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Vernier Supports STREAM Girls
STREAM Girls, a new outdoor STEM program for girls, is a partnership between Trout Unlimited and the Girl Scouts of America. Using water quality testing equipment donated by Vernier Software & Technology, this watershed experience combines STEM education, recreation, and arts to explore a local stream.
Every person is a citizen of her watershed, and by visiting a local stream and having the opportunity to observe it as scientists, anglers, and artists, girls get the complete picture of what their stream could mean to them. Beyond science, Scouts were introduced to fly fishing, camping, conservation, and outdoor ecology. Trout Unlimited and the Girl Scouts of America hope to continue to inspire new leaders that will steward and conserve our country’s precious natural resources.
Explore Stokes Shift with Spectral Analysis®
We’re “stoked” about the addition of fluorescence to the latest version of Spectral Analysis. It allows students to see the Stokes shift between the absorption and emission spectra. Download our free experiment “Absorbance and Fluorescence Characterization of Vitamin B2” for use with our free Spectral Analysis app and our fluorescence spectrometers.
Four Ways to Get K-8 Students Excited About Science
by Nüsret Hisim
Nüsret Hisim is an Education Technology Specialist at Vernier and a former science teacher. He’ll be hosting a webinar, Using Technology to Excite Students About Hands-On Science on March 5th.
It can be challenging to engage students in science activities, despite how exciting the lessons are. As an Education Technology Specialist at Vernier Software & Technology, I frequently receive phone calls and inquiries from elementary and middle school teachers looking for ways to engage their students with hands-on science experiments. Teachers are tasked with teaching an array of subjects, and as a result, many find themselves teaching science despite not having the experience to describe complicated and seemingly intimidating concepts in an effective and stimulating way. After years of attending and conducting workshops with teachers of all levels, and being a former science teacher myself, I know this to be an especially significant challenge for teachers.
First and foremost, when it comes to getting students excited about science, it’s important to make sure science is hands on. Sometimes teachers have all the materials but don’t have the knowledge to explain the science behind the experiments. Some teachers struggle to find the time to set up investigations that are both effective and engaging.
Regardless of the issue, I have four simple methods I’d love to share that will help you get your students truly excited about science while keeping you sane.
1. Ask questions to involve students and keep them interested.
The best way to get students thinking like real scientists is to treat them like real scientists. By asking your students questions about science phenomena, simple observable events that drive student inquiry, and the concepts behind them, you can awaken prior knowledge and get students more involved in making observations, predictions, and hypotheses. With their attention fully engaged, you can apply their prior knowledge to a different reaction/phenomenon that students are less familiar with—extending this knowledge into new areas. By encouraging students to use existing knowledge for new discoveries, you help build student interest and motivation to find answers.
2. Learn alongside your students.
Show your students the fun of science experimentation by demonstrating your own interest and curiosity. You don’t have to be an expert to learn alongside your students, so dive in! Become involved by asking your own questions, taking part in investigations, and engaging in interactive feedback. When students see that you’re engaged in an investigation, their curiosity is piqued and they want to be engaged as well.
3. Save time with easy experiment setup and quick results.
Money can be hard to come by in schools; big experiments with delicate tools and complicated setups are often expensive and cumbersome, making them impractical for the classroom. One way to ease this burden is to simplify your roster of investigations and the tools used to conduct them. Instead of dealing with expensive and difficult equipment, invest in products that are cost effective, durable, east to set up, and designed with students in mind. Find tools that work with technology you already have in your classroom.
4. Make it a cross-curricular event.
Demonstrate to students that science exists in all aspects of their lives by overlapping other school subjects into discussions and investigations. Have them write ‘professional’ hypotheses; for instance, to practice writing—find a curve fit for their data to apply math concepts—or try exploring the history behind different science concepts to incorporate social studies. Whichever subject you choose to cross, have fun with it and use your creativity! This cross-curricular approach is not only a powerful way to stress the connection between subjects, but it’s exciting for students to better understand science in a real-world capacity.
With these four methods you’ll see more engagement from your students regardless of your prior experience teaching science. By asking questions, learning alongside your students, investing in products that help you save time, and doing experiments that can incorporate other subject areas, you’re sure to get your students excited about science.
At Vernier, we strive to equip teachers to not only teach science but to teach it in the most engaging way possible. If you’re looking for more ideas on how to engage students in the classroom, join Nüs for a webinar where he’ll discuss this as well as other cognitive teaching strategies and the impact of the hands-on approach to science. Watch as he uses a temperature probe to measure temperature changes during an experiment involving a reaction between common household products.
How to Introduce Evolution to Your Students
By Sara Tallarovic
Darwin Day is coming up on Wednesday, February 12th. It presents an excellent opportunity to introduce or discuss the concept of evolution by natural selection with your students. While I’m now part of the Vernier Biology Department, I previously worked for 15 years as a university biology professor and know first hand how creative teachers have to get when introducing new concepts to a classroom of students. There are plenty of ways to get students excited about evolution, and here are a few ideas.
Introducing Evolution with Candy
Hands-on activities easily engage students, and when I was teaching biology, one of my favorite ways to introduce evolution was with a candy hunt. You can find multiple versions of this exercise online using different types of candies, but I like mixing together a bag of plain M&M’s® (the original kind with six colors) and several bags of candy corn (the original yellow, orange, and white type) in a large shallow bowl or tub. I pass it around and ask students to select a number of M&M’s® but not to eat them. You can vary the number they choose to match your class size.
Once the candy circulates around the entire room, we count how many of each color of M&M’s® were selected and graph it on the board. The results are always striking. Very few of the yellow and orange M&M’s® are typically selected, while more contrasting colors, especially blue and green, are selected in higher proportions.
Right away, students can begin picturing the forces at work in the natural world. We then talk about the variation of our “population” of M&M’s® and how some “individuals” might have a selective advantage by blending in with the substrate (candy corn) whereas others were easier for their “predators” to spot. The exercise makes a fun prelude to a more in-depth lesson on evolution and natural selection.
Deepening Student Understanding of Evolution
I found that incorporating a variety of interactive and informative activities resonated with my students. After introducing the concept of evolution through the candy hunt, I used a mixture of short videos and hands-on experiments. If you enjoy sharing media with your class, you can also browse HHMI BioInteractive’s evolution collection, where you can find a wealth of free activities and short films.
One of my favorite films is The Making of a Theory: Darwin, Wallace and Natural Selection. This half hour piece presents a compelling history lesson, telling the stories of both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, which helps students visualize the physical and intellectual journeys that led these two men to the discovery of evolution and natural selection.
If you are more interested in the mechanics of evolution than the history of its discovery, my colleague and former high school biology teacher, Colleen, recommends The Making of the Fittest: Adaptation and Natural Selection, which is a 10 minute film about the evolution of rock pocket mice.
How Vernier Can Help
Whether your lesson plan includes activities like the candy hunt, videos, or other approaches, engaging students through evolution-themed laboratory activities are highly effective, and Vernier has multiple experiments to fit your class. Our inquiry-based laboratory experiments include exploring the evolution of yeast, comparing the respiratory systems of different aquatic organisms, and many more. You can access more information about these experiments here.
Professional Development and Training with Vernier Technology
Are you looking for professional development using Vernier technology? We offer free hands-on workshops across the country, online training opportunities, and options for personalized professional development. Each option allows you to immediately apply your new learned skills in the laboratory with students.
4-hour Professional Development Workshops
These free workshops are hands-on, 4-hour data-collection workshops for science educators available nationwide during the school year. One of our knowledgeable training specialists will work right alongside you, providing guidance and inspiration as you explore classroom-ready experiments. You’ll leave the workshop ready to excite your students about learning using data collection technology. And, to make it even easier, you’ll receive instructions to download the Workshop Training Manual, which includes ready-to-use experiment handouts for all science disciplines.
Video Training Library
We have a free online library of introductory and advanced videos featuring experiments and product demonstrations. Because the library is available any time and anywhere and is accessible on a variety of platforms, you can choose what works best for you.
Personalized Interactive Webinars
Another popular option is our free webinars. We know instructors want a voice and choices when professional development opportunities are offered, and our customized webinars make it possible to tell us what to focus on. These are interactive, web-based sessions for your department to deliver basic or advanced training on Vernier data-collection technology.
On-Site Workshops
We also offer a fee-based option, if you prefer to have a full day of training on-site. This training takes place at your school and uses the equipment you already own. To request this option, please fill out the online request form.
When Will I Use Forensic Chemistry in Real Life?
While teaching chemistry and physics for 34 years in public schools in Maryland, nearly every semester, students asked, “When will I use this in real life?” When I supplied a scenario for a lab activity, students could see how a topic studied in their chemistry lab could have real-world application.
For instance, it might be difficult for a student to see where absorbance spectroscopy and Beer’s law could be useful to a chemist. But, what if the technique is used to analyze poisoned wine from a crime scene? This definitely piqued the interest of my students.
The scenario: At a local dinner party, some of the guests became ill and had to be transported to the hospital. Most of the stricken guests recovered, although it took varying amounts of time for them to recover. Some guests even died. What could have stricken these people and why was the effect different?
Using a Go Direct® SpectroVis® Plus Spectrophotometer, students can compare samples of fresh wine to those collected at a crime scene. Samples of tainted wine will show absorbance spectra different from those of fresh wine. By comparing the spectra of suspected toxins with those from the crime scene, the nature of the poison can be determined.
Once the identity of the poison is determined, Beer’s law can be used to determine the concentration of poison in the tainted wine. From additional evidence from the crime scene, including estimates of the wine consumed and body mass of the victims, students then calculate the amount of poison consumed and compare this to the LD50 for that poison.
Due to the local restrictions on the presence of alcohol containing products in schools, the poisoned wine and suspected poisons are all created using food dyes. A similar activity called “Killer Cupa Joe” in the Vernier lab manual Forensics with Vernier uses coffee. My students and I did this lab and used food dye as the poison.
Vernier sensors can also be used for other forensic scenarios. Future blog postings will discuss more activities.
To get a free copy of this activity, email us at chemistry@vernier.com
LabQuest 2.8.5 Update
We’re pleased to release the latest update for LabQuest 2. The version 2.8.5 update is free and recommended for all LabQuest users.
- Added support for Go Direct Photogate
- Added support for Go Direct Projectile Launcher
- Bug fixes and improvements for Go Direct Sensors
Happy Holidays from All of Us at Vernier!
Your friends, colleagues, and fellow scientists at Vernier wish you a heartfelt happy holiday, winter fun, and the joy of scientific exploration.
In keeping with our commitment to Earth-friendly practices and to supporting the community, Vernier Software & Technology has donated to 21 charities, including The Nature Conservancy, Oregon Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity, and Mercy Corps.
2019 Vernier Engineering Contest
The annual Vernier Engineering Contest provides a great opportunity for educators to showcase how they are creatively using Vernier technology to introduce engineering concepts to students. Contest entries can include activities such as introducing coding by reading Vernier sensors with Scratch, using sensors in the engineering design process, controlling digital outputs based on Vernier sensor inputs, integrating Vernier sensors with robotics platforms such as LEGO®, VEX®, or Arduino®, and so much more.
The deadline to submit your application for the 2019 Vernier Engineering Contest is February 15, 2019.
The winning educator, selected by a panel of Vernier experts, will receive $1,000 in cash, $3,000 in Vernier technology, and $1,500 toward expenses to attend either the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) STEM conference or the ASEE conference.
Watch on YouTubeTate Rector, an Engineering and Project Lead The Way teacher at Beebe Public Schools, challenged his 8th grade engineering students to present a solution (using Vernier sensors with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3) to an everyday problem in order to make connections with the engineering practices identified in NGSS.
“Winning the Vernier Engineering Contest in 2015 kick-started our engineering program here at our school,” said Tate Rector, a teacher at Beebe Junior High in Arkansas and a former Vernier Engineering Contest winner. “While my 7th and 8th grade students used to think it was just fun or cool to see things explode or fly, evaluation of the data we collect using Vernier technology has helped them see the reason why we do the experiments.”
The 2019 Vernier/NSTA Technology Awards Deadline is Approaching!
The deadline for applications for the 2019 Vernier/NSTA Technology Awards is quickly approaching. This annual awards program recognizes seven educators—one elementary teacher, two middle school teachers, three high school teachers, and one college-level educator—for their innovative uses of data-collection technology in the science classroom or laboratory.
Each winner, chosen by a panel of NSTA-appointed experts, will receive $1,000 in cash, $3,000 in Vernier products, and up to $1,500 toward expenses to attend the annual NSTA National Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 11–14, 2019.
All current K–12 and college science educators are eligible to apply. The deadline for submitting an application is December 17, 2018.
Last year’s award winners, including Robert Hodgdon from Richmond Hill Middle School, Richmond Hill, Georgia, demonstrated a variety of ways data-collection technology can be used in and out of the classroom. Hodgdon engaged his students in real-world ecological investigations to help them develop STEM career readiness skills. This included students using Vernier data-collection technology, such as pH sensors, to understand the biotic and abiotic factors relevant to their local habitats including tidal marshes, ephemeral wetlands, and relic forests.
“Winning the Vernier/NSTA Awards provided us with a new collection of LabQuest® 2 interfaces, as well as new temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity probes,” said Hodgdon. “Students are able to use these technologies during ecological activities and as an integrated part of their science instruction year-round.”