Summative Eval...now What?

Today we digested the PERG summative evaluation to see what we could learn from student and teacher feedback, and to look for places where we could incorporate appropriate suggestions into what we do everyday with LabVenture!

What we noted was that a lot of the suggestions about the presentation have already been addressed prior to the publication of the evaluation - hmmm...psychics in the house??

Many of PERGs thoughts were about addressing the scientific method - and that is now a big piece of the intro (through a brainstorm) and how we kick of the conclusion. Another PERG suggestion was giving kids more of chance to talk about their different findings and allowing them a chance to change their mind. We do this when identifiying the X-Fish, but could put an added focus on this for other decisions as well (ID of stomach contents).

Suggestions from the evaluation about the introduction we think will be addressed with the INTRO 3.0 which will take place solely on Google Earth - more exciting, more personal, more current.

But where we DID have places to change what we do is how to better engage the teachers during the program. Having the kiosk is a great addition, but we really need to better utilize this tool.
Ideas: consistantly updating and adding content, encouraging teachers to browse through and add content, sign up for RSS feed, adding pages featuring work done by other teachers (Doug Caldwell & Ruth Wilson), place to post NOAA resources, news from GMRI education group - what we're up to besides LV programs...SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!!! One new thing that we started last week (due to Justine cleaning her desk off), was putting resources (NSTA magazines, articles, print out resources...) at the kiosk for teachers to read and/or take home.

Further suggestions from the PERG eval were about how to better prepare students for success at the LV stations without over-preparing them. We're going to test out new instructions during th week of Jan.20th - instead of giving students NO info about the stations, we're going to tell them about videos/photos and their websites that they will be creating. We'll also be adding an "Elements of successful Teamwork" brainstorm to the instructions during the intro.

Stay Tuned to see how our "investigations" pan out!

Presenters Club for Jan. 13th will be rolled into our "Clicker Questions" brainstorm meeting at 2:30.

Presenting 2.0

We had a terrific (extended) meeting today of the Presenters Club about changes that we could make to the presentation - content and style of delivery. We're going to attempt a true v3.0 X-Fish presentation for the New Year, centered around a student brainstorm about why Atlantic Herring is important to the Gulf of Maine. That brainstorm will drive the different content/concepts that we talk about (fishing, food web, and current science). We'll also attempt polling to gather student information, during programs that allow for that time. The intro will also be revamped by using just Google Earth with embedded layers, placemarks, photos, and videos throughout the Gulf of Maine Watershed. We ordered a "Space Navigator" to make flying through Google Earth a breeze (hopefully). We'll keep you updated with our progress...and announce the launching of v3.0!

This week we are thankful for 86%

This week's Presenter's Club meeting followed a great program with a very different group, Longley Elementary from Lewiston. This school has a diverse group of students from Sudan, Africa, Morocco, and Asia - just to name a few. I had a great discussion with the teacher about the challenges that she faces in the classroom; cultural differences, non-English speaking students, wide range of academic abilities, low economic backgrounds, and non-existant parent support goups. She really enjoys bringing her students for the LabVenture! program, because it is something that they can all participate in on some level. A cultural difference that she noted was that many of her students aren't hands-on and see animals as being wild, not something that can be handled...including our X-Fish.

As a group we discussed ways that we could alter our presentation style to better engage ESL students, such as speaking slowly, shorter sentences, and simpler words.

This week we made some minimal changes to the 2hr presentation to include some more student artifacts, and discussed ways to engage teachers during LabVenture! through conversation and paritipating in the program at empty stations when we have smaller groups (testing out Lobsters was a possibility).

But we saw both of these topics; presentation changes and engaging teachers as a much bigger discussion, so they became topics for future weeks:

Presentation changes (likes/dislikes, new content, new styles, different ways of using powershow) is next week's topic of discussion (Dec 2nd during lunch).

Fostering teacher relationships will be another topic that we'll get to in December as well.

Wow...December already! Again, if you're interested, you are all more than welcome to contribute.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Welcome to the Presenters Club

Hi all...we're going to revive this blog by using it to archive our weekly Presenters Club meetings. This meeting (lunchtimes on Tuesdays) gives us a chance to reflect on what has happened during LabVenture! presentations, work together on making improvements and changes, and share articles and news.

By Blogging this it will give you a chance to see what we're up to besides hosting 2 LabVenture! programs each day. And also, if you see any topics/questions/ideas where you'd like to participate or contribute to - let us know.

Nov. 18th
Today's Topic was how to best use this time, and potential future topics.
We decided to focus on one topic per week, and to have task items to complete by the next week.
Decided on opening questions:
Any changes to the presentation? Any you would like to make?
Anything stand out from last weeks visits?
Decided on Closing question:
What will next week's topic be?
Potential future topics: how to best use the teacher kiosk, major changes to current presentation style and content, future lobster presentation, teacher talking points, interesting articles to read and share...

Next week's Topic: Teacher talking points and quick revisions to the 2hr presentation.

Stay tuned...

Sushi and bar coding

If you have not seen it, a very interesting article about a couple of hs students who took dna samples of fish in sushi restaurants and found that 25 percent of the samples were mislabeled: half of the restaurant samples and six out of 10 grocery store samples. In every case, less desirable or cheaper fish was substituted for its more expensive counterpart.

The technology they used, genetic bar coding, and the organization they send the samples to, The Barcode for Life, might have implications for species ids for exotic species.

The original article is in the NYT here.

Interesting use of citizen scientists

The European Space Agency (ESA) has just posted a large number of pictures of Mars that were shot with "a non-scientific camera." They are looking for people to analyze the photos and post comments on what they see.


More information about this (it is really quite interesting) can be found here.

The site for accessing the photos is here.

The site is not very user friendly but this is an interesting concept.

Interesting use of videos

The University of Nottingham has just created a whole periodic table of elements, with each element being a video by the scientists about that element. Quite entertaining and educational. When you have a moment, take a look at site.

Below is the video for hydrogen:



Imagine a map of the Gulf of Maine with videos by fishermen, scientists, policy makers, and educators. Could be quite nice as a follow-up for the bus (click on areas along your route for a video about "Fill in the blank.").