XPERIMANIA I - PETROCHEMISTRY AND MATERIALS & XPERIMANIA II - THE BENEFITS OF CHEMISTRY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
8 Teachers discussed and exchanged ideas about the best implementation and use in their classrooms of Xperimania I ( Petrochemistry and materials experiments) and of Xperimania II (Chemistry in everyday life).
Carlos Cunha gave a very interesting explanation about how he tested the activity « Watch it bounce » « Energy efficiency ». Carlos tells us that his students enjoyed it and he thinks that the challenge factor was very important as a motivation for better work.
Mariana Buican explains how she has experimented the practices : « Taste the Difference « , « Watch the electricity » , « Water resistance » and « Lightweight » with students from 9 to 11 years old and she has tried to extend this project for kindergarden children. Mariana is interested in using ITEC for her lessons and she would like to share it with her colleagues.
Irma Ben Moshe wants to perform « Taste the difference » . This experiment very suitable for her sunny country , is also related to water problems solutions. She wants to have some suggestions about that experiment. Irma has also tested "Resistance to acids" and "Resistance to bases". She thinks that these experiments are both dangerous to be performed by students. Irma informs us that in her national science curriculum there are only few experiments in combustion mainly because of safety reasons. She would be glad to receive new ideas and experiments.
Attila Gören has tested " Watch it launch" activity with 15/16 years old students. He shares with us the main steps of the implementation and if anyone is interested to get the material (worksheet, vídeos, …) , he can send them in Portuguese .
Carmen Diez Calzada experimented with twenty students (15 years old) the practice : « Water resistance » and she has planned to repeat the practice with other students. She will incorporate new vocabulary in different languages and seek information from industries that manufacture waterproof material.
Lidia Ristea has studied with her students the fuel combustion chemistry . She tells us : « Making fuels such experiences makes the students more responsible, makes them be more careful especially if used at home firing such fuels, they are exposed to danger »
Aiki Jõgeva had a chemistry lesson on acids with 14/15 years old pupils . The students were so interested and excited that Aiki wants to try it again and compare the resistance to both acids and basis. Aiki is planning to use more Xperimania materials.
Stella Magid wants to increase the interest of students in chemistry in the middle school thanks to the Xperimania practices as « Taste the difference »
SKOOOL PRACTICES
Seemed to work best for pupils aged 12-15, where they could work for example by pairs. They found Charter Online and Number line Online enjoyable and it gave them new ideas and new ways of thinking mathematical problems. Also coordinates& Graphing and 2D shape & charting was used. For primary pupils (test group aged 9-10) tasks were too difficult, although Sprint Tool could be used by them successfully.
Sensor Adventure
This practice could be integrated with several other subjects, such as Environmental studies, English, Ecological thinking. It worked with different age groups and it was easy to spice up by teachers. It was mainly used by pupils between 9-14 years. Pupils enjoyed it a lot. It gave great opportunity for discussions and projects about alternative energy and sustainable Earth. Also pupils learnt about different job opportunities and what they actually do (physics, chemists, biologist). This practice wasn´t about mathematical problem-solving but it made pupils think about the future and care for it.
Skoool Football
This practice consisted of two parts; building up the team and play the game. The first part was about nutrition, health care, injuries and heart rate and the second about solving mathematical problems and finding the rule behind each problem (number patterns, exchange rate, ankles). Older pupils (13-15) could play it individually but younger ones (9-10) needed a lot of help. Most pupils enjoyed it, but some found it too difficult. It can be played as a game to score the points, but teachers must be careful that pupils don´t cheat by answering the same questions again.
CREATING PROJECTS IN THE SCRATCH ENVIRONMENT:
- Makes students active participants in the learning process
- Increases their sense of ownership in the learning process
- Helps them to realize their share in the success -> higher involvement
- Increases the scope for feedback control of the results obtained
- Provides opportunities for collaboration and peer review
- Encourages pupils to think outside the box
- Leads to other ideas and the need to create new projects
Three basic principles of environmental Scratch are "Think”, “think &share" and “Imagine, program, share”. Scratch offers a Scratch Online Community (scratch.mit.edu) which allows you to share your Scratch projects, to get more materials and ideas.
Children tend to move between the four main roles :
- Passive user viewing the page, viewing the projects and comment them.
- Active user: looking at projects and evaluate their comments.
- Passive creator: create projects, sometimes inspired by other projects from the site, but do not feel the need to share their work with others online.
- Active maker: is not only looking at the site, but also contributes to it
The teacher will ensure that before the first hour Scratch was installed in all the computers.
Initial discussion: Have the students already done some programming? Explain all the programs on the computer, and that all of these have been programmed by someone.
Motivation: scratch.mit.edu
Let them browse the various projects and play games. Explain that the games are also created by children of their age, and that in a few weeks they will also be able to do something similar.
Introduce the Scratch environment (range commands Scripts section, Scene, People), basic principles (cat that says what to do with statements written on cards, using arbitrary commands-move them into the script, etc.).
At the end of lessons to help students to register for scratch.mit.edu.
ELECTRONIC DICE
First of all many teachers heard about this practice but they did not know how to get the assembly kits.
Here again for everyone who is still wondering:
Go to the InGenious website, fill out a form and you will get one package that consists of 25 kits and a manual.
If you want to have 50 or 75 kits, write an e-mail to Evita.
A good idea is to split the project in 2 parts:
1 - 2 lessons "theory" (binary system, history, etc) and 4 lessons "practice" (soldering).
The most difficult thing is soldering the ICs onto the circuit board because of the narrow space (and the lack of experience).
Another challenge is getting the appropriate soldering equipment. Maybe it's possible to find a sponsor, who could support us for free delivering the right soldring equipment.
The next problem is, that in some countries the subject electronic doesn't fit into the curriculum.
It would be great if inGenious could provide us with more activities like this.
Time to Wrap Up...