Strategies and Tools for Teaching

1. Strategies and Tools for Teaching Ilan Chabay The New Curiosity Shop® Elements 2002 Workshop

2. Inquiry As Motivation and Process • Provoke students’ or pose your own questions • Reflect process of doing science • Challenge your own and students’ current understanding • Awaken inherent curiosity as an intrinsic motivator • Use surprise -- “cognitive dissonances”

3. Cognitive Dissonance: An Example • The Cart and The Pendulum™ in Mirador, Santiago, Chile

4. Cognitive Dissonance: An Example • The Cart and The Pendulum™ in Mirador, Santiago, Chile

5. Introducing New Ideas • Focus on few most important concepts • Organize ideas into a coherent framework • Identify fundamental ideas at core of concept • Restate ideas in multiple ways • Elaborate connections to students’ current level of understanding and knowledge • Emphasize a deeper understanding of principles, process, and content

6. Pre-existent Mental Models • Build upon existing mental models of students -- so-called “naïve concepts” • Elicit descriptions of existing models • Focus on idea represented by models, rather than on choice of vocabulary • Point out common and distinct threads among models • Identify significant problems in current models • Alter or replace models explicitly by reference to observations, experiments, and theory.

7. Complexity and Conceptual Layers • Articulate all the major concepts encompassed by a complex idea • Organize ideas in priority orders • Create an strong model for the central idea • Elaborate on secondary ideas in separate models • Encourage exploration of major ideas and their implications

8. Conceptual Layers in a Set of Models • Giant Magnetic Disk Drive™

9. Conceptual Layers in a Set of Models • Details of GMDD

10. Conceptual Layers in a Set of Models • Messing Up Data on the Giant Magnetic Disk Drive™

11. Conceptual Layers in a Set of Models • Hidden Directions™ and Magnetic Medium™

12. Models, Representations, Simulations • Consider models and simulations as a type of metaphors in science • Use real phenomena when possible • Real phenomena and objects have a profound impact • Models using real phenomena have an inherent richness and are more open-ended • Connect models and simulations to real events • Discuss limitations of model -- what does it do and what doesn’t it do well • Beware of facile manipulation of a model without significant understanding of its representation

13. Models Are At the Core of Science • Developing models • Define the purpose of the model • Set criteria for design • Choose medium • Test to identify problems • Operational • Conceptual • Using models • Develop a visual vocabulary for thinking • Observe emergence of patterns • Make and test predictions to check understanding