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
- Full Strength
- 1 part in ten (10%)
- 1 part in one hundred (1%)
- 1 part in one thousand (0.1%): (Ferrous Sulfate; Morphine)
- 1 part in ten thousand (0.01%): D.D.T. and Cl
- 1 part in one hundred thousand (0.001%)
- 1 part in one million (0.0001%) 1 PPM: Nicotine, Cu and Fe
- 1 part in ten million (0.00001%): Tetrodotoxin, AG
- 1 part in one hundred million (0.000001%) Pb
- 1 part in one billion (0.0000001%) Hg
- 1 part in ten billion (0.00000001%)
- 1 part in one hundred billion (0.000000001%): Botulinus Toxin
- 1 part in one trillion (0.0000000001%)
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
- a number line with whole numbers and look at this simple way to
show numbers and their sizes.
- Look at negative numbers. Where do they go? What
do they mean?
- From that we will look at an adding slide rule from the Far Out
Math book.
- Look at powers of 10 on the number line. What happens to negative
exponents on a number line?
- Look the multiplication slide rule. How do powers of 10 make this work?
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.