A visit from NASA

I was recently extremely pleased and honoured to welcome two NASA scientists, Dr Dorian Janney and Peter Falcon, on a visit to my school. There were a number of factors that led up to this point, which I will outline here, along with a brief overview of the visit itself. 

A few years ago my school purchased an automated weather station. We had it installed on the roof, and it now continuously uploads data to the website Weather Underground. Since then a colleague, Craig Wardman, and myself have also facilitated the participation of some our students in various citizen science programmes. These include NASA's S'COOL and CloudSat weather observation schemes. During that time we have held a number of videoconferences for our students where they had the opportunity to interact with different NASA scientists.

Recently, however, we were lucky enough to take things a step further, when two NASA scientists, Dr Dorian Janney and Peter Falcon, paid a visit to our school. We invited our Year 8 students, along with members of our Climate Club, to join in with an afternoon of activities and discussions about the scientists' work with NASA.

The students began with presentations about life in Bangkok and at our school, and followed this up with a fun quiz created in Mentimeter. Whenever we have videoconferences, webinars, or indeed visits such as this, we encourage some of our students to give brief presentations. This gives them invaluable speaking practice, especially as some of them may go on in the future to international careers where English is the medium of communication. 

Following the students' presentations, Dorian gave a great talk about the important work NASA is doing in relation to the earth's water cycle. The kids were surprised to learn that the water they drink could have once been dinosaur pee! 

Next, Peter gave a fascinating insight into life as a NASA scientist. He outlined the time his department were given the opportunity to launch an instrument that would be attached to the International Space Station - except they had an extremely tight window of opportunity in which to design and construct the instrument. They managed to put an instrument together in time by rounding up old bits of kit they had from previous missions. 

The day ended with a line of students queuing up to ask questions, which Dorian and Peter very patiently answered. This was a great way for our students to make connections between what they learn in class and real-world science, while engaging in discussions with practising scientists from NASA, a globally-recognised leader of scientific research and exploration.

All in all, this was a fantastic experience for our students, and one which we can hopefully repeat in the future. We are very grateful to Dorian and Peter for affording our students this opportunity. As a thank you we took them out for dinner - although this also gave us more time to quiz them about their amazing experiences of working with NASA!

A student videoconference with NASA

Getting students involved with global citizen science projects is a great way to engage kids with science and to instil curiosity and a desire for lifelong learning. There are many such projects available, and this week some students at my school were fortunate enough to participate in a videoconference with a scientist from NASA!

Students give a presentation about El Nino.

Joining us from NASA for this videoconference was Peter Falcon, the NASA/JPL Earth Science Outreach Coordinator, who also works with the CloudSat Education Network. 

The session began with my students giving the traditional Thai greeting to Peter, before some Matayom 3 (Grade 9) students gave a presentation about the effects of the latest El Nino event here in southeast Asia (thanks go to my colleague Ajarn Craig Wardman for helping the students prepare for this). 

Students making their CloudSat observations. 

Peter was impressed at the level of detail and information provided by our students. He next gave us a 30 minute presentation on some of the background to the CloudSat project and how the data collected by students around the world are used by NASA scientists to calibrate their satellite instruments. He also explained how the CloudSat project nearly came to a premature end when the satellite's solar panels stopped working correctly. Fortunately, after several months of trial-and-error tweaking, the NASA scientists came up with a solution which allowed the CloudSat satellite to resume its observations, and the project was saved. 

Group photo!

This kind of collaborative, global project can be used to get students engaged across all of the STEM subjects. It can even lead to a STEAM-based approach, with art added to the mix of science and technology. For example, Peter mentioned some schools have students write poetry about clouds, in addition to learning about the earth and climate science aspects. 

Overall, holding this videoconference served two main purposes. Firstly, it allowed those students who had already participated in CloudSat to see how their data helped NASA scientists with their research. Secondly, it hopefully aroused interest in the younger students so that they will wish to take part in the CloudSat project in the future. This seems to have worked - later this week some students will be participating in their first CloudSat observations!

Using citizen science to support global learning connections

Last week's #AsiaEd slow chat on Twitter discussed how we as educators can help our learners become globally connected citizens. As a follow-up I will outline what I think is a great way to do this, which is by encouraging students to get involved in citizen science. I have written previously about how I have introduced my students to citizen science, which is essentially science carried out by amateur, non-professional scientists. In this post I will outline various citizen science projects and websites which offer opportunities for students to participate in citizen science. I will also explain why I think these kinds of projects are useful for helping learners to become globally connected citizens. 

Dr Lin Chambers from NASA has a videoconference with students who participated in the S'COOL project.

NASA


NASA has a number of citizen science projects, for example the CloudSat and S'COOL projects. Students participate in these activities by making careful observations of the sky conditions - cloud cover, cloud types etc - then uploading these data to the respective project web sites. One of the aims of these projects is to reconcile surface observation data with observations made by sensors on satellites, in order to try and improve the accuracy of the sensors. By taking part in these projects students can make connections on a global scale. This includes making connections with the science, for example the global nature of climate science. It also includes making connections with a global community of both citizen scientists (other schools who are engaged with these projects) and professional scientists, for example NASA climate change specialists. Students at my school have participated in videoconferences with NASA scientists and with a school in the US which also participates in the S'COOL project.

A student presents some data for the NASA S'COOL project videoconference.

SciStarter

SciStarter is a very useful website which contains links to a large range of different projects in which volunteers can get involved. Their website has a search function that allows you to select and search for a variety of topics and activities. There are links to many different projects across a range of fields. 

Zooniverse

Another great website which has a variety of citizen science projects across a range of disciplines is Zooniverse. Projects include Snapshot Serengeti, where volunteers help to classify animals in photos taken by camera traps, and Asteroid Zoo, where work is conducted to identify near Earth asteroids. 

Journey North

Journey North is a website dedicated to monitoring wildlife migrations and seasonal change. It also has a number of resources for educators, such as activities, slide shows and teacher guides. 

Project Noah

Project Noah is an online tool for documenting biodiversity around the world. Anyone can join, and once signed up members can upload photos of wildlife they have taken, along with details of the organisms they spotted. This information can then be used by ecologists in various ways, for example to track the spread of invasive species, or to determine if climate change is having an impact on the geographic range of a species. 

Summary

Citizen science affords students the chance to make global connections between what they are learning in the classroom, and the community of practice of scientists. It also provides them opportunities to become globally connected with other learners around the world. There are many different citizen science projects with which learners can sign up to and get involved. By encouraging our students to engage in these kinds of activities we can provide fantastic opportunities both for learning about real science in an authentic fashion, as well as affording rich experiences for learners in a globally connected environment. 

Reflections on teaching and learning during an urban biodiversity project

This semester my Grade 10 students conducted projects which contained a number of elements considered to be important for project based learning (PBL). In this post I will describe the various activities carried out by learners as part of these projects, along with reflections on how I implemented each activity. This will be followed by a summary of learners' own reflections on the projects. 

A screenshot of the front page created by students.

1. Driving question

The driving question for these projects was 'What biodiversity can we find around us, when we live in a large urban centre like Bangkok?' On reflection, next time I would spend longer having students developing their own driving questions related to the theme of urban biodiversity. In this way learners would have more voice and choice over the direction their project took. 

2. Opening event

Groups of students were asked to take photos of various wildlife that they spotted around Bangkok. Back in class the following week, I asked learners to upload their photos to the biodiversity monitoring website Project Noah. I have blogged previously about how Project Noah is a great way to introduce learners to citizen science. This was the opening event for these projects, and aimed to give learners a sense of how their own photos and observations may be used to inform real-world science. 

An example of Bangkok's biodiversity.

3. Creating authentic products

In order for learners to exercise some creativity, and make good use of the photos they had taken, I asked for each group to create a web page for their photos within Google Sites. This was also where students were able to reinforce what we had been learning in class about scientific naming and classification of organisms, habitats, and community interactions. 

Additionally, I asked each group of students to create a video based on their observations and photos. They had a choice of approaches here: a series of their photos put together as a movie, a filmed piece to camera, a video with a voiceover etc. These videos were then posted to YouTube (for example here), and so represent an authentic, public product.

5. Learners' reflections

At the end of the project I wanted students to have the opportunity to reflect on their learning throughout the projects. This would also act as feedback for me, affording me insights into what could be improved about the projects in future. These reflections were recorded by having students complete a questionnaire created using a Google Form.

All but one student (27/28) completed the reflections questionnaire. 25/27 students responded that they had learned something new about biodiversity in Bangkok. Many students expressed surprise at the range of biodiversity they discovered in and around Bangkok. 

A number of students expressed the opinion that going out finding wildlife of which to take photos of was fun, not boring, and in the words of one student '(felt) free, not like doing work'. Some students enjoyed making the videos, while others stated that they enjoyed putting their web pages together. 

When asked what was the most important thing they learned from the projects, many students noted that they had learned a lot about biodiversity and the relationships between living things. Other students highlighted team working skills as an important aspect they had learned from the projects. Some students talked about specific technical skills they had learned, such as building web pages and editing videos. 

When asked what they would change about the project, many learners responded that they wouldn't change anything. A few students suggested that there may be better options than Google Sites for building the web pages, since it is somewhat limited in the choices available. A couple of students also noted technical difficulties when it came to making the videos. 

Summary

My own personal feeling about these projects is that they were successful in many respects, most importantly that the majority of students felt that they had learned something new from them. I think next time I would spend longer in the driving question development phase, giving students more opportunity to have their input. Also, I would consider ways to give learners more say in the choice of what their final product should be. I still like the idea of having a website so that the whole group can collate their work in one place, but within that there could be a wider range of ways to display their findings. 

I would be interested to hear other views on these projects, along with suggestions for improving them. 

Citizen science in the classroom

Citizen science is science that involves amateur or non-professional scientists. It can take various forms, e.g. it may involve online tagging of photos taken by field scientists,  drones or camera traps, for example Zooniverse's PenguinWatch: http://www.penguinwatch.org. Other citizen science may be game-based, for example the protein-folding game Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/), which led gamers to solve the structure of a retrovirus enzyme in a matter of weeks - professional scientists had been trying to solve the puzzle of its structure for over a decade! (http://bit.ly/1tqDCLL).

I'm interested in using citizen science in the classroom. Roth and Lee (http://bit.ly/1O1q1Ig) have long advocated incorporating citizen science into the school curriculum as a way to increase science literacy, leverage lifelong learning, and foster participation in community issues. I recently had some of my Grade 10 students participate in Project Noah (http://www.projectnoah.org/), an online tool for documenting biodiversity around the world. It is specifically aimed at citizen scientists, with an active community of enthusiasts and experts ready to offer suggestions and advice for identifying species.

I had the students go out into the school grounds to take photos of the different organisms they found, then they returned to the classroom and uploaded their spottings to the Project Noah website. 

Student feedback was positive following the activity, with one student remarking that it was their favourite biology activity all year. If I were to plan it differently next year, I think I would introduce the project earlier in the school year, and encourage students to download the Project Noah app to their phones. They would then be able to hopefully spot a larger variety of organisms than we might expect to see around our campus in the centre of Bangkok!