Jennifer Selinger – Head of Science

View From the Kleinleher Family Science Building

What do plastic cups, paddlepop sticks, mortar and pestles and rocks have in common? They are all featured in K20 nearby as Year 7 is having a lesson and I type up this article in the staffroom. I was seduced a few minutes ago to try my hand at the STEM challenge to build the tallest tower possible that would balance on a dice – mine went up two levels before I recalled that I had work to do. It is difficult to restrain myself from re-joining the class. Some students are talking to the teacher about something that caught their attention, some are discussing their work on the rock cycle with each other, or inventing words to describe the things they are doing, or planning their next move on their tower and groaning in despair as their construction succumbs to gravity. They are identifying rocks from a key (including using acid, which is causing much excitement), watching mini-videos to gather information and recording their findings in a number of different ways. This is what modern Science learning looks and sounds like!

Year 7 Science Class

The difference between Science learning as it was when I went to school and how it is now has been in my mind after a number of comments made during the 3-Way Conversations that I was a part of recently. Students discussed their learning, using two tasks that they had selected as the basis of their chat. A few parents finished the conversation off by commenting on how different things seemed from their own experience of Science. How true! I often look around the lab and marvel at the wonderful opportunities I can give my students.

They can watch, in real time, the hatching and development of eagle chicks on a ‘nest cam’. They can take an idea and spend a period, or a week, finding out everything the internet can tell them about say, colonising Mars or mitochondrial DNA. They can work more slowly than the rest of the class, with all the work on Reshet available all the time, so that they really understand the basic concepts and do not have to keep moving on before they are ready. There are videos to watch, interactive activities to try, practical tasks to be done. Learning is no longer passive – the students take an active role in what they are doing and their school world is all the richer for this.

It does make things harder, however. Where once it was enough to memorise all the parts of the body, or the first 20 elements on the Periodic Table, now with all the information they could want literally in their hands, the students are expected to go further. “Apply your knowledge of the human body to the question of organ donation”. “Can we design babies to suit our own requirements? Should we do so?”. “Design an advertising campaign to teach people about nuclear power”. Knowledge is no longer enough and understanding and application are now key. I think this is much harder! But also far more engaging.

I am horrified when I hear of schools deciding to “ditch the technology and go back to pen and paper”. Why would we cut the students off from the vast selection of experiences and opportunities that the modern world offers? How can we shut our eyes and pretend that this enormous richness does not exist? Much better for us to help them learn to manage the distractions and sift through the huge and complicated piles of data and in the process learn some important skills that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. And let’s face it – would we be willing to give up our mobile phones and go back to land lines … and note pads … and alarm clocks … and World Book Encyclopaedia.