Science and the 21st Century Educational Standards
The video links for this work can be found under the menu “Classified Videos (by Subject)”. Students should pursue the links to videos within sections found under this menu, and then proceed to respond to the questions found here.
As the educational community moves into the 21st Century and into the realm of the “Common Core Standards”, the domain of science will certainly be included in the future where currently the focus is Language Arts and Mathematics. In the future, science students (learners of all ages!) will be asked to describe and discuss the evidence that justifies the position in thought that an individual is taking as a result of an experience or presentation of a situation. This critical analysis of information and ideas that we are use to build our knowledge is of course the most important component of becoming educated.
The process of critically analyzing the sources of information we use to construct knowledge is of course the most important process of becoming educated. Videos, particularly PBS science and nature videos, can communicate important ideas and relate virtual experiences of the natural world and how it operates, and can be used by anyone to build their knowledge base about Science and Nature. But video can be “doctored” in ways that we all have experienced with “Special Effects” in movies and photographic images where video and images have been changed and the message “doctored” with the use of modern technology. And…there is also an important aspect to a video in terms of “What has been left out?” of the program that would have changed the overall message if it had been included? I would like to construct a course of study where I work with people on this process of validating the information and perspective of a video’s message in similar ways that “peer review” validates the basic message in scientific research. Please email me if you would like to participate in this educational process: sweeneyrandy@gmail.com
The Next Generation Science Standards are going to be interesting, and worth a careful examination by all who wish to help our youth get a good handle on the role science and natural experiences play in their future. Recently, the role of computers and the Internet in facilitating the development of knowledge has challenged way that traditional education is structured for students. This revolution in the ways we learn has been recognized recently in the public media, and is certainly a radical transformation from traditional education. The need for a student to memorize information is being rapidly reduced as the means to obtain information on almost any subject has become readily available on the Internet. But the need to develop skills with the educational process of validating the information found on the Internet is becoming extremely important.
Anyone trying to sort out their experience with the Natural World, and think through what “is out there on the Internet”, must have a base of experience with nature in order to fully take advantage of these new goals for growth of our youth. Actually stomping through the mud of wetlands gathering experiences there may be “more real” than the virtual experiences one gathers through the fabulous videos showing life in the wetlands that are made available on PBS (and elsewhere), but the differences are closing in on one another. The Children & Nature Network, for example, tries to get youth to venture outside and into natural settings, and these goals will very well serve the new awareness of natural. But there is so much of nature that is beyond the capability of kids to personally experience there must be other means to gather information that can be used to construct meaningful relationships about Nature and how the science investigating it work. I believe that this blog provides an excellent environment for endeavor.
There are some basic informational issues and underlying concepts that everyone should get out of the videos as they watch them. This information and set of concepts is fundamental and will be used to determine if a participant has mastered the most basic level of learning that can be imparted from a medium such as an online video.