TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Team Meetings

Muhs
2003

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Date: 7/20/03
Duration: 40 hours
Location: Palestine, Texas + travel to & from
Parcticipants: Eric Muhs, Tom Haff

Goal(s) of Meeting
Cosmic ray balloon experiment, to go aboard a NASA high-altitude balloon, flown out of NASA's NSBF (National Scientific Ballooning Facility in Palestine, Texas.

Overview of Session (e.g., resources used, discussion points, next steps, etc.):
The 40 hours represents ground time in Palestine. The actual time was quite a bit more, back in Seattle, working on the experiment details, travel details, etc. And there were a number of followup sessions to process the experiment data, re-prep (parts of the first experiment failed !), and process the seccond experiment data. Then we made a multimedia cd of the experiment. We’ve presented at our local AAPT meeting, and will present at the National Meeting this summer.

How did your team address pedagogy, content, the process of science, and the use of technology during the session?
We prepared a multimedia cd of the experiment, which was a recreation of a classic Nobel Prize winning experiment. The CD has lots of introductory material, and all the data from the flight, presented for student analysis. It's pretty cool, and can be viewed in its entirety on line at http://www.invisiblemoose.org/site_material/CHESS/CHESShome.html. High school students played an important role in every step of the experiment, building the detector, traveling to Palestine, and helping to process the data. So we didn't just leanr about science, we did science with students.

Additional reflections:
In case it's not clear, the actual Palestine time was preceded by about 10 hours of meetings between Tom & myself, and at least another 10 hours of post experiment computer work. We co-presented the experiment at our local AAPT meeting in October. The whole thing was a huge amount of work, especially when I had to fly down to repeat the experiment in October because the first experiment partially failed. I just today found out I won a nice award from NSTA & Vernier Software as a result of the experiment !

Goal(s) of Meeting
WALTA cosmic ray detector workshop training

Overview of Session (e.g., resources used, discussion points, next steps, etc.):
The primary focus of this year's workshop was to train our group of teachers to use a newly-designed digital data acquisition card to be deployed in our school-based cosmic ray detector network. For a short movie of this workshop, see http://www.invisiblemoose.org/site_material/WALTA/cosmicKIRO.mov

How did your team address pedagogy, content, the process of science, and the use of technology during the session?
This group of 10 teachers talked a lot about the kind of work we could do with students with the new equipment, and the ways in which the old analog equipment was superior in terms of providing students with real wires plugged into real sockets: they can see the data logic, and it's no so "black box". We all continue to struggle with ways to bring parcticle physics into our classes. I demonstrated a simple inexpensive cloud chamber for everyone.

Additional reflections:
The key stumbling block for this group to make progress is not the technology or time, but developing good introductory activities for teachers to use in their classrooms. Late news: at AAPT meeting in Jan 2004, there seems to be some momentum for holding a national meeting to help teachers share good ideas. This is sorely needed.

Goal(s) of Meeting
Introduction to new computer modelling tools applicable to high school math/science/computer programming classes

Overview of Session (e.g., resources used, discussion points, next steps, etc.):
Lots of modeling resources were presented. Mark & I spent a lot of time working on 2 that we really though could be very useful to our cosmic ray group : NETLogo & STELLA. A lot of presentations were made demonstrating applications, and we even developed out our cosmic ray airshower model during the workshop. (see http://www.invisiblemoose.org/site_material/WALTA/AirshowerFireworks.html)

How did your team address pedagogy, content, the process of science, and the use of technology during the session?
There was a terrific atmosphere at the conference, and a lot of synergy, as 200 educators were focused on using computer modeling in their classrooms. The push from the conference organizers was to get more fundamental computer use happening in schools, not just business applications.

Additional reflections:
Mark & I, as a result of attending the conference, have funding support to hold a one week workshop for teachers this summer. We're working on some ideas to model cosmic rays, and hope to bring along a group of teachers to where they have enough simple programming confidence to support their students in computer modeling.