Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
This app lets you drag and drop electrons, protons, and neutrons to create atoms with different charges, elements, and atomic masses. You can also enter the element symbol, charge and atomic mass and it will build the atom for you.
Note, however, it only does the first 20 elements.
We were working on plate tectonics last week, and the conversation went from earthquakes to heartbeats.
I think it started with the question of, “How do we know what the inside of the Earth is like if no one’s been down to see it?”
I agreed that we’ve not even been down to the bottom of the crust because the heat and pressure would collapse any hole we tried to drill. I did not mention that terrible movie, “The Core”, because beyond maybe the first ten minutes where there is some actual speculative science fiction, it’s really not worth seeing.
But beneath the crust, how do we know how thick the mantle is? How do we know that the inner core is solid metal (mostly iron) while the outer core is liquid metal?
Not wanting to go into too much detail I tried to explain about seismic waves. Different types can go through different materials and if you monitor their reflections off different parts of the Earth’s interior you can puzzle out the layering and composition. I just gave the simplest demonstration: if you tap a piece of wood with you knuckle, could you tell that it was wood and not metal? What if you tapped a bucket, could you tell if it was full of water or not? Well seismic tomography work in much the same way, except that you’re usually picking up the reverberations from the earthquake rather than making it yourself by hitting the bucket. There’s also a bit more math involved.
But tapping the bucket gives a quick easy feel (pun intended) for the process. My students at least seemed satisfied.
So then I pointed out that you could use an app called iSeismo, to detect seismic waves. Both the iPhone (and its variants) and the iPad have accelerometers that can be used to pick up motion in all three dimensions. My students from last year remembered it, and at least one already had it loaded on his phone.
A quick test showed that the phone’s pretty sensitive. You can pick up two people jumping together all the way across the room. This part of the demo is nice because it helps prove that seismic waves from earthquakes can go very far. You can also see the little squiggles as the waves are picked up.
I did not try it this time, and I’ll need to confirm if it will work, but since the time on the phones should be well synchronized over the network, and iSeismo can output the actual data, we should be able to use three iPhones to triangulate the location of the jumpers. This might work in nicely with geometry now that I think about it.
Anyway, finally, a student asked if the phone might be able to pick up his heartbeat if he lay on his back.
We tried it. Lying on his back on the floor while holding his breath, we could see his heartbeat quite clearly.
Until tomorrow (Jan. 5th, 2011), the Graphing Calculator Pro iPod app is free (thanks Josh). It can do a lot, so it might take a minute figure out how to do the graphs and it can be a little fiddly (you can scale both axes separately, for example, which is nice unless you don’t intend to), but I like it. After just a couple of minutes, the student who found it was already playing with slopes.
I’m quite happy for students to use their handheld devices if they’re being productive. They’ve used them to take text-based notes (I’m still not sure how they are able to type so fast), make flashcards (I need to find or make an app for notecards and bibliography cards for the IRP), and now they’ve discovered one for making graphic organizers called Idea Sketch (thanks go to J. for showing me, and M. for finding it).
I’ve been using graphic organizers (GOs) a lot at the beginning of the year and students are getting the idea that we will inevitably put one together to summarize the weekly themes. So today, during our Needs of People discussion/lesson, when I did a quick spot check to see what the the iPod users were doing with their devices, they showed me that they were already putting together GOs. Because I really want them to develop the skill themselves, I’ve not been giving them GOs ahead of time, and we’ve been practicing putting them together. I was quite happy to see them being proactive. Maybe the lesson helped after all.
Idea Sketch is simple, seems to work pretty well, and is a free download at least at them moment.
iPod Touches are quite convenient little PDA’s. Beautifully tactile, they are a pleasure to use. A few of my students have them and I’ve had to think long and hard about allowing iPods in the classroom because, for a little while there, students were using them under the table for all sorts of illicit applications (games). I was tempted to ban them outright, and I have not yet made a final decision but I thought I’d try co-opting the devices first.
So I now have a few students using the iPod Calendar, taking notes, and now one has found a nice little flashcard app called Cramberry. Apparently, the major selling point was its catch-phrase, “Studying doesn’t have to be painful.” The app costs $4.99 for the full version (the Lite version is useless). I’ve also tested Flashcard Touch myself, which is free this month (March), and it seems to work well (see the screen capture).
PDA’s are still on probation; they can be very useful. The outstanding question is one of trust. Will students use them appropriately, or are they too much of a temptation. A key Montessori principle is that students should take responsibility for their learning and trust is an essential component. I am cautiously optimistic.