iPhone App for Data Collection and Critical Thinking about Ecology and Biodiversity Nancy Butler Songer Professor of Science Education and Learning Technologies The University of Michigan 10 April 2012

Working with Next Generation Science Standards 1. Focus on fewer big ideas building over time Japanese eighth-grade textbooks cover eight topics, compared to an average of more than 65 for U.S. eighth-grade textbooks.” (Linn, Lewis, Tsuchida, Songer, 2000) 2. Emphasize science practices e.g., explanations, predictions, data collection, modeling 3. Systematic guidance in developing content + science practices

What We Do Build tools + curricular units emphasizing guided development of explanations around focal content 4, 5, 6th grade biology/ecology (8 weeks) 8th grade, high school Climate Change (8-14 weeks) little agreement exists between programs on what components should be brought to scale or what the profile of growth should be. In other words, does “bringing an intervention to scale” refer to documentation of widespread use among a thousand classrooms at any one time or are consideration of depth of implementation and sustainability important? Regardless of focus, most researchers would agree that the current body of research on scaling curricular reforms includes an under emphasis of research approaches and sound experimental methods that might result in clear evidence of cognitive and epistemological outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in the many locations. In our case, we are bringing to scale several standards-based middle school curricular programs shown to be successful as measured by student learning outcomes. Key ideas in our scaling efforts throughout the eight years include…

Fusing Content + Practices Content Ecology 13: Because many animals rely on each other, a change in the number of one species can affect different members of the web. Science Practice Explanations: Students build a complete scientific explanation consisting of a claim, two pieces of Evidence and Reasoning with content hints Learning goal: Students construct scientific explanations to address the question, how have recent changes in the Detroit River affected yellow perch populations?

Systematic Guidance of Strategic Thinking

26% of fourth graders have difficulty generating two pieces of evidence for an explanation, even with guidance (Songer and Gotwals, 2012) Conducted two studies on both types of errors and types of support needed by fourth and fifth graders. Collected verbal transcripts of what kinds of “verbal scaffolds’ teacher provided for fourth and fiftth graders so we could code that kinds of support into future versions of the online scaffolds. When analyzing type of errors, found out that Fourth and fifth graders are capable of generating guided explanations, but even with guidance such as sentence starters or transforming open ended into multiple option, many errors in generating, for example, two types of evidence were observed.

Passing Percentages by State, District, and Treatment Schools On State Science Test, Eighth Grade (MEAP) Comparative statistics on fish pond item Not that these data represent only one item. While this early data is suggestive and encouraging, we need to get averages across multiple ides in order to have better generalizability of the results. We are now collecting these data and have some to report. (Numbers in parentheses indicate standard error)

Results: Achievement by Completion as Measured by Three Tests (N= 1885) Comparative statistics on fish pond item Not that these data represent onlly one item. While this early data is suggestive and encouraging, we need to get averages across multiple idems in order to have better generalizability of the results. We are now collecting these data and have some to report.

BioKIDS app for animal data collection Record data on phones, ipods, PDAs Icon-based entry

Now BioKIDS app runs on iphones, ipads and Androids. Recent research article was the lead article and cover graphic for the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching featuring our BioKIDS app.

Integrate Critter Catalog information about animals with Predictive Distribution Modeling maps, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted futures. Created new browser/interface: SPECIES for the integration of all resources.

Species has interactive maps, opportunity to observe and critique, models of phenomena (e.g., the Green house Effect)

SPECIES has interactive Explanation building sections that draw directly from what we learned from our design of scaffold-rich activities and assessments in offline form. Scaffolds can be clicked on and off as needed