The Students Discover project is all about getting kids involved in real science.  Either the collection or analysis of data or both are what students will be doing for the project.  There are of course challenges to overcome when thinking of getting students involved and even bigger challenges trying to spread the lessons to other areas of the country or world.  I hope that we have been able to think of most of the issues and find ways to address them.  But I know that in the coming years the next set of fellows will be able to build upon our work and make the lessons stronger and better.

Mite DNA is the key piece to the mite project.  Obtaining it cleanly from people and sending it to a lab to be extracted and sequenced are the first and biggest steps of the project.  These are also probably the most difficult steps.  The average middle school science classroom does not have have the materials for obtaining DNA, extracting such a small amount of DNA, and sequencing it.  Access to a lab that can and will do these steps will be critical for this project to grow.  Willis, Kayla and I have access to Dan and the Rob Dunn labs at NCSU to complete those tasks and share the data with us.   These labs do not have the capacity or the funds to do this for every school that wants to participate, so one condition for success is finding other labs that will complete this piece for other schools.

Along the same lines, teachers need to purchase the materials to sample the mite DNA from students. The materials are not expensive but they are an added cost to the teacher or school.  And any lab that completes the process will also have added expenses for helping with the project.  Unlike the other Students Discover projects there are a lot of added costs with the mite project that may make it more difficult to scale.

Another key component is the data analysis.  The labs are going to return to us a set of DNA sequences for our students to take a look at.  Dan has taught us how to use free software to take the sequences and turn them into a phylogeny that will make the data more useful and meaningful.  The issue here is that this is a program that teachers will have to take the time to download, and learn how to use.  We are creating a guide to help teachers learn the program, but this is still something they will need to work with the program in order to walk students through using it.

My externship provided me with many opportunities for growth this summer.  I think my biggest AHA! moment and take away from the summer is the excitement and wonder that should be associated with teaching and learning science.  I learned through several opportunities at the museum to let my students wonder and explore the world around them to bring that excitement back.  I am very excited to see if allowing students more time to wonder and explore if they will have more interested and better grades in science class.  I hope that more enjoyment will mean harder work and better grades for most of my students.  And on a larger scale I hope I can excite a life long interest in science.

Students Discover Interview

M-I-T-E

“We hit the Kenan jackpot!” Was my reflection during our second of three Lunches with Liz at the museum.  I knew that we were in for something special when I found out about the Students Discover project, but I didn’t know how awesome this project is!  Working with 12 other like-minded middle school teachers has been such a great experience.  We have been able to compare experiences and bounce ideas off of each other about our projects and lessons.  Being in the lab with 2 other teachers helped us talk out the connections to our curriculum (because they aren’t always so obvious).

The goal of the students discover project is to create lessons in citizen science that are scale-able so that they can be easily adapted in other classrooms.  I think it may take some time to find out if we were ultimately successful when we find out when and where these lessons start to be used.

The biggest success, thus far, of the project and lesson plan writing piece is what has come about through collaboration, with the 2 other teachers on the project, the 11 other teachers as students discover and the 4 post-docs and other scientists at the museum. I think we have really produced some good strong plans and activities that are going to be engaging and exciting for our students and hopefully students around the state, country, world and universe (according to Rob Dunn).  Each of us have heard about the lessons created in the other labs and we want to use them in our classes this year as well.  I am planning to teach not only my mite lessons but incorporating the sharks teeth and fossil lessons into my curriculum too.

Team MITE working on our lesson plans.

There are a couple of challenges in writing these plans, I think we have overcome them through the collaborations and conversations.  The first challenge is that we are working with mites which are basically invisible, and then to take it to another level we are working with their DNA which is definitely invisible.  Middle school students have a hard time understanding things that they cannot see and observe.  Dan, my mentor, was really worried that it would be hard to get students excited and involved because they can’t see any of the processes that are happening.  Another challenge going along with this is that classroom teachers don’t have the equipment that is in the lab.  We can’t do DNA extractions, PCR’s, gel electrophoresis, and sequence DNA with our students because we don’t have the equipment and materials need for all of these complicated processes.  We will be able to do DNA extraction with strawberries so that students can experience that process, and show them online interactive virtual labs so that students can see the process and understand what is going on at the lab with their mite samples.

Another big challenge for us is actually writing the lessons.  I know what I would do in my class and how I would do it. The challenge is not knowing how to write lesson plans for others to view and follow, I am very unsure of the words and phrases I should use.  I also realize as I am writing the rough draft that there are several materials that need to be added in order to give a complete lesson to others to use.  What started out as a simple 2 or 3 day lesson has become a very large complicated document that has several add ons and extra documents attached so that it will be complete.

Connecting my externship to my classroom is going to be challenging, but do able. Pieces of the work I am doing fit in to several areas of the NC Essential Standards for 8th grade. So, my current plan is to have a series of lessons scattered through the year that bring in mites to teach or reinforce the content.

There are many pieces of the mite project.  The main one is the citizen science piece.  I plan to introduce citizen science at the beginning of the school year and actually do citizen science with my students by collecting samples from the willing students and send the samples back to the lab.

Later in the year I can use tools that I have learned about in the lab to show my students that real science is still concerned with the topics we talk about.  My mentor has taught a couple of college classes and has ideas for lessons that he has used in the past which can be tweaked for a younger audience.  For example, he has a lesson using the phylogeny of HIV DNA to show how to disease moved through a population.  I am planning to use this idea, but simplify it for a lesson during my diseases unit.

Even later in the year, when we get our class data and DNA sequences of mites back we will use computer programs to create phylogenies with our mites.  I plan to use this lesson during my evolution unit.  In the past my evolution unit has focused on fossil records and geologic time.  I am excited to add in information about creating phylogenies so that my students will be able to see another side of evolution.  I think that this will give my students a little charge of curiosity and excite them about a topic that seems distant and finished to them.

Using the mites throughout the year and connecting the many pieces of my curriculum to them will show my students that scientists use all areas of science in their work.

The biggest Technology Challenge I face in my classroom is lack of technology.  I do have a SMARTboard and a couple of computers in the room, but my students need more than chance encounters with technology.  Instruction could be so much more efficient if my students had access to computers in class daily.  They could be doing research and creating presentations, using simulations for difficult to understand concepts and blogging about these experiences.

My goal for this coming year is to have a BYOD classroom.  After seeing some of the tech tools and talking with other teachers at NCCAT I decided that this is the best way for me to make use of those tools.  I am really excited to use some of the great tools that we learned about to make my classroom more exciting and engaging.

Here is a photo of me and my mentor (though he would prefer not to be called that) in the lab.  In this picture we are preparing to run Gel Electrophoresis, and he is explaining to me how to use the micro-pipette to mix the buffer, dye, and DNA then transfer the mixture into the wells of the gel.

Micro-pipetting is nerve racking!