On Jack Johnson, Trains and Curriculum ...

I was listening to Jack Johnson's excellent album In Between Dreams today when his song Breakdown came on. Here is an except of the lyrics for those who have not heard this song (which ranks as one of my favourite songs of all time):

I hope this old train breaks down
Then I could take a walk around
And, see what there is to see
And time is just a melody
All the people in the street
Walk as fast as their feet can take them
I just roll through town
And though my windows got a view
The frame I'm looking through
Seems to have no concern for now

When I first heard this album I was living in Cape Town, South Africa working as a waiter at a Mexican Restaurant (I know, it makes no sense). I listened to this song a lot as I was backpacking around Southern Africa and it resonated with my wish to get out of the bus I was in to explore everything that was rushing by me. But the bus kept going ...

Today, it hit me an entirely different way. I was thinking about all the times in school when we are exploring a curriculum mandated topic and the students and teacher would love to stop the curriculum train to explore the current topic. But the train keeps going ...

It seems to me that our current model of education views curriculum as the train; it drives education. This model may be preferred by some as it removes much of the control from the individual teachers, who may choose to teach different topics. However, what it fails to do is to allow for exploration, to permit creativity and to generate passion about the topics. We have a set time to explore a topic, and whether or not we want to move on, we must when the time is up (or we need to dredge through 3 more weeks on a topic no one cares about).

What if we instead switched our model and made the curriculum the track and allowed the teachers to control the train. We would all have a set path to follow, but we would be allowed to stop and gawk when it was appropriate. Or to speed on through when the scenery wasn't to the groups liking. We could even stop the train in the station for a day or so and go on a walkabout; exploring that stop in more detail because our students wanted to.

Imagine that, no longer needing to view the curriculum just through our window frame which, according to Jack Johnson, "seems to have no concern for now", but instead getting out of the train and seeing things unobstructed, freely, and without restraint.

Where are the Students?

While wandering through the woods today:

I saw the deer and thought this is Biology.
I saw the different biomes and thought this is Geography.
I saw the roots of the upturned trees and thought this is History.
I saw chickadees flying through the air and thought this is Physics.
I heard the animals chattering around me and thought this is Music.
I saw the marsh grasses purifying the water and thought this is Chemistry.
I felt the perfection of nature and thought this is Math.
I saw the beauty around me and thought this is Art.
I felt connections to everything around me and thought this is Philosophy.
I felt these words flow through me and thought this is English.

Then I saw that I was alone,

And I thought, where are the students?

What did you learn in school today?

I learned that knowledge is static.
I learned that I have no hope of learning on my own, knowledge must come from my teacher.
I learned that learning is best done quietly and in rows.
I learned that fun has no place in life.
I learned that I am not smart enough to learn on my own.
I learned that conformity is valued more than creativity.
I learned that my opinion and ideas are worthless.
I learned that my greatest achievement will be a test score.

What did you teach your students today?

The beginnings of #scisat

So, I had another idea (which I have apparently followed through with ... go me!). I am a huge fan of science laboratories that are open-ended and allow for students to learn important soft skills such as observation, note-taking, hypothesising, problem solving and communication. Personally, I don't care much for labs where a 'correct' answer must be found. In school, I usually reversed engineered them to solve for the answer and add in some experimental error to make it look better.

So, on to the idea. The creation of #scisat. Every Saturday (or Sunday, or apparently Friday as I posted early ... Maple Syrup Festival tomorrow and all) I will post a science idea that helps to foster the skills I listed above. Anything is fair game from labs to demos and journal ling to technology.

If you like the idea and the inaugural posting Spicy Spicy Science, let people know. Let's start #scisat as the way of communicating our ideas with each other. Let's bring science back (hmm, I smell a song ... is Justin Timberlake on twitter?)

Science Saturday: Spicy Spicy Science

So, I like hot food. I like science. Why not combine them together? I was listening to Tom Allen on CBC Radio 2 Shift today (apparently, he provides me with much insight) discuss the Scoville Unit and determining the heat of peppers. Then I got to thinking about converting it into a science lab. Here we go:


So, Wilbur Scoville designed this scale in 1912 to determine and compare the pungency of peppers. This is defined by the amount of capsaicin contained within the pepper. His test, known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test, involves soaking dried peppers in alcohol (capsaicin is alcohol-soluble) and determining by how much it must be diluted with sugar water until it is undetectable to taste. So a pepper with a rating of 2000 Scoville Units must be diluted over 2000 times (its original volume) to render it unpercetable by human taste.

How does this apply to the science classroom? Well, this makes a fantastic open ended science lab that can cover important topics such as: experimental error, subjectivity of methodology, issues with perception, observation and experimental design.

My idea is to provide students with the background information presented above. Have them design an appropriate experiment to determine the Scoville Rating of an unknown sample. Provide each student group with a different sample (I would recommend nothing too hot as it can burn eyes and mucous membranes) and let them run their experiment. Students should have the opportunity to present and discuss the different methodologies chosen by their peers.

Of course, the one outstanding question on your mind is: you want me to have students drink alcohol? Well, it is unfortunate that capsaicin is not water soluble, but it is fat and oil soluble so I would recommend using vegetable/olive oil instead of alcohol in class.

Finally, here is how Scoville did it. He had a minimum of five tasters who were allowed to taste only once per session to prevent prior tastings from influencing their decisions. Because of the subjectivity of the testing, today we test through liquid chromatography.


One more extension is to discuss why drinking water after eating food spiced with capsaicin doesn't work (it is not water soluble). Whereas the drink of choice, beer, has a mild amount of alcohol which can alleviate the burning sensation. The alternative drink, milk, has a compound casein (which is lipophilic or fat-loving) that surrounds the fatty capsaicin molecules and washes them away.

This is a easy to run lab which should provide ample opportunities for students to explore the scientific method while having a bit (or heaps) of fun.

More information on Scoville, capsaicin and peppers:
Wikipedia
Chile Pepper Scoville Scale
The chemistry of capiscum

Top 100 Education Books

Well, I've been sitting on this idea for a bit now and I think it is time to unleash it. I was scouring the net for some amazing way of implementing it, but I can't find anything that doesn't require me to host a web site myself. So, without further ado ...

My idea is to have teachers collaborate and generate the Top 100 Education Books that aspiring, new, and current teachers should read to improve and inform their practice (with thanks to Tom Allen at CBC Radio 2 Shift for the inspiration). This of course is a unending project as new ideas are introduced and new literature produced.

This will be hosted at the shift-ED wiki site and should be ready to be unleashed in its entirety shortly. So, get pondering and get ready to produce the greatest list ever produced (that references books about education).

Theme Days

I've always toyed with the idea of having theme days in my class. People love structure and routine as much as they may need change. Having theme days can allow for the structure, give students the chance to get settled and prepare them to venture into the unknown. My current idea is to spend 5-15 minutes each class on the particular theme. My week would look like this:

Monday Madness -> Show a short video showcasing some cool science
Tuesday -> Individual silent reading
Wacky Wednesday -> Some cool demonstration (may not apply to what we are studying)
Thursday -> Individual silent reading
Famous Friday -> A short bio on a famous scientist

For the silent reading, students would be allowed to read whatever they like (as long as it is not rude). I would also have a variety of reading material in the class library in case students forgot to bring something. I think having students pair up afterwards to discuss something they read is a nice extension.

Sure this would take time away from teaching content, but in the long run I think more science would be learned and taken away.