Science Apps from Tinybop

Like many of the strong educational app suites available today, the spark that turned into Tinybop came when the CEO was searching for apps for his own son and came up empty handed. Often, digital tools can be fun and engaging for children but lack educational rigor. However, there are several strong ed Tech companies that have set out to change that by creating tools that are more than simple busywork. One such company that  is radically changing the landscape of science education is Tinybop.

The Explorer Library offered by Tinybop provides students with whimsically interactive ways for kids to engage with basic science concepts. Tinybop explains it best, by saying that in these apps, “kids play and learn by diving into big ideas, seeing how things work and making connections about the world they live in.” If English isn’t your first language that is okay, Tinybop releases many of their apps in over 50 languages to ensure that learners of all backgrounds can access their incredible content.

The Human Body app allows students to explore the skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems in a highly interactive manner. Using your iPhone’s camera, children can watch pupils dilate and learn how we send messages through to our brain. Meanwhile, in the Plants app, students will master life cycles and explore different environments and habitats. Students can travel across time and explore the earth’s layers in the Earth app, or understand mechanics by conducting their own experiments in the Simple Machines App.

Beyond the applications, the Tinybop website offers additional resource materials to extend the learning beyond the digital space. Using the educational handbooks students can read more about the area of science they are mastering and glean answers to some of their burning questions. Again, like the apps, each handbook is produced in several languages. If you are interested in knowing more about the benefits of these apps for promoting inquiry and scientific learning, you can review the company’s One Sheet. To keep the science learning going, Tinybop has curated some of their favorite resources in their Loves section of their website. The apps and additional resources are worth exploring to help any budding scientist explore the world around them.

Breakthrough Junior Challenge

There do not seem to be any shortages of exciting educational challenges lately. Our previous blog discussed the upcoming Global Math Challenge, sponsored by Sony Global Education. Also coming up is the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, another international competition. Contestants ages 13 to 18 have the opportunity to create short videos explaining a mathematical or scientific concept. Prize money will go to the winner as well as to his or her school, with a top individual prize of $250,000.

This initiative is supported by Breakthrough Prizes along with Khan Academy, a resource we often recommend to our students. Khan Academy offers instructional videos and practice exercises that students can use to bolster their understanding and skills. A contest encouraging students to create their own videos turns this learning modality on its head and offers a unique opportunity for rich academic engagement and creativity. Submissions are being accepted through October 7th and the winning video will be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel on November 8th.

TED-Ed Brings the Periodic Table to Life

Working with Dmitri Mendeleev's brilliant periodic table of elements, first published in 1864, has become a groan-inducing task for many students today. The organization of elements into a succinct and useful table was ground-breaking, and even more impressive was Mendeleev 's foresight: He left blank spaces on the table where he imagined elements would go when they were eventually discovered (and he was right!). However, the fascinating history of the table is often lost on frustrated students who find studying it boring and memorizing the properties of all those elements next to impossible.

Rather than memorizing, we suggest that students endeavor to understand the properties of the elements instead. And thanks to a partnership between TED-Ed and Periodic Videos, it's easy to do just that.

Periodic Videos is a series made by a team from the University of Nottingham. It is led by the star of the videos, an eccentric, bespectacled professor with a huge mane of white hair named Dr. Martyn Poliakoff. Actually, as of December 2014, he is Sir Martyn Poliakoff, having been knighted for his contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry. In collaboration with TED-Ed, Periodic Videos has made a short video lesson for each element in the periodic table). Some, like the video for krypton, are just over a minute long.

                                       

Others, like the video for scandium, take more than seven minutes. The lessons intersperse informational tidbits shared by Sir Poliakoff with experiments by his team that illustrate the elements' properties, bringing the periodic table to life. High school and college students and even chemistry-minded, precocious middle school students will enjoy this fascinating and helpful resource.

We would be remiss not to spread the word about the Periodic Videos YouTube channel  as well. If hydrogen bubbles that burst into fireballs or videos with titles like "Chicken in Acid Conclusion" (in which Sir Poliakoff discusses the results of an experiment in which chicken legs were dipped in hydrochloric and sulfuric acid) don't pique your interest, we're not sure what will.

    

Agricultural Science for Kids

There is something about summer that makes even the most resolute city folks think about farms, growing fruits and vegetables, and rolling fields that seem to go on forever. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service has just the ticket for sparking kids' interest in matters of farming, noting on a website geared for children and their parents and teachers that "agriculture is more than just cows and pigs on the farm."

The Agricultural Research Service is the chief research arm of the U.S.D.A. and employs some 2,100 scientists at 100 locations nationwide, including a few outside the United States.

The site features a "cool careers" section which allows kids to explore the many kinds of scientists who work in the field of agriculture, from chemists and horticulturists to hydrologists and nematologists (scientists who study worms). There is a "for teachers" section with an extensive list of resources and classroom activities, educational puzzles and crosswords to print, and a separate section on science projects (including ideas for agricultural focused projects and how to set up a successful project). 

Teachers may want to use the site to help them plan for the coming year and parents may want to spark their children's interests in connecting with the science behind the bounty at their local farmers' market. It's chock-full of information and ideas and a great way to get kids involved in this important aspect of the world around them. 

Great Sources for Frontloading Videos – Part 1

One of our favorite strategies here at the Yellin Center is frontloading. Frontloading is a great way to boost comprehension in almost all learners, and especially in students who struggle with attention and comprehension. The principle is simple: A preview of a concept, in which a learner is exposed to some of the most important ideas, tends to help students understand and absorb the information when they’re presented with more thorough instruction later. For example, if a student reads a short summary of a science chapter before reading the chapter itself, she tends to understand the complicated ideas in the chapter more easily. She knows, for example, which information is most important. She also has a sense of where the chapter is taking her as she reads and so can more easily build a schema in her mind.

Frontloading can take many forms, but one of our favorite ways to frontload is to take advantage of the treasure trove of information available on the internet. Videos are a great way to frontload for lots of reasons: they’re visual, engaging, move fairly quickly, and hold students’ attention. We want to share some great sources for frontloading videos, all of which are available, for free, on dedicated YouTube channels. Not only are the videos below great sources for information about physics and earth science, they’re all humorous and are characterized by quick but precise explanations and explanatory visuals, too. Students who spend a few minutes watching a video preview before they attempt to read a textbook chapter or attend the next day’s lecture on the same topic will more readily understand and remember the relevant information.

MinutePhysics – middle and high school

As the name suggests, this channel hosts a series of videos that explain topics important in physics, such as gravity, wave/particle duality, the mechanics of the sun, and even Schrodinger’s cat. At the time of this writing, there were 123 videos available, though new ones are added all the time. Most videos are between one and two minutes long.

MinuteEarth – middle and high school

Just like MinutePhysics, this channel is a gold mine for students learning earth science and geology. Viewers can learn about the properties of sand, how trees survive winter, where Earth’s water came from, and other topics, all in less than three minutes per video. So far the channel has 33 videos, but their collection is growing.

Stay tuned for a follow-up post in which we’ll share other favorite video sources!

Picmonic Uses Mnemonics to Make Science Memorable

Science, especially at the higher levels, can be especially challenging for students to learn. There’s much terminology to recall, and concepts are often so abstract that many learners struggle to keep up. Enter Picmonic (picture + mnemonic), an insightful and creative way to make seemingly arbitrary information truly memorable.

Picmonic uses an audiovisual method for teaching science. Although there is material for K-8th grader students, Picmonic specializes in medical content, making it a fantastic resource for students preparing for the MCAT or actually enrolled in medical school courses. Here’s how it works: Each concept is represented by a detailed, cartoonish picture depicting all of the important aspects. The relationship between the picture and the concept is tough to discern at first, but audio narration takes students through the different parts of the picture, explaining how each part of the image connects with real scientific concepts.

For instance, an 8th-grade-level card with a typically wacky tableau teaches about Charles Darwin and how he developed the theory of natural selection. The 80-second narration begins on the left, where a dolphin balances a cherry on its nose. “Cherry dolphin, Charles Darwin,” explains the narration. Atop the cherry is a British flag, to cue the memory that Charles Darwin was English. Next to the dolphin is an island, shaped like a golden goose. (“Golden goose, Galapagos.”) A bearded man is sitting cross legged with a book called Natural Selection on his lap. He isn’t wearing any clothes; this “natural outfit,” explains the narration, is to remind the learner that he was a naturalist. Perched in a tree above Darwin are three gray birds with thick, green beaks and a bag labeled “nuts.” On nearby islands are similar gray birds, except that the birds on one island have thin beaks that they’re using to drink from flowers and others on a separate island have pointed beaks they’re using to eat worms. A large, green monster has red plumage and a hapless bird foot protruding from its mouth, reminding learners that brightly colored birds were not adapted to the Galapagos because they were too easily spotted by predators.

All of this is explained in less than a minute and a half, and the images are so strange and memorable that it would be difficult to forget either the terminology or the concepts illustrated.

Students can select either “Classic” or “Creative” audio to explain the image to them. The creative audio sometimes takes the form of a jingle or rap and sometimes that of a narrative story with a plot. We recommend listening to both, though the creative audio seems to work best after the classic has already established the basic facts.

One aspect of the Picmonic we really like is the rating scale that appears at the bottom of each card. Once a student has learned the material, he can quantify his grasp of the concepts on a scale of one through five by indicating whether he “doesn’t know it” (1), “gets it” (5) and anywhere in between. The card will then go into a “pile” of cards with the same rating so students will know what they need to review and what they don’t.

Interested? You can try Picmonic for free to get a sense of whether this style of learning is right for you or your student. All of Picmonic’s content is available for either a monthly subscription fee or a one-time fee.

Photo credit: Flickr:  Ano Lobb

Changes in Medical Education

Two recent articles in The New York Times focus on how medical education is changing. Both reflect the trend away from the traditional path of four years of hard science courses in college, followed by four years of medical school, where coursework continues to focus strictly on science based topics.

One move away from this is the growth in post-baccalaureate pre-med programs, where college graduates who have not taken the necessary science courses, or who are out in the working world but want to switch to a career in medicine, can prepare for medical school. According to the Times article, more than 15% of new medical students have gained admission after completing such programs and there are now 135 post-baccalaureate programs listed with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). These students may have studied poetry, history, or psychology in college and may have had work experience as teachers, artists, or marketers. They can bring a very different perspective to their medical education and their interactions with their patients.

Another trend involves changes to the medical school curriculum itself, towards what the Times piece calls "heart and soul and social science." The AAMC is making substantial changes to the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in an effort to look for strengths in areas other than just science, with the goal of admitting individuals to medical school who bring a broader skill set -- including the ability to connect to their patients, not just to analyze test results. Beginning in 2015, the MCAT will include sections on "Psychological, Social and Biological Foundations of Behavior" which are designed, according to the MCAT website, to recognize "the importance of socio-cultural and behavioral determinants of health and health outcomes." In addition, another new section called "Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills" is intended to help identify applicants from diverse backgrounds. Students entering college this coming fall will be the first group to take the new MCAT when it is put in place in 2015.

Dr. Yellin's work as a consultant to the Office of Student Affairs at New York University School of Medicine and his extensive experience performing evaluations of medical students lead him to observe that whatever changes may occur to medical school admissions and curriculum, the academic demands of medical school will continue to be an issue for future physicians."Like other strong learners," he notes, "medical students will not get very far in their studies or careers without an understanding of how they actually learn and without developing a repertoire of strategies. Often, learning strategies that have worked for them in other environments don't work for them in the demanding setting of medical school. They need to develop new strategies for the extraordinary demands of the medical curriculum and that requires them to understand how they learn, since even very successful students will have stronger and weaker areas in their academic skills."

Photo: Alex Proimos/Flickr Creative Commons

Science and Science Fiction Reading Ideas

Science can be one of the most fascinating subjects a student can study. Kids love learning about the way the world around them works and appreciate the practicality of science. Science taught from a textbook, however, can be a dry topic indeed. Trade books can pep up science instruction that young people find tough to get excited about, however; and there are many fantastic offerings available. To ensure you’re supplying your young readers with the best of the best, check out favorites picked by the staff at the Smithsonian and the National Teachers of Science Association.

But not every child enjoys reading books about science. Why not whet kids’ appetites with science fiction instead? Great conversations can be had about whether or not the futuristic ideas in a science fiction novel are currently feasible, or what would need to happen for them to exist.

A quick Internet search for “children’s science fiction book list” yielded many great lists, some complied by various libraries around the country, others by news media and awards committees. One outstanding source for excellent science fiction titles for children of all ages is the Golden Duck Award list, though of course this list should not be considered exhaustive. Some stellar young adult titles, like The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature, Newbery Honor Book, Printz Honor Book) and Feed by M.T. Anderson (National Book Award Finalist) are notably absent. Still, it’s a great starting point for those unfamiliar with the genre’s offerings for young readers.

With this variety of genres and topics available, it should be easy to convince even the most skeptical of students that science rocks!

Photo: Lokesh Dhakar/Flickr Creative Commons

Unlocking Science Vocabulary

Scientific concepts can be difficult enough on their own, and the long vocabulary words used in science can make the subject seem incomprehensible to some students. Happily, many common words in science can be deciphered by considering the word's morphemes. A morpheme is a small, meaningful part of a word; for example, “in-“ in the word “indivisible” means “not.” 

Some good morphemes to start with are micro- (“small”), therm- (“heat”), and photo- (“light”). 


How to Use Morphemes

Beginning with the target word to be studied (“thermometer”), present the definition of the word, and the crucial morpheme (therm-) and its meaning (“heat”). Ask students to determine how the morpheme’s meaning is related to the meaning of the word. Then ask the student to come up with several other known words that contain the morpheme (e.g. “thermal, thermometer”). In the case of “thermometer,” it may also be useful to teach the morpheme -meter (“measure”).

Finally, present students with other scientific words containing the targeted morphemes. Explain that -phile means “lover of” and ask them what a thermophile might be, or tell them to think about the word “altitude” and figure out what an altimeter does.

Students who enjoy this kind of detective work about the meaning and origins of words might want to sign up for Dictionary.com's Word of the Day or check the Daily Buzzword at the Merriam-Webster website.

The Importance of Science Education in the U.S.

Few of us would question that science helps us understand the world around us. But in a recent blog for National Public Radio ("Why the U.S. Needs To Learn More Science," October, 19, 2011), Marcelo Gleiser argues that the importance of learning science goes far beyond that: it helps shape our culture and our philosophy. Gleiser cites the shift away from superstition and toward reason, and the changes in the way we view our world and communicate with each other, all thanks to science.

“Science is more than a collection of explanations about the natural world: science is a means to freedom, offering people a way to control their destiny, to choose wisely in what to believe.” Gleiser quotes Gallileo, who insisted, “Think for yourself! Don’t take what people tell you at face value. Do not bow blindly to dogma!”

Gleiser looks to the future as well as nodding to the past, raising issues like genetics in medicine and global warming. “Only a well-informed population is able to make well-informed choices about science and the environment that will shape our future,” he points out. Gleiser recommends a list of scientists who, like himself, view science writing for the purpose of educating the public as part of their mission.  The U.S., he concludes, needs to learn more science.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Liz

Experiments from Scientific American

At The Yellin Center, we often encourage students who are having difficulty understanding or recalling complicated processes to experience them in a variety of different ways. Instead of just reading about a concept, students can visualize it, write about it, represent it on a graphic organizer, or employ one of a myriad other methods to internalize and remember it.

One of the best ways to learn science, for example, is to pair reading or hearing about concepts with hands-on experiences. For parents interested in helping their kids interact with scientific principles, Scientific American provides a great resource. Their Bring Science Home page contains a series of experiments that are simple and fun, yet also highly instructive. Each is introduced with a "key concept" section which provides important background information on the phenomenon the student will observe during the experiment. The student who is less than captivated by learning about pressure in physics should gain much more enjoyment, and understanding, from the balloon rocket activity!

Science experiments not only make scientific concepts both visual and tactile for kids, they can also be tremendously motivating. Visit the Education page at Scientific American's site for great experiment ideas and other educational resources.

Online Tools for STEM Education

There has been much discussion of late about fostering education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math -- STEM. We've come across some excellent online tools to help students build their competencies in these important fields (and have some fun while they're at it).

EdHeads 

EdHeads is the rarest of animals, a site that offers a genuine learning experience that is highly enjoyable too. Depending on the activity, this site will appeal to users in grades 4-10. Students can click on “Choose an Activity” to link to various medical, engineering, and meteorological interactive activities. In the medical section, for example, a surgeon invites the student to scrub in and conduct various surgeries from start to finish. (Graphics are realistic cartoons, keeping gore at a minimum.) Students interested in physics, geometry, or law enforcement will be fascinated by the crash site investigation activity. And for younger students (or anyone with a sense of humor), a walk through a truly inventive Rube Goldberg machine, accompanied by a quiz on physical forces, is a sure winner. These are some of the most appealing and valuable science learning opportunities available online.

Learning Science
Learning Science provides links to lots of great interactive science sites that provide quizzes and teach new information. Far from being a laundry list of available sites, the choices presented here appear to have been carefully selected before being shared with viewers. Some of the highlights include digital animal dissections and a series of oceanographic mysteries which must be solved. Activities are grouped by concepts learned in grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12.

Create A Graph 

Remember when you used a ruler and a pencil to draw a graph for your homework assignment or science project? Like the Rolodex, hand-made graphs have become a thing of the past, thanks to technology that makes creating a graph a snap. Create a Graph, a free feature from the National Center for Educational Statistics’s Kid Zone, allows kids to create professional bar, line, area, pie, or xy graphs by supplying a few pieces of information. Users can view a helpful tutorial, browse examples, or simply start experimenting. Create a Graph makes great finished products for printing and sharing, but perhaps its most valuable asset is the ease with which users can create and compare different graphs conveying the same information. It’s easy for students to enter the same data set into the fields for, say, a bar and line graph to determine which represents the information more effectively. In addition, information can be grouped differently and presented in various ways, providing an interesting lesson in how various designs can present the same data in very different ways. Students can use the site not only to create graphs but to learn to read graphs critically as well.

A Day in the Cosmos

I spent yesterday at the intersection of Mind, Brain and Education -- and the cosmos -- when I visited with Dr. Matthew Schneps at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. An astrophysicist, Dr. Schneps is the Director of the Laboratory for Visual Learning at the Center, which combines the resources and research facilities of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Dr. Schneps is actively involved in dyslexia research and has asked me to serve on the Advisory Board for a research project which is looking at novel ways to deliver written material to children with dyslexia.

During my visit I was also interviewed on camera for another project, funded by the Annenberg Foundation, which is looking to create web-based materials to make information about neuroscience and learning accessible -- and practical -- for educators. Dr. Schneps is particularly interested in emerging evidence that perceptual variations associated with “learning disabilities” are actually advantageous. For example, it turns out that many of the world’s most accomplished astrophysicists have dyslexia. Dyslexia is frequently associated with an increased ability to perceive information in the peripheral visual fields -- which is advantageous when examining the cosmos. Dr. Schneps also introduced me to a brilliant and resilient astrophysicist who began losing her sight as a graduate student -- and now studies the universe using sound.

After my meeting with Dr. Schneps, I finished the day at a Board of Directors meeting for CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology). CAST continues to amaze all of its Board members with its continued progress in leading the field of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). With technology and an understanding of the wide range of normal variation in children, CAST continues to create tools to make academic material accessible to all learners. If you haven’t heard of CAST and UDL, you will soon. CAST is increasingly sought out by policy makers, foundations, and educators interested in bringing these groundbreaking ideas and technologies to schools and school districts.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech