As a college professor, I am intrigued by the notion of tapping into the passions that learners bring with them into the classroom. While I agree that it is important for teachers to understand what interests and motivates our students, it is also important to help them develop the tools to learn effectively in situations within which they feel no or minimal levels of passion. What strategies can we share to help students get interested in topics that seem to be boring or irrelevant? It is easy for students to learn in areas related to their passions, but we also have a duty to help them succeed in domains outside their zone of passion.

NOAA has a project Science on a Sphere, that was demonstrated at the recent supercomputing conference in New Orleans and in fact is on the cover of “Computational Science, Foundation for Innovation. from the coalition for academic scientific computation at http://www.wasc.org

The contact person is Sue Fradkin

Bonnie Bracey Sutton

We started school August 18th and I have accomplished 3 of your 5 suggestions. I start the year showing my students a model of DNA and then they complete a form called “I am unique…” that is all about them from favorite ice cream flavor to favorite videogame to career interests. I use this info all year long to connect and engage. Next I asked my students to find a cell they are interested in, build a model of it, and prepare to tell the class an interesting story about it (one student chose the oil eating bacteria that have shown up in the Gulf since the spill). Today my students used their stopwatches on their cell phones to help gather data for a speed experiment with retractable toy cars. I gave them the cars, weights, tape, and two meter sticks, they did the rest. They made excellent line graphs of their data on the online site called Create-a-Graph. I’d like to complete your other two suggestions before the end of the month so please post resources for the “relaxation” tools (a Dalcroze roll call method would be great if you know of one). I signed up for epals but I am also toying with the idea of an exchange through the virtual world of Quest Atlantis, one way or another we will be in contact with other students across the globe. I would also like my students to use their cell phones to participate in a GPS Your Trees with kids in Kenya. Keep up the great work, I look forward to reading your books next summer. Please let us know which online free games you like for math and science and what do you think about World of Warcraft at School http://wowinschool.pbworks.com/ . If only computers fell from the sky into school computer labs, what fun learning we could have!

Similar outreach?

I was introduced to real science in Virginia, at the Science museum when they did the Kepone outreach.
I don’t remember the incident, but industry financed outreach because of the Kepone in the James River.

I am embarassed to say I still have the book. The state of Virginia created the opportunity for teachers to come
and learn real science for a week and we were given resources to take home to my classroom.

It was magic in changing my understanding of hands on science. Most of the class returned for another symposium and most of the other teachers got PhD’s in
areas of science. I did not choose to leave the classroom.

I was so excited to teach physics at the University of Virginia to other teachers as a part of the work.

On a personal note it was when science became real to me.

Just a thought.

Thanks Marc for making me remember when I learned to love science.

Bonnie

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuHcppi0TQg. Pay special attention to the almost-failing student’s response to technology that teaches.

This particular technology (in which I have a stake) may not be the best possible today; it may not even be the best available, but it really, really works.

I’m not criticizing Mr. Prensky’s suggestions, just his quick dismissal of technological approaches. Just because you haven’t seen it yet doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

The Texas standards for high school physics have about 250 topics. With around 180 school days per year, that’s about 1.5 topics per day.

The national curriculum is more mellow but the topics aren’t broken down into such small pieces.

As I read through them, I have to ask, “Why should anyone have to learn all of this?”