Out of This World Instruction

Dr. Mary Garrett, Instructional Designer, Michigan Virtual University

Introduction:

As modern children passively stagnate in the world of television where the unexpected is normal, it is sometimes difficult for educators to help children truly understand the wonder of the real world and the excitement of exploring it. At http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/ we can get a look at the way scientists are striving to understand our world. But the terms and especially the numbers used by the scientists make it difficult for the students to really understand what the scientists are discussing. Trying to help children and the non-scientists of our culture to understand the excitement behind the blasting rockets and the reason for the many NASA missions, NASA scientists have worked with educators to develop educational resources that can capture the imaginations and expand the understanding of students. You can find many NASA educational resources at http://teachspacescience.org, but sometimes it is hard to see how they can be used in the classroom. In this presentation, we will look at NASA developed materials and methods to teach small numbers and toxicity, large numbers and scale, the SWIFT mission resources, understanding Newton’s laws, number lines, adding rules, multiplying rules, log rules, slide rules and log graphing paper. Then we take a brief look a Human Space Exploration class and an astronomy class that use NASA materials.

Small Numbers and Toxicity

Look at a drop of green food coloring. What hue is it? Put 9 drops of water in 10 different containers. Add a drop of green food coloring to the first container. How many drops are in the container? What fractional part is food coloring? What is the hue of the mixture? Add a drop of that mixture to the next container. How many drops are now in this container? What fractional part of this container is food coloring? What is the hue? Repeat the exercise from one container to the next until all the containers have been used. At what point did the green coloring seem to no longer be in the mixture? Look at common toxicity standards? How do these concentrations compare to the green food coloring mixtures?

“Toxicity” (Standards of common substances from Environmental Science (4th ed.), by Daniel D. Chiras (1994), Cummings Publishing

http://www.odak.com/standards.htm is the URL of the National Primary Drinking Water Standards. These numbers will have more meaning to the students who have looked at food coloring and its dispersion in water.

Large Numbers and Scale

Having looked at small numbers, look from small to large. Look at a grain of salt and note how it compares to a cubic millimeter. Look at a cubic centimeter, decimeter, and meter. How big is a billion cubic millimeters? Think about the size of a thousand thousand millimeters? What is this measure called (kilo). Think of square of that size on each side? What is that called? Think of a thousand, thousand millimeters cubed? How many grains of salt would fit in that cube? How big is the Universe? How would we measure something that big?

Examine common items and see if you can place their sizes relative to each other form the width of a light switch lever to the Milky Way galaxy:   Question of scale and Question of scale answers.

The metric system is based on powers of 10. The Swift mission resources, http://swift.sonoma.edu/education/index.html, can help you make the learning of powers interesting. While there, look at the materials for Newton’s Laws. Look at an example of a Newton’s Law demonstrated with a tennis ball and a person walking. Notice that each poster has numerous activities on the back. There are other materials explaining the NASA missions at http://universe.sonoma.edu/materials/index.html. Look at the PASS activities for exploring the size of the universe: http://lhs.berkeley.edu/PASS/

PASS: Planetarium Activities for Student Success by Cary Sneider, Alan Friedman and Alan Gould, Editors, Volume 9: How Big Is the Universe http://lhs.berkeley.edu/PASS/AST209&309.html. Notice also the updates: http://lhs.berkeley.edu/PASS/PASSv9updates.html . To show your students the scales of the universe, look at the Powers of ten, animated in java, at: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html, By the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, The Florida State University, Tallahassee. Having looked at scales, try out your understanding of size with common items and their relationship to each other and scales of 10 of the metric system with “A Question of Scale” (http://www.nationalacademies.org/rise/examp20.htm).

Slide Rules and Log Graphing Paper

From this trip into outer space, we will come back down to earth with a closer look at

Having seen how powers of 10 work, look at a log tape. How does it work? How does the traditional slide rule work? How can this type of reasoning work when we need to graph large numbers? The Far Out Math Booklet will help you go through these activities step by step. If you go through the sequence of steps with students, there is a good chance that your students will understand the log graphics and some of the tools we use to try to grasp large numbers.

Human Space Exploration

Have you dreamed of going into space as one of the pioneers in the space station or the moon or beyond? What would it take for you to do that? The Michigan Virtual High School (http://www.mivhs.org) has two on-line high school classes based on NASA materials for students: Human Space Exploration and Astronomy. You can find out more about them at http://www.mivhs.org/courses/traditional/. The Astronomy Course shows how NASA links can be used in a traditional course with a traditional text book to add “real world” excitement to science classes. Human Space Exploration demonstrates how a modern science class can be completely developed using NASA materials.

Conclusion

NASA has an educational outreach program designed to help teachers bring the excitement of space and active real world science into the classroom. In this presentation we have demonstrated how some of these materials can be used not only to help students understand difficult concepts such as very small through very large numbers, powers of 10 applied from quarks through distant galaxies, laws of force and motion, the relationship of the manipulation of simple arithmetic operations through understand log graphics, but even how NASA materials can be the core of a complete courses. Teachers, administrators, and instructional designers should leave this session with a better understanding of the role that free NASA materials may have in making your instruction as exciting as the very Structure and Evolution of the Universe in which we live.

If you want to order NASA materials, the order site is:  http://epo.sonoma.edu/orderformpublic.html.

References

Please note that the references were embedded in the presentation and URLs to the sources listed throughout the presentation paper.

About the author

Dr. Mary Garrett is the Instructional Designer for the Michigan Virtual High School that was funded by the Michigan Legislature in July 2000 for a three-year period to be operated by the Michigan Virtual University. The Michigan Virtual High School offers web-based courses to Michigan schools having students who would benefit from our wide variety of on-line courses. Mary Garrett earned her PhD in Educational Systems Development, (instructional technology emphasis) from Michigan State University. She has taught at the post-Secondary level for more than 20 years. She has won numerous awards for outstanding instruction and frequently presents at International, National, and State conferences on instructional design and educational technology issues. She is an Educator/Ambassador for NASA’s Structure and Evolution of the Universe project. She is certified to teach at the secondary level and has developed instruction and taught on-line since 1995.