.com, and eight state online schools. (More details another time.) Yet, I cannot find funding anywhere. The government says it supports improving education but won't fund anything except studies and committees.

It's time for our government to become the venture capitalists for businesses that we absolutely must have such as science education entrepreneurs. Why not? Taxpayer investments might even make money!

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Simulations Aren't Science

2008-10-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

I've finally had enough. I'm tired of seeing teachers use simulations as substitutes for science labs.

As a scientist, I would like to see people learn about science, not memorize definitions, formulas, and laws. The only way to learn science is to do it. Science requires investigating the real world, not some made-up world created by algorithms.

Learn science instead of learning about science.

This issue has become even more urgent lately because of the expansion of online courses. Many purveyors of online courses use simulations in their science courses in place of real science investigations or "labs." By so doing, they cheat their students of a wonderful opportunity to find out about science and to begin learning how to think as scientists do. They also are robbing our country of its science future. Basically, they are being unpatriotic.

But, many protest, science labs require expensive equipment, fancy facilities, lots of time, safety rules, and other stuff that many students don't have. What are we to do about those in poor rural areas and underserved urban neighborhoods? I've visited these locations around the country myself and know this problem. You can do great science without all of that fancy stuff. Here are the five ways in which people have provided science experience in online courses.

1. "kitchen" labs (can do at home with readily available materials)
2. investigation of large online scientific databases (like DNA)
3. remote real-time experiments (use programmable equipment, e.g. MIT's iLabs)
4. prerecorded real experiments (with highly interactive software for personal data collection)
5. simulated labs (using algorithms to generate data, phenomena, and objects)

The first four are valid. The fifth is not!

For an authority on this analysis, take time to read America's Lab Report. You can read it online for free. It's fairly long, but you can just read the executive summary. The National Research Council of the National Academies wrote it. They define a science lab experience as follows.

“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.”

Having this experience instead of simulations creates the opportunity for students to develop an "understanding of the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work." According to America's Lab Report, only the real thing allows you to achieve this crucial goal of science education.

Real experiments also allow you to understand the nature of science and to develop scientific reasoning skills better than the fake simulated labs do.

I urge everyone who cares about our future to oppose the use of simulated labs in science courses as substitutes for real labs. The first four items in the list above provide plenty of opportunity for doing science without high cost, safety problems, or lengthy times.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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