Education, Outreach, and Training Meeting

1. Education, Outreach, and Training Meeting Introduction to Chickscope July 1998 Umesh Thakkar National Center for Supercomputing Applications University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 61820 217-333-2095 uthakkar@ncsa.uiuc.edu

2. Outline In this introduction, I will summarize • The first Chickscope project (Spring 1996) • Illinois Chickscope, a professional development program for K-12 teachers • Significance of remote scientific instrumentation in education

3. What is Chickscope?(http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/) • Chickscope is a project to study chicken embryo development using a variety of educational resources, such as inquiry-based curriculum materials, interactive modules on egg mathematics, image processing, and remotely controlled magnetic resonance imaging instrument. • It is being developed by educators and researchers from several UIUC departments in collaboration with inservice and preservice teachers, and the Image Processing for Teaching project at the University of Arizona. • Inquiry-based materials by collaborating teachers are at http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/inquiry/. • Chickscope overview for parents and teachers is at http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/about/overview/.

4. Remote scientific instrumentation • Using a standard Web browser, researchers, teachers, or students in any location and at any time have the potential to access the latest scientific instruments without having to travel to a remote site or invest in the hardware themselves. • Accordingly, the Web becomes a laboratory for many fields of research and education—a World Wide Laboratory (WWL). • Chickscope is a working example of the WWL project. • In addition to Chickscope, there are other innovative scientific instrumentation projects on the Web (e.g., Stardial, an autonomous astronomical camera). Seventh-grade students learning about MRI acquisitions during the first Chickscope project

5. Overview of project design • An interactive web site • School pages • MRI control interface and database • Scratchings (observations and questions) • Roost (expert responses, etc.) • Designing for instruction and interaction • Focus on interests, needs, and skills of participants • Encourage exploration everyday • Provide support for guiding the scientific inquiry process

6. Participants in the first Chickscope project • The ten participating classrooms during the spring of 1996 ranged from kindergarten to high school, including an after-school science club and an out-of-state home school. • In all, there were 210 students, 9 teachers, and 15 undergraduate students in the classrooms. • Teachers selected based on their school or classroom access to the Internet, interest in the project, and plans for integrating it into their curriculum. • Teacher training prior to and during the project. • A Sample Scenario: Primary School Classroom

7. Primary school classroom • 24 students (10 girls, 14 boys; half kindergarten, half first grade) • Undergraduate student assisting the classroom teacher • 2 Macintosh IIsi with access to the Internet; 1 classroom incubator • Sample activities: Slice hard-boiled eggs to see how MRI would "slice" the egg. Identify the three available views (front, top, and side) on their acquired images. Write scratchings to share observations and ask questions.

8. Sample primary classroom activities

9. MRI acquisitions • All classrooms had remote access to the MRI system twice a week for 20 minutes each day, except the after-school science club which had access once a week for 2 hours. • Experts suggested good starting points to students everyday on the MRI control interface for acquiring images. • Annotations and observations by experts to record the chick embryo development process for the benefit of all classrooms.

10. Sample primary school image acquisition

11. “It is MRI time” [primary school classroom] • Six to eight primary students per group for image acquisitions. • “Look at quadrant F3. We are looking at the top [view]. What do you think we could do next? What do you think the white spots are?” [Teacher leading a discussion in the classroom] • “The bright spots above and below it [heart area] are signals from the blood in the ventricle. These spots are in the wrong places because they are moving too rapidly.” [Expert observations and annotations]

12. Annotations

13. Annotations (cont.)

14. Sample MRI explorations • Primary schoolchildren made comparable attempts to manipulate parameters for MRI explorations. • 722 actual acquisition requests from all participating classrooms. • Online guide, Getting the Most out of MRI, developed to provide students with advice on image acquisition strategies.

15. Scratchings • Scratchings about classroom activities, chick embryo development, and MR images. • Experts responded daily in the Roost and gave procedural guidance and cognitive guidance to students and teachers.

16. Sample primary school scratching

17. Sample expert response

18. Sample scratching practices • Each classroom had its own story in writing scratchings. • Observations and questions also sent via a mailing list. • Sample illustration of scratchings by selected classrooms from different grade levels.

19. Impact in classrooms(http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/facstaff/chip/Publications/chickscope/) • Situated evaluation approach to examine how Chickscope is used across different classroom contexts. • General questions to guide our understanding of the project • How useful is MR imaging (with and without remote access) for understanding chick embryo development? • What different modalities are available to students? • What are students learning from this experience? • What kinds of support structure is provided to teachers? • What are some of the unexpected events?

20. Situated evaluation of educational innovations • Situated evaluation is focused on the innovation-in-use across contexts (Bruce and Rubin, 1993). • Some of the purposes of situated evaluation include: • explain why the innovation was used the way it was • predict the results of using the innovation • identify similarities and differences across settings • improve the use of the innovation • improve the technology • identify variables for later evaluation

21. Situated evaluation process • The situated evaluation process has three key aspects: • understand the idealization of the innovation • examine the settings in which the innovation appears • analyze the realizations of the innovation • The guiding assumption in the process is that the innovation comes into being through use.

22. Lessons learned • Students working in groups were able to share computers and limited MRI time effectively to do serious science for an extended period. • Students more involved in Chickscope when it was integrated into the classroom curriculum plans. • In spite of the complexity of the technology, students and teachers across K-12 were able to benefit.

23. Diverse range of benefits • Exposure to a new way of using the Internet. • Increased understanding of the process of gathering scientific data. • Opportunity to interact with scientists from several disciplines. • Motivation for learning science and sustained interest in the scientific enterprise (i.e., at least 21 days). • Continuing sustained use of resulting project materials by classrooms that did not originally participate or have access to the remote instrumentation.

24. Implications for K-12 outreach from the first Chickscope project • Access to new technologies should be possible through standard computer hardware and software, such as Web browsers. • Online interactions with experts is essential for doing scientific investigations, especially for students in the lower grades who may need specific guidance as well as immediate feedback.

25. Why Illinois Chickscope? • The first Chickscope project was successful in immersing students and teachers in a small scientific community. Students and teachers learned much about how to collect and analyze data, how to ask questions, and how to communicate their findings with others (Bruce et al, 1997). • Planned to scale this project up to provide further opportunities to students and teachers at state and national levels. • Proposed a professional development program, now referred to as Illinois Chickscope (ILCS), for K-12 teachers during the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 1998 (Bruce and Thakkar, 1997; Potter, 1997). • ILCS was initially proposed as Champaign County Chickscope (CCC) before teachers from east-central Illinois got involved.

26. Illinois Chickscope(http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/facstaff/chip/Projects/Chickscope/ccc.html) • Illinois Chickscope is building a community of teachers; linking that community with scientists in a variety of disciplines; promoting an integrated understanding in science and mathematics; and teaching new ways of using the Internet. • ILCS participants are 32 K-12 teachers (21 elementary school teachers, 4 middle school teachers, and 7 high school teachers) from 15 schools in Champaign County and Charleston-Mattoon area. • ILCS started by introducing Chickscope to 57 preservice teachers in fall of 1997 so that these teachers can take their new pedagogical knowledge into their student teaching, including in the classrooms of the ILCS teachers.

27. ILCS objectives ILCS objectives include: • To demonstrate what is required to scale up a successful local project to a larger community. • To build collaborations between teachers, preservice teachers, and scientists in order to promote and facilitate scientific investigations using the Internet. • To test the information infrastructure by providing a diverse range of classrooms with access to the interactive MRI database. • To assess the effectiveness of Illinois Chickscope in motivating and preparing teachers for incorporating inquiry-based learning and teaching in science and mathematics classrooms.

28. ILCS inservice schedule ILCS teachers are expected to attend 11 inservice days. Each day includes interactive discussions, hands-on, and computer- based activities related to chick embryology and MR imaging. • During the spring semester, the teachers were learning about Chickscope through five inservice days. • During a week-long summer inservice, the teachers focussed on developing inquiry-based curriculum materials for use in their classrooms. • During the fall semester the teachers will return for one day of inservice, where they will introduce the ILCS project to new preservice teachers and other interested teachers.

29. Inquiry themes Inquiry themes during inservice focus on a broad question: How do we build a community for inquiry learning? • How do we get students to engage in inquiry? • How do we ensure that all students are involved in inquiry activities? • How do teachers link to other teachers and student teachers to facilitate inquiry learning and teaching? • What are the roles for scientists in supporting inquiry in the classroom? • How can teachers study their own inquiry practice and share what they learn with others?

30. ILCS evaluation procedures • ILCS evaluation questions will focus on the project objectives. For instance, what is required to scale up? Is collaboration among classroom teachers, preservice teachers, and scientists supported? How well does the information infrastructure work? Are teachers supported in inquiry-based teaching? • A formative evaluation is being conducted to guide the project development. • A summative evaluation during the summer and fall semesters will assess the overall impact of the project. • A variety of data is being collected for evaluation. Appropriate consent from teachers, preservice teachers, school, and university has been obtained before the start of the project.

31. ILCS and scientific instrumentation? • The goal for the Chickscope project was not only to provide students and teachers with access to the MRI instrument, but also to provide them with the supporting infrastructure that is usually reserved for scientists. • It is difficult to sustain the infrastructure of both the people and the underlying technology for a long duration. • ILCS teachers (and their students) will be using images from the MRI database to learn about embryonic development and growth; for instance, studying the change in the yolk occurring between 24 to 72 hours of development (see, for example, http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/explore/biological_imaging). • The database includes MR images acquired by students during the first Chickscope project.

32. Significance in education • Remote scientific instrumentation is part of the daily practice in research and industry (e.g., Mars Pathfinder mission). • Students at all levels may need to learn more about this new technology for doing science, and that it is likely to be less costly in the future (e.g., electronic mail). • The particular instruments and scientific domains may change, but understanding the principles underlying this mode of learning through projects like Chickscope should be generalizable to other domains, such as cell biology, involving new technologies, such as transmission electron microscope.

33. Current directions • I am working on a review of scientific instrumentation projects in many domains, such as radio astronomy, cell biology, and nanomaterials. • My interest is in evaluation of WWL technologies to understand their impact in research and education; for instance, • What effect WWL technologies have on student learning? • How WWL technologies support scientific collaboration and expand participation in science?

34. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge UIUC collaborators: • Illinois Chickscope (Dr. Bertram C. Bruce, Maureen P. Hogan, Alexis P. Benson, Dean J. Grosshandler, Jonathan A. Moore) • Remote scientific instrumentation (Clint S. Potter, Dr. Bridget O. Carragher, Dr. Peter R. McCullough, Dr. Ray L. Plante) Clint Potter initiated the first Chickscope project and continues to direct its present development. Chickscope is funded in part by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the UIUC Campus Research Board, and the Lumpkin Foundation and the Illinois Consolidated Telephone Company.