An inspiring project that overcame some challenges

This clip is the first one of five expounding the project, the Darwin's

world, aimed at fostering scientific thinking,

in kids from primary school with ICT.

The project is presented by Michel Aubé and Florian Meyer from

the University of Sherbrooke, and Robert David from the University of Montréal.

Part one presents another view of the project.

The whole project is based on three main

principles corresponding to three essential characteristics of science.

Science is a collective endeavor, meaning that scientific

rigor emerges essentially through critical exchanges between peer experts.

Science involves social commitment.

Meaning that scientists are accountable before

society for the knowledge they produce.

Scientific progress stems from questions.

Meaning that scientists do not look only for answers.

They mainly crave for good questions as unique

tools to probe and decipher the real world.

The following question is raised as a tentative heuristics.

Could scientific rigor and practice be learned in

a way similar to how kids learn natural language?

To achieve this, children should have significant things to talk about.

A stimulating community to talk with, and a

commitment as to the credibility of the content exchange.

This is what the Darwin's World is trying to set up as a learning environment.

This website offers various activities about natural

sciences, but with focus here on one in

particular, called the adoption program, presented in the,

in the education pavilion section of the site.

The essential idea is to adopt a wild vertebrate from the vicinity.

Adopting here means the commitment to set up a complete

card file about the identity of the ecology of the species.

For a class which is doing the project a few rules have to be respected.

The animals should not have already been adopted by another class.

So, that the class could become known as the expert on this species.

The class should create a best pro, possible card file on the species.

In, including at least one good photograph free of rights of the animal described.

The class should find a scientific advisor and a linguistic counselor, and

submit them, regularly the content of the file before posting it publicly.

The class should commit to act as expert

about incoming questions raised online concerning the studied species.

Part two presents the structure of the class work.

The project website includes a computerized form to help fill the

card file together with various tools, located in the researcher's workshop.

The workshop offers an editing module for the

children, and a validating module for the advisors.

It also includes suggestions, and guidelines, to

help setting up and completing the card file.

The file is accessed through a selective password, owned strictly by

the members of the class, the two advisors, and the project managers.

Once entered into the addition module, different types

of information could be added and easily corrected.

There is plenty of texts of course, structured along different sections

of the file pertaining to the identity and classification of the animal.

The reproduction and life cycles.

Behavior and habitat, and the scientific questions of interests about the animal.

Another frequent way of posting information

is by filling tables, especially when

numerical data is required as for

menstruation, longevity, litter size, et cetera.

It is also possible to include in the file various hypermedia such as photographs,

distribution maps, graphs, sounds, video clips, and hyper links.

These links could lead to other sections of the same card

file to species adopted by other classes, or to external websites.

The required information is mainly gathered from

books and articles, or through the Internet, be

it by browsering websites or exchanging information

with experts, or with other classes through emails.

But children also get direct observations and measurements within the class itself.

Notably when the animals could be held in captivity.

Finally, there are also frequent field observations that are notably enabled

by the fact that the species adopted have to be chosen from the local fauna.

Sometimes the expert advisers themselves lead these outdoors activities.

Part three, four, and five illustrate how the

founding principles are met through the ongoing activities.

Part three is concerned about meeting the first principle.

This first principle has to do with the following fact.

Science is a collective endeavor that offers the best guarantee of rigor.

By confronting and merging the best ideas and data issued

from many thinkers, concentrating their minds on the same problem.

In the project, this principle is captured through multilevel cooperating tools,

which facilitate discussion and critical exchange

of information, all across the project.

Those include, notably, online support, suggestions

for children, teachers, and experts, and people.

One example of online support is the accompanying guide for

the creation of the card file found in the researcher's workshop.

It explains in detail the sections of the file, providing

examples and suggestions as to how complete each of them.

One example of suggestions for children,

teachers, and experts is the adoption guideline found in the education pavilion.

It provides an exemplary proceeding for the whole

adoption process, from choosing the animal to organizing

the research, gathering the data, processing the information,

by dating the content and communicating the results.

Example for the resources coming from interacting with

people include experts found on the internet, specialized

visitors giving presentations, classroom activities involving experiments and

discussions between the children and the teacher, et cetera.

Part four is concerned about meeting the second principle.

The second principle is stated as follows.

Science involves social commitment in the sense that

scientists are socially responsible of the knowledge they produce.

Whether such knowledge comes from the facts discovered.

Theories expounded of, or the technologies developed.

The loosely gathered data may be erroneous.

Poor theory rising may result in sterile research and costly applications.

And badly tested technologies may have traumatic detrimental effects.

A very simple tool for evaluating the rigor of the sources used in

the file has being proposed to children and teachers with fairly good results.

The use a simple grid where they record any relevant

piece of information to be used in the card file.

All information should rest at the

very least, upon two different converging sources.

If two sources are diverging, additional sources should be looked for,

and the student should try to explain a way it divergences.

The computer form is posted in neat

format witnessing the seriousness of the endeavor.

The picture illustrates parts of the identification section.

On the left column, the various sections of the file are listed.

The file always opens with the

identification, including a good photograph, the scientific

classification of the species, and a sort, and a short text describing the animal.

We have seen some classes spend a whole day con, combining short

texts from every child in order to formulate the best possible description.

The photograph used was taken and authorized by biologist

responsible for the National Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

As mentioned in the second clip, the whole file is composed of various types of data.

Texts, table for graphs, distribution maps drawn by the students themselves, graphs

and histograms, sounds, songs, calls, and cries, video clips, hyperlinks, et cetera.

Children are warned to the rigorous and choosy as to the inclusion

of new information, and each added piece has to be free of rights.

As such, the information posted by the students in

their card file is favorably comparable to what is

found in most field guides that are ab, amply

used by the university level for field training and biology.

Actually, the information found in those guides is much less

complete and developed than what is found in the students' files.

As these card files are publicly posted on the web after rigorous val, validation.

They practically reach the status of genuine scientific production.

Finally, the young would be scientists,

did not only demonstrate their accountability

by rigor invested in their work, they also felt proud for the

knowledge they had acquired, and some classes with nests the responsibility they

inherited from this knowledge by communi,

by communicating their worry to local authorities.

Notably, about environment matters,

environmental matters, and endangered species.

Part five is concerned about meeting a third principle and about concluding.

The third principle is stated as follows.

Scientific progress stems from questions.

Although scientists indeed look for answers and try to solve the problems

they are confronted with, they also look for questions raised along their quests.

They crave for these interrogations as unique

tools to probe and decipher the real world.

Learning to formulate good questions is basic training in science.

As is usual, launch new promising research.

This training is incorporated by having

the kids, all through the project, systematically

incited to look for curiosity and surprising

things concerning the species they, they adopted.

Reflect currently about validity of, and soundness of their sources.

Compare and exchange information between teams and classrooms

about similar species, similar behaviors, similar ecosystems, et cetera.

Try raise new, significant and challenging, even yet

unsolved questions about a species that they have adopted.

Children are frequently presented with

astounding facts encountered across biodiver, diversity.

When the opportunity affords it, they

would be mentioned such astonishing facts as

that indigo bunting uses an internal

celestial map to ensure navigation during migration.

Or that the most frequently encountered deer mouse is a bearer of the

antivirus and hemorrhagic fever particularly as lethal as Ebola.

And that chameleon-like gray tree frogs

freeze during winter and unfreeze in spring.

The two following slides illustrate a genuine

scientific exchange between young scientists from primary schools,

and an expert researcher found on the

internet about the reproduction of the spotted salamander.

After a thorough reflection, concerning the different, differential

behavior of males and females the student ask.

If there are more males than females in

the marsh, is it because there are more males

at birth, or because there are just a

certain number of females that reproduce at every year?

The expert fully recognizes the significances of the

question, and he invites the children to combine the

information they had correctly gathered on the subject,

so as to make sense of the apparent paradox.

A neat piece of quasi-socratic interaction.

This slide enumerates further examples

of interesting scientific questions raised, raised

by the children through their own research within the Dowing project.

These interrogations have been formulated by children between 11 to 12 years of age.

From different schools in Quebec and in France.

They bear witness to the capacity of young minds to engage in deep scientific

thinking, provided that the ideological environment is

apt at sustaining the mind expanding activities.

Finally, this slide, this last slide summarizes the main characteristic of

the world of Darwin, of Darwin that gave the project its strengths and efficacy.

At first, engage the participants

in long-termed project-based situated learning.

Indeed, the kids have an, had an opportunity to present an

animal of their local fauna, to the rest of the planet.

And pride raising activity, that made sense even for their friends and kin.

They also had time to scrutinize information,

discuss about it, correct it, and improve it.

The collaborative atmosphere that impregnated the whole approach

allowed a lot of significant directions, sometimes highly gratifying.

The quality of the, the work posted in form as well as

in content, also raised their own standards and pushed them yet forward.

The interaction with renowned expert, and the

possibility of publishing their work to a large

audience, also fostered rigour of thinking, and

responsibility about the worth of knowledge and effort.

All these elements concurred to the overall success of the enterprise.

Les TCI dans l'éducation primaire : transformer l'apprentissage des enfants au cours du programme

Avis

Enseigné par

Professor Diana Laurillard

Explorer notre catalogue

Rejoignez-nous gratuitement et obtenez des recommendations, des mises à jour et des offres personnalisées.