Science Methods Blog

Week 14 - Greenhouses Gases/Albedo Effect methane gas Christinelmiller, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Introduction When we look at the greenhouse effect, what you think of? In my elementary schooling, I thought that this effect acted exactly like a greenhouse, with parts of the atmosphere acting as the "glass" for Earth. As I developed my scientific knowledge, I learned about methane and carbon dioxide, but just knew that they contributed to the greenhouse effect. That is as far as I know about the greenhouse effect. But what is the albedo effect? How does "global warming" work? What is really happening? We started off by discussing our interviews on global warming with our elders. This was a fairly interesting discussion as some elders (as expected) denied, while some took this as a serious threat. I interviewed my roommate, as he is older than me, and I thought we it would be interesting to hear from a ...

Week 13 - Melting Ice News/Introduction For this week in Science Methods, we explored the lesson plan from last week that we were asked to critique. This was a nice way to explore the idea of climate change from a conceptual level. Being able to think about what we did, and how relevant this was to our current understanding of teaching science. One such think I enjoyed about the lesson was that this helped me engage with the material because of its relevancy . Because we looked at an actual issue in our communities, this helped me take a deeper look into the science of climate change. This lab experience helped me reflect on how I want to help my students learn science.  We also discussed teaching and learning in academia. A current problem is how we have moved into this methodology of "teaching to the test," rather than teaching for understanding. As a result, we lag behind our peers. If we were to take approaches like the SWH Approach, we can narrow the gap. This ...

Week 12 - Intro to Climate Change News/Introduction This will be a short intro because we had our geology quiz! But we started off by discussing the documentary  Before the Flood. We learned many things on climate change and how our actions have contributed to the rise in greenhouse gases (methane and carbon dioxide). One contributing factor has to do with the denial of climate change, despite evidence showing.  For our lab investigation, we looked at NASA's Images of Change, and were shocked at some of the images. During this time, we asked about questions that students would ask. But these images were shocking! During this time we also discussed the idea of climate versus weather and came up with an important distinction - weather is a daily measure, while climate is a measure based on the weather for the last 30 years.  The main part of our investigation was looking at the Iowa goldfinch. Is the goldfinch in danger? We looked at weather data at different regions of Iow...

Week 11: Sand, Geodes, Erosion river bank erosion Courtesy of: Mick Garratt, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/565767 News/Introduction We started this week with a quick pedagogical reflection on the sweater articles that we read last week. A big question that we have to ask is how does this apply to teaching and learning? It is important that we let students explore topics to help them with their scientific understanding. For the first part of our lab experience, we looked at sand collected from different sources through telescopes: We then looked at geodes for the second part of today's lab experience. We learned about Archimedes Law with respect to geodes. (W(air)/W(air)-W(water)). This is an equation for specific gravity. For geodes, if the specific gravity of the geode in question is less than 2.7, the geode is hollow. The lower the specific gravity, the more hollow the geode is. If the specific gravity is 2.7 or more, the geode is not hollow.  My partner and I picked a rock, ...

Week 10 - The Rock Cycle The Rock Cycle from:  http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/msese/earthsysflr/rock.html Introduction Discussing Assessments We started off our lab section by discussing the issue of assessment. When we look at assessment, we have shifted from the standard "learn the material, take a test" to formative and summative assessment. We had to think about how we do assess our students? I believe that formative assessment is the better route to go because this allows for us as teachers to see what our students know. This helps us plan our lessons and also helps us find possible lines of student inquiry. When we also look at assessment, there are inherent dangers in using percentages. What if one student shows growth? Even if that student scores low but shows growth in their progress, is it fair that they still receive a lower score? Across time, grades have skewed higher, this is due to the habit from the Vietnam War era in order to avoid being drafted. Convection ...

Week 9 - Geologic Time Introduction For this week in Science Methods, we talked about the reading Activitymania  and how problematic teaching in science can become when we repeatedly have students do activity after activity. In this science model, are students really learning science? How does this approach really benefit student inquiry, which leads to scientific understanding? Us, as teachers, need to think about how we need to not be in control all of the time. Letting students take control of the lesson is perfectly fine. For our introduction to geology, we learned about how the presidential election of 2012 was impacted by geology. In the Civil War Era, many of the plantations were located in the south due to the fertile land. After the Civil War ended, many African-Americans stayed in the south. Today, the area is heavily democratic, and helped contribute to Obama's re-election. For our investigation, we were tasked with finding out when specific events on Earth happened: Hum...