Combining Science and Technology

One district shares secrets to success for their students.

By Carol Williamson, Julie Miller, and Kevin Bosworth

In Olathe (KS) District Schools, we share a vision: students prepared for their futures. So, when the Concord Consortium invited our district to participate in ITSI (Information Technology in Science Instruction), a project funded by the National Science Foundation, we jumped at the opportunity to help us realize our vision. The ITSI project aims to increase the number and diversity of students entering careers in the information technologies (IT) by engaging them in designing exciting inquiry-based science activities that use computational models and real-time data acquisition and analysis. And while we don’t know what specific IT careers many of our students will eventually choose, we know they’ll need certain IT skills for any vocation in the 21st century. ITSI has helped us help our students.

Implementing ITSI

Two of our staff attended training in Concord, MA, with other staff developers from Boston, MA, and Desert Sands, CA, that are also part of this project. Then in summer 2007, we hosted an ITSI institute in Olathe. With project funding for two Concord Consortium staff members to attend, plus stipends for our teachers, we hosted our first summer institute. Twenty-six grade 7-12 Olathe district science teachers—including teachers of biology, earth science, and physical science—plus four math teachers participated. Twenty students also attended for four days and were paid for their time.

During the 2007-08 academic year, we held a half-day workshop to gear up for the school year and to ensure that ITSI online resources were accessible at all schools. In fall 2007, ITSI teachers participated in a five-week online course on inquiry with probes and models. And in spring 2008, teachers took part in a self-paced online course focusing on VideoPaper Builder, a tool to create a video case study so teachers can reflect on their teaching with ITSI activities.

We have been so excited about the ITSI model that we offered an “ITSI for All” professional development session in January, attended by all 120 secondary science teachers and seven secondary math teachers in the district. Current ITSI teachers shared the lessons they’d developed while recruiting new teachers to join, and with so many success stories to share, it was easy to recruit.

ITSI empowers students as effective inquiry learners of science and technology

“I found that the use of probes brings out the inquiry in everyone regardless of age or grade level, not just the adults!” – Marsha

In a ninth grade physical science class, students engaged in an ITSI activity adapted by a teacher, “You’ve Got the Music in You.” Students used a microphone with the Sound Grapher to compare waves and frequencies. They began by making a lot of noises, and it isn’t very often that students are assigned to make loud noise! Students made motorboat and animal sounds, dropped books, changed the pitch of their voices, and sang in order to observe the variables of the waves shown in the Sound Grapher. Students kept asking, “What if I…?,” and then they tested their questions.

After watching the video of his lesson, this teacher posted to the online course, “I couldn’t stop watching it and laughing at myself. It looks like the kids were even more engaged and on task than I perceived them to be.” He went on to say, “If real inquiry is happening, then I observe the students trying out their own ideas and testing to see if their predictions come true. We saw that big time when they used the laptop microphone with the Sound Grapher.”

ITSI empowers teachers as creative practitioners

“I had to work on editing each activity to make the directions very clear for my students. I would make changes sometimes to the activity during one class so the next hour would not have the problem. I also added some worksheets that went along with the lessons to make sure my students were accountable. This allowed me to pass back their grade so they could keep it as their record of the activity.” – Dana

Teachers are encouraged to modify ITSI activities to make them most relevant for their local students, a hallmark of giving teachers professional freedom and trust. Teachers change titles, add images, modify directions, and add links to local standards.

Students are learning with probes and interface hardware that were available, but previously unused

“For years I have complained about the probes and how they were of little use to us in the classroom. Now I feel that they can be used and the benefits for the students are great.” – Robin

Some ITSI teachers who had never used the probes that were available at their schools have revamped their teaching and their students’ learning through their ITSI participation. “I drank the Kool-Aid and I am a complete believer,” commented one. He found that his students were fully engaged and kept working the entire class period when doing ITSI activities. Another said she didn’t realize she would have as much fun building the probes as she did, and that her students loved it.

In one school, teachers searched their storeroom for probes, and discovered an unopened box of new probes; they immediately began playing. The following day, a physical science teacher and his students were using the motion sensors. ITSI has opened up a world to many teachers that they did not know existed.

ITSI is infectious

The energy at the “ITSI for All” workshop was infectious. Teachers walked away with ideas on using probes, building probes, implementing models, and using an incredibly powerful model for viewing events at the atomic level called the Molecular Workbench. Soon after the event, at a junior high school that does not currently have any ITSI teachers, the science teachers began brainstorming how they, too, could use models and probes in their classrooms. After one life science teacher engaged his students with ITSI’s “How Genes Determine Appearance” activity, another life science teacher tried it, too.

Next steps

In our summer 2008 ITSI institute, the 30 veteran ITSI teachers will be joined by 30 additional teachers from Olathe and surrounding districts to build on the success of ITSI. The veteran teachers will be “trainers of trainers,” facilitating new teachers as they prepare to use ITSI activities with their students in 2008-09. The summer institute will feature an “ITSI Showcase” to highlight ITSI learning activities for community members, including school district business partners with an interest in information technology, such as Garmin Industries, whose world headquarters is in Olathe. The expected outcome of the summer institute? Same thing we’ve come to expect from ITSI: more students will be learning in a style that will prepare them for their futures.

Carol Williamson is the Science Coordinator at Olathe (KS) District Schools. Julie Miller and Kevin Bosworth are ITSI facilitators in Olathe, KS.