Real science for high schools

PhD student in the ACA, Phil Butterworth, (second from left) discusses early evidence of life on Earth with high school students.

A collaborative education project is pioneering a hi-tech online way of opening real science to high school students and their teachers.

It is being developed by Carol Oliver of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology (ACA), Jenny Fergusson of the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre and NASA Learning Technologies.

The project centres on the search for evidence of ancient life in the Pilbara region of northwest Western Australia, and how this helps us to search for life on Mars and beyond.

“The Pilbara is one of the few sites where we have access to an ancient landscape in which early life on Earth may have formed,” says Oliver, Assistant Director (Management and Outreach) of the ACA.

“Fossil-like structures - of which there are very good examples - suggest life flourished 3.5 billion years ago. The scientific debate on whether these are indeed fossils make it ideal for our project,” she says.

Students gain insights into preparing the trip, developing hypotheses and testing them on-site. They are also able to use a multi-media library of relevant information. A NASA Learning Technologies tool, What’s the Difference?, will allow them to build up personal databases using text with visual and multi-media elements. From this, teachers will immediately be able to see what progress students have made in learning.

Students’ response

Students from selected Sydney public high schools have been testing how well the project works as a learning tool.

Oliver says the software is fun to use, and that students who have previously shown no real understanding of how science is done suddenly grasp “very complex ideas”. They have access to interesting tools such as a globe that turns to zoom in on a particular area, and a program comparing environments against different attributes. 

Student responses have been an important part of the process. “They have been teaching us how they learn,” says Oliver.

What they tell Oliver and Fergusson will determine the final look, feel and construction of what is offered for general use.

Against scientific illiteracy

American and European surveys indicate widespread science illiteracy amongst adults, but there is no information on how this happens. Oliver suspects science illiteracy begins in high school. Tools such as this software will make students aware that science knowledge is only as good as the best current interpretations of the natural world, and depends on the reliability and sensitivity of the tools used to examine it.

Future developments

The education project began in 2004, and recently won $120,000 in funding under the federal government’s Australian Schools Science, Technology and Maths Innovation scheme.

It will be available online in mid-2006, and free to anyone who wants it from then on. It will become part of the New South Wales and Western Australian curricula, and schools are also testing it in the UK and the US.

“Almost everything we have developed in this project has an application in science itself,” says Oliver. “Moreover, most of the hi-tech tools will have been developed in a way that allows teachers and some students to adapt them for other projects.”

For more information, contact Carol Oliver at coliver@els.mq.edu.au The ACA website is at http://aca.mq.edu.au/

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