Project URL:
http://callunafineflowers.com/
memorial_middle_school/arewealone/index.htm
How
it works:
Students are inquisitive about many things. Depending on the
nature of their curiosity, though, their inquisitiveness can
lead teachers off track or be the impetus for wonderful learning
situations. This program shows how teachers can turn student curiosity
into a project with meaningful results.
In Are We Alone? I addressed my students' curiosity about
aliens. I wanted to dispel the influences of media
and utilize the opportunity to further their understanding of
curricular content. We developed questions for a survey and a
questionnaire, researched relevant professionals to target inquiries, e-mailed
those professionals and requested their input, collected their input,
calculated and graphed the results, and drew conclusions from those
results.
For similar programs, the process is as follows: develop goals, introduce topic and excite the students, research and gather
e-mail addresses of pertinent professionals (I had my research astronomy departments of major universities),
develop survey questions with students (encourage them to think beyond
their textbook and develop questions that cannot be answered by their
teacher or their book), design the project's website, have students
answer their own survey questions, compose and send e-mail to scientists, disseminate
the results to students and have them analyze them (such as determining response percentages), transfer
survey/questionnaire responses to HTML pages (I copied and pasted the
information), upload HTML pages to a server and share information with
students, draw conclusions from the project, thank participants and
invite them back to the site, and inform others of your results.
Standards addressed:
In this program, students collect/analyze data and draw conclusions; support
reasoning by using a variety of evidence; construct logical arguments;
access information at remote sites using telecommunications; apply the concept of percent; represent numerical
relationships in graphs; and construct inferences and convincing
arguments based on data.
Materials used:
To attempt this program, you need Internet access and
e-mail capabilities. It is also advised to develop a website for
the project. To do this, you need a web-authoring program
such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. You also need a server and, if you are not using
FrontPage, a FTP program to upload the
website to the server. To operate a form, you also need a CGI
script that will process the form information. FrontPage users simply
need to have the website on a server with FrontPage Server Extensions
to do this.
The
students:
The students involved in Are We Alone? were seventh
graders of varying abilities and skill levels. The teacher is
involved with the more technical aspects of this project. This allows
total student participation in information input and drawing
conclusions from the professional responses. Students need to develop
higher-thinking-level questions, calculate percentages, graph data,
and draw inferences and conclusions from that data.
Overall value:
This program probably cannot be duplicated exactly. Astronomers
responded to the survey because it was unique. However, both concept
and process have applications in many subjects. Internet surveys are
excellent tools for gathering data to enhance math and science
classes, and they allow students to access experts in
virtually any field and provide real-world connections for many social
studies and language arts projects. Experts, or a single expert,
can be utilized throughout a unit or semester to
enhance student learning. Creating a website rather than using e-mail
results in a format that encourages responses. It also allows
respondents, students, and others to view results, thereby
becoming
an important resource as well as a record of the students' work. Tips:
For more information, visit the Teacher Resource section of
the Are We Alone? website. This section can be
accessed from the Teacher's Note page.
|
About the teacher:
Neil Battagliese is a seventh-grade science teacher at Memorial
Middle School in South Portland, Maine, and also serves as the Middle School
Science Leader for the South Portland School District. For the
past three years, he has had an important role in the development of South
Portland's middle-grade science curriculum. He has guided teachers
through the development of a standards-based curriculum and constantly
seeks innovative ways to meet the state and national standards from
which their curriculum is created.
E-mail:
battagne@spsd.org
Subject
Areas:
Science
Math
Technology
Grade
Levels:
6-12
|