It looks like Stephanie (ScienceGeekGirl) is not here at the Winter AAPT meeting. I clearly can't fill her AAPT blogging shoes, but I did see one talk that I wanted to mention.
In the session on training physics teachers, I listened to the following short presentation:
Ramps & Pathways: An inquiry-based Approach to Physical Science - L. Escalada and B. Zan
I am not going to paste the abstract, let me just summarize the talk.
Essentially, the Center of Early Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa has a program for very young children. Basically, they give the kids some cove molding, marbles and some blocks and let them play.
The kids (or in-service teachers) get to build stuff to achieve some specific result. A very simple example: what would you have to do to get the marble to move without touching it? Or how would you get the marble and track to turn?
Why is this awesome? First, let me say why it is not awesome (because someone will probably say this). The students are going to get the wrong idea. They are going to get the idea that in order for an object to move, it must have a force on it. You might as well teach them that the Earth is flat while you are at it.
Ok. Now we have that out of the way, why is this awesome. Let me just list some ways:
- Simple stuff. There are no computers, no fancy electronics or even fancy specialized tracks. Just marbles and cove molding. Who doesn't have some marbles (or ball bearings? it's all ball bearings these days). Oh, cove molding is apparently some type of ceiling molding that and a nice grove for marbles to roll down. The other thing you would need is blocks. Or not blocks. Really you can use whatever you want to incline these "tracks". Simple is good.
- There are essentially no instructions. Especially for kids, instructions just suck the fun and creativity right out the room. There isn't a 'right' way to do something.
- Kids get to build ideas. What makes the marble move? How do they know the answer? They know the answer because they did it themselves. They are the masters of their own knowledge. They were not told the answer, and they did not read the answer in a book. This is one of the biggest problems that older students have to overcome (especially in inquiry courses). These kids can to practice real inquiry.
So there you go. I thought it was a cool idea. It seems to be successful. Students get practice building ideas. If the ideas are completely correct - that is ok. At least they are building ideas. If I find an online version of this talk, I will add a link.
