dendrite studios

(An adaption of presentation made during National Science Week)  

Last week (10 – 17 May 2008) was National Science Week  and the theme for this year was “Tomorrow’s Science & Technology is in our youth’s hands.” It is our belief that in order to succeed in that notion, we must begin to put some of today’s science & technology education in our youth’s hands.

This in no way places less emphasis on the value of educators, but perhaps means a slightly changing role. Placing science education more in the hands of the youth is also a response to a remark by Nobel Prize winning Physicist Murray Gell-Mann that, “modern science education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant and being fed the menu. Students are only being shown representations of ideas and told about great discoveries rather than being helped to learn deeply for themselves.”

We are very interested in finding ways to wet children’s appetite for science and to nourish them with enriched learning. For the last 2 years we have researched educational globally. We have looked at emerging trends, technological developments and new pedagogical methodologies. While we have a special interest in life-long learning, given the needs of South Africa, we have also looked in depth at science, technology and engineering education.

Apart from research and consulting, we launched Rossum Academy  at the beginning of the year. Rossum Academy is an extra-curricular Science, Technology and Engineering Academy for children of 8 – 18. Rossum currently runs several classes a week at the MTN Sciencentre.

So after much research and 6-months of hands on experience, what have we learned in terms of science and technology education for children?

Three trends
Firstly, and this hardly requires in depth study: The world for which education prepares anyone has changed a lot over the last 2 decades and is changing ever more rapidly. The IT revolution, the molecular explosion and the current phase of globalization has lead to information doubling at a faster and faster rate, and the half-life or relevance of other information becoming shorter and shorter.

The Physical Sciences National Curriculum Statement refers to it in the context of chemistry by stating: “Chemistry is a critically important science for the future of the country. However we need to recognize that its character today is very different from what it was, when most of us learned chemistry. Things regarded as important even 25 years ago, may not be any more. They may still be true, but there are more important things now.”

This is off course not only the case with chemistry but especially with fields such as technology and computer science.

Secondly, and this I believe cannot be emphasized enough: The students of today are very different from their predecessors. Author and educator Mark Prensky  put it as follows: “Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.”

Today’s students, from Grade R to university, are the first generation that has spent their entire lives surrounded by digital technology such as computers, videogames and the internet. Prensky goes on to say that the most useful designation for this generation is Digital Natives. Most educators however are ‘Digital Immigrants’ and this places additional pressure on them to be relevant to their students.

While it may be argued that South Africa’s youth are less ‘inborn’ into computer and internet technology due to our tragically deficient capacity, the situation is changing fast. Our youth are however on the forefront of mobile use, both in terms of penetration and adoption of new technologies.

A third noticeable trend is the increasing number of pedagogical approaches put forward – specifically for science education. You would have heard of inquiry based, problem based and activity based instruction as well as modelling instruction, studio approach and constructivism or constructionism.

All of these methodologies have their validity and place, but what do they have in common? All of these pedagogical advancements call for greater student engagement and involvement. And the support for this type of thinking is widespread and in some cases not so new at all:

• “Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it” – Aristotle
• “Knowledge is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and use.” – John Seely Brown (ex Director PARC, member National Academy of Education)
• “Making universities and engineering schools exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus is more important than specifying curricular details.” – Charles Vest (President emeritus of MIT)

So John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget and Seymore Papert and from Aristotle to the president of MIT, they all advocate a more active and involved role for students in the classroom.

On a meta-level the pedagogical methodologies fulfilling these criteria can be called Interactive Engagement (IE). Besides the qualitative support for IE, various quantitative studies have been done to prove its validity. A recent one by Prof Richard Hake of Indiana University concluded that conceptual and problem solving test results strongly suggest that the the use of IE strategies can increase Physics course effectiveness well beyond that obtained with traditional methods.

Implementing Interactive Engagement
One of the best ways we have found to effectively implement interactive engagement, and this has been corroborated by countless school and universities around the world, is using educational building and robotics kits in the classroom. While the field of robotics itself will be one of the most important fields in the 21st century, the educational value of robotics as the premier integrator in education makes us very excited.

Among all the educational building kits out there, we have discovered Fischertechnik as offering the most complete end-to-end solution. While we use other equipment in Rossum Academy as well, the versatility and true-to-life nature of Fischertechnik’s mechanic components make it incredible value in an educational context. The greatest plus is that the same basic parts that are used in sets for 5-year old are used in the industry training models. From the simplest depictions of basic machines, to the principles of electricity and pneumatics al the way up-to complex control systems for a 3-axis robot, Fischertechnik is ideal. On the programming side, is has a very easy to use visual programming language, but is also compatible with Java, Robotics Studio and Python. It furthermore comes with a 3D designer where components and machines can be fully digitally designed.

There are several ways in which we believe educational building sets can be implemented to add great value in schools.

1) Demonstrations
At the most basic level, it is great for demonstration. In other words the educator builds something and uses it to demonstrate or for learners to conduct experiments. With sets such as Fischertechnik, there are virtually endless concepts that can be accurately demonstrated. It is of great value that models of actual devices are demonstrated, as this makes it easier for students to relate. This is important as the research of Prof. Eric Mazur at Harvard  has indicated that the value of demonstrations is greatly enhanced if learners first predict and discuss the outcome before demonstrations are conducted.

2) Studio approach
A second possibility is using educational kits as part of a Studio Approach to teaching Science and Technology. Originally developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic University for 1st year Physics is has subsequently been adopted and adapted at numerous leading universities and schools for various subjects.

The studio approach is characterized by the following:
Students sit at tables in groups of 4-6. There is limited formal lecturing and students engage in a range of short experiments or model building exercises, with questions that they need to complete. Educators move from group to group, monitoring the process, answering questions and making clarifying comments. Students thus get immersed in what they are studying. At university level the studio approach was designed for group of 100+ and the typical school classroom of 20 – 35 students can work effectively.

3) Technology lab
The third option, and that speaks to the matter of integration, is utilizing educational kits and other equipment to create a technology laboratory, with the tools being utilized by various subjects including Mathematics, Natural and Physical Sciences, Technology, Design and Computer Science.

There are various ways in which this can be practically implemented at schools and Dendrite Studios specialise in advising how to do that. Obviously the biggest advantage of a technology lab is that more resources and and tools can be acquired and as it benefits a lot more students, the cost per student is much lower. A lab can also be made available to students in the afternoons, just like a library or computer centre, thus allowing students the opportunity to explore on their own or to prepare for expo’s and robotics competitions.

Beyond old things in new ways
Several authors from Alan Kay to Mitchell Resnick to Bill Gates have noted that while new technology and especially digital technologies make a learning revolution possible, they certainly do not guarantee it.

The biggest reason held up for that is that technology is being used exclusively to the same old things just in a newer way. Take for example using PowerPoint instead of a blackboard, or word-processed assignments instead of hard written ones or e-mailing notes instead of printing and handing them out.

What is required for the effective education of today’s digital natives are doing new things in new ways. It is not enough to teach technological literacy – students must attain technological fluency. In other words not just knowing how to use technological tools, but also knowing how to construct things of significance with those tools.

Allowing for an inter-disciplinary approach, with a technology laboratory used by all students in all subjects, is the start of doing new things in a new way and putting science and technology in the hands of our youth.