STEP into STEM

 

Hello Teachers

I am excited for you to learn new ways of looking at STEM.

Let me tell you a bit about myself. I am an engineer with masters in electronic engineering, Mathematics and working on an MBA. I am also a literature enthusiast who has taken classes at ASU. I had to consciously drive my brain to the arts or science side depending on different phases of my life. In high school, I was encouraged by my English teacher to write essays. In undergrad college dubbed as Boring Institute of Test Series, I read classics during holidays or breaks. I took part in creative writing competitions and collaborative painting during breaks. I had to wait for the right personal time to devote myself t reading and writing. When I got some time to write, this is what it was all about.

Difference between a creeper and a climber

This is one of the earliest questions that I remember from Elementary school. It wasn’t obvious then, but now I can relate them with creepers on ground and climbers on wall.

Germination experiment is such a mnemonic like the half empty or full glass. Either side of the glass you take, in the middle is where you need to be for the seed to germinate.

The other day my daughter asked me what would happen if you put too much salt in water. I told her about saturated solution. Better yet, I told her that she could do the experiment the next day. Her science vocabulary is increasing. She is 8 now.

In high school my dad would ask us to draw an outline of our footprint, so he could buy us shoes on his way from work. Recently at Saguaro national park we bought a nature lovers guide which showed different animals footprints. By looking at the tracks on the ground you could tell which animal was there before you. These are the kind of things that you become aware of during birdwatching. Is birdwatching art or science. The science part of it is ornithology. The other day when I read about dogs helping in archaeology, I asked my daughter if she knew what it meant. She said its something science because of the ‘logy’. A while ago she told me about her interest in rocks due to a beautiful geode from her ‘Little Passports’ kit from my friend. From there we learnt about petrology.

From all the examples, I have shown you so far, I want you to know that your class will come alive in the future many time in many lives.

 How to STEP into STEM

When I started thinking about sharing what the fun part of STEM for me is… I always went back to these famous examples of Archimedes crying Eureka in the streets, pencillin serendipity and so on. In each of these, I felt we could role play those discoveries. The research can be boiled down to ‘fact cards’ when students ask the right questions. You guide them to the questions. Somehow I got started with Pasteur and found that he had saved so many species with the same technique of inoculation. again and again. I also want to show a little bit of my continuous learning experience.

 

How kids learn

When I asked my kid about how she chose to do the chicken soup, the answer came to be that it was for kids.

•        If you cant teach something to a six year old, then you don’t understand it yourself. – Attributed to many many

 

Wired 5 levels of difficulty of explaining a concept – This could be an interactive activity where the teachers write how they would explain the concept to different grades. In my Math class, our teacher would give us one tough, cool question which was an achievement if we could crack it. After the exam we would all convene to figure f we got that right. It is said that kids should be asked questions that they cannot solve atleast 30% of the time. So it should not always be about kids getting it all. Let them have some questions and some inconvenience of not figuring out so they can refer extra material and dive deeper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KC32Vymo0Q

Keying into the fact that Feynman said

“What I cannot create, I do not understand”

“Know how to solve every problem that has been solved” – Richard Feynman

If kids can recreate in their minds, the problems and how the solutions came by, they will have a framework to recognize the way forward.

If I were Pasteur and if I knew what he knew at the onset of the problem, how would the process look for me? The STEP process jumps from problem to solution. But that step could mean many leaps and many gaps. In Pasteur’s case it took him a year to find out what was happening. When he spoke to the beer maker, he asked for good and bad samples.

After seeing this book, I narrated the story to my daughter to see if I could elicit some of the responses I was hoping for. Seeing that the two samples were different. With some prompting, I was able to get the answer from my daughter that in the end, he would know if the beer was right by looking under the microscope and had the good round yeast.

This scenario can be played with kids too where they act out what they have learned. Kids are very good at detecting patterns. I feel jealous of Gauss that he was able do the addition of 1 to 100 so quickly because he saw the pattern.

The other kind of roleplay is using kits Like Blue’s the Clue with built in hypothesis instructions and guidelines for the ‘Design and Conduct’ lab and Observe, Record, Report lab.

https://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/matrix/lessonplan.cfm?lpid=283

 

If we emphasise on what tools are consistently being used in these discoveries, then we will provide kids with toolsets. While some of the toolsets are analytical, the ones that have helped the scientists are courage, tenacity and curiosity.

The jump from the S to T has more steps.

Bigger problems can be broken into smaller problems with the same loop repeating.

To maintain curiosity and relevance, assign a day to a child to bring in a science fact or event or any question that happened. The other day my kid asked me if birds have ears. I never thought about that. When I was in my sixth grade, I had a question as to why I could still hear even though I closed my ears. I now know that we hear through bone conduction too.

Current coronavirus situation is a great tool for scientific process explanation.

Books like Pasteur and pasteurization make science fun. Lenny Cyrus, School Virus is another great book on blood brain barrier and anthropomorphization of different organisms.

When possible I try to catch up with science fairs both the school ones where I take my kids. Recently I took my kid to catch up with a CES presentation in Phoenix. There we met the inventor of a Robotic machine. He told that his inspiration was the “plenty of room at the bottom” speech referring to nanoparticles.

https://web.pa.msu.edu/people/yang/RFeynman_plentySpace.pdf

After this, I got interested in the reverse of what if we had to make something large. If we had to weigh it, the precision. You can lift it but you cant weight it? Lever principle

If Sisyphus was smart he would use a counterbalance?

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/what-s-the-heaviest-thing-in-the-universe

Even know when I read science journals that say that some 90 year old theory has now been proved, it gives me goose bumps that they had to wait for sophisticated instrumentation this long, but also that someone could precede proof that long ago. Excellent theorists. There is an interplay of technology making new discoveries possible.

https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/

Lets make those Theorists that will power the future technologists.

Getting to the source of inspiration of the giants before us will lead us into the STEM.