Data+Collected

Data collected (links, student examples, surveys etc.) go here:

[] [|Sonlig Project pre-survey] [|Sonlig Project Post Survey]



[|Transcription of student writings about use of the logic cycle] Conclusions We feel that with more specific questioning and a refinement of our surveys, we feel that we could get a more accurate measure as to how inquiry-based learning helps students learn things and question the world more independently.

**Who, What, When.**
This study was done during the month of February 2012 with a group of students from Mattawan High School who were in Ben Tomlinson's Tier 2 intervention Essentials of Physics class. This particular course was focused mainly on exercising the students' ability to think and reason logically. This is a small departure from the traditional essentials of physics at Mattawan High School as there was less focus on learning the facts of science and more focus on giving students the experiences on which to draw their hypotheses from. A large percent of the students in the class are those who require special services from the school in the form of IEP's, 504 Plans, and other academic accommodations. To some, this may seem as an interesting group to be doing research with, but to us it was a beautiful opportunity to start from the ground level of experiential learning. The group of students were excitingly insightful and provided key components to understanding how logical processes and curiosity played a role in the sonlig science curriculum. Along with that insightfulness, they were also able to identify many shortcomings in the curriculum as it was written and help mold it so that it made sense to themselves and others.

Project Data collection
Conclusions (Ben) Most students have a significant amount of devices that require recharging. I would suspect if you ask them to list the names of the devices, they probably would come up with a few less than indicated in the survey. This may have been a good follow up question provided we had enough time to complete the survey. I would also be curious to know what devices the students thought were recharged by solar energy. Knowing if any of the devices were charged by solar energy might be difficult to measure, since much of our grid is now tied in to solar arrays. In conversation with some of the students, they knew this fact, so that could have skewed some of the data. "Which are renewable?" The sonlig curriculum did not specifically focus on teaching the specific types of renewable and non-renewable resources, however, some of them came up in conversation. The only discussions that we had as a class with resource types came from a couple of students' questions. We talked about how energy could not be created, nor destroyed, therefore one of my students asked, "So doesn't that mean that there is no such thing as 'renewable'?" If you can only capture energy and store it as something else, there is no infinite replacement of that energy. He was right, we then began talking about what the line was between non-renewable and renewable, how do we define it? This was a question that students had many opinions on and was probably most contributing to some of the adjustments made from the pre to the post survey. Based on the data collected, the only renewable resources that the students seemed to have changed their understanding of was Biomass and Flowing Water. The non-renewable resources they seemed to have changed their understanding of was Natural Gas. However, Coal, Petroleum, and Uranium each received some additional votes the second time around. What attributed to this? I have not a clue. Importance of conserving energy Most students at one point or another, said that they believed that conserving energy was important. In fact, 12 out of the 15 students said it was important in either the pre or the post survey. Only 1 student gave it a medium rating before and after the curriculum. In asking a question in this way, we introduce an interesting classification of how students view a 4-rating and a 5-rating. Indeed there is a significance between maybe a 2 or below, a 3, and a 4 or above. If you classify all the ones and twos into a group and then all of the fours and fives into a group, we may be able to get a better picture. We could call this a "significant" change if a student rates from one of these classifications to another. In this case we had one student who rated 3 on the pre-survey, who rated 5 on the post-survey. We also had another student who went from a 5 to a 3, and one student who went from a 3 to a 2. These opinions would likely need some more questioning to go along with them to fully understand what they were thinking. Your effect on the climate This question may have shown us something different than that of which we thought we were going to get. Our initial goal was to try to measure how "worldly" the students would become and see how they felt they were a part of the grander scheme of things. However, I think what may have happened is we opened their eyes to a world that was much larger than they had thought. Most of these students have never left the united states, and have only witnessed societies much like their own. Coming to the realization that the world is a much bigger place may have been a more interesting experience to research. From Skyping with Pagan in Vancouver, to Theo in Rome, and having our district Superintendent show up for the occasion could be unsettling and almost minimalizing to some students esteem of their value in their world. Pushing their walls beyond the known limits may have made them feel like they have less of an impact on the climate if indeed the world was as big as they now think.  Managing personal energy usage Knowing that the current curriculum does not change opinions like this is important in understanding where we need to get students. The only major variance from the pre-survey to the post-survey was by one student who went from a 2 to a 4 out of 5. Only one student rated themselves at a 5 out of 5. This could be a bias question, as there was no standard as to how you manage your own energy usage. For instance, maybe we could have said a 5 means that you turn off all the lights in your house before going to bed or leaving for the day, and that you change the thermostat at different times of the year and the day so that energy isn't wasted. We could have also classified a 5 as someone who implements energy saving lights and appliances with energy star ratings. This may have framed things for us a bit more, and allowed students to give a more accurate scale reading. For all we know, one student's 2 rating could be another's 5, but we had no way to classify. Country manages energy use I think it is a bit funny to see that students have such a negative view of their country, and that they rank themselves higher than that of their country. This could be because of the news and all of the energy policy that is tossed around in the media, but the fact of the matter is that everyone ranked their country below average on both the pre and the post survey. Again, like in number 6, we did not provide a rubric or standardized scale other than an opinion from 1 to 5. Follow up questions would need to be asked in order to get a better understanding of why they rated the way they did. I would suspect that it has much to do with our conversations about other "non-renewable" resources being used. They may see "non-renewable" and think that this is a poor use of time and energy creation. Thinking about energy throughout the day More students changed their opinion on how much they think of energy throughout the day negatively than those that did in the positive manner. !Thinking about how students see these opinion questions makes me wonder if the scale from the pre-survey, being based solely on opinion, is different in the minds of the students than when they took the survey at the end. The seem to be more harsh on themselves in the post-survey than they were on the pre-survey. Does them loosing their naive views on the world mean that they become more critical of themselves as they try to fit who they are into an changed world view?! Expectations Student 2 seemed to have learned a lot about the intricate parts of the solar panel and charger, as they reference the efficiency rating on the panel. We had only discussed this once, and for a student in this group to remember something of that detail is a major accomplishment. That means that at the moment we were talking about that fact, the student was curious and very engaged. Student 10 talks about how they have learned to respect the fact that they have electricity. This is the same student that decreased their rating from 4 to 2 on how much they think about energy throughout the day and yet rated themselves 4 on both the pre and post survey when asked how well they feel they managed their energy usage. However, this is also the same student that went from a 5 to a 4 rating on how important they think it is to conserve energy. This is a strict contradiction to their explanation. Overall, on question 9 it seems as if students did not put much thought into their descriptions. Most of the thoughts that they placed in this commentary were taken from the earlier part of the questioning in the survey. I would be interested to see if they would have answered differently had the questions been presented at the beginning of the survey. Students went from a 59% on this short quiz to a 68% after gone through the curriculum. The largest gains seen were in the area of solar energy, which is what we suspected was going to happen. Questions that dealt with other forms of energy and other facts did not see as drastic increases. The last few questions that dealt with fossil fuels saw an increase in accuracy almost near 100% of the students. On the pre-survey quiz, there wasn't anyone who had a perfect score, and 10 students who received less than a 60%. After the curriculum, 2 students got 100% on the post-survey quiz, and 7 failed it with below a 60%. This seems to be a shift in the right direction.
 * Question 1 & 2**
 * Question 3**
 * Question 4**
 * Question 5**
 * Question 6**
 * Question 7**
 * Question 8**
 * Question 9**
 * Questions 10-16**

Group Projects
[|Student Projects PDF]

//Title:// Saving Energy to cut costs //Comments:// This group had very clear goals, whether they accomplished them or not, and were able to articulate their findings in their research. By looking at their presentation, you can tell that they used the logic cycle very well to refine and redesign their goals. #LC. Moving from being curious about the quantity of energy used, to the cost of that energy, and even to a cost per room in one of our buildings. They never really gave any answers to "how" they were going to save on energy.

Title: [|Solar Powered Bluetooth] Comments: This group had a REALLY hard time gettings started. They don't focus much on a particular model of constructing ideas, it's more of a brute force method of questioning and answering. #LC. Even when they find facts, those facts don't always end up in the correct conceptual structure. Open inquiry is hard for these three. #I-O. This team spent almost a week trying to find out if there was already a solar powered bluetooth device. After I stepped in and showed them how to use google patents, they decided that they should find another topic because the solar bluetooth device already existed. It was from my conversation with these three that we came up with a working model for classes under the M-Ubuntu project to use the bluetooth devices. The idea that I tasked them with was to describe what a class would look like if they gave the teacher a bluetooth microphone to use for the class period. They came up with a plan that would let the instructor record audio onto the device and distribute it to the other student's phones. This plan sounded good when we talked about it, but the group could not quite articulate the intermediate steps of their goals. #LT. More one-on-one instruction with them would have guided them to a better structure of their arguments. #I-G

Title: [|Waterproofing switches] Comments: The logic cycle has never been more prevalent than with this group. Each member brings a different view to the table. The best work that they do is in conversation. As I talk with the three of them, you can see the ideas cycle through at an alarming rate. At one point, I tracked 3 full cycles in less than a minute. They went from "How do we waterproof the box?" to "How do we waterproof the individual components?" to "What materials do we need to accomplish this?". The only thing that was tough to define was how they should be recording these cycles of logic, so that they could learn from the way they think. I would like to see them record the process in a reflective sort of manner that is structured enough that they can actually see their own thought patterns. #M. Instead of having an opportunity like this, we had them reflect at the end of the project, where each of the students from this group were able to talk about how the process went for them .

Title: [|Solar Extra Charge] Comments: This was a group that had so many great ideas but were bogged down by the missing connections between all of them. I truly saw these young ladies creating something amazing, but we never got focused in to one specific thing. They began by wanting to create what they called a "solar extra charge", which is basically a system that would plug in to the sonlig solar charger and create a higher capacitance device. The group justified the need for something like this in areas that didn't get as much sunlight as South Africa does, like Michigan! After one short discussion with them about all of the possibilities of this, the group and I came up with the idea of taking old flip-cams and gutting internal component of them and changing them into chargers themselves! The question then became, "How would we reconstruct the circuitry to charge the batteries instead of discharge them to the camera function? And how would it charge something eles?" This took on a whole new life that neither the group, nor I, had the knowledge or ability to research enough to learn how to accomplish these things. The idea lives on, but it may have to wait for more capable and willing participants. We simply did not have the time.

Title: Other than Sunlight? Comments: This group really did not understand how much energy was output from the sun. Even knowing that only 13-14% of the sunlight's energy was converted into electrical energy, they were not grasping that almost every other source of energy was so minuscule that it was immeasurable by a solar panel. Their self created lab experiments were fairly flawed, but it brought up an amazing concept that they would never have found otherwise. The inverse square law is a law that played an important role in how luminous the light source was with respect to their placement of the solar panel to create a voltage. What they found, was that their reading from the same source was different at two different attempts to measure the voltage. I had to explain to them that the missing variable was the distance they were from the light source. This was the perfect opportunity to introduce a concept that they had never heard of before. I urged them to put this in as a slide on their presentation, but it never made it, however they did mention it during the presentation as to not disappoint me.

Title: Project Pamphlet Comments: This group was the most functionally complex of them all. It was comprised of one student who does the absolute bare minimum he needs to do to pass. Another who was pretty much the same way, but had a much more complex thought process and a better ability to think logically and connect concepts. The last member of the group was very work oriented and persistant on getting results from what their task was, along with being very open and forward about what she wanted. They had their project half way completed in the first day, then took two weeks to make absolutely no progress. In one evening, the third student went home and used her Macbook to create the pamphlet that you would see on the student projects pdf from the sonlig website. She accomplished more in one evening, than the three of them did in three weeks. The pamphlet definitely needs some polishing, and some direction, but most of the informational pieces are there. Overall, these students did not work much through the logic cycle, as they stuck with their first idea and went forward simply to get it done and get the grade.

Google Groups questions
As part of our implementation of the sonlig science curriculum, we felt that it was important for students to have a connection between themselves, their content, and area professionals. As the sonlig team was really the primary group of professionals the students had access too, as well as Theo from Learning Academy Worldwide, we hope to expand upon this collaboration and include other cohorts of students who have gone through the curriculum before. The incentive to use the medium of google groups came when the class had tasks to perform on the system. Things like answering questions posed by the professionals, and response items posted by the teacher of the class, and responses to each other's comments.

Topic: [|Comic Book reviews] One of the abstract assignments that we tasked these students with was to read through our curriculum and respond by giving productive criticism and any advice for future iterations. We found that most students took this task very seriously, as they cited things like: wit, attention grabbing moments, and times that felt confusing. Some students were even ready to make the illustrations for us, which I was about ready to let them, except for the fact that it would have taken a lot of time that we didn't have. By informally asking the class, there were a handful of students that said they would like to read another episode of the comic if there was one provided.

Topic: [|Household Energy] As an introduction to Energy and Power, our students had to record as many devices and their power output in what we called an energy diary. This exercise was to have students familiarize themselves with how much energy they actually use in a given day. After recording all of the devices on a poster in our classroom, we created a question on google groups that asked students to record what all they believe could be used "at the same time" in their homes. This list was then totaled and the students were expected to tell a story about what it looked like in their house to use all of those devices at the same time. The total Watts would be used to determine "maximum load" on the system and have a discussion about "peak usage".

Topic: [|Learning about Photovoltaic Systems] Students were given the opportunity to read through an article that is significantly above their reading level. The key to making this work was for them to search the internet and find articles on which they could build and bridge their understandings from. Each student was to post a different link, but unfortunately their internet searching skills were not very diverse, so many of the links ended up being the same. The other part of the results from the activity was that students did not care to read the article that they had posted. So out of the overall goals of finding resources to understand, reading them, applying that to their understanding, and continuing on... all they got to was finding the resources. We may need something more structured to walk them through the process, like a logic cycle model designed for them to work through the research and modify their conceptual understanding on a continuous basis.

Topic: [|What does "conservation of energy" mean to you?] We asked the students the following questions, "How do you conserve energy?" and "Do you think about conserving energy often?". Some of the most reported topics, include: electricity, fuel economy, and fossile fuels. Most students talked about how they try to turn off all the lights in their house when they are not using them

Video Analysis
Title: energy awareness - elevator speech.MP4

Notes: Create awareness about things we can do 260$ a day identified variables set goal for 50% less energy. Was this researched? No, but you have to start somewhere.

Teacher Notes: Amber's group started with a question, "How much money does the school spend on energy?". #I-O. As they researched this question, it led them to having conversations with the school's principal who ultimately called up the district's financial guru to get the most accurate information for them. Amber, particularly is a student that will actively seek out answers to her questions regardless of the boundaries that she may be governed by. #B. After they found out that the school spends around $250,000 on energy, they decided to set a goal of reducing this cost by 50%. This brought them through another rotation of the Logic Cycle. #I-O. Their new question was now, "How can we save 50% on our energy?", though this group did not make it to any sort of experiment due to the amount of time that they had, they did go around and collect data on how much energy the lights in the building use. The came up with $260 in only the main classrooms in the high school. This came from a researched cost per watt-hour and counting the number of lights in the high school rooms. Their presentation was of quality work and included an entire description of how to calculate the amount of money it takes to run certain wattage devices. This was a benefit to the whole class and also to future participants of the sonlig project. #Q
 * LC

Title: google group in Action.MP4

Teacher Notes:
 * 1) A. Students reply to posts in an online environment. The goal of this activity is to find as many links about the article referencing solar photovoltaics. As they are working, you can hear students saying, "I don't know what photo-whatever is?" and as soon as someone says this they are supposed to begin their research. #I-O. This is when they started to search the internet via google, however some did not take this seriously and just posted the link without even reading what they had found. This is typical for the average student in this class. My goal was to provide incentives in finding the answers to questions that arise in the reading, however the only incentive that they saw as being valuable, was the "post" itself and not the knowledge that comes behind it. If we had to do it again, I would have them summarize each post so that others could read the summary. This would give them the feeling that they will be judged by an outside source other than the teacher, it will be peers who are reading what they write and not the person they are used to satisfying. Sometimes I am too easy on them, but they may feel more of a need to satisfy their peers. #A. #B. #P. Designed as a research practice activity, I feel that my students did not fully understand why they were going through this exercise. Also, if you watch the very end of the video, 5 out of 7 students remained fully engaged seem engaged.

Title: "Jason explains to ripmaster water proof"

Teacher Notes: As Jason talks to the principal, he struggles to find words to use to describe the idea that he is looking to implement. He says, "I don't know how to…" and then pauses because he is struggling to find a word to use. I found that activities like this provide open inquiry #I-O opportunities and a chance to exercise a student's vocabulary. Paired with computers with access to information, students can search and find answers to their questions, but google can only do so much. This is why it is important to have a teacher present to help the student sort out vocabulary, because if you can't find a word to describe what you are thinking, then how are you supposed to search in a tool like google? This is where the role of discussion plays a huge part, both with student groups and with teachers.

ANALYSIS
Ben discussing [|Theo's video with SA students] My view of research until now, has been very narrow minded. I have always been good at "researching" aka finding answers to things, but had no idea that such emphasis on different types of research even existed. After looking and thinking about a few of these researching techniques (and reading Susan's post), I went back to a video that Theo took of the group of students in South Africa seeing our solar charger for the first time. Our team had talked about how amazing it was to see students with a device and idea that we had created, but at the time, I did not realize how much research could come from a motion picture, or even a still photograph. I will explain my reasoning for this post by giving a brief description of the film. First, Theo hands a student the box, the students explores the visible parts of the box, rotating it around in their hands. They pass it to another student, who then tests some of his theories on how it works by pressing a few of the switches and rotating it some more to see what happens. After a few tries, the second student makes the correct combination of mechanical adjustments and shines the bright LED lights directly into his eyes. After partially surprising himself, he then "undoes" the same combination of switches that had made the phenomena occur in the first place. The video continues, but this is where I would like to break down a few things. First of all, watching this video helped me become a better "observer" of my students and the way they learn. Small, but identifiable, learning moments can be lost so easily if it weren't for this video. The student that flashed himself with the LED's quickly learned how to turn the device ON and OFF, while experimenting on his own. This is a philosophy that I think is a big focus of this global program, "curiosity". He learned in 10 seconds, what some education systems wants us to do in 10 days. If these students would not have had these devices in their hands, they would have needed someone to "tell" them how it worked. Sample questions *So, how do you turn it on again? Why do you need two switches? Where does the light come out? How do you plug it in?* All the answers to these questions should not be taught, they should be explored and researched by the students themselves. What should be taught, is the process in which students do such inquiry based activities, how to frame their questions, how to research them, and how to propose their solutions or answers to an audience.

COLLECTIONS
This is what we will be framing our observations and student involvement data on...

@Pete and Pagan, if you can post any research from inquiry based learning, or just brush yourselves up on it, that would be helpful to get some research based references to put in our paper.

Here is the process with descriptions



**Theory**: A prediction or explanation of an occurrence based on one’s own conceptual network. **New Question**: A questioning of one’s own understanding of a theory on a given subject **Research**: Examining information that would support an hypothesis on a certain subject **Hypothesis**: An educated guess based on research but not yet tested **Experiment**: A controlled procedure designed to test a hypothesis **Observation**: the skill of using the senses to gather information **Data/Analysis**: Resulting information drawn from observing experiments and other related information **Facts**: Verifiable observations that are tested and agreed upon by others **Concept**: A collection of proven facts related to the same subject **Conceptual Network**: A collection of proven concepts related to the same subject

Pilot with students in Mattawan: [|Scenario 1: (waterproofing)] A set of three of my students took on the challenge of waterproofing the solar charger. They began by examining the device and creating a very basic theory of coating the device with a substance. In their very brief research period, one student asked the question, “how would you plug anything in, then?”. The other students followed with, “oh yeah...”. This was a very short trip around the logic cycle, in fact they skipped the whole experiment via observing the fact that they needed a way to access the box. This led them to agree that they must have an access point to the USB and the Solar charger port. As they fit this into their conceptual network, they started researching ways to waterproof individual parts of the box that were exposed, instead of attempting to cover the whole thing. This was a learning experience that I chose to stop and talk about with them. In a quick conversation with the three gentlemen, I told them how proud I was that they learned so quickly and rebounded with another idea in a short amount of time. I expressed that if they could keep that pattern up, they could potentially have a solution that could go into production. I remember sputtering ,”And how cool would that be!?” after I saw their eyes light up.

Scenario 2:

Types of Data Collection: Conversation analysis **What is it?**

The study of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in order to discover how we produce an orderly social world. CA provides an account of the machinery in operation within talk by a fine-grained analysis of talk. It does not refer to context or motive unless they are explicitly deployed in the talk itself. Conversation analysis has developed a highly sophisticated form of transcription notation (q.v.) to support its fine-grained analysis.

Comparative analysis **What is it?**

Analysis where data from different settings or groups at the same point in time or from the same settings or groups over a period of time are analysed to identify similarities and differences. A good way to undertake these comparisons is using tables or matrices. (See [|Matrix Analysis/Logical Analysis] )

Narrative analysis **What is it?**

Narrative analysis is a form of discourse analysis that seeks to study the textual devices at work in the constructions of process or sequence within a text. In a narrative research the respondent gives a detailed account of themselves and is encouraged to tell their story rather than answer a predetermined list of questions. This method is more successful when people are discussing a life changing event. Analysis of the narrative tells the researcher about the person's understanding of the meaning ofevents in their lives.    <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;"> <span style="color: #333366; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 1.62em; text-align: left;">Objective hermeneutics <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; text-align: left;">**What is it?** A method of interpreting textual data, whereby different interpretations (//Lesarten//) are developed in a team of researchers who mutually criticise their //Lesarten//. The analysis of the textual data in a strict sequential manner allows for the exclusion and modification of interpretations. Thus the different //Lesarten// are regarded as preliminary hypotheses that in principle can be falsified by further empirical material. The method provides an explicit, rule-governed procedure, but it is time-consuming and thus only feasible with small amounts of text. The central step to analysis is the sequential fine analysis which includes interpretations of interactions on nine levels.
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Explain the meaning of the context immediately preceding an interaction.
 * 2) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Paraphrase the meaning of an interaction according to the verbatim text of the accompanying talk.
 * 3) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Spell out the interacting persons’ intentions.
 * 4) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Identify the objective motives of the interaction and of its objective consequences.
 * 5) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Make clear the function of the interaction for the distribution of interactional roles.
 * 6) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Characterize the linguistic features of the interaction.
 * 7) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Explore the interpreted interaction for constant communicative figures.
 * 8) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Spell out the general relations.
 * 9) <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">Independently test the general hypotheses which were formulated at the preceding level on the basis of interaction sequences from further cases.