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Gravity Amplification Systems

By Joe Malave, Suffolk STANYS Director

The gravity of COVID-19’s effect on education in NYS and across the country is amplified by the fact most educators have never created a remote system of learning that could be done online.  When I went into education, I never imagined not teaching directly in front of a group of students.  Oh, and if you thought this article was going to be about how an unknown stable element can create gravity waves, and how those same gravity waves can be focused to bend space and time for propulsion systems, not quite.  I can say from my personal experience that the transformational shift into remote teaching feels as if space-time has been pulled towards me and I’ve been relocated to a classroom at some very distant coordinate without moving an inch. Having been given this insight into a possible future in education, I’ve gained a new foresight into digital teaching. I can’t say that I didn’t notice online programming, or digital classrooms gaining strength.  I chose not to use it.  My belief has been that science needs to be taught in a lab setting and in a classroom, but now I believe the online teaching component can be a useful part of my curriculum, and I should not be so resistant to the change.

Resources are key to preparing for teaching in the new paradigm. STANYS has provided a whole web page of resources to help with distance teaching.  Clearly, to teach like this, you need a fast computer, one that can handle video processing and digital processing software without crashing and doing it in a reasonable amount of time.  A fast internet connection is important.  Have you considered paying more for a faster internet connection?  I did, and it really does help, especially when the bandwidth on Google Classroom is being stretched to the limit.  Zoom meetings also benefit from having a faster connection. At this moment in time, I have two college sons home doing remote learning at the same time I’m doing remote teaching. That puts a further strain on my internet bandwidth and speed.  I’m actually glad to be able to spend so much time with my sons, even if we are all in separate compartments within my home.  My wife asked me if I’m planning to write off the expenses from teaching at home.  I didn’t even think about that until she asked me. So if like me, you’ve spent money on software, printer paper, video recording technology, maybe a new computer, electricity, or office furniture, I’d say that you should be able to write off a portion of that in 2020, and to keep all of your receipts.

Teachers have an amazing way of banding together when things get tough. Teacher organizations, such as STANYS are a tremendous anchor in this storm. Suffolk STANYS is working to create subject area help for distance teaching.  Do you know who your Subject Area Representative is?  The list is on the Suffolk STANYS website.  Send them an email and ask for help, or share some of your strategies or resources.  Are you using driving unit questions in your distance teaching?  How hard is it to devise online lessons using claim, evidence, and reasoning?  I know how hard it is to meet the needs of all students when all students don’t have the same resources, computer skills, and socio-economic status.  Have you contacted your technology and special education personnel to help deal with these issues?

Here’s some general topics that have been discussed this year in STANYS.  Last year saw a lower conference attendance at Rochester for the STANYS annual conference. However, the speaker quality was the best we ever had, and the statewide conference gets better and better in terms of quality each year. If you have never been to a STANYS annual conference, it’s worth the sacrifice.  I once had the belief that every minute in class, was a minute that I and my students will not get back if I’m out.  However, how well do you understand the new NYSSLS standards?  Many workshops are geared towards teaching you how to apply these standards.  Until we get out of the box we teach in, you will never know all the teachers across the state in your subject area that can not only become great friends, but wonderful colleagues as well. Most of the colleagues that I’ve met are fantastic teachers willing to share teaching strategies, lessons, curriculum, etc.  Now for the bad news, the 2020 STANYS conference is being cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.  So, after we get through this, keep checking the STANYS website for more information on conference updates.  After I attended my first conference, I can honestly say the lost time in class does not compare to the wealth of information that I brought back into the classroom.  The new teaching strategies I brought back not only made teaching more fun, but reduced the time it took to plan 3-dimensional lessons, thereby gaining back the lost time threefold.

Other STANYS discussions, if you tried CLANED this past year, it was decided that due to the inflexibility of the program during the trial period, that STANYS would not use it moving forward.  Texas Instruments is a financial supporter of STANYS, so please consider using their technology in your classrooms.  Many STANYS sections have been cancelling local conferences and activities due to the current COVID-19 situation. Suffolk STANYS had to cancel our spring conference this year too. Our current STANYS president, Kenneth Huff, has worked hard on Transforming Innovations into Reality in Science [TIRS]. His goal was/is to help individuals better implement three-dimensional learning science standards, and how STANYS should be a source for teachers to make this transition. In addition, Donna Banek, a long time STANYS dedicated volunteer in many capacities within the organization has been named a STANYS fellow.

If the gravity of COVID-19 has caused you to feel out of sync with your teaching system, then amplify your teaching through STANYS resources and participation.  STANYS as an organization can only function with an active membership.  If you know of someone in your building that is a science teacher and is not a member of STANYS, please encourage them to join STANYS, and share with them the wealth of information that STANYS has to offer.  I highly encourage any elementary science teachers to contact the Suffolk leadership, as we are trying to build resources for elementary science education as it is the foundation for all science that follows. Be well, stay healthy, and may our distance learning improve.

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Preparing Students for the Next Generation

How can we best prepare students for the next generation? (The following is based on a TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson.) As science teachers, we are trained to be keen observers of student behaviors. Most of us are naturally good at this. This is a direct development of our science minds. We see natural changes and can make predictions, but predicting the timing and the degree of future changes decades away, is extremely challenging. That being said, the students we are teaching today will live and work in that world. Graduates and students today are facing globalization, a robotic workforce, academic inflation, high-speed travel, rapid population movement, rapid advancements in computer technology, climate change, and a raft of environmental issues. The world is changing at an accelerated pace. Students today need to more creative than ever to compete and be the problem solvers that can take on these challenges successfully.

We as teachers, administrators, and legislators have a large stake in creating curriculum and practices that allow students that are creative to flourish. The problem is that we reward students that excel in less creative courses, and diminish the types of courses that produce creativity. Some teachers that I work with are masters at using teaching crutches that allow a student to get the right answer by reducing the solution and limiting creativity. In the world of hyper testing environments, are students being taught that being wrong is unacceptable? Think about it, we reward students for getting near perfect or perfect scores. In fact we praise them with lavish awards and scholarships. Colleges use SAT scores based on a few dimensions of learning, mathematical aptitude, reading and language skills. In general, students learn that in order to be accepted into a college, they must emphasize the courses that the SAT measures, and de-emphasize other courses that are very creative, including arts. This by nature reduces the creative courses that SAT focused students enroll in. Please, I’m not being disrespectful and I’m certain brilliance can shine in any area, but there are specialized minds and very creative thinkers that are not being developed to their fullest potential.

In New York State, many new educational programs are being implemented. In science we are transitioning into the NYSSLS based on the Next Generation Science Standards. How we teach NYSSLS is an important as the performance expectations themselves. Administrators need to realize that every teaching discipline is different. If a science teacher that tries to set up interesting teaching phenomena for 3D learning is not given adequate time or supplies to accomplish this, then creativity and problem solving will be lost from the start.

In order to teach students to be more creative, as often as possible, we should allow students to fail with less penalty, allow them to realize that real problems and solutions do not always lead to an absolute answer. Many times, solutions lead to unsolved problems and more questions. Reward the journey as well as the end result.  I’ve seen many students reach an impasse in science investigations and simply assume they have failed and stop working. Why? Because the reward system in most schools and higher academia fail to allow creative solutions that don’t fit standard grading. Students are taught that failure is unacceptable, so students stop investigating when things go bad and they probably experience a dose of damaged humility as well. However, it’s at this point that student creativity and grit for reworking the new questions generated needs to be taught and rewarded. We should allow time for these type of open-ended activities and not jump to assigning a grade or a score when a student reaches a predesignated result. Encourage and guide the student with the new problem. Allow them to struggle, and reward them for creating new hypotheses to solve using the information gathered from the previous attempt.

If we all know that an experiment that can’t fail is flawed from the start. Then why do we teach students that failure is not an option? It’s not just above average ability that should be rewarded without failure. If we seek to produce the type of problem solvers for the next generation and well into the future, then we must reward creativity, perseverance in finishing, and the raw ability of tackling unexpected results as the cornerstones of the next generation of problem solvers.

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The Faulkes Project & the Montauk School Science Program

NGC330

 

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The Faulkes project is a real-time, astronomy based research and imaging project based at Cardiff University in England, and Santa Barbara, California. The later operates as LCOGT (Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network), and is an equal partner in the project.  Through this project, students can use large research grade telescopes located in Hawaii and Australia, via the internet, to image objects and conduct student research.  In addition, LCGOT has created a network of smaller 1-meter telescopes around the world.

     I became involved in the Faulkes project during the summer of 2010, after trying to build an observatory in Montauk for 7 years.  It was my initial goal for the local observatory, to operate from a network, providing High Schools internet access to the telescope. When I found out about the already established Faulkes project, I passed the torch and began earnestly using the Faulkes telescopes on the LCGOT network.  The telescopes in Hawaii and Siding Springs, Australia, are two-meter diameter telescopes which cost 30 million dollars each.  These are capable instruments, to say the least.

        Since joining the program, Montauk science students have imaged a planetary nebula (M97), and a pair of galaxies that are colliding (NGC 4567) and many other deep space objects.  Montauk students have worked on rebuilding a galaxy catalog called the Hickson Compact Galaxy catalog.  In addition, several students began research on determining which stars in a globular cluster are classified as Be Stars.  

  As an example of a student’s actual research (sponsored by researchers at Cardiff University), the student numbered image below is named NGC 330.  The student used photometry to determine any variation in the amount of energy being emitted by stars in this field and compared multiple images taken over several months.  The student then examined the images in specific frequencies of light and used various mathematical functions to determine which stars are classified as B[e] stars.            

For general classes, teaching students about astrophotography using robotic instruments and photo-processing can be challenging enough, and very rewarding.  The following images were taken and processed by Montauk students.  Most science students get very excited about participating in this project, and this can be a terrific STEM project as well.

For further information about how to get involved, or if you have any questions, please contact me and see the following web sites: http://lcogt.net  &  http://www.faulkes-telescope.com . My e-mail is jmalave@montaukschool.org .  

Happy observing and I hope to see your school’s images soon!!

 

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Tips on Teaching Astronomy

An image of the 8.21.17 eclipse, taken by the author of this post.

The smartphone operating system will dictate which apps you use. However, many of the apps are similar, so they can be used the same way. Having the students load a sky map of some sort, will allow most of the kids not to get bored if you do an observing session at night with limited telescopes. Better yet, include an app that detects the position of the International Space Station, and plan an observing night that coincides with a flyby of the ISS. Students and parents always marvel at the sight of it as it brightly passes overhead. Passing Iridium satellites can also be predicted and observed.

If I’m teaching astronomy, I always ask the students to load a program onto their laptops, it’s called Stellarium. Stellarium allows students to see their sky at night, for that date and time (or any date and time), and illustrate it many ways. It also shows other cultural constellations, not just western culture. Stellarium can be used for H.W. Assignments, teaching constellations, mythology, teaching star circles, and learning about deep space object classification systems. Another laptop program that’s free and is a great tool for showing our place in the universe is Where is M13? It is a program that maps out our galaxy, and most of the visible celestial objects in deep space that you might discuss. It is also useful for showing the structure of our galaxy.

Now telescopes, if you are considering purchasing equipment the first thing you should buy is a solar telescope. Meade is producing a low-cost solar telescope called the PST. If you are new to solar observing, you can easily see sunspots, prominences, and solar flares with these solar telescopes during the day! For night, skip the refractors, because good ones are a fortune, and cheap ones are good for the moon only. A planet will look like a small dot, and the planet will rotate away before a student has a chance to see. At night, diameter counts, and the cheapest way to get diameter is with reflecting or Newtonian style telescopes. A 10” or 12” reflecting telescope will not break the budget and is not too heavy to move. If you get an equivalent catadioptric, it’s a back breaker and very expensive. Used equipment can be found online, so if your district is willing to but that way, you can save money by shopping on Cloudy Nights.com. Trussed reflectors are a little cheaper than catadioptric but more expensive than Dobsonians (Newtonian version), however, they are easy to set up and are light. OK, you keep hearing me mention catadioptric. I’ll save this one for last, as they are expensive. I just saw new 9.25-inch listing for $3000.00. That is a starting point, they get more expensive. They are also heavy and delicate. The advantage is that most catadioptric are compact in length, are GoTO, and most have a GPS to do self-alignment. Having a big heavy mount is important for these instruments, otherwise they will vibrate and so will your object in the eyepiece will too.

Just a few more tricks, I use Google Earth and a solar system scaling Excel program (Google it) to create a scale model of the solar system if the sun has a 9” diameter. I usually will have the class on the athletic field to build the model. I like using solar system and constellation flash cards during lessons as a quick segue into lessons. Most of my students love Scale of the Universe, and I as a teacher love UNL Astronomy Simulations. Well, that’s it for now, enjoy the rest of the summer and don’t forget the August 21st solar eclipse!