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Teaching Science Through 3D Modeling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 3d animation, 3d modeling, 3d printing, 3d printing in science classes, charles hull, constructionism, constructivism, dewey, ed catmull, evans and sutherland, fused deposition modeling, hideo kodama, history of 3d printing, kozma clark debate, last starfighter, marshall mcluhan, medium vs. message, papert, pbl, pedagogy, piaget, project-based learning, robert abel and associates, science education, scott crump, stereolithography, technology acceptance model, tron, vygotsky on May 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

A 3D model of Tyrian purple, the ancient Phoenician dye extracted from murex sea snails.

This blog is the script for a final video project for my Educational Technology class as a doctoral candidate at the University of Northern Colorado. The final video can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/jimJqjsetNM.

Introduction

3D modeling and printing are taking the Do-it-Yourself world by storm as makerspaces spring up in many schools. Considered to be an innovative way of learning next-generation skills, 3D modeling and printing are fun hobbies, but are they effective educational tools? Is 3D technology worth the cost and the time it takes to learn? Will a 3D printer merely sit in the corner and collect dust, or will it be frequently and effectively used to teach class concepts? Is 3D printing just another new toy or is it a pedagogically sound method for deep learning?

My name is David Black and I have taught media design and science classes for 30 years at the secondary level. I have developed multi-disciplinary projects that combine science with 3D modeling, but I lacked a theoretical framework. This video explores the history and innovation of 3D modeling and printing within a theoretical framework of constructivism and a project-based learning pedagogy to effectively teach science concepts. We will look at the diffusion of this new technology, how it works as a medium to convey learning, the basic steps and history of producing 3D models and prints, and provide examples of 3D technology use in science classrooms.

A photo gallery interface for the AM to FM project. Designed as a scrapbook, the animation zoomed into the pages and each item became a category for different images that could be viewed interactively. The entire interface was programmed in Macromedia Director.

A Theoretical Framework

When students create their own science educational content, or learner-generated digital media (LGDM), they achieve a deeper understanding of the science. Researchers have found that students not only learn science content well through media creation, they also develop marketable media design and 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity (Hoban, Nielsen, & Shepherd, 2013; Orus, et al., 2016; Reyna, 2021).

Reyna and Meier (2018) conducted a literature review of studies that use learner-generated digital media to teach science concepts. They concluded that previous studies were limited because they lacked theoretical frameworks or sound pedagogy. These researchers assumed that the participating students already knew how to use media design technology tools since they were so-called “digital natives.” According to Reyna and Meier, just because students grow up using computers and digital devices doesn’t mean they have ever developed media creation skills such as video editing or 3D modeling. In a follow up study, Reyna scaffolded media design skills training through smaller partial projects embedded in a theoretical framework of constructivism and a project-based learning (Reyna & Meier, 2018; Reyna, 2021). As an example, a teacher might have a student team create a short Public Service Announcement (PSA) as a practice project to gain skills in using cameras, lighting, and microphones and to learn the entire video creation process or workflow before tackling the final project.

A final (?) version of my model of constructivism, with students as explorers, teachers, content creators, makers, designers, coders, engineers, scientists, critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators, and problem-solvers. My model suggests that students need to move from being passive learners to becoming active and creative learners.

Constructivist theory proposes that learning is a socially mediated cognitive process whereby learners experience a subject and construct their own meanings for it. They create mind maps or schema that tie previous learning, emotions, and social reinforcement together with their new knowledge. Schema develop through the processes of assimilation, where the new knowledge is placed into existing categories, and accommodation, where the schema are revised to acknowledge divergent information. Constructivism acknowledges that the learner is at the center of the process.

3D modeling is inherently a constructivist activity, as creating the models literally requires constructing one polygon or primitive at a time. That the model exists only in virtual space does not mean it is any less a constructed medium. By 3D printing the virtual model, the printer builds an actual model one layer at a time. If properly planned and conceived, students can also construct science knowledge through 3D modeling and animation. Instead of consuming scientific content, students become producers of content. They become the experts and the teachers, and learning occurs as a natural byproduct of the process.

Lev Vygotsky was a pioneer of constructivist theory. He also developed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development shown in the image at right.

Constructivist theory can be traced all the way back to Socrates, who said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” John Dewey proposed that students learn by doing, that is, in an active, creative process where they construct their own meanings through discovery with the teacher as a guide on the side, not the sage on the stage (Brau, 2020). It is the opposite of objectivism, where teachers are the center of the process and must somehow pour their knowledge into their students’ brains. Lev Vygotsky added that learning is socially mediated through interpersonal interactions, language, and culture and that students learn within their zone of proximal development; as students learn more, what they can do with help (the ZPD) expands (Brau, 2020). Jean Piaget developed cognitive constructivism where children develop naturally through various stages from concrete to abstract, with each stage of cognitive growth affecting the construction of learning (Brau, 2020). Seymour Papert developed his constructionist theory where students construct learning through making. He saw computers as a tool for learning and invention where students learn through doing and experimentation, including the use of computer programming and media design. Today’s makerspaces are based on his theories.

The characteristics of gold-standard project-based learning, as developed by PBLworks, formerly the Buck Institute for Education.

Project-Based Learning Pedagogy

Project-based learning is a natural fit as a pedagogy for media design creation. It usually occurs in teams and the conclusion is a public product. According to PBLworks, formerly the Buck Institute for Education, gold-standard PBL includes seven characteristics (https://www.pblworks.org/):

(1) A challenging, meaningful question or problem to address; (2) Student inquiry using authentic data or sources where they discover the learning for themselves as a natural outgrowth of the initial question; (3) Student voice and choice in the type of project chosen and how it will be accomplished; (4) Collaboration and communication as students actively participate and work through issues creatively; (5) Frequent opportunities for critique and formative feedback, with revision; (6) A public presentation of the final product; and (7) Student reflection on what they have accomplished and learned.

Each project ends with a presentation before a public audience, usually at some type of back-to-school night with feedback and suggestions from the audience. Knowing that their work will have a public audience motivates students to deliver a high quality product and helps to actively engage them in the process of learning. As John Spencer, a well-known PBL guru, explains:

Students who engage in authentic project-based learning have increased agency and ownership. They’re often more excited and engaged in their learning. When this happens, they retain the information for a longer amount of time while also learning vital technology skills like digital citizenship and media literacy. However, they also learn vital soft skills, such as collaboration, communication, curation, and problem-solving. As they work through iterations and revise their work, they develop a growth mindset. Often, they learn how to seek out constructive feedback. This connection to the community can help them develop empathy (Spencer, 2021).

Marshall McLuhan invented the concept of the global village and was famous for saying that “the medium is the message.”

The Message and the Medium

In the early 1960s, Marshall McLuhan created the concept of the global village, which predicting the interconnectivity of the World Wide Web, and famously stated that “the medium is the message.” Such technologies as print and movable type have a profound effect on the human psyche and cultural understandings. Humans re-invent themselves and how they communicate with the invention of each new medium (McLuhan, 1962). Richard Clark argued conversely in the 1990s that the medium of a message was unimportant to the learning process and that cost-effectiveness was the only consideration in choosing one medium over another in instructional design (Clark, 1994). If more than one form of media can be used for a particular learning task, then they are replaceable with each other and the medium does not influence the message. Robert Kozma (1994) takes a middle ground, similar to Kalantzis and Cope (2012), where the medium conveys or mediates the message, influencing the message because of the medium’s unique affordances (advantages, disadvantages, limitations, conventions, etc.). Learning from a video with its linear format is qualitatively different than learning from interactive media such a website or a CD-ROM-based multimedia title. Learning from printed text alone is different than learning from text with images, or moving text and images in the form of a video.

A simple chart can show a great deal of data, such as this one showing the growth of STEM related jobs from 2012 to 2020.

3D modeling and animation has its own affordances that allow it to present a unique learning experience unlike other media. It can visualize large datasets, allowing patterns and inter-relations between data to be understood that purely numeric data tables cannot. A chart of the stock market can lay out several indices together for comparison over time, representing over 80,000 different data points in one infographic, which would be impossible to interpret as raw data but is easily accessible visually (Krum, 2013). If the data represents values in a two-dimensional grid, then a 3D graph is the best way to visualize and understand the data, as in the example of the voltage data I will talk about later. The medium chosen to convey learning is therefore an essential part of the learning experience. This agrees most closely with Kozma’s middle ground stand on the Clark-McLuhan continuum (Kozma, 1994).

With this in mind, let us now turn to an examination of the history of 3D modeling and printing as an innovative technology and how it can be used in science classrooms.

The movie *Tron* by Disney broke new ground by including scenes that were completely made of 3D animations.

History of 3D Modeling

The first experiments with 3D computer modeling began in the 1970s using mainframe computers, the only ones that could handle the millions of calculations necessary. A group at the University of Utah’s computer lab led by Ed Catmull developed a process to build smoothly polygonal models with accurate reflections called raytracing. As microprocessors improved and computer speeds and power increased, the first entertainment applications appeared. By the early 1980s movie studios were experimenting with computer graphic inserts for special effects. Disney’s Tron brought complete scenes designed and rendered in 3D, followed by even more photorealistic effects in The Last Starfighter with complete Codon Armadas including spaceships, planets, and asteroids.

A still frame from Robert Abel & Associates’ “sexy robot” commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl. It was an advertisement for canned food . . . By the way, this was the same Super Bowl where the infamous “Big Brother” commercial introduced the Apple Macintosh computer.

Meanwhile, some of the artists that started with Tron founded their own studios, including Robert Abel and Associates, who created a number of iconic and Clio Award-winning TV commercials including the famous 1984 Super Bowl sexy robot commercial that introduced innovative motion capture technology (Art of Computer Animation, n.d.). Lucas Films and Industrial Light and Magic experimented with completely 3D animated short movies. When Steve Jobs left Apple Computers and invested in the studio, they became Pixar Animation Studios and created the groundbreaking Luxo, Jr. animation. Jobs encouraged John Lasseter to create a full-length 3D movie; the result was Toy Story in 1995 and the rest is history.

History of 3D Printing

In 1981, Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute published a description of a liquid resin-based photopolymer that becomes solid by hardening each layer with focused ultraviolet light, but he did not file a patent (Goldberg, 2018). In 1984, Charles Hull invented a similar system called a stereolithography apparatus (SLA). Refinements continued, including building up layers by sending UV light in cross-sections. In 1992, the first Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) device was invented, which uses a laser beam to sinter or weld together a powder into layers.

The original MakerBot Thing-o-Matic, one of the first commercial 3D printers for home or school use.

Although both of these techniques are still used in high-end industry, the type of 3D printing most familiar in schools is the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique where a plastic filament on a spool is fed into the printer by a motor, melted by a heated nozzle, and deposited in layers continuously to make cross-sections (3Dsourced.com, 2019). For each layer, the build plate is moved down. It is also called Fused Filament Fabrication. This type of printing was first developed in the late 1980s by F. Scott Crump who went on to found Stratisys in 1990 as the first company to build FDM printers and plastic filament.

Altogether, these technologies are referred to as additive manufacturing because the models are built up, or added, layer by layer. By comparison, a 3D milling machine or CNC router uses subtractive manufacturing because it starts with a larger blank and carves away parts.

By 2009, when the first FDM patents expired, new companies entered the market with lower cost desktop 3D printing machines such as MakerBot, FlashForge, Prusa, Ultimaker, Dremmel, and others. Various types of plastic filament became available, including Polylactic Acid (PLA), Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), and even flexible nylon filaments, fused metallic filaments, and water dissolvable filaments for printing supports. Filaments come in many colors and finishes, including filaments that change color as they spool into the printer. A new development is 3D printing in full color, however these printers cost $3500 or more. To print in color, 4-process color (CMYK) dyes are added to a base color filament as it extrudes.

The 3D process begins with primitive objects such as cylinders and spheres assembled in 3-dimensional space, as shown here in TinkerCAD. Boolean commands can use one object to cut holes in other objects.

The Process: From Model to Print

Many 3D models are available for free on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/) and other sites, but ultimately the fun of 3D modeling is to do it yourself. Complicated by working in three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional computer screen, in 3D modeling primitive objects such as spheres, cubes, and cylinders are given textures and composed into scenes. They can be combined to add, cut, or intersect other objects using Boolean commands. Other objects are created using a polygonal mesh like chicken wire. Meshes act as three-dimensional vectors and can be modeled from equations and deformed using envelopes. Grayscale images can be converted into terrain objects with light areas as mountains and dark areas as valleys.

Primitive objects are shown as a wireframe model, sized and moved into a complete composition such as this Greek temple.

To create complete scenes, the objects are aligned and composed, the camera positioned, lighting and atmospherics provided along with other procedural effects, then rendered out through ray tracing as if the scene were being photographed by bouncing a beam of light out from the camera. To animate objects, a timeline is added and the objects are given hierarchical links from parent to child, a process called forward kinematics. The pieces can be moved, rotated, and otherwise changed over time by adding keyframes on the timeline. The computer then renders out an animation frame by frame, creating all the in-between frames itself. Complex characters can be rigged with bones and joints or morph targets to deform the polygonal structure over time.

Learning 3D animation is traditionally a difficult and time-consuming process, with each step from modeling to rigging to texturing to animating done by different teams of specialists for a major CGI-based motion picture. Teaching students how to do all of these steps competently can take several weeks of class time, if not years, which few teachers or subjects can afford to do. However, new tools are simplifying the process.

This model of a dinosaur has had bones and joints added, which can be rotated and animated to distort the wireframe model. This model can walk, thrash its tail, turn its neck and head, and eat unsuspecting time travelers.

TinkerCAD is a browser-based modeling tool that has a range of primitive objects and simple textures that can be combined into more complex models, which can then be exported and printed with a 3D printer. It is not set up to do complex polygonal modeling or animation, but is a good introduction to working in three-dimensional space. SculptGL is another browser-based modeling tool. It does create complex meshes, but instead of subdividing polygons one at a time, the tool works as a ball of virtual clay that can be pushed and pulled. The model can be colored with paintbrushes and the final models and textures exported as .OBJ files for use in more sophisticated animation software. I have not yet found a browser-based tool that can assemble complete scenes, add keyframes, rig bones and morph targets, and render out animations. There are full-scale downloadable programs available for free or as educational licenses, including Blender and Autodesk Maya. Many tutorials exist online for how to use these programs.

Once a 3D model is completed it is saved as an .OBJ or .STL file, then imported into a 3D printer’s slicing software which provides the G-code directions for moving the print nozzle across the build plane while extruding the melted filament. Where overhangs occur, supports must be built in (which can be done automatically or by hand). Once the model begins to print, it can take several hours to complete a moderately large print. The print must then be removed from the build plate and the raft and supports snapped off and sanded.

The benzene molecule, shown above in TinkerCAD, now printing out on my 3D printer.

Subject Integration and Adoption of 3D Modeling and Printing in Schools

Reyna’s 2018 literature review concluded that most previous research in learner-generated digital media lacks theoretical frameworks or solid pedagogy. This agrees with the TPACK model of technology integration (Rodgers, 2018), where the affordances and workflow of the technology, the appropriate pedagogy for teaching, and how students learn the content knowledge through the technology or medium must be considered to successfully integrate technology into the classroom. By using a constructivist/constructionist framework and the pedagogy of project-based learning and by training students how to create the media as they develop their own science-related content, we are following the TPACK model.

For 3D modeling, we cannot assume that even digital natives know how to use the conventions of modeling in three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. It is a challenging innovation to learn, and many problems can occur in the modeling and printing process. Students do not naturally know how to subdivide polygons, use Boolean commands to cut holes, create procedural UV texture maps, create the lighting and atmospherics needed for a scene, or set up a 3D object for a successful print. This is highly technical work, and requires practice and scaffolding with simpler projects before large-scale media projects can be undertaken. Time must be set aside for training and practice either in class or using a flipped classroom model. The purpose of the 3D modeling – to learn a science concept – must be carefully considered and needs to be worth the time and effort and cannot be adequately taught through any other medium.

For adopting new technology, there is always a balance of risk and certainty. Some people and organizations are willing to accept risk to stay ahead of the curve, others, such as most schools, are risk-averse and will not adopt new technology until it has been widely accepted. This puts them behind the curve as laggards or late adopters.

Because of these challenges, 3D modeling and printing have been slow technologies to truly take hold in schools. Although 3D printers are popular now, most schools and teachers have little idea how to use them effectively. If we use Everett Roger’s model of technology adoption (Legris, Ingham, & Collerette, 2003), schools are usually in the late adopter or laggard phase for adopting 3D technologies. They do not want to waste the time or dollars to invest in a 3D printer just because it is the newest shiny thing. Some individual teachers may be ahead of the curve and ready to adopt, but they will need to learn how to use 3D technologies on their own; there is little to no professional development training available through school districts unless provided by teacher associations.

Using 3D Modeling and Printing in Science Classes

Because of the time and challenge required to do 3D modeling, printing, and animation there should be a compelling reason for using this medium in a science classroom; the 3D model or animation must convey a scientific concept more effectively than other forms of media. Some possible applications include modeling and animating scientific processes or principles, modeling complex authentic data where it cannot be visualized in any other way, and creating accurate models of science-related objects that can be examined.

To demonstrate how data can be visualized in 3D, my chemistry students this week studied electrochemistry by comparing the voltages of different combinations of metal electrodes, recording the data in a two-dimensional grid separated by commas. We used a free program from the National Institutes of Health called ImageJ to convert the raw numbers into a grayscale image, with higher values represented as lighter shades of gray and lower numbers as darker shades. This image can be converted into a 3D object by Adobe Photoshop. Finally, an altitude sensitive texture is applied and text added and the scene rendered as an image or animation. Patterns in the data that are difficult to notice as raw numbers become readily apparent as a visual image. Students can easily see that magnesium is the most reactive metal and has the highest voltages. 3D visualization has great advantages over trying to understand a grid of numbers.

The SOFIA airplane, as modeled by my 6th grade Creative Computing Class.

As an example of building models to illustrate concepts and objects, in 2004, my media design students began work on a video documentary for KUED, Salt Lake City’s PBS station, on the history of AM radio in Utah. They created animations of transistor radios as part of the title sequences of each segment based on photographs of actual radios. They modeled interfaces for an interactive DVD of our final video and for an accompanying CD-ROM programmed with Macromedia Director. Students in my 6th grade Creative Computing class each modeled a part of the SOFIA aircraft, or Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, and my high school students assembled, textured, and animated the final model. It was used to demonstrate how the telescope works for a video we made about my flight on SOFIA in 2013.

A diner modeled for the AM to FM project. The animation zoomed in on the jukebox, which acted as an interface for the history of AM radio.

My media design students created models and animations of Mars space probes for an interactive CD-ROM on Mars Exploration which they presented at a student symposium at Arizona State University. They learned how to access and model 3D terrain data of Mars from the MOLA instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor probe to analyze possible landing sites on Mars which we then printed out using color-changing PLA filament. Other students collaborated with the NASA Lunar Science Institute to study selenographic features and create a 3D animation of the Big Impact Theory of lunar formation.

My biology students use TinkerCAD or SculptGL to model and print viruses for a unit on microbiology. To visualize the periodic properties of the elements, my chemistry students create a grid of data points and convert it to 3D models using ImageJ and Photoshop. My eighth grade physical science students created a 3D animated video with greenscreen narration showing a possible habitat that astronauts can live in on their way to Mars. To represent land forms on Earth, my students access EarthExplorer by the United States Geological Survey (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/), which allows grayscale heightmaps from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to be downloaded and converted into highly accurate 3D models.

A viral mini-museum. My biology students recently chose a virus, then modeled and printed it in 3D and created a display poster on its infection vector, parts, symptoms, and treatment.

All of these examples took time to learn and execute, so we needed to have compelling reasons for using 3D modeling that were worth the opportunity cost of time and the steep learning curve. In each case, using 3D enabled us to present authentic data more completely and helped us visualize important scientific concepts more effectively than other types of media.

Using 3D modeling has benefits for students. Visualization of big data sets has become a growth career, as has 3D printing of everything from prosthetic limbs to cars to rocket parts. It allows for rapid prototyping and has become a necessary component for engineers. My students have used these techniques to create visuals for winning science fair projects, such as this one that determined whether surface features on Mercury were caused by impacts or volcanism. As part of the Mars Exploration Student Data Team program, my media design students downloaded Mars dust opacity data from December 2003 to January 2004 and converted it into animations showing how a dust storm arose over the Tharsis Plateau, blew across the equator, and spread globally just as the Mars Exploration Rovers were approaching. My current physics students are using altitude data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s LOLA instrument, turning grayscale heightmaps of the Moon into 3D models, then mapping spectroscopic data from Moon Mineralogical Mapper instrument to show where different commercially viable minerals might be located according to surface landmarks as shown here (Fa & Jin, 2007). They are creating a poster of their results for the ExMASS program to compete with students from nine other schools.

The alchemist in his lab. As part of a project to teach students chemistry lab equipment, I had them create their own versions of florence flasks, and other equipment, new and ancient, as well as models of various minerals. We put these together into this scene for fun.

Conclusion

In this paper I have described many 3D modeling and animation projects created by my students. They have learned many positive things about STEAM careers and processes along the way, but of most importance, they learned science concepts more deeply through 3D modeling than through any other method. Although 3D modeling can be rewarding in its own right, it has additional benefits for students including teaching marketable skills and providing them with opportunities to collaborate, communicate, solve problems, and enhance their creativity. Given our limited time as teachers and the high opportunity cost, we have to be very sure that 3D modeling also enhances science learning in ways that other options can’t achieve. In my own experience, the projects are well worth their time. Other teachers will have to look at their own situations and determine whether or not it is worth investing the time to learn and use 3D modeling in their own science classrooms.

Thanks for reading this. I hope it provided some ideas into how and why to use 3D modeling and printing in your science classroom.

References

3Dsourced.com (2019). Fused deposition modeling: Everything you need to know about FDM 3D printing. Retrieved 3/18/21 from: https://www.3dsourced.com/guides/fused-deposition-modeling-fdm/.

Art of computer animation (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/5xwLFRdewgE.

Brau, B. (2020) Constructivism. In R. Kimmons & S. Caskurlu (Eds.), The Students’ Guide to Learning Design and Research, EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/studentguide/constructivism.

Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 21-29.

Center for Educational Innovation, (n.d.). Constructivism. Center for Educational Innovation, University of Buffalo. Retrieved from: http://www.buffalo.edu/ubcei/enhance/learning/constructivism.html

Edutechwiki,(n.d.). The media debate. Retrieved 4/18/21 from: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/The_media_debate

Fa, W. & Jin, Y. (2007). Quantitative estimation of helium-3 spatial distribution in the lunar regolith layer. Icarus, 190 (2007), 15-23.

Goldberg, D. (2018). History of 3D printing: It’s older than you are (that is, if you’re under 30). Retrieved 4/18/21 from: https://redshift.autodesk.com/history-of-3d-printing/

Hoban, G., Nielsen, W., & Shepherd, A. (2013). Explaining and communicating science using student- created blended media. Teaching Science, 59(1), 33-35.

Kalantzis, M. & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY

Kozma, R. B. (1994), The Influence of Media on Learning: The Debate Continues, School Library Media Research, Volume 22, Number 4, Summer 1994.

Krum, R. (2013). Infographics: Effective communication with data visualization and design. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ.

Legris, P., Ingham, J. & Collerette, P. (2003). Why do people use information technology? A critical review of the technology acceptance model. Information & Management, 40 (2003), 191-24.

McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Canada.

Orus, et al. (2016). The effects of learner-generated videos for YouTube on learning outcomes and satisfaction. Computers & Education, 95 (2016), 254-269.

Reyna, J. (2021). Digital media assignments in undergraduate science education: An evidence-based approach. Research in Learning Technology, 29 (2021), 1-19.

Reyna, J. & Meier, P. (2018). Learner-generated digital media (LGDM) as an assessment tool in tertiary science education: A review of literature. IAFOR Journal of Education, 6(3), 93-109.

Rodgers, D. (2018). The TPACK framework explained (with classroom examples). SchoolologyExchange. Retrieved from: https://www.schoology.com/blog/tpack-framework- explained.

Spencer, J. (2021). PBL for all. Retrieved from: https://spencerauthor.com/pbl-for-all/

A still from an animation showing a dust storm on Mars forming above the Tharsis Plateau in December, 2003 just as the Mars Exploration Rovers were approaching. The data from for this animation was downloaded from the atmosphere opacity measurements of the Mars Global Surveyor space probe.

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Mind Expanding Experiences

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged authentic data, big data, doctoral program, education theory, educational engagement, global competency, guided inquiry, makerspace, makey makey, media design skills, microbit, national air and space museum, pbl, steam education, stem-ah, students as makers, teacher innovator institute, udvar-hazy center, university of northern colorado on August 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

A mural of the Lunar Roving Vehicle and an Apollo astronaut in the National Air and Space Museum, where we held our Teacher Innovator Institute

This past week I participated in two programs that will impact my teaching philosophy greatly over the remainder of my career.

As reported in my previous post, I attended the Teacher Innovator Institute sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. This was a two-week workshop that focused on education strategies and technologies. I had to leave that workshop a few days early to travel to my second program, a mandatory orientation seminar in Loveland, Colorado for my Doctorate of Education (EdD) in Innovation and Education Reform at the University of Northern Colorado. Both programs spoke of education theories and reform movements, and I have been trying to wrap my brain around them ever since (and will continue to do so for the next 3-4 years).

Part of American University campus, where we stayed in dorms for the Teacher Innovator Institute

Let me attempt to explain the first half of the week, where we learned about Guided Inquiry and how to integrate Makerspaces into our STEM classrooms. Then I will give a brief introduction to our orientation meeting in Colorado, although I’m not nearly ready to summarize it all yet.

Group of TII teachers in the conference room on the third floor of the National Air and Space Museum, learning about Guided Inquiry and working on our lesson plans and projects.

Guided Inquiry

On Monday, July 22 we met in the third floor conference room in the Air and Space Museum to learn and practice Guided Inquiry with Leslie Maniotes, who has founded this strategy along with Carol Kuhlthau and Ann Caspari. It was a fairly specific set of steps for shaping and guiding inquiry, designed mostly for doing library research but certainly adaptable to science and technology education. Some of the main points include finding that “third space” where the students’ world and the curriculum align and gradually releasing the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student through a series of stages (focused instruction, guided instruction, collaborative learning, and independent learning) characterized by the teacher statements: I do it, we do it, you do it together, and your do it alone. This is similar to the guided practice model of Madeline Kahn I’ve often used for teaching skills such as algebra problem solving.

Working on our lesson plans using the Guided Inquiry model.

Their main model involves eight phases for the inquiry process, starting with an Opener or hook that provokes interest in the subject, then an Immerse phase to build student background knowledge as a community. This is done by the teacher so that students will have the proper schema or framework from which to understand the subject – without this phase, most research projects go astray or never get off the ground because the students don’t know enough to know where to begin or even the extent of their own ignorance. The next phase is Explore, where the students dig in on their own and follow ideas related to the topic, to dip their toes into the pool and look around. They skim and scan and write down whatever piques their interest in a research journal.

The next phase begins the actual work of research. Students Identify what ideas and sub-topics they are most interested in by reviewing their journals, pausing, and pondering what questions they have and developing a concept map of what they know so far. They analyze their research questions according to their interest level, the resources they have available, the task they are asked to produce, and their available time.

A group of teachers posing at Hamilton’s, a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

The final phases are fairly standard: to Gather information through research or primary sources, then Create the final product (paper, presentation, etc.), then Share their product in an authentic way (presentation, blog post, etc.), and to Evaluate what they have learned including the content and processes used.

I have blundered along assigning students to do research papers and other types of inquiry without the proper guidance or background knowledge, then have wondered why they flounder. This process, once I adapt it for science inquiry, will be of great benefit for my students.

A World War II vintage sea plane, similar to ones that my Uncle Dean flew during the war, at the Udvar-Hazy extension of the Air and Space Museum.

Makerspaces

On my final day at the Teacher Innovator Institute we were at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Josh Ajima, a lead maker teacher evangelist in Loudoun County Schools, presented ideas for incorporating makerspaces into our curricula. A makerspace doesn’t have to be full of high tech CNC routers, laser cutters, and 3D printers. It can be as simple as a Ziploc bag for each student with a few simple items inside, such as a CR2032 button battery, a color LED light, a small buzzer motor, a few business cards, a plastic drinking straw, and a purple crayon. He leads a program called DesignMakeTeach and told us about the stone soup model of makerspaces – start with something, no matter how simple, then add to it as you can.

The Mr. Tetris Makey game, created by one of the teacher groups.

It is like the story of the man with the soup pot who came to a village and put water and a stone in the pot, then heated it up and claimed he was making soup for the whole village. As he sampled the hot water, he would say, “You know what would make this? A few carrots. Does anyone have carrots?” And someone would bring a few carrots. Then potatoes, celery, salt, and finally a little meat here and there until he had a tasty soup that fed the entire village. All he brought to the table was the pot and imagination, and the village provided the rest for itself.

D.C. Metro Mania Makey game. The idea is to see who can navigate the stations correctly to get to different destinations.

Our abilities as maker-teachers develop through stages. First, we have to become makers ourselves. Then we educate students as a teacher, then we become a coach to train other teachers. He spoke of the Three Conflicts in martial arts – how to master a martial art, one must not just train the hands, but also the head and the heart. It is the same with making. We focus too much on the hands part, but don’t apply the mind or the heart to engage students in how making fits in with their lives and gives expression to their feelings. I had never thought about the Zen of Making before.

Dance Dance Revolution Makey game

We began by watching part of the video “Harold and The Purple Crayon” on how all it takes to express imagination and make is a purple crayon. We used the contents of our Ziploc bag starter kit to build a light saber and make a Buzz Bot. This could be a great way to introduce electricity and circuits to my physics class for about $2.50 per student. I started thinking of what I will do with the grant money for this institute and how to build my own portable makerspace with a cart, plastic tubs, and a little imagination.

The Musical Chair Makey game. Tap your feet and hands on the legs and arms to play music.

After a presentation by two archivists at the NASM (which brought back memories of my time at the Chemical Heritage Foundation ten years ago), Josh continued by providing us each with a Makey Makey and a Microbit. I had only recently (one month ago) been to presentations at a Utah STEM education conference were I first learned about Microbits, and saw Makey Makeys, Ozobots, and Spheros in action. Now I have the means and some training to take this further.

Assistive tech Makey project – tap the contacts to play sounds that say “yes”, “no”, “sad”, “toilet”, “food”, and “water.”

We divided up into teams to use the Makey Makeys to create physical interfaces for games and other uses. Never having used one before, I wandered around and observed what the groups were doing and took videos and photos to gather ideas for my classes. The Makey Makeys use Scratch for a programming language, then allow contact switches to be made from pieces of aluminum foil attached by alligator clips to the Makey Makey, with another clip on the player’s wrist to provide a galvanic skin contact that would complete the circuit. As players touched different contacts, the Makey Makey would send different inputs to the Scratch program to play the game.

Learning to program Microbits

One group did a Tetris robot interface – press the hands to move the Tetris pieces left or right, touch the feet to rotate them clockwise or counterclockwise, touch a fifth contact to drop the piece in place. Another team did a Dance Dance Revolution, another team did a Whack-a-Mole using an aluminum foil hammer and different contacts for the positions where the moles might pop up. One team created a physical Pac Man game. Another team designed a literal musical chair – they took an office chair and put different contacts on the five wheeled legs and the arms so that each would play a different note. One team even made a D.C. Metro Mania game, with the Metro system stops as possible contacts so that students would have to navigate to get from one point to another through Gallery Place, Metro Center, or L’Enfant Plaza. My team created an accessibility board for students unable to speak so that they could touch different contacts to express needs, such as needing to go potty or to eat, drink or say yes or no.

Group of teachers learning to program Microbits

I had heard of Makey Makeys before and had thought them too basic to be useful for a high school class. I was wrong. Although these games are preprogrammed, learning how to make the contacts, hook up the boards, and provide the inputs to the game is a highly sophisticated but very doable project. I can get into this, so my students will, too.

Groups working on Microbits during out Makerspace training.

We also tried out Microbits, a small programmable board with USB input/output and programmability, a small LED screen, and thermometer and accelerometer sensors for only about $16. Carl Lyman had shown me these at the STEM conference, and now I have my own to play with. These could come in handy for various physics experiments.

A group shot of the 2019 cohort of the Teacher Innovator Institute in front of the space shuttle Columbia; July 23, 2019.

Stuck in Chicago

We took photos of our entire group by the space shuttle Columbia and in our red TII polo shirts on the stairs, since this was my last day with the group. As the rest were boarding the bus back to American University, I stood on the curve and ordered an Uber driver up to take me to Reagan National Airport. I had a great conversation with the driver, Mike, on the way through rush hour traffic. Once there, I discovered that my United flight through Chicago was delayed because of weather and that I would miss my connecting flight to Denver. I was able to transfer to a slightly earlier flight, but arrived in Chicago at 11:00 and still missed my connection. The next United flight from Chicago to Denver wasn’t until 5:30 in the morning, so I had to try to sleep on the benches in O’Hare international. Fortunately I had my hamburger pillow with me, and the lady at the United desk gave me an overnight kit with a water bottle, toothbrush, paste, deoderant, and even TicTacs in it. I managed to get about three hours of interrupted sleep.

An underground passage at Chicago O-Hare Airport.

Cohort 7

I arrived in Denver at 7:00 and got my bags and a shuttle van to the Payless rental car lot. I drove from there straight across the tollway to I-25 and north to Loveland, passing my motel just off the Longmont exit on the way but without time to stop and freshen up. I had trouble finding the UNCo extension campus – I finally drove past a building with the sign on the side more by accident than anything else – and was 30 minutes late for the initial meeting. I came in just as the last of my cohort was introducing herself, so I went next and apologized for being late. There are eleven people in Cohort 7, and over the next three days I got to know them fairly well. All are very sharp and experienced educators with varying research interests and backgrounds that will make the next few years interesting.

An almost deserted O”Hare airport at about 4:30 am. Not my favorite place to spend the night.

We had a presentation on how to use the university library system to look up articles and do interlibrary loans as an online program. I will now have access to most of the educational research available, a much deeper resource than I could achieve with a simple Google Internet search, which will help me learn more about my seven chosen research topics.

Thinking through my interests as I have prepared for this orientation seminar over the last two months, I have narrowed my personal research interests down to seven major topics. These are the following:

Project vs. Problem Based Learning:

I stumbled upon project-based learning as an educational strategy during my third year of teaching and have used it successfully ever since, with most of my classes completing 1-2 major projects per year. I want to see just how effective PBL truly is – does it actually improve retention and motivation? What effect does it have on test scores? How do other teachers effectively use PBL? Most specifically, I wonder about how teachers create a culture of excellence and quality with PBL – in other words, how can students achieve professional level results with their projects?

A photo of the Enola Gay, the B-52 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Since this was my last day at the Institute, I wandered around the Udvar-Hazy Center and took photos. It is a huge place!

STEAM Education (or STEM-AH):

I have successfully incorporated the arts, history, and humanities into my STEM classes (what I like to call STEM with Arts and History, or STEM-AH, because arts and history put the “Ah!” into STEM). Beyond my own anecdotal evidence I want to know how effective STEAM education truly is and what the theoretical frameworks are for using it. Why should art and history be part of STEM education?

Using Authentic Data in the STEM Classroom:

As part of our orientation seminar, we each went through a detailed analysis of possible research topics and how we would approach answering our research questions and disquietudes. I chose this topic since it is the most concrete of the six I have chosen. How can Big Data be utilized and translated for a high school STEM classroom? What datasets exist, how do I find and download them, what software is out there for analyzing the data, and what tutorials exist (or need to be created) to assist in this process? I will be attending the Teacher Research Data Conference again this fall and will focus much of my attention on answering these questions.

The Concorde supersonic jet, along with other airplanes.

Media Design Skills in the STEAM Classroom:

As a media design and STEM teacher in small schools and a magnet school, I have incorporated a lot of media design technology into my projects. Hopefully you’ve seen this in the various posts I’ve done on this site. This includes using 3D modeling and animation, video production, graphic design with both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and other skills. How do learning these skills assist STEM students and teachers? Why are media literacy and design thinking important in STEM classrooms? What models exist out there, including the use of Makerspaces, to effectively teach academic subjects? Josh’s presentation showed how his students use 3D modeling and printing to enhance history (such as the amazing Hidden Figures shadow lanterns he made) and I’ve had some success at this, but what models of excellent practice can I draw from and build a theoretical framework behind?

Global Competency in STEM Classes:

How can teachers best incorporate a global awareness perspective into their classes to enhance STEM learning? Here is where problem-based learning may come in. Again, I want to look at excellent models that are already out there and build a general community of practice, with help from all the resources I’ve gained from the State Department and elsewhere.

A Soviet MiG fighter on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Excellence in Education:

What does it take for a school (or teacher) to be considered excellent? I’m not looking for a list of factors, but more a set of excellent practices. This orientation class has cured me of thinking in terms of “best practice” because it implies that there is one best way of doing something, which isn’t true. Educational excellence is found in many different types of practices and classrooms from a wide variety of teachers and schools. So this would lean towards a more case-study approach, visiting classrooms and teachers and seeing what works for them and their students. I want to set up a mixed-methods survey of excellent teachers, those that have been identified through winning awards or being chosen for professional development opportunities. I’ve developed a preliminary questionnaire for this, but didn’t actually use it during my last two weeks even though I did talk to many teachers informally about the questions on it. But I will have more time next summer to do this more formally.

Levels of Engagement Model:

I also want to find evidence for my Levels of Engagement model and why we should train students to become teachers, scientists, engineers, programmers, makers, and artists. Do students move through stages, beginning with ignorance and progressing through passive, to active, to creative types of educational activities? What kinds of research have been done about student engagement and what kinds of research can I do to test my model?

The USS Enterprise NC 1701, on display at the National Air and Space Museum. This is the production model for the original series.

On this first day of our seminar we also saw presentations and posters by the previous cohorts on the history of education and social justice and educational theorists. I am still trying to wrap my head around all of this and the names that were flying through the air like leaves in a storm – Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Bruner, Bloom, Piaget, Papert, Montessori, Eisner, and many others. I know there will be entire classes on these theories and theorists, but I hope to create some sort of diagram or study aid before we get too deep.

I will speak about these theories, and the other two days of my seminar class, at length in a later post.

My next steps, now that I am home, will be to work through my notes for both programs and try to work out a strategy for proceeding. I need to create lesson plans for this coming year, in addition to reorganizing my classroom. I need to analyze all six of these topics as thoroughly as I did the authentic data topic, then put them into a decision matrix and make a final decision within the next month or so. I will be starting fall classes online in a few weeks, so I have a brief window to think and plan before I have to hit the ground running. By then, it would be nice to have a direction to run and at least a preliminary decision on a research topic.

A group shot posed for TII (Teacher Innovator Institute) on the stairs at the Air and Space Museum

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Extraordinary Education: Standards Overreach through Project-Based Learning

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged bloom hierarchy, blooms taxonomy, course standards, creative education, educaitonal reform, education for creativity, educational excellence, educational innovation, educational standards, extraordinary education, higher-order learning, higher-order thinking skills, individualized education, ngss, pbl, project-based learning, public education, standards based education, steam education on June 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »

I found this quote on a TeachThought website. It captures the spontaneity, engagement, and creativity of extraordinary education.

Several years ago I attended the closing banquet of our state science teacher conference and overheard two teachers comparing notes in a friendly competition. They had apparently gone through the same teacher development program together. One bragged that 86% of his students had passed the state science standards test at the end of the year. The other claimed that his students had a 93% pass rate, with the implication that having more students pass the test meant that he was the better teacher.

They were both new teachers and I can forgive them their misunderstanding. I felt like jumping into the conversation to remind them that having most of their students pass the standards aligned test only proved that they were standard teachers, when what our children deserve is extraordinary teachers. Unfortunately, there is no state test for extraordinary education.

Is our public education system ailing and in need of reform? Yes, in that it insists on treating each child like a cookie-cutter clone using a one-size-fits-all set of standards.

Would any of us recognize extraordinary education if we saw it? Can we even agree on the characteristics of extraordinary education? For my own definition, I say that students must be deeply engaged in the learning process, with memorable learning opportunities that invite active participation and critical thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration, and communication. In the end, education should have a lasting impact on their lives. And it should be fun, meaningful, and inherently interesting for them!

I learned during my third year of teaching that Project-Based Learning (PBL) can be a powerful route to extraordinary education. I’m not trying to say that I am an extraordinary educator, but I have tried with some success to bring meaningful opportunities to my students. To do this, I have had to look at my course standards in a different way.

There is a great need to change how we do education, but the forces that resist changes are the teachers and administrators and communities that need them the most. The bureaucracy of our school system is the very thing that holds us back. As one individual teacher, I have to accept that I may not be able to change everything, but I can at least change the way I do things.

The push for standards in education is simple to understand. We don’t want students with gaps in their understanding of the world, nor do we want teachers who are incapable of bridging those gaps. Society needs well-educated people in order for them to make informed decisions. Educational standards were developed to achieve a minimum level of essential literacy and knowledge across all students.

This brings up a deeper question: what constitutes essential knowledge? As one of my college professors put it, is there any knowledge (or skills) that a person must have? Every subject expert has a list of what he or she considers to be the essential concepts of the subject, and the list tends to multiply in any committee put together to consider new educational standards. Heaven forbid that even one math student would not understand the quadratic equation. The world might very well collapse if that happened! So we have to create a standard to address that concern, even if only a minority of teachers hold this opinion.

As a result of this drive toward comprehensiveness, all states have far too many educational standards than are truly necessary for each discipline. In chemistry, is it critically important for students to understand Le Chatelier’s Principle of Reaction Equilibrium? You’ll find it in all the state standards. But is this really necessary for what the student and society need? If taught well, it might help them understand some aspects of everyday chemistry, such as why the Haber process works to produce ammonia or why shaking a warm soda bottle causes the carbon dioxide to spray out. But can they become productive citizens without knowing this? Probably. Why force them to learn what they can easily live without? This has bothered me for years.

All the shareholders in the education system (parents, children, teachers, administrators, state officials, communities) point the fingers of blame at the others and expect them to be innovative, but are unwilling to change their own viewpoint of what education should be.

What I finally recognized is that standards are meant as a guide to the lowest acceptable level of understanding in a class, not as the final target. Anyone who teaches to the standards alone (especially to the end of year test) will succeed in creating a standard class, an average class, but not an extraordinary one. If we want all of our students to graduate as identical cookie-cutter clones of some “standard” citizen, then standards-based education and the factory model of education will suffice. But if I want students who are strong individuals, creative problem solvers, and innovators, I must go beyond the standards and teach for excellence and quality, not mediocrity. The standards are supposed to be a means to that end, not an end in themselves.

Deeper into Theory

Many of our vaunted education theories support this reductionist view of a subject. For example, Bloom’s Taxonomy is widely used and quoted in educational circles. It poses that there is a hierarchy of understanding and learning; that remembering facts and content details comes first as the foundation of all learning and then leads to understanding, then to application, then analysis, then evaluation, and finally to creativity. The implication is that we need to move our educational activities toward creativity and higher-order thinking skills. The problem with this pedagogical model is that too many teachers never get to the higher-order levels; they get stuck on remembering and regurgitating facts with little real understanding and even less application, analysis, evaluation, or creativity.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, often quoted but poorly understood. Instead of starting at the lowest level (remembering facts) and working our way up, we should start with creativity and work down to facts. Think of this pyramid as flipped upside down, or of creativity being the ground level but the other levels being roots underneath, reaching down to the facts. Students will learn the facts they need if they start with the requirement to create.

So many educational theorists are beginning to propose that Bloom’s Taxonomy should be stood on its head. Creativity should come first, not last. As students create, they can be taught to evaluate the effectiveness and even the aesthetics of their work (more on this in my next post). To do this, they will need to learn to analyze their work in the same way that engineers analyze the effectiveness of their prototypes and models. To analyze the prototype, they have to build it first, which involves the application and understanding of scientific theory. To gain that understanding, students will have to look up and remember the scientific facts and theories involved. In other words, teaching creativity first and insisting on quality work provides the impetus and motivation for students to find the information they need, understand and apply that information well enough to build prototypes, then analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of that prototype against specifications. Students will look up what they need to know because it is necessary for them to solve the problems that occur as they create, build, test, and analyze prototypes. We call this the engineering or design process.

This is where Project-Based Learning (PBL) comes in. Only through extended projects can students have the time, independence, and creativity to deeply explore and understand a subject by following their own curiosity. Projects are the only way to ensure that the intent for having standards is met and that we reach extraordinary education. This happens through what I call “standards overreach.”

It doesn’t make sense to raise standards while lowering the resources available to schools to reach those standards. There’s nothing quite like an unfunded mandate.

Standards Overreach:

Let me start with an example. During the first week in my first year biology classes, I introduced the concept of the characteristics of life and the abiotic factors necessary to sustain it. This is a common biology standard in most states. Now if I were a standards-obsessed teacher, I would teach to this point as my target for student understanding. I might put up a list of terms and have students write down definitions in the hope that they will understand them. This is a low-level activity without much student mental engagement. They’ll forget these definitions as soon as the test is over, if they retain them even that long. I might write the terms on a worksheet and have them look up definitions. Slightly better but still boring for everyone concerned, although it does meet the standard. I could show them a video about it and have them take notes. A bit better but still teacher-centered and passive for students. I could have students brainstorm the characteristics of life, then ask them to provide examples, or do a lab activity, etc. Getting better but still not entirely effective.

What all of these activities have in common is that they are targeted specifically to this one standard alone, and on the end of unit test, only some of the students will show understanding (or at least regurgitation). I have only partially succeeded.

What kind of life forms could exist on an exoplanet or exomoon, such as shown here? As students ask and answer such questions, they come to understand the characteristics of life and the abiotic factors that support it.

Or I could do this in a completely different way through a student-centered, engaging project. I could have them go beyond the standard (overreach it) knowing that at minimum they will understand the standard and possibly much more. So I use my passion for astrobiology and experience conducting field research studies of extremophiles in the Mojave Desert to create a project for my students. We’ll collect halophilic bacteria from the Great Salt Lake and let them grow in a Winogradsky column then analyze the pink floaters under a microscope. We’ll extend this to research on other extremophiles and use real examples of how they are adapted to their environments, with students developing posters or presentations or other summary products of their choice. Do all forms of life on Earth need oxygen, or even air? No – there are lithoautotrophs that live in rocks and get carbon dioxide from minerals, not air. Does all life require light and plants at the bottom of the food chain? No. Look at the chemosynthetic bacteria that are at the bottom of the food chain near deep ocean hydrothermal vents.

How can one test measure the quality or extent of knowledge for every student, even if the tests are adaptive? How can a single measure determine the effectiveness of every teacher?

Then they’ll look at potentially habitable exoplanets (and learn a bit of astronomy and physics on the way) and choose an actual planet, then develop a drawing or clay model of an alien life form they envision, complete with descriptions of how it is able to survive in that environment, the abiotic factors that exist there, and the ecosystem it is part of. How does it eat or get energy? How does it move around, reproduce, adapt to changes, grow and develop, etc.? How would we detect it and know that it is alive?

As a capstone event or product, they produce posters or other products on their research into and present them at a science showcase night, just as if they were professional scientists at a conference. At the end of the evening we can watch and analyze the realism of the movie “The Andromeda Strain.” In the process of thinking all of this through, the students will deeply understand the characteristics and factors necessary for life. They will all easily meet the standard because we shot way beyond the standard.

With high stakes testing supposedly measuring the effectiveness of teachers and schools based on how students take the test, its no wonder teachers are teaching to the test. Their jobs are on the line. Yeah. No pressure . . .

You will argue that this type of project will take days to complete, when you can cover that standard in just one day. Maybe so, but we haven’t just covered that one standard. Without my having to lecture them, my students have learned about evolution and classification, microbiology and using a microscope, physics and astronomy, and even developed artistic skills. They have learned about scientific communication, which is part of one dimension of the Next Generation Science Standards. We have therefore touched on about ten other standards from multiple disciplines in the five days of this project. If I tried to teach each one of those standards one at a time, it would take far longer than our project did. My students’ understanding will be deeper and more permanent than any lower-level unengaging assignments can achieve.

No Child Left Untested . . . How can teachers possibly meet education standards when they have to spend all of their teaching time administrating tests to measure how well they are meeting education standards?

Meeting Standards through PBL:

Here is another example that we completed just two weeks ago. We had moved into our units on human anatomy in my biology classes. I wanted students to learn the function of muscles and bones and how they provide support and movement. Now the “standard” way of doing this would be to provide diagrams of the skeleton and muscles and have students label all the names of all the part. Tibia. Fibula. Patella. Femur. Pelvis. Clavicle. Sternum. Latisimus Dorsi, Deltoid, etc, etc, ad nauseum. And many teachers leave it at that, with no understanding of how it all works together. Some will go on to teach (or more likely have the students read in the textbook) how flexor and extensor muscles must be paired, how they are anchored to the fixed bone with tendons reaching across the joint to the mobile bone. But only a few teachers will have students apply this knowledge, or design experiments to collect data that can be analyzed, or have students think critically to evaluate the quality of their knowledge, or do something creative with it.

So I turned the process on its head. I did draw a diagram of the elbow joint on my whiteboard as an example, showing and labeling the parts of everything. I explained how the bicep and tricep work in tandem to flex and extend the joint, and how ligaments, cartilage, and all the other parts hold it all together and allow it to move. That was all I did, and I didn’t really need to do that. It was just a quick 15-minute introduction. Then I gave them a challenge: using the materials I provided, they had to build a mechanical arm that would duplicate the movement of the elbow joint. As teams, they would need to use my diagram as a guide, look up whatever other information they needed, then design and build their own arm. It had to meet certain specifications: It had to have the same range of motion as a regular arm, not bending too far or extending too far (it could not be double-jointed). It had to have a way of both flexing and extending the forearm. And that was it.

I provided lots of cardboard, wooden skewers, beads, string, hot glue guns and glue sticks, etc. I divided the students into three-person teams, and required them to show me a sketch of their plan before they were allowed to collect materials. Then they set to work. In every case, their first attempts didn’t work very well. Some of the students wanted to quit at that point, saying that this task was “impossible,” but I provided encouragement and hinted that they should look more closely at how the actual human arm does this; obviously, it isn’t impossible if our arms can do this. They tore parts off their models, reglued, tried again, and eventually all the teams succeeded. They were all different, but all mimicked the construction of the human arm in important ways.

Standards imply that every student is the same, and that one size fits all in education.

With that project done, the same teams went on to create working models of the human hand. These models had to be able to create several gestures of my choice to show control of individual fingers, be able to pick up and move small objects to show dexterity, and be able to grasp and lift a cup full of water (added slowly) to demonstrate strength. This was a much harder task, and the same students again tried to give up. They wanted me to provide step-by-step instructions, but I refused. I repeated that there were no right answers, no one right way to do this. Some had to redesign from scratch, which was frustrating, but they overcame this frustration and eventually all succeeded.

It took seven class periods to accomplish these two projects. I could have easily taught the basic concepts about the arm and hand in a day using traditional activities, and they might have remembered the details long enough to pass the unit test (with some repetition and review). This would have sufficed for the requirements of the state standards. But it doesn’t meet my own standards, which are much higher. And it meets those other two pesky dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards: Scientific and Engineering Practices (engineering design process) and Cross-Cutting Concepts (modeling). We’ll look at teaching through building models in a future post.

So how did they do upon assessment? On the unit test, the students who completed these models showed a thorough understanding of how the arm and the hand work; not just the parts, but how they are shaped, how they operate and fit together, and even the importance of having opposable thumbs. Those teams that didn’t have effective thumbs had great difficulty lifting their cup of water.

All students received 100% on the essay questions related to these projects and all passed the test. They could repeat the facts, and they thoroughly understood the concepts. They will remember their learning far longer than traditional methods because they have applied their knowledge. They have analyzed problems that occurred with their models and evaluated their effectiveness against the specifications. They have revised, fixed, redesigned, and in short, they have created. They fulfilled all of the requirements for the state and the three dimensions of the NGSS, as well as all of Bloom’s levels. In addition, they learned resilience, teamwork, collaboration, and communication skills. Not all of the teams got along perfectly, and I had to work with them on how to communicate effectively to listen to all ideas and make a solid group decision instead of one person trying to run the show. Was it worth the extra time? Absolutely!

There are a lot of education buzzwords out there, a veritable Tower of Educational Babel that obscures instead of clarifying the problems of education and the need for reform.

Conclusions:

When administrators and parents and everyone else gets bent out of shape about standards and you feel a pressure to “teach to the test,” just remember that state education standards are the minimum expectation, and we should hope that you are a better teacher than that. Yes, you must meet the standards. You can get fired if you don’t. But state standards are not the end we are after, only one means to the better end of extraordinary education. So overreach the expectations forced upon you by your state, principle, or community and dare to teach to a higher standard. Mentor your students to deeper understanding, higher engagement, and further creativity. Dare to be extraordinary!

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Job Hunting Success

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post, tagged age discrimination, competency based education, education careers, education jobs, education reform, educational innovation, new haven residential treatment center, new haven rtc, pbl, persistence, project-based learning, residential treatment centers, resilience on May 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »

New Haven Residential Treatment Center, where I now teach. It is located in a rural area near the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. It is surrounded by alfalfa fields and deer frequently walk through the school in the evenings.

With my performances in the musical over (see my previous post) and Christmas past, I redoubled my efforts to find another teaching job. By the end of 2017 I had about seven different interviews, some over the phone, a few in person. I thought they all went well, but not all of the jobs were equally attractive. Some would require my moving away from Utah, which I am reluctant to do. I like living here, with the great combination of desert and mountains, incredible geology and scenery (there are five national parks in Utah and two others just outside), and a wonderful mix of biomes, ecosystems, and weather. A science teacher’s dream-come-true! So I am loath to leave.

One interview was with Pearson Publishing to promote their new science curriculum, which would require frequent travel but allow me to continue living here. But I’m not much of a book salesman, having had a negative experience while in college selling books door to door in Phoenix during the summer. I wouldn’t want to do that again unless at the uttermost need. I had some teaching interviews with KIPP schools and elsewhere, but again there are none in Utah and it would require moving. Another job was for a new tutorial program, but it was only part time (I need full time) and I’m also reluctant to start a new job with a new school knowing how much is promised that never comes to fruition.

The school building at New Haven RTC. I teach in the science room, which is the new addition right behind the pine tree next to the pond.

I looked for a variety of categories on every job aggregating website I could find, from Teachers to Teachers to Indeed and beyond. I looked for teaching jobs, curriculum development jobs, education consulting jobs, media design jobs, tutoring jobs, even substitute teaching jobs. These last two I didn’t pursue yet since I wasn’t quite that desperate, but I decided if I didn’t get an offer by the end of January I would start applying for these jobs, too.

One position I found was for a science teacher at a residential treatment center in Spanish Fork, about 20 miles south of where I live. I have taught at an RTC before and am familiar with how they work. Students with emotional and behavioral problems are sent to these centers (by parents, the courts, and school districts) as a last resort to provide them with in-house therapy while helping them catch up on school credits (which they are often behind on). Utah has a cottage industry of RTCs because the structure of our laws allows for lock-down school facilities as long as they have fire-safe zones separated by firewalls. I was called in for an interview and was impressed by what they are doing and felt the interview went very well. It happened on Dec. 16, so I wasn’t expecting to hear back immediately because of Christmas break. But once January began I hoped to hear back one way or another.

I followed all the requirements of Unemployment to apply to at least four employers per week (I actually did far more than that). I put myself on a daily time card to track the hours I spent, hoping that I could be productive in everything I did. I worked harder than on a normal job, averaging over 55 hours per week. But not much was happening. I was about to start subbing and finding whatever jobs I could, but knew if I did so it would take time away from looking for better jobs. It’s a kind of Catch-22.

A schematic diagram of how a project would be organized and managed using the BBIG Idea structure. The entire organization from students on up will decide on the major projects for each year, and the Project Directors and Advanced Innovators will divide the project into separate pieces, such as videos, 3D models, games, etc. Innovator teams work with Master Educators to divide the project further into pieces that individual students organized into Apprentice Teams complete, based on continual formative assessments.

A BBIG Idea:

I continued to develop a business plan for creating an organization that would take Media Design and STEM professionals into schools as independent contractors, similar to some school to work programs. My idea is called the Black Box Innovation Group, or BBIG. It will create a non-profit that sends professionals into schools to work with their media design students to create non-profit educational products, starting with practical projects such as promoting Utah tourism through creating county videos. Each year I would add more schools, then build an organized training program, with graduated students (masters) working for BBIG to go back into schools to train apprentices (middle school students) and journeymen (high school students).

My BBIG Idea will be a competency-based school program directed by outside professionals and Master Teachers (classroom teachers trained by BBIG). This diagram from the 2014 meeting of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools describes the challenges to adopting a competency-based curriculum, although it is a much needed school reform.

Students advance by mastering skills and participating in central journeyman level projects that show high competency. The central themes will be decided on each spring at a BBIG Idea Convention. Anyone in the organization could propose ideas at the annual conventions, and these would be focused on media design but with STEM themes. At first, BBIG would be supported by grants but would eventually fund itself through sales of its products. I worked out all the details, and even set up an appointment with the Small Business Development Center to look it over. The SBDC was very favorable on all but my funding model, as trying to continue an organization on grants alone isn’t very sustainable. I took a Saturday class at the SBDC to learn how to test the feasibility of my idea, and I took a continuing class on Thursday nights for how to create my own business. Although I haven’t moved further on this idea, I intend to pursue it through grants once I build more cache for myself through adding those three magic letters to my name and gaining the backing of a university.

If you want to learn more about the BBIG program, here is a PDF file you can download and view at your leisure:

BBIG presentation-s

Finally: Success

If my job hunting efforts had continued into February, I would have taken the plunge into starting BBIG while beginning to do tutoring and substitute teaching. But my job search efforts finally paid off. In mid January I interviewed with Heritage School, another RTC that is less than two miles from where I live. When I taught at Provo Canyon School 20 years ago, we did some joint training activities and classes with Heritage, so I was familiar with their campus and some of their people. The day after the interview they called me and offered a job. I told them I needed 24 hours to decide. With an offer in hand, I called up New Haven RTC and asked what their decision was. They had a couple of final questions for me based on my references from my former school, which I was able to answer satisfactorily. They offered me a job as well. After three months of no results, I was in the good position of having two offers to choose from.

I also weighed continuing my job search. It was near the start of a new semester and there would be some science jobs available at local school districts. Did I want to go back to crowded classes with over 30 students per class? Working in a district is a stronger position than being at a private school when it comes to applying for awards and grants. Finally, however, after much thought, I decided to accept the offer at New Haven. My feeling for their program was more positive and I felt I could work in their system more effectively.

I would be replacing a teacher who was leaving to become a stay-at-home dad. Over the years, he and his wife had sponsored 14 foster children and she had accepted a great job offer, so he was needed at home. I went in to the school starting a week before the end of the semester to observe and get prepared for the transition at the end of January 2018.

Making gak in my classroom at New Haven RTC. Because of the nature of our school and the students’ need for privacy, I cannot show faces or give names. It is nice to be back doing fun projects again, which I’ll describe in later posts.

I have been at New Haven since then, and I am used to the students and system. I feel that I am finally getting back on track creating new materials, blogs, lesson plans, and applications. I am writing blog posts again, creating new lesson plans, and planning ahead for what seems like the first time in a long time. I am innovating and creating again, and beginning to apply for awards and professional development opportunities. One thing I can’t apply for, however, is grants. This is a private for-profit school and almost all grants require the grantee to be a non-profit entity. I am moving forward and have been accepted into an online doctoral program in Educational Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, specializing in Innovation and Education Reform. I will talk about this more in later posts. This may provide further opportunities for grants.

As of today, May 21, 2019, it has been a year and a half since I was laid off at American Academy of Innovation and I don’t miss it. I do miss many of the students there, who were amazing, but I don’t miss the commute or the long hours or the stress that seemed endemic to that school. I have half the commuting time, and I get home now long before I would even leave school there.

I can focus on individual students and their needs. We have weekly treatment team meetings where we go over the therapeutic, educational, and social needs of each student. Think of it as a very detailed IEP that takes place every week. Our structure at school allows teachers to attend those meetings and be a full part of the team. I wish normal schools could do the same, but the intensity of how we do things couldn’t be replicated without quadrupling the amount we now spend on education.

Although I’ve now been here for 16 months, which is longer than I was at AAI, I’m not sure if I’ve yet recovered from the trauma of losing that job, even if it was a lay off due to financial issues. I still feel a need to cover my backside. I applied for over 60 jobs, interviewed for nine, and received two offers. That’s a lot of rejection, and it was hard to take day after day for three months. One thing that helped me was to see the movie The Greatest Showman (my wife insisted –she’s a big fan) and hear the song “This is Me.” It inspired me to write my own personal anthem as a way of thumbing my nose at all the detractors and naysayers I’ve had during my teaching career (and there have been more than a few) and to rise above the continued daily rejections. Here it is, for what it’s worth:

I Will Rise

Personal Anthem of David V. Black

They tell me my efforts are worthless,
I’m too old, obsolete, uninformed.
They say that my skills are now useless,
And ignore all the castles I’ve stormed.

But they’re wrong about me.
I’m afraid they won’t see
All the value I’ll bring to their schools.
Yet I won’t believe them,
As a teacher of STEM
I’ve learned to obey my own rules.

Though I may not be much in their eyes,
You can still count on this: I will rise!

I’m not falling down, I am leaping
Ahead of the pack, not behind.
Their negative thoughts won’t start seeping
To poison my thoughts or my mind.

Oh they won’t get me down,
And I won’t play the clown,
I deserve some respect for my strife.
Through the rest of my years,
I won’t give in to fears,
I’ll have joy throughout all of my life.

No matter how hopeless the prize,
There will be no mistake: I will rise!

I’ve taught classes from Boston to Bali,
Written blogs from the ends of the Earth,
Lead workshops for NASA in Cali,
And now you dare say I’ve no worth?

I’ve worked far too long to accept it
When you say that my best years are gone.
There is still much to see, still more to do
And I won’t quit until I have won!

Oh they’re wrong about me,
And some day they will see,
That I have so much further to go.
They will bow with respect,
Accusations retract,
And upon me their honors bestow.

Through the darkness I’ll reach for the skies,
And no matter the cost: I will rise!

I’m the teacher they thought to despise.
I will never give up: I will rise!

OK – so – I’m not exactly a great poet. But it encapsulated my feelings, and helped to keep me going. Despite daily setbacks and let downs, I had to keep going and believe that my efforts would pay off eventually. As an ancient king once said regarding his people’s attempts to escape from slavery:

I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made.
– King Limhi

Or as Shakespeare put it:

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
– Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

I had to believe that my attempts weren’t futile and set my fears and self-doubts aside. I kept trying, and it finally did pay off.

Now I can continue this blog and look forward to the rest of my teaching career. With my doctorate program I can finally join empirical research to the theories I’ve developed over the years based on my observations as a teacher. I can finish the books I’m working on and edit them until they are published. I can create a plethora of educational materials and follow up on all the ideas I’ve had. I’m no longer in job limbo. I am in recovery.

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Starting Up at Walden School

Posted in Weekly Post, tagged chemistry projects, expeditionary learning, montessori, pbl, project-based learning, student created content, students as teachers, uintah mountains, uintahs, walden school of liberal arts on September 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

Walden School of Liberal Arts in Provo, Utah

The past month has been crazy busy as I’ve prepared for my new teaching job at Walden School of Liberal Arts in Provo, Utah. I had intended on writing at least six blog posts in August and interviewing at least one person, but didn’t do any of it; instead, I’ve been writing curricula, lesson plans, preparing my classroom, and going on a four-day backpacking trip with my students to the high Uintah Mountains, up past Mirror Lake to Naturalist Basin. My legs are still recovering. Now this week has begun our first week of classes: I am teaching two sections of Honors Chemistry and one section of Astronomy on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays and one section of Computer Technology and one of Multimedia on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll probably also pick up a Video Production class afterschool as well on those days. So far we are three days into the school year and things are going well.

My chemistry and multimedia students will be helping with the Elements Unearthed project in much the same way as my Media Design students did at MATC, except I am now at a school that actually believes in expeditionary learning (field trips) and project-based learning (PBL). Plus having dedicated chemistry students will help improve the accuracy and relevance of the student videos. Here’s what they are going to do:

My classroom at Walden School

During the first term, each student will select a topic from one of four categories: elements, materials, energy processes, or the history of chemistry. They will conduct background research and develop an extensive set of notes with references, which they will condense into some form of print media, such as a poster, newsletter, brochure, etc. which they will convert to .pdf format. They will act as guest hosts of this blog, each one taking a turn to write a post entry about their topic and attaching their .pdf file to it for all to see.

During second term, they will come up with some sort of demonstration that relates in some way to their chosen topic, and practice it in class, then on a Friday in November we’ll take the whole class downstairs to the elementary classrooms (Walden School is a K-12 Montessori school) and present their demonstrations to the students, as well as handing out a simple worksheet or activity the students can take home. The chemistry students will also present their demonstrations to each other just before winter break and receive feedback.

My classroom again

During third term, the chemistry students will add a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation or a video to their topic, which will be presented to their peers and added to this blog site. They will also present again to a different elementary class.

During fourth term, they will present their demonstration, Powerpoint, video, etc. to the public and their parents at a Back-to-School Science Night at the end of April or start of May. We’ll videotape the proceedings and add the videos to this blog as well.

This may seem like a huge project (and it is) but I’ve done all of this before when I’ve taught chemistry at Juab High School in Nephi (except for the media elements – that comes from MATC). Those students who wish can utilize the footage and photos I’ve already gotten for the Elements Unearthed project to do their element or material reports. They can also compete in the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s “It’s Elemental” video competition. My multimedia students will help on the longer videos I’m creating for this blog, YouTube, and iTunes (we’ll set up the iTunes account in our Computer Tech. course).

So you see, I have landed in an ideal situation for classes that I love to teach coupled with a great group of students and an environment that works perfectly for this project. I’m very excited to see what will come out of it. At the very least, this blog should be quite a lively place.

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A New Base of Operations

Posted in Weekly Post, tagged 3D star model, creative students, creativity, educational philosophy, hands-on, mars 3D terrains, montessori, pbl, project-based learning, walden school on June 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This morning I accepted a job offer to teach full-time at Walden School in Provo, Utah. (here is their website: Walden School Website). I will be teaching a combination of chemistry, earth science, and multimedia courses at the high school level. Walden is a small charter school that follows the Montessori philosophy of providing a rich learning environment and letting students have a large say in the direction and content of their education. This happens to coincide very well with my own philosophy, which I have stated here before, that science classrooms need to go beyond hands-on learning and teach students how to be creative contributors to their own education, through building their own science content or conducting their own experiments.

Materials for the Mars 3D activity

In fact, the fit for me is so good that if I had sat down and designed the perfect situation for what and how I like to teach, it would be very similar to what Walden School has to offer. And it will be ideal for The Elements Unearthed Project. It will provide a base of operations, so to speak, from which to apply for grants and gain support as well as a group of dedicated, creative students to work with. Teaching chemistry and earth science in addition to the multimedia I’ve taught for the last ten years will also allow me to cross-pollinate the classes so that students can do diagrams, animations, and videos for their multimedia class but also get credit in chemistry or earth science. This is the way project-based-learning (CBL) can be more efficient as well as more effective.

I’ve struggled this last year since returning from my fellowship at the Chemical Heritage Foundation to make financial ends meet by creating Business Profile Videos for clients. The economy being the way it is, all the businesses we’ve contacted love the idea of a YouTube video advertising their products or ideas, but hardly anyone can afford to pay what the videos are actually worth. So for the last two months I’ve been searching for full-time and part-time jobs; it takes a great load off my mind to know I will have a regular income. Although my days will now be spent teaching, I think the overall pacing of the project can increase; I no longer will have to spend all my evenings working on business videos and can devote almost as much time as now to the video episodes I’ve already filmed.

It will also be great to get back to science teaching. I’ve missed it, and I’m looking forward to dusting off and updating some of the great lesson ideas and activities I’ve learned from NASA and elsewhere. I can bring back the Elementary Science Tutorial Program I began at Juab High School so many years ago. Now my students can build the 3D model of the nearby stars I developed for my astronomy classes at Provo Canyon School. Now the Mars 3D project I developed at MATC can be shared between multimedia and earth science classes. Now The Elements Unearthed Project will be able to draw on students from multiple disciplines in a school that believes in student creativity, project-based teaching, and expeditionary learning.

Table-top 3D model of the nearby stars.

Instead of the factory model, one-size-fits-all style that is killing our public high schools, where subjects are fragmented and divorced from each other, I believe in teaching holistically and individually and expecting students to achieve highly creative work. Now I’m going to put this philosophy to the test.

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The Elements Unearthed

Our Discovery and Usage of the Chemical Elements

Posts Tagged ‘pbl’

Teaching Science Through 3D Modeling

Mind Expanding Experiences

Extraordinary Education: Standards Overreach through Project-Based Learning

Job Hunting Success

Starting Up at Walden School

A New Base of Operations

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