Outside Reading - Article Review Science Autobiography Biography of a Scientist  Interview Assignment Consumer Product Testing Long Term Research Projects (Experimental Design) Assignment

Outside Reading - Article Review

Lots of people appreciate science even though they are not professional scientists. They read magazines, go to museums, and have science related hobbies. My goal with this assignment is to encourage you to be more attentive and interested in the science around you. In essence, I am asking you to do the kinds of things done by people who like science.
 
A few times during the semester you are required to summarize something related to science. These will take the form of short reviews . These entries should include a reference so that I, or another class member, could easily find the article.
 
The majority of the reviews you hand in can--and should--be based on things people who like science might do frequently. Only a few times during the semester does this assignment require much extra effort on your part to find material to discuss. Do you regularly read a newspaper? If so, simply write about a science article that caught your attention. Do you ever look through science related magazines? Write about something you read. Did you watch a science related program on TV, or have a science story on the news catch your attention? These are all things you will write about for this assignment.
 
Your reviews will have two parts. First, you should summarize your article, TV show, etc. in three sentences. Second, discuss how the article connects to other science courses you have had. This should be about a paragraph. The entire assignment should be equivalent to approximately 1/2 a typed page in length.
 
Each assignment should be sent via e-mail. Clearly label which of the weekly assignments you are fulfilling, as well as the source you are using. Also be sure that your name is within the body of the e-mail.
 
You will do 6 reviews from the following list. You may only do one review per category.
 
• a newspaper article related to science (e.g., LA Times, Long Beach Press Telegram, etc.). Particularly recommended are articles from Science Times, which is a section of each Tuesday's New York Times.
• an article from Discover magazine (available in the main library and many newstands)
• a science related television show (e.g., NOVA, Scientific American Frontiers, Newton's Apple, Bill Nye).
• a summary of attending an AFSE meeting or an area science education workshop/conference (see me or AFSE website for details)
• a science article you found in the hallway of one of the science buildings on campus.
• an ERIC search about articles you find related to one of the units we have done or will do during class. Choose an article from an NSTA journal (Science and Children, Science Scope, or The Science Teacher), and be sure it's not already in the course reader.This assignment should be done after our class session devoted to ERIC searches You will do the ERIC search and review the article.
• An article and/or website related to the recent Mars Missions OR a review of NASA educational materials
Save my replies, and keep track of what you have handed in. This assignment makes up 10% of your total grade.

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Science Autobiography Assignment

Write a two to four page paper (typed, double spaced) about your personal experiences with science through teachers, friends, parents, museums, magazines, and other sources. After writing this section, write another section where you tell me how you would distinguish science (as a method, or way people understand the world) from other ways that people understand the world (personal experience, religion, art, humanities, etc.). I want your thoughts, not something copied from a book or dictionary. This assignment does not have "right" and "wrong" answers. Students who show me they've thought about their experiences, and write about them clearly and succinctly, will receive a high grade on this assignment. I'm not looking for any particular kinds of responses.

Rationale
Before you complete your science requirement, it is worthwhile for you to consider your science experiences and what science means to you. Thinking about where you have been and where you are now will help you synthesize what you have learned. Being conscious of your science background and its effects on you will help you make decisions about how to teach science when it is your classroom.

Getting Started
Think about your experiences with school science, scientists, science in the media, and science teachers. It doesn't matter how limited or extensive your experiences are, or how positive or negative they are. It only matters that you describe them honestly and thoughtfully.
 

• Relate early memories of school science and your reactions. Write about your experiences with school science up to now. Think about what the study of science involves, to you. Consider what you've grown up to believe about scientists-who are they and what do they do? What does the media say about science? When have you used scientific processes or information in your everyday life? How has understanding science helped or hindered you in life outside of school? Reflect on these in formulating your personal definition of science.
• Has science ever been a way of knowing for you (as opposed to, say, a collection of facts)?
• Discuss science that has changed you in some way.
• Explain how and why your course experiences have been so poor. Has science ever frustrated you? In what ways?
• Alternatively, if you've tended to get higher grades or had more positive experiences in science, share your strategies with us.

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Biography of a Scientist

The purpose of this assignment is for you to become familiar with a scientist and her/his contributions to science.The following areas need to be addressed. Find the information and be ready to enter the information into an Inspiration biography map. Your conecept map will answer the following questions about your scientist:
 

Background Information Name: Birth/Death: Discipline:	Ethnicity: Country:
Education (formal & informal): Scientific Achievements: Scientific Collaborators (if applicable): Personal Life: Historical Context: Barriers to Scientific Career (if applicable): Why did you choose this person?

There are several books in the Science Education library and my own library which provide background information about under represented populations in science. I will bring these to class as they may provide a starting point for you. There are several websites that can help you as well. Please see me if you are having problems finding an appropriate scientist. I would like you to find someone to whom you can relate - it could be someone of your race or gender, someone who has similar interests, someone you admire, or someone who studies in a field of interest to you.  You will not be writing a full-blown paper but you should have gathered sufficient information to serve as a skeleton framework for a paper. Be prepared to share a brief account of this person's life & accomplishments in class. Be sure that your data sheet (above)  includes complete references.

Some ideas to start your thinking To help you plan your assignment, you may want to read a Consumer Reports article (old issues in classroom, newer issues in library's current periodicals). Watch commercials or read print ads to see what claims are made about the product. Discuss your preliminary plans with me.

You will work with a partner, although your papers will ultimately be quite different from one another. Of the two  qualities you will test, one will be something you do uniquely. The other quality you test will be something your partner also tests. For this shared quality, you may use the same procedures, or you may each use your own procedures. Either way, you should perform your tests separately from your partner. I'll give you some class time to talk to each other, though you will probably need to spend time outside of class together as well.

Here's an example (note: you're not allowed to test paper towels for this assignment :-) Students A and B are working together, testing paper towels. Student A tests for how quickly each towel brand will absorb liquid, and how much liquid each brand will soak up (regardless of towel abosrption rate). Student B tests how strong each towel is (how long you can scrub with a towel before it disintegrates), and how much liquid each brand will soak up. Both partners tested how much liquid each brand will soak up, while also testing a unique product quality.

The following steps may help you plan your work:

While determining the product you will test, find someone else in the class testing the same product. You will be asked to make use of their data in coming to your conclusions, even though each of you will complete your own, unique assignment, working individually.

1. List the important characteristics of the product.

2. Think about how you could test those characteristics to see what makes for the "best" product. You must choose a product for which you can determine at least three criteria you could test. That's difficult, if not impossible, for some products. For example, when considering soda pops, once you get past testing for best taste, it'd difficult to find other criteria worth examining. You must test at least two broad characteristics, and at least one of the tests must involve manipulating and controlling variables. Tests should be repeated multiple times to increase confidence in the findings. A taste test or survey must be completed by at least 40 people.

3. Meet with your instructor to discuss your preliminary plans for the procedures you'll follow. This is important.

4. Select at least four different brands of the same product (this is a place where you will be controlling for variables).

5. Test each brand for each characteristic. Record your raw data.

6. Record the results of each test in an easily readable table (or graph).

7. Meet with your partner. Bring him/her a copy of your data. Discuss your tentative conclusions, if you like.

8. Prepare a written report of three to five pages in which you:

• Introduce what you tested and the rationale for the characteristics you decided to test;
• Explain the procedures you followed to test your product's characteristics, with special emphasis on how and why you controlled variables and tried to be objective in collecting data. (This is the most important part of this paper, by far.)
• Evaluate your work critically. Discuss your work's limitations. You are students, with limited budgets and time. This will result in work that might be ultimately less valid than what you'd produce if you had more time and money to spend on your project. Think about how you might do the project differently if you were less limited by time or money considerations; use that as a starting point for your thoughts. There may be factors (or variables) beyond your control that might affect your outcomes; discuss these. Also, think about factors that might bias your outcomes, and discuss these as well. Apply what you've learned reading Carey's book.
• A copy of the table summarizing your results (not counted as part of the three to five pages).
• Your conclusions---synthesizing all the disparate tests you've done, what did you decide was the "best" product among those you tested? How did you choose the "winner"? Compare your partner's data or conclusions with yours, esp. for the test you both did. Briefly discuss similarities or differences and how they affected your final evaluations of the product you tested.

Click here for more information about what I will look for when grading this paper.
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In this assignment you will apply the experimental and observational skills used by all scientists as you attempt to answer a question while doing an investigation. You will devise a question which you would like to know more about. Note that this is to be a question that you can research doing real-world investigation, or analyzing real data, as opposed to doing library research. You will then design and implement investigations to find the answer(s) to your questions(s). Finally, you will analyze and interpret what you have found and create a way to communicate your findings.

This assignment takes longer than most. You must begin several weeks before it's due. This assignment counts more than any other toward your final course grade.

The following steps will help you plan your work:

1. Brainstorm a list of topic related questions you could investigate. Want some ideas, just to get you started? Here is a list of questions students recently investigated for this assignment.

You can use data bases of existing data for this assignment. Here's a list of some databases you might want to use.

2. Narrow the list to those questions which you are going to explore.

3. Refine your researchable question(s) to a concise statement explaining exactly what you want to find out. You will hand this in.

4. Design an investigation to address your question.

5. (opt.) Meet me to discuss your progress so far.

6. Carry out a pilot version of your investigation. A pilot test is a way to test your experimental ideas before investing large amounts of time and energy. Students often make small changes at this point that make their project a little easier or better. Record your raw data, and briefly write up what you did. You'll hand this in. Then, meet me again to discuss your progress.

7. Carry out your investigation. Record your data. Begin interpreting your results, trying to understand what they mean--what tentative conclusions you can begin to draw at that point.

8. As you interpret your results, consider what the next step should be in answering your original question(s) and extending your investigation. Think in terms of what you still need to find out, or how you could go about knowing with more confidence whether your tentative conclusions are accurate. This would usually involve (a) testing the validity of a pattern you observed, or (b) testing tentative explanations for your results by making & testing a prediction based on one or more explanations. Alternatively, consider new questions to investigate that hadn't occurred to you before doing your study. Feel free to discuss this step with me; you may also wish to keep me informed of your work through periodic e-mail messages. I can help.

9. Summarize your data in an easily read table.

10. Prepare a written report that includes:

• an introduction and background to your question
• outline the origin of your question, and list reasons for conducting the test or experiment, i.e., how does your procedure help address your question?
• a description of your procedure
• a data summarizing table
• a written summary of your data--clear and brief. If your data table expresses your results completely, this section will be very short. Please avoid repeating the same information. Just tell me anything I need to know about your data that doesn't come through in the table.
• Your analysis and conclusions, including detailed discussion about how you would continue the study (and why). This section of the paper also includes discussion about assumptions underlying your investigation, or other critical examination of your results and conclusions. Specifically:
• --Evaluate your study in light of the information and criteria you learned about in Carey regarding study aspects like sample size, variable control, and bias. You may want to use the directions from chapter 2 exercises in the book to evaluate own study, including discussion about what a statistically significant study would look like. If you find things you wish you had done differently, let me know.
• --Discuss how your study would continue if you were to continue investigating the general topic you began for this research. Tell me about how you would use your data or conclusions from this research as the starting point for another, related study. New studies often involve testing to see whether conclusions hold for a larger, more general realm, or testing for the validity of data explanations by making and testing predictions: "If my explanation is accurate, then I would predict ... and I test my prediction by ..."
• The report must by typed (double spaced, 12 pt. type, 1 inch margins) and approximately six pages in length. Click here for more information about what I will look for when grading this paper.

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It's important for you, as a teacher, to realize that children think differently than you do. You probably recognize this, at least in theory, but this assignment will help to really drive home the point. And because children see the world differently from you, instructional approaches that you like-methods that have traditionally helped you-may not necessarily be what is best for them.

1. Before you begin, review the information about Piaget's theory of stages of cognitive development and the descriptions of Piagetian tasks found at the end of your course reader.

2. Select at least three tasks to do with children and assemble the materials you will need. Practice the script of each task with the materials. Practice with adults or someone who will not be part of assignment.

3. Interview at least three children between the ages of 5 and 12 on an individual basis, according to the script. You may not interview your own children, siblings, or other relatives. (It's very difficult to be objective interviewing people to whom you are close!) Prepare a form ahead of time so that you need only record the children's responses. Show me the form before you begin. (This helps assure that you will do the interviews properly.)

4. Prepare a written, typed (double spaced, 12 pt type, 1 inch margins) report of at least two pages plus the interview questions and responses. Your report should contain the following sections:

• brief introduction;
• interview questions and responses on your interview recording sheets, i.e., your raw handwritten data;
• briefly discuss where you practiced the tasks, and what you learned from the practice session that helped you later;
• describe the setting where you performed your tasks;
• table summarizing children's performance on each task and each child's age; and
• What did you learn from the assignment? What are the implications for your teaching? Why should someone teaching elementary school science care about this?

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Looking for internet sites with real data for your long term research project?
(see also some of Leigh Haefners links below):

1. Sun and Moon Data for One Day by U.S. Location

2. Phases of the Moon (1990-2005)

3. The GLOBE Program Check out "Maps & Graphs" and "Data Access" NOTE: For Students, GLOBE provides the opportunity to learn by: -Taking scientifically valid measurements in the fields of atmosphere, hydrology, soils, and land cover/phenology - depending upon their local curricula -Reporting their data through the Internet -Creating maps and graphs on the free interactive Web site to analyze data sets -Collaborating with scientists and other GLOBE students around the world

4. BRIDGE - Ocean Sciences Education Teacher Resource Center: Click on "Data Port" and then "On-Line Data" on Sidebar for Real World-Real Time Data that you or students can use....There is an AMAZING amount of organized data to be found here...

5. NOAA Climate Data

6. CDC Public Health Data

7. National Center for Health Statistics - Inludes ability to tabulate data by State and form your own data charts/tables

8. International Data Base - The International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world.

9. NIH Molecular Biology Sequence Databases

10.  National Statistics Online  This is the UK's home of official statistics, reflecting Britain's economy, population and society at national and local level. Summary stories and detailed data releases are published here free of charge.
 

Here are some other sites with real data available:

• Model rocketry and thrust data
• Water bottle rocketry links
• National Climatic Data Center (especially recommended)
• Real Time Weather Data
• L.A. Weather Data
• NOAA Tide Data
• Tidal Data Links
• Earthquake Data
• San Andreas Fault Zone info/history
• Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Data Center
• Nutrition Analysis Tool
• Fast Food Data
• World Bank Health Data by Country
• Cancer Mortality Data