Okay. This lesson was a struggle for me. I was fine with problems 1 - 4, even though I had to figure out where the luminosity sensor data was located. Once I got to Part C, my computer (or user-error) did not show any information that made sense when I added the IR sensor to the other y-axis. I struggled along, sure I just was not getting it, reopened and repeated the steps, and finally the green dots representing IR sensor data showed up. But even figuring out which IR data to use confused me.
Perhaps this would all be much more obvious to a science person, but it was truly a challenge for me.
I can see sharing this with my science people, who would probably LOVE the CODAP site. Even though this was uncomfortable for me, I want to explore this site to see what else is on here that I might be able to use.
Perhaps additional video tutorials would make this lesson (and others) easier to understand⌠especially for the teacher.
I will admit I was really confused when I got to this part as well. I have already decided that I want to go back and play with this experiment some more, as well as others, this summer when things are not so hectic after I get back from vacation.
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)? I think this would fit into my Ohio 8th grade curriculum in the how do know what we know about the earth. Using technology tools and collecting data.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful? I agree with the previous postings about the data being overwhelming to my students and I would need to downsize the amount of data in. order for them to be successful. I really like the CODAP application and I can see using this in class. I think we would spend some time looking at satellite technology prior to the lab and get students familiar with the what and the why of how it is used and can be used. I think that background knowledge would keep them more engaged with the data sets.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
My role would be to break this lesson done into manageable pieces and to pair students based on their student skills to be able to support one another. I like the aspect of open inquiry and it would be my role to facilitate discussion and answer questions and give guided support where needed.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your studentâs role during the class. What does âstudent successâ look like?
**Students would work in groups with group partners who share different strengths and weaknesses and they would support one another as they work through this lesson to gain understanding. I would expect a lot of questions and a lot of discussion among them.
I would also create my own data set. Thanks for this great idea. The amount of data would be very overwhelming for my students at first glance. I think after they had success with a smaller data set, we could go back to the larger data set with more success.
This lesson was awesome. It has created many new ideas for projects and lessons for this next school year. I have always been interested in a weather balloon launch and now I feel more confident in moving forward with that idea. My students are excited about the possibility as well. They took the initiative to look up more information about the logistics of a launch and even found a website that predicts where your balloon would land. It will be a big project with a lot of preparation but it will be worth it.
Another direction that I would like to explore is to continue the project and talk about GPS. I have done a unit that includes technology and agriculture. The average student has no idea how much tech is used in farming today. We cover GPS and how it works, then we move to how GPS is used by farmers to grow more efficiently. It has been a great unit that ends with a GPS treasure hunt around our local area.
I will have to contact you either this summer or upcoming school year to figure out some details of the launch. At first, I thought it would be a fun idea but the more I read the more involved it appears to be. Itâs great to have such great support nearby!
This is one of the best things I have gained from these discussion boards is the amount of work that has been done already to make it easier to implement the tech in the classroom. So often new tech is bought for the classroom because one demonstration of one project looked fun, followed by the catch phrase âand so much more!â. Later you realized so much more actually meant that there are other projects, just nothing you like or want to use. Just like a cookbook with a delicious cover. I think the book will be great, I make the cover recipe and then the book sits on the shelf until it is donated.
This site is packed with projects and if the project is not your cup of tea, it will lead to ideas that you can use in your curriculum.
I agree! I would have to guide my students more in this activity and simplify it just a bit for my elementary kiddos. But I think they would still find it interesting!
My students are always very engaged in our space unit, so thereâs no doubt that they would love this. I just worry about how overwhelmed my elementary students could get with the data so I feel like I would possibly need to make some more accommodations. However, I do love the real world connections so students make connections with how STEM is relevant in so many real world situations is what I would consider student success in this lesson.
Often times I spend a more of my time focused on students that arenât getting our standards and not enough for the kids that have mastered standards. This would be a great enrichment activity for some of my high and gifted learners to complete together. It really would complement the work we do to try to recognize and analyze patterns in our math and science classroom!
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
This past school year our first day of school was the day of the Eclipse, this would have been perfect! I could this lesson in two places. I could use it during the 1st chapter when I teach graphing techniques (which is where I think I will actually use it). In physics we do cover a chapter on planetary motion so I could use the lab there however we do not really get into the phases of the moon. I would probably add having them draw the three graphs on their own paper themselves. I would them pick 10 points throughout the data and make a graph. That way they can also practice good graphing techniques.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to successful?
Maybe just moving the data over into CODAP. I will also need to explain what the data sets are showing (ex: luminosity and UV). Since this is an exercise to teaching graphing, I will also review proper graphing techniques.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I will show them how to move the data into the CODAP program and then felicitate.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your studentâs role during the class. What does âstudent successâ look like?
I liked the worksheet that came with this assignment. I would have them complete the worksheet and then complete 3 graphs. Student success will be the kids having a greater understanding of how to interrupt data results, how to read graphs and how to make graphs.
I had a similar experience to Rhonda.Howard. I struggled with this lesson a bit before I got the hang of it.
Renaming the sensor data will definitely make this experiment easier. I also agree that pairing down the data, so the students are seeing and using less, might make this lesson easier to be successful. At the same time, for my advanced class, I think I will leave the data as is and spend some time in the beginning of the lesson figuring out what the units are and which sensors would express those units. It might be a little extra challenge for them.
I think this lesson will need a lot more extra support than most so far. This might be a lesson that we all do together, using the I do, we do mostly.
I also teach a lesson on perseverance. That lesson is usually taught to the 4th-5th graders, but I could adapt it to be used with the higher grades and incorporate it here.
Perseverance lesson: The basic idea is that somethings are hard to accomplish and somethings are difficult to understand, but that doesnât give you license to throw in the towel. You just need to take a step back and analyze things one little piece at a time. If you break the information down into very small segments, then you can work through the problem until the whole picture starts to make sense.
The practice of this lesson is to purposefully overwhelm students and then help them break down the problem, finally giving them a problem of their own to break down on their own. It teaches abstraction and the top-down problem solving approach. An understanding of these concept are great life lessons and also come in very handy when they begin coding complex actions.
I think I will do a combination of these two ideas with more emphasis on the perseverance factor for the advanced classes and more emphasis on simplification for the rest.
Many of my students are very interested in space as well. I think this lesson creates a great tie in for anything astronomy related. Our kiddos do a âmission to marsâ experience at the end of their 5th grade year. I can tie this lesson to that to make it a little more friendly to the students.
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
My school recently changed what preps I will have for next year (HS Biomedical Science 8th Grade STEM, no Astronomy) and while itâs something Iâm passionate about, I was worried that I wouldnât be able to incorporate the work I have done with the arduino⌠until I got to this lesson! I can use this as a great intro to our statistical analysis unit by putting large amounts of data into another form and allowing them to see how this information can be used by scientists in the field. I think that this lesson is rigorous and challenging enough for my high schoolers but will definitely need some scaffolding for the 8th graders.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
I really love the worksheet and the CODAP site (I hadnât used it before) and feel like I could use CODAP for a lot of different things in future lessons. I would want to spend a little bit more time going through more of CODAPâs functionality so it could be used for my studentâs own data, especially in biomed where they are running multiple trials of an experiment.
Multiple teachers mentioned that they felt like students will get overwhelmed by the data and are coming up with ways to mitigate that - I kind of feel like that they need to feel gently overwhelmed by it in order to appreciate it. This is a great way to really drive home the fact that raw data is sort of useless until you process it.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I would definitely guide the students through the first few sections, then turn them loose, going over their findings every few minutes or so as a class to make sure we werenât losing anyone. Then, I really loved the thoughts from @DHSSTEM to have students write their own research question. This could also become a springboard for future investigation as well.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your studentâs role during the class. What does âstudent successâ look like?
I definitely see this activity done in groups for the 8th graders and for the high school kiddos, individually but allowing them to check in with people at their table. I would like the students to understand that their role is like a researcher, allowing them to take time to come to some of their own conclusions based on the data set they are working with. I think student success is when students have had enough time to work the data that they are confident enough to design their own experiment with the data provided or work towards developing an experiment in the future.
