{"id":49,"date":"2011-05-25T22:20:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T22:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49"},"modified":"2011-06-28T22:20:47","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T22:20:47","slug":"video-analysis-of-science-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"Video Analysis of Science Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

My workshop today was to really\u00a0 time looking at kid’s science and engineering thinking and work.\u00a0 Couple of things I noticed:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 In many cases, the problem was not as clearly defined as the teacher thought, which resulting in kids going off in different directions.\u00a0 Actually, this may not be a bad thing, as it is typical of real world engineering.\u00a0 But that should be a conscious decision.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 Kids misunderstand each other a lot and do not always share the same language, which results in misunderstandings.\u00a0 Teachers sometimes starting with having kids represent their thinking with drawings, but did not always persist in that.\u00a0 The drawings could help a lot to clarify the words.\u00a0 I would say in my experience in engineering, that they are much more important than words in expressing critical concepts.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 When analyzing these lessons and thinking about how the you, as the teachers, might, have done things differently, the answer in almost all cases is:\u00a0 it depends on your goals for the student.\u00a0 I saw many examples today where the direction would be different depending on if the goal was:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A science concept,<\/li>\n
  2. Wanting the students to understand and experience the scientific process,<\/li>\n
  3. Wanting the students to understand the engineering process.\u00a0 In the examples, we looked at today, the directions one could go with the students depending a lot on how the problem was defined and the constraints and objectives of the problem.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    An interesting example of this was one of the video clips from the today.\u00a0 The problem given to the students was to design an instrument that made at least 3 tones:\u00a0 high, medium, and low.\u00a0 They had elastics, Legos, and balloons.\u00a0 The students in the study first tried to build a square with pegs sticking out of it so that the elastics could be made to be different lengths.\u00a0 Even with a cross beam, the square collapsed, and they went right to a triangle, which was a previous idea they had considered.\u00a0 Eventually, the abandoned that idea too. (They said it was hard to play though we did not see that part.)\u00a0 They finally went with more of a simple harp design with string of different lengths on each Lego beam.<\/p>\n

    So an interesting question is:\u00a0 how much should the teacher encourage the students to pursue their square idea?<\/p>\n

    To me, it depends on the goals you have.\u00a0 I think in many cases, these goals are not clear to us ahead of time and we respond instinctually when interesting subproblems arise.\u00a0 In this case, there is a really interesting engineering problem of what shapes can support the most weight.<\/p>\n

    What would you have done?<\/p>\n

    For me, instinctually, I would have wanted them to work on their square because it is an interesting problem.\u00a0 However, if the goal is the underlying science concept of sound frequencies and wavelengths, the shapes problem is not of direct interest.\u00a0 If the goal is to to explore the scientific process, you would want them to explore this problem.\u00a0 If the goal is to explore\/understand the engineering process, I think the answer is less clear.\u00a0 While the square problem is a great engineering problem, a simpler solution is the harp solution.\u00a0 So it depends how you define the engineering problem.\u00a0 Is the goal the simplest\/best solution or to explore the most interesting engineering problems?\u00a0 Is the goal to have the students persist more in their solutions?\u00a0 Is is to be able to reject ideas that don’t work and consider alternatives?<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My workshop today was to really\u00a0 time looking at kid’s science and engineering thinking and work.\u00a0 Couple of things I noticed: 1)\u00a0 In many cases, the problem was not as clearly defined as the teacher thought, which resulting in kids … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childdevelop","category-teaching"],"yoast_head":"\nVideo Analysis of Science Thinking - Kids Engineer!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Video Analysis of Science Thinking - Kids Engineer!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My workshop today was to really\u00a0 time looking at kid’s science and engineering thinking and work.\u00a0 Couple of things I noticed: 1)\u00a0 In many cases, the problem was not as clearly defined as the teacher thought, which resulting in kids … Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kids Engineer!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-25T22:20:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-06-28T22:20:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"JohnHeffernan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"JohnHeffernan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"JohnHeffernan\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/#\/schema\/person\/fd9d549ccd0fb2c6c495705a81039438\"},\"headline\":\"Video Analysis of Science Thinking\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-05-25T22:20:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-06-28T22:20:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\"},\"wordCount\":589,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/#\/schema\/person\/fd9d549ccd0fb2c6c495705a81039438\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Child Development\",\"Teaching\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\",\"name\":\"Video Analysis of Science Thinking - Kids Engineer!\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-05-25T22:20:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-06-28T22:20:47+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=49#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Video Analysis of Science Thinking\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/\",\"name\":\"Kids Engineer!\",\"description\":\"To understand and promote engineering education in elementary schools. 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