Canadian Space Agency Sponsors Guest Speaker at Our School! – blog post #47

 Just three days after returning from their Christmas holidays the science and math students at St. Pius X High School are in for a special treat! Sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency, Adam Vigneron, graduate student at Carleton University will be speaking to a select group of senior St. Pius X High School students in the school library during period two.

Born and raised in Wilcox SK, Adam holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Saskatchewan.  While at the UofS, he was an active member of their Space Design Team (USST), competing in a space elevator challenge (focus area: wireless power transmission) and a Canadian nanosatellite competition.  Adam also spent a term studying space physics at U of Tromsø in northern Norway.  In his leisure time, Adam enjoys waterskiing, playing cards, curling, and is an avid scuba diver.

While at St. Pius X High School, Adam will also be facilitating workshops on Solar Max with two of our grade nine classes. During these interactive 75 minute workshops students will be engaged in a variety of hands on activities. He will also be lunching with the science and math teachers; they are looking forward to discussing what essential skills he took away from high school with him.

If you are going to be in Ottawa on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 and would like to be invited to Adam’s 10:20 a.m. presentation please send me a direct message on twitter (@EurekaTeacher) with your email address and I will extend one to you personally.

You can be sure that there will be a follow up blog posting about this exciting day!

From the Space Quarterly Magazine -- Education Section

During the summer of 2011 I had the opportunity to attend the Canadian Space Educator’s conference which is sponsored and held at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It was fantastic and all expenses are covered by CSA! Subsequently I was interviewed by Randy Attwood from Space Quarterly magazine and am cited as a primary source for his article on the conference. The article appears below.

32 Space Quarterly December 2011

Education

Inspiring the Next Generation of Space Explorers

By Randy Attwood

Randy Attwood has been following the space program for over 40 years. He has appeared on television and radio for over 30 years as a commentator. He is a Senior Editor at SpaceRef Interactive Inc. And Managing Editor of Space Quarterly.

While the space shuttle program was winding down earlier this year, NASA produced several videos profiling the people who worked on the program. Astronauts, mission controllers, and support personnel were asked why they chose to work in the space business. Many had the same answer: they had watched the first Apollo moonwalk at a very young and impressionable age. The idea of going into space stuck with them through school, and they made it their careers.

Now, with the remaining space shuttle orbiters heading to museums and the number of opportunities to fly in space reduced to a minimum, who will inspire today’s young people to follow the same paths to space? Not everyone wants to be an astronaut; some want to be engineers and technicians. But all have a story about a certain event or individual who inspired them to stay in school and follow their dream to space. For many, that person is a teacher.

Approximately every 10 years or so, the Canadian school curricula are revised. In the late 1990s, astronomy and space program material appeared in the grades 6 and 9 science curricula

for most provinces. Not all science teachers have a background in astronomy; so many teachers were suddenly facing classrooms full of eager students with a thousand questions. The teachers cried out for help.

One resource for teachers to turn to is the annual Space Educator Conference held at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) headquarters in Saint-Hubert, Québec. This three-day conference held in early August provides an opportunity for educators to participate in workshops with CSA engineers and scientists. The conference covers space-related, curriculum-relevant topics at the primary and secondary levels.

Marilyn Steinberg is the Program Manager, Space Learning Program, at the CSA. In a recent interview with Space Quarterly, she talked about how it is a challenge to bring space to the students in the classroom: “Space is a natural hook because children tend to look outward. Space is not a concept; it is a context. From that context, you can explain and teach a vast variety of concepts that appear in the science, math, and technology curricula across the nation. The challenge for teachers,” she says, “is how to translate content so students can understand, engage, and apply it to their own experiences.

“The children are glowing with anticipation. They want to get their hands dirty; they want to think about the problem, they want to attack it. For a teacher who does not have a background in space, it is hard to satisfy the students’ expectations. The program we have developed here attempts in a variety of ways to address that. We give [the teachers] the opportunity to live, breath, and know space. We do this by offering the same kind of workshop that we would offer students. “We also want to make sure that the educator community has an opportunity to integrate with the scientists and engineers. The two communities speak vastly different languages. We take the time to train the scientists and engineers. They learn about curriculum, and they learn about teaching strategies. Ultimately, they are speaking the language of the classroom to the educators.”

One of the educators who attended this summer’s conference was Kay Stephen, a high school teacher from Ottawa: “The Educators Conference was amazing. My background is chemistry and biology so I didn’t know a lot [about space]. For teachers without a space background, the textbook is a good starting point. But things are changing all the time in space. After the conference, I felt current with what was happening in space and knew where they were going to next.”

An important aspect to teaching in Canada is STSE, which stands for science, technology, society, and the environment. (In the United States, they use STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.) Essentially, STSE is the application of what the student learns in science to other areas, including his or her own environment and daily experiences. It is answering the question, what does this have to do with me?

Applying STSE to teaching space exploration is very important to Stephen: “That is what it is all about. That is where it all comes together. That’s where the kids take all the theory and apply it to real life.”

Stephen teaches applied-level students and says that without STSE, her students would not be engaged at all. “Every day, that’s all they want to do: get their hands on an activity, get their critical thinking engaged, and apply what they are learning.”

Stephen says that the highlight of this year’s conference was the workshop on Mars. “They

have an area that simulates the surface of Mars. They took us through the different labs where the actual research scientist made the presentation. There were no stupid questions. They spoke to me at my level. I can take the information back to my own grade 9 students. I was very impressed.”

The CSA does more than run the educator conference, though. Students can visit the CSA headquarters for workshops, and the CSA also sends presenters to schools. They perform 280 workshops a year. The educators who cannot get to the CSA can access online resources on the CSA Educator website.

And there are other programs for educators to use. The Tomatosphere project, which the CSA co-sponsors, has been active for the past nine years. Tomato seeds that have travelled in space are made available to students to grow and compare to similar seeds that have stayed behind on Earth. Students receive two packs of seeds; they conduct a scientific experiment and compare the germination rates of the two seed sets. Only after the experiment do they learn which pack of seeds had been exposed to a space environment and which were Earth seeds. During the nine year program, Steinberg estimates that 2 million students have participated in the Tomatosphere project.

A major project the CSA is working on for educators will be released a year from now. It

is a 3D interactive program that immerses the student into the space environment. With a Chris

Hadfield avatar as the student’s guide, they will learn to live on the International Space Station or fly the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. All along, they will be given problems to solve that require them to apply the scientific method and understand several important concepts. Their teacher will be linked in to monitor the students’ progress and act as Mission Control. The student avatars will join the Hadfield avatar and shrink down to either explore the internals of a green plant on the space station or examine the insides of a rocket engine on the Soyuz.

The challenge for the CSA? Canada is a large country, and there are thousands of teachers struggling to bring space and astronomy to their students. Unlike NASA, which has education centres spread across the country and a much bigger budget, the CSA is isolated on Montreal’s south shore.

“Many teachers don’t even know there is a CSA. [It’s] Canada’s best kept secret,” points out  Kay Stephen. “Canadian educators need to know that there are grants to get CSA scientists to visit your schools.”

The CSA is about to undergo potentially severe budget cuts. Hopefully the CSA programs, which are meant to help educators across the country inspire our future space scientists, will not be too severely affected.

All photo credits in this blog post: Kay Stephen

Special Education Students Get to Meet Canada’s Astronauts

St. Pius X students pose with Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques.

On Friday, May 13, 2011 two students in St. Pius X  High School’s High Needs Program, had the opportunity to accompany their science teacher, #EurekaTeacher, to the newly renovated Canadian Aviation and Space Museum where #EurekaTeacher was participating in a live tweet-up with five of our astronauts.

After some carefully placed phone calls to the Canadian Space Agency and with the blessings of her principal,  #EurekaTeacher was able to make arrangements for the two students to attend the event with her. Canadian astronauts Steve MacLean, Bob Thirsk, Chris Hadfield, Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques spent an hour on the stage participating in a Q & A session withschool students from Ottawa. Their questions ranged from how you shower in space to what happens if a meteorite hits the space shuttle.

After the Q & A session the two St. Pius X students spoke privately with David Saint-Jacques who graciously answered their questions on a one-to-one basis, signed souvenirs for them and posed for photographs with them. This is one Friday the 13^th that brought Good Luck to our students. Thanks to David Saint-Jacques and the Canadian Space Agency for making two students dreams come true!

Conducting the Tomatosphere Project with the Smarter Science Framework – Posting 26

Now that our day length is increasing, bulbs are emerging and robins returning I am eager to start gardening. Since the ground won’t be warm enough to plant for at least another month I did the next best thing and had my class plant the tomato seeds which I had ordered from the Tomatosphere Project. This year however, I combined the Tomatosphere Project with the Smarter Science Framework to enable the students to design their own controlled scientific experiment. The fact that they are going to be sharing their data with the Canadian space Agency adds an extra layer of excitement to this rich, authentic learning task!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Tomatosphere Project I encourage you to view their comprehensive website. Briefly, schools can enrol to be part of a blind test. They are sent two sets of genetically identical seeds – one of the sets has been exposed to a simulated space environment at the University of Guelph, the other set has not. Students are asked to plant the two sets of seeds and track their germination rates. This data must be submitted online before the teacher is informed of which set of seeds was exposed to microgravity and which was not.
I like to start this experiment while we are studying the grade nine space unit. It leads to many questions, such as:
“What is microgravity?”
“How do seeds germinate?”
“Are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?”
“Why would they want to grow plants in microgravity?”
“What will people eat when we colonize Mars?”
All of these questions, and many more, come from the students and each one leads to a teachable moment.
The design of the Tomatosphere Project predetermines the dependent and independent variable for the students. Yet they still need to identify them. In addition, they determine what the control variables for the experiment are and decide on their values.
After distributing the Smarter Science starburst graphic to the students and describing the Tomatosphere Project to them the students were able to define “what would be observed” as the germination rate, as prescribed by the project. Therefore they wrote “germination rate” in the centre of the star burst as their independent variable. The dependent variable, which they filled in at the bottom of the page, was if the seeds had been exposed to microgravity, or not.
Together we brainstormed the control variables, each of which were written around the rays of the star burst. The list was:
• Size of pot
• Amount of soil
• Type of soil
• Location pot kept in
• Water
• Number of seeds
• Depth at which seeds are planted
Each student decided the value to give each of these variables then set up their experiment. This also led to a teachable moment on the important of labelling! Fortunately, I have a greenhouse attached to my classroom which allowed them all to choose their own spot in the greenhouse to place their two pots.
Once the seeds were planted the students then had to design their own observation tables. This was the most difficult task of the day. They really struggled with it. I kept telling them to make columns for whatever they were going to observe every day. Overall, this task was poorly done on the first day yet I managed to resist the urge to dictate the table headings to them.

The second day when the students came to class and checked their plants they were disappointed that no tomatoes had sprung up overnight. Nevertheless, I insisted that they still had to write down what they saw and what they did (if anything) to each pot. Now they could identify what was wrong with their observation tables. They asked me things like: “Where do I record how much water I gave them?” Eureka! Now I could tell them to add a column to their table! There were several aha! moments in class that day as the students realized what was wrong with their observation tables. Some even choose to redesign theirs from scratch.

For now we are watching, watering, recording and waiting. What will the two sets of tomato seeds do this year? I don’t know. It’s a blind test! But I will blog about it later when are results are in. In the meantime, I urge you to get involved!
For many of the students in my classroom it is the first time they have ever watched a seed germinate, thereby allowing me to provide them with some prior knowledge before we start our ecology unit. The students become very emotionally attached to their plants. They name them, they rush in to see them before class starts, they worry about them over the weekend, and they take them home and transplant them into their own gardens at the end of the experiment. There is a lot of friendly completion as they compare their plants to the others and a great deal of pride in the finished product. As the plants grow the students become more attuned to the importance of keeping everything equal between the two sets of plants and the importance of a controlled experiment becomes self-evident to each of them.

What types of seeds have you had success with in your classroom? Send me a tweet @EurekaTeacher

Robotics -- How hard could it be?

Posting 13
In the grade nine applied science curriculum in Ontario we study a unit on Earth and Space Science: Space Exploration. One of the overall expectations the students need to master is “analysis of the major challenges and benefits of space exploration, and assess the contributions of Canadians in space.” (The Ontario Curriculum, grades 9 and 10 – Science, 2008)

With this expectation in mind I led my students through some information on the Canadarm and Canadarm2. This included examining static pictures, appropriate grade level reading material and viewing a variety of videos. The students were fairly disinterested in what the text book had to say, I am not sure how many of them actually processed it. However, when I showed them actual video footage they expressed disbelief that the videos were even real. I had to actually show them where I got the videos (from NASA’s and the Canada Space Agency’s official websites) for them to grudgingly accept this was not some sort of a conspiracy theory I was trying to pull on them।

The students were amazed by the concept that the International Space Station (ISS) is really in existence, that it is constantly orbiting the Earth and -- what really blew them away – that astronauts are taking turns traveling to it and living there for months at a time! Now we were getting somewhere!

Using the “official” videos we became familiar with the three components of the Mobile Servicing System (MSS) – Canada’s contribution to the ISS. These components are the Mobile Base movable work platform, the 17 foot long robotic Canadarm2, and Dextre the robot that works in conjunction with the first two components to perform the fine motor skills.

Shockingly, now that the students believed me they adopted a blasé attitude towards this amazing R&D. “Yeah, yeah, Miss, so what? How hard can it be for a bunch of nerdy engineers to design a stupid robot to turn screws in outer space?” OMG! Are you kidding me?! This when I knew we needed to do a robotics lab to give these students a sense of just what robotics entailed but what robotics lab could I possibility do with them that they could perform successfully and I had the equipment for?? (A primary mandate for teaching struggling student is ALWAYS set them up for success!)

Time for the Smarter Science Framework to go back into action!

1. Initiate and Plan (Engage)

“Let’s identify a really simple problem that each one of us does every day that could be performed by a robot!”

Our brainstorm resulted in this list:

· Eating lunch

· Taking notes

· Going to school

· Putting on makeup

· Tying a shoe

· Walking to school

· Cleaning my room

“Is there anything on this list that we could practice right here in the classroom to see how hard it would be for a robot to do it?”

· Not eating lunch because not everyone has one. Besides we would still be hungry, why would we want a robot to eat our lunch?

· Taking notes would be good! I hate taking notes. I never read them after I write them down anyway. I don’t even read them while I am taking them down. Yeh! Taking notes is a good one.

· Going to school is good to, that way we could just stay home all day. No, I like coming to school, I get to see my friends. Not me, I hate coming to school, I would rather send a robot so I could just stay home and chill all day. That wouldn’t work, your mom would kick you out of the house anyway.

· Putting on makeup? It would be good for the girls that use make up. No, it wouldn’t, we like putting on makeup ourselves, and we don’t want some stupid robot to do it.

· Tying shoe is no good, I don’t even have laces I my shoes. I have laces but I just leave them tied all the time, I just slip my shoes on and off. I don’t know how to tie shoes! What! We learned that in kindergarten. The bunny ears go round the hole . . .

· Walking to school? Why not just build a car to drive in?

· Cleaning my room, that’s a good one! Wait, we can’t do that here, you have to be home to clean your room . . .

Okay so identifying a common problem was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Next time I might just identify the problem for them. How much would that affect their learning? Hmmm? Well, “Literacy does float on a sea of talk” and there was some excellent discussion while reviewing the pros and cons of each of the activities . . . If only we had unlimited time!

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes of our discussion our question emerges!

How can we simulate the performance of a robot tying a shoe lace?

This question is the center of our star burst diagram.

Once again we brainstorm different methods we could use to tie a shoe, keeping in mind the equipment that is readily available to us. Four options are agreed to:

1. Blindfolded

2. With eyes open, but wearing gloves (lowered tactile sensation)

3. With eyes open, but using pencils instead of hands. (No tactile sensation.)

4. With eyes open but using tweezers in each hand (still no tactile sensation but pinching is possible)

Our control, or dependent variable, will be how long it takes (TIME) the individual to tie a shoe as they normally would, ie. Wearing the shoe, with their eyes open and using both hands.

Holy cow! We were finally ready to start our investigation and the whole 75 minute period was over, yet highly productive! Also, because we ended on a high and the kids were actively engage in the process of planning the lab they were more likely to show up the next day! It’s win-win!

2. Perform and Record (EXPLORE)

Sure enough, the students come bouncing into the classroom the next day eager to get going on their lab. We refer to the starburst diagram to review what we agreed on for our independent and dependent variables. Before they could get started they needed to construct an observation table to record their data. The data that needed to be measured and recorded was the amount of time each trial took. Using instruments is one of the fundamental skills identified in the Smarter Science framework, however, I have had numerous stopwatches broken, stolen or malfunction over the years so I use this as a teachable moment!

“Everyone take out your cell phones!”

“No way, Miss. This is a trick. We will take them out and you will take them from us. No way!”

“I’m not kidding! Take out your cell phones. We are going to use the stop watches on them to time how long each shoe tying takes! Let’s go! You can absolutely trust me – but no texting!”

“Whoopee! Best teacher ever!”

So there they were with the technology right in their pockets। No more lost or broken stop watches for me! Okay, so I didn’t actually know how to use the stop watch function on a cell phone but that didn’t matter, they quickly taught each other. Because they were working in pairs it didn’t matter that not 100% of the students had a cell phone, those that did were eager to show them off and time each other.

Working in pairs or groups of three the students were completely engaged in the inquiry। As I rotated through the room I continuously drew them back to the original question which was, “How difficult would it be to design a robot that could perform this task?”

3. Analyze and Interpret (EXPLAIN)

The students drew a bar graph as a visual means of comparing their success in tying shoes using the five techniques outlined above. Although some of them still complain about having to draw graphs because it is math and it is not fun, they have become so successful at producing them that the grumbling is minimal now. They actually like selecting the colours they will use to shade in each bar and a surprising amount of thought goes into it. For example, “I will use yellow for the pencils because my pencils are yellow.” “I am using red for the gloves because the gloves I wore were red.” “How about gray for the forceps? They are silver which is sorta like gray.”

I had the opportunity the very next day to demonstrate to the students just how proficient they have become in constructing and analyzing graphs। One of our class clowns, who consistently pretends to not understand anything, was absent for the day of the lab but showed up the next day and actually asked what he had missed yesterday. So we told him and he asked how that had worked out for us. At this point I showed him one of our bar graphs and asked how he thought it had worked out for us.

He peered at the graph intently and quickly looked away with a smart-alex remark forming on his lips. But instead of blurting it out he looked back at the graph and cried “Wait! Wait for it! Hmmmm? Well, Miss, according to this graph,” he began and picked the graph up from the desk where it was lying. As soon as he actually touched the graph I knew I had him!

“This graph, Miss? It shows that it is very quick and easy to tie shoes with your eyes open and using two hands . . . but once you close your eyes it takes longer . . . then, if you put on gloves it will take even longer . . . when you use pencils . . Come on, Miss, who uses pencils to tie their shoes? Yeah, well, if you use pencils to tie your shoes it maybe can’t even be done according to this graph. Hmmm । . .this is interesting. What were you doing in here yesterday? Using forceps to tie shoes? Who uses forceps to tie shoes? Right, this is science! Who knows what those crazy scientists will get up to next? Well, if for some reason you use forceps to tie your shoes it will take 270 seconds and that is just for one shoe so really? Really,. Miss?”

HUGE APPLAUSE!!! HIGH FIVES ALL ROUND!!!

4. Communicate (EXTEND)

This interpretation by our class clown led us directly into the final part of our lab, which is the debriefing, where we discuss, explain and reflect on what we did and what we learned. We orally compared the times required for each task, both individually and between groups. In every instance, the interpretation given by our class clown held true.

Once the students had actually performed the lab they had a much greater understanding of how difficult it would be for a robot to build things in outer space, even when being controlled by a person with a controller (“joy stick”).

AFTER THOUGHTS

It turns out that one of the major difficulties in teaching my grade nine science class about space exploration this semester is their lack of prior knowledge. These teenagers have seen so many special effects in computer games and movies that they have no actual knowledge of what is out there. Instead they believe that anything that is depicted as man made in outer space is just the result of special effects.

Next time I do this inquiry I think I will have the students predict or hypothesize what the outcomes will be। Will that require an extra day of class? Probably? Will it be worth it? Definitely!

Addendum: Here is a photo of me at the Honeywell Space Camp for Educators. In the photo I am in the simulator of the Space Shuttle. Space Camp is one of the best Professional Development opportunities I have ever had and I encourage everyone, from everywhere, to apply. All expenses are covered and it will be the best week of your life!