4/6-Elizabeth-the meaning of literacy

I don’t think there is a concrete definition of what “scientific literacy” means because it is multifaceted and still being defined today.  To me, it’s a combination of both understanding and earning about scientific concepts through the scientific methods of investigation and revision (among others) while also being able to explain it to others.  However, it is hard to even begin to embrace this meaning of scientific literacy when standards and high stakes testing emphasize and encourage rote memorization over truly understanding and taking the time to investigate. 

            Media and representations should play a big part in scientific literacies.  This brings a sense of relevancy and familiarity to otherwise foreign topics, a struggle many students face when learning about the sciences.  Relevancy has been a major theme to this course: that students feel as though the concepts are not at all applicable and when made applicable, they are more motivated to learn and understand the material.  Thus, modeling is critical for student success and ideally, should be used in the classroom everyday to various extents. 

I liked what Clark and Sengupta said in their article concerning modeling: that  “developing a good model involves designing representations that capture essential dynamic features of the relationships they describe, but these representations also edit the relationships, by foregrounding some elements and obscuring or omitting others” (3).  They make explicit the important notion that not all modeling is good modeling.  In the beginning of this course, I though any modeling was good and that it would automatically be better for the students.  However, in order for successful modeling to occur, students have to see that ideas and concepts are “dynamic,” ever-changing and directly related/connected to other scientific concepts.

As for modeling inside my classroom-I will definitely include it.  However, I think it will take a few years before I will be able to comfortably use computational models and will probably rely heavily on physical models in the beginning.  I find NetLogo very interesting and would love to learn, and have my students learn, how to code well.  When we went to the school last week, it was amazing to see the students easily making commands and creating their own individual programs with the purpose of them being used in the lower grades.  Thus, I would love to include computational models inside my classroom because there are some interesting chemistry ones, especially for the Ideal Gas Law, but it may take a little bit before I can successfully incorporate it into the classroom. 

4/13: Laura - Encouraging literacy

            Scientific literacy is an illusive concept that I think includes both conceptual familiarity and the tools, cognitive framework, and attitudes necessary to access content.  I often joke about the “science or not science” game I play with my family, but I think it speaks to a core value of literacy that I hope to instill in my students- what does it mean to know something in science and how can we as humans critically receive the constant input of information and experiences and discern the logical conclusions.  Because this is such a fluid goal, I want to support scientific literacy in many ways in the hopes that scientific practices can become habits of mind for my students and thus prepare them to interpret future scientific experiences.  I will do this by encouraging inquiry, challenging their constructs, and providing opportunities for exploration and discovery through modeling and field experience. 

            Media and representations will be extremely valuable in student’s experiences with exploration and discovery, which will in turn support their scientific literacy.  Having a visual or tangible shared experience/model can help ground student’s understanding of concepts and create authentic moments for students to fully engage and understand how science is done.  I definitely want to incorporate physical and computational modeling into my classroom.  I like the modeling cycle because it allows students to experience so many elements of actual scientific practice, which means it will ultimately benefit their scientific literacy.  I think the modeling cycle is just a jumping off point though, and can be implemented creatively like in the SURGE games and incorporated in both small and large scale inquiries.  For example, in a unit on evolution, students can play with a model for population bottleneck by placing different numbers of colored m and ms into a bottle and testing hypotheses for the result of a ‘bottleneck’ event and also use a computational model like peppered moth vimap program to explore the ideas more deeply. 

4/13 Caitlin Farney Modeling Literacy

Even after two semesters of studying how to teach scientific literacy, I, still, cannot give an exact definition. Organizations who write and create standards and curricula for science courses make some skills more important than others. Some older standards have put more emphasis on disciplinary content knowledge over how the scientific information is found. Standards are changing to put more emphasis on technical and practical science skills, which expects students to have deeper understanding and knowledge of scientific concepts. According to the authors we have read this semester, scientific literacy is competency in the skills that scientists, and engineers, use to practice science. All of the authors agree on common skills, such as, observation (and analysis), modeling, revision, and argumentation, as being necessary to understand and practice science. Some of these skills require other literacy skills, such as being able to read scientific literature and being able to write and make explanations and arguments. Scientific literacy includes many different skills and needs a lot of support to learn and build.

In other classes, we have talked about how to use resources, such as media, in the classroom. Videos, articles, and the Internet can help bring student prior knowledge and background knowledge to the foreground, so lesson can be more meaningful and more attainable. During lessons, these resources can also give more or alternative representations to help students understand concepts. It can also be a powerful tool in helping with the scientific literacy skills, such as modeling. In my own classes, modeling skills will have to be taught and built upon throughout the year, but as students become more familiar with modeling, I will use it to teach them other literacy skills, such as analyzation and explanation, which can help me to assess understanding.

Some authors, such as diSessa, Resier, and Wilensky, say that computational programming is also a very effective resource to teach modeling and the other skills. Computational programming is one way to teach students how to create and revise accurate models. In the article we read this week, Pratim and Doug argued how other media resources, such as computational games can be useful in science and math classrooms. Media resources can make lessons more meaningful and more interesting to students, while teaching them the skills they need to be literate in science. I would like to incorporate these computational methods and other modeling methods in my future classrooms.

4/13 Jenna - Developing Scientific Literacy in the Classroom

Before taking this course, I considered scientific literacy as a person's ability to analyze scientific information. I was thinking in terms of the relationship between the general population and expert scientists; how does someone interpret and make sense of the knowledge that scientists produce in their everyday experience? I thought of scientific literacy as it related to someone's decision to receive a vaccination, to the debate over teaching evolution and/or intelligent design in schools, and to appointing members of Congress to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. But while I could name tons of ways I hoped scientific literacy could inform people's decisions, I hadn't given much thought to how I expected them to develop this literacy. What skills would they need? What experiences would develop those skills? What could science teachers in the US do? - These questions weren't regularly on my mind.

I still think my original idea of scientific literacy is valid, but my current understanding is much broader. In the simplest terms, scientific literacy is the ability to navigate the mangle/tangle of the production of scientific knowledge. It includes the ability to understand vocabulary of the discipline, ask testable questions, conduct experiments and observations systematically, generate varied representations, and to share and critique ideas. Modeling and media use are ways to cultivate these skills within the classroom community. They push science learning beyond memorization of vocabulary, facts, and formulas, to their very creation in a problem space that is authentic to the learners. Plus, they require that learners have a tangible product (like a simulation or a whiteboard), which means students must be thoughtful of the ways they represent their understanding and how they critique the products of their peers.

As I prepare to enter the PhD program at Vanderbilt I've been thinking about how modeling and scientific literacy will be a part of my future work with SURGE Symbolic. In this game players manipulate an avatar's movement across obstacles by changing graphical representations of the movement. Players must transition between multiple representations (motion graphs, dot-traces, verbal descriptions), creating rich layers of understanding across the different levels of interpretation at work. This is a literacy-developing process. Over the next several weeks, I'll be looking at the literature related to graph learning (how people interpret graphs), with my own hope of finding ways that SURGE Symbolic's design can be improved to better support learning and scientific literacy.

4/13 Joey: Communicating Science

I would say that scientific literacy is having the ability to understand how to read, present, and interpret science.  Being literate in science makes communication possible between others.  Just as there are different levels of proficiency when it comes to language literacy, there are different levels of scientific literacy.  Scientific literacy is not something that should be exclusive to scientists.  Scientific literacy is also important for people in other professions to have.  Everyone should be able to see a graph or representation in a newspaper and understand what information is being presented (and hopefully know if it is reliable).    

Media and representations are a huge part of scientific literacy.  Media and representations allow for people to understand the summation of the phenomena being investigated visually.  Charts and graphs are seen in everyday life in newspapers/TV as well as research papers.  Interpreting these figures is essential to understanding what data is being communicated.

Modeling will play a huge role in my classroom.  I really hope to make it central to my students learning experience.  I will definitely encourage students to make representations and revise them.  I will  also encourage students to use multiple forms of representations.  Physical, representational, computational, and mental models all have different affordances and drawbacks.  However they can all be revised and revision is a key part in the modeling process.  Having different model types will allow for rich discussion about concepts and let students explore science in unique ways.  Although in the traditional approach of teaching students can still acquire knowledge, modeling really lets students engage in actual scientific practices and I feel they will get a lot more out of it.

How many revisions are necessary to make before you move on to new content?

If everyone creates individual unique models for every concept, how will you as a teacher address all of them?

4/13 David B Scientific LiIteracy and Modeling

     Scientific literacy contains multiple components of thought and production. First, scientific literacy is the ability to explain, argue and revise concepts. This includes elaboration of vocabulary building into the relationships that exist in and between concepts and theories. Scientific literacy for example, may be described as exploring electron orbitals and detailing the relationships the nucleus of an atom has with the electrons and their orbital shells. Then, being scientifically literate also includes using higher level thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and synthesis in discussion or writing and are especially critical during the revision process. Finally, scientific literacy involves making observations and then planning, organizing and testing hypotheses. These parts of scientific literacy are fluid in a process of engaging in science and science practices. Effective and efficient investigation or inquiry may also be described as scientific literacy.

     Media and representations are tools and resources for creating scientific literacy. These tools allow students to interact and engage in the relationships between parts of a concept. A better understanding of the relationships that exist may build vocabulary but will also offer ways that students may describe concepts during the explanation portion of scientific literacy. Also, media and representations allow students to cite these things as evidence during the defense of explanation and during the revision process. These tools may be used as an aid during investigation or inquiry.

     Modeling in my class will serve as a means to build scientific literacy. Students will engage in models to create a better understanding of the relationships that exist in concepts and theories. Modeling may also be used as a means to investigate a thought or idea. Students will use models as activities then discuss what they observed. Students will apply these observations through higher level thinking skills in the defense of concepts and the revision process. Modeling will be a practice that is engaged in throughout the course. Students will have many opportunities to engage in this practice and then hold discussions afterwards both in small groups and as a whole class. The type of models and representations used depends on the type of school district and classroom where I teach. All classrooms will allow opportunities for cooperative learning that will be used in modeling.

4/12 Steve: Literacy in the classroom

• What is scientific literacy? Scientific literacy is the knowledge necessary to negotiate the mangle of science.  Science is complex, and there are many processes, customs, and terms that govern the “doing” of science.  Once who is scientifically literate know how and when to apply these many processes, customs, and terms when investigating a scientific phenomenon.   
• What are the roles of media and representations in scientific literacy?  Many scientific advancements are of interest to the general public.  This can be for many reasons: business, health, consumerism, etc.  Media has the difficult job of communicating scientific information to others in a clear and informative way.  Different forms of media are better for different scientific information.  Graphs show quantitative data well. Videos show processes and can animate complex motions.  Diagrams show layout and snapshots of events.  All of these different forms of media are important to scientific literacy.  It is not enough to know how to make and interpret all the different forms of media, one must also know which to select to communicate optimally.  This makes it a difficult task for educators of scientific literacy because representing science is a very complex task.  Furthermore, scientific facts can be manipulated by clever representations to trick people, and understanding media well enough to catch those tricks takes a lot of hard work.     
• What role will modeling play in your classroom?  Modeling will have a big role in my classroom.  I will be teaching engineering and physics, so many topics will be ripe for modeling.  I intend to use some agent based modeling program for many of the force and motion concepts.  Computer models are a great way for students to understand the relationship between forces and motion.  Computer modeling allows students to conduct a wide variety of experiments quickly and inexpensively.  I really like what the article for this class said about how the most important thing for modeling is to have students make connections between the different aspects of a phenomenon like the graphs, the simulation, and real life.  I want to make sure to include those kind of discussions in my classes next year.
• Questions:
• Can we assemble a list of all the great modeling online resources / games out there in class?  This class’s article mentioned several of them but are there others we should know about? 
• How often should real-world demonstrations / labs be included to build student trust in the simulations?