This past weekend I went to my first science fair ever! It was the perfect culmination of the two things I have devoted my professional career to: science and education. It was so incredibly rewarding to see students so proud of the work they had accomplished in the world of science.
While each generation has surpassed the previous one in terms of technology adoption, it comes down to the fact that I continue to be amazed by the fluency that young students have with technology. What was interesting: any time the students were left to their own devices (as in, they didn’t have to be next to their own posters), they were hovered around the iPad on a stand I had next to the ant display or huddled around the one laptop in the room. Why? It’s interactive. The students had created detailed posters (much like the ones that scientists create and display at conferences) and stood next to them explaining what their experiment was all about. Some students read directly from the posters while others relied on them very little only using them as props to describe their experiments. I wonder how their presentations to judges would have been different if they were presenting their results on a touchscreen or made a YouTube video describing their design, methods and results?
Speaking of being savvy at technology… you should pre-enroll (it’s free to pre-enroll!) for JJ’s Skillshare course entitled “Captology: Using Persuasive Technology to Change Behavior“
I have to disagree slightly in part with your second point. All science should be able to be replicated, so it is still science replicating previous experiments. As you know, we never “prove” anything in the scientific method…only disprove hypotheses. How would it be if all of us just accepted at first glance the first research article on a topic and never looked at it again? Think about “studies” that indicated that one race or gender were inferior than another at something (e.g., intelligence). However, I should indicate that I tend to agree with your sentiments that original ideas would be better and replication can be overdone.
Thanks for disagreeing Heath (seriously!) this is a conversation that needs to be had! I think it’s important that objectives are clear for students to understand that they are accomplishing an experiment (something novel) versus a replication. I completely agree that there is value in the replication, but I think it should be done as a precursor to the science fair, where original research should be presented. IMHO
I can get behind that clarification.