The Urban Community-School Collaborative
LAPTAG Distributed Science Experiments
Abstract
We propose to initiate a collaborative distributed science project in twenty Los Angeles high schools, Santa Monica College, and UCLA. This project will be a seed effort for a three-year proposal that will be submitted to the National Science Foundation. The distributed science project involves the construction of modern scientific instruments; the creation of a collaborative data collection network; and the use of research quality computers in the analysis and visualization of data by high school teachers and their students. The project entails the construction of seismographic stations for the twenty participating schools, plus the cooperation of four LAPTAG schools in the collection and analysis of air samples in the Los Angeles Basin in conjunction with personnel from the Air Quality Management District (AQMD). The high schools will obtain Internet connectivity and share data. Experimental results will be published on a World Wide Web home page. This summer a new NSF proposal will be drafted, a network of the four high schools participating in the air sampling project will be established, seismometers will be tested, and work will begin on the development of curricular software for physics. Our ongoing series of UNIX instruction for teachers and students will continue this summer. We envision that this collaboration will expand to include many other schools--ultimately changing the way high school science is taught throughout the area, state, and nation.
Laptag was founded three years ago at a NSF sponsored meeting encouraging the development of science oriented alliances between high schools and Universities. A dozen alliances were formed and LAPTAG (The Los Angeles Physics Teachers Alliance Group) is one of the only ones left! We strongly feel the reason for this is that we have identified a worthwhile project and have begun work on it. The project entails identical experiments running at many high schools with the data from them shared on the World Wide Web. The schools involved cut across a wide variety of social, economic, and geographical communities: Santa Monica, the San Fernando Valley, South Central Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, Woodland Hills, Simi Valley, Lakewood, Sylmar and Camarillo. The majority of the schools in LAPTAG have student populations which are predominately Hispanic, African American and Asian. These are the students that will be involved in our projects.
An outgrowth of the many meetings and discussions of educational problems held by LAPTAG has bee an increasing awareness of the need to bring more good physics instruction to the lower grades. LAPTAG formed at the time when the Internet and the World Wide Web was beginning to capture the imagination of everyone. To initiate LAPTAG members to this rapidly developing technology, all involved teachers were "required" to create a home page for their school. As a result, all LAPTAG schools became leaders in this movement. A new project is now being created at UCLA with the expressed purpose of helping elementary school teachers to develop lesson plans involving Physics and Astronomy. Input from all LAPTAG teachers will make this page happen and a UCLA instructor from the Department of Physics and Astronomy together with a LAPTAG teacher will author the page. This page will constantly request email feedback from the targeted elementary school teachers as the lesson plans and activities are published on the web.
We have designed a program in which the students, under their teacher's supervision will build and maintain a modern scientific instrument. They will learn about the instrument through lectures by experts from the university and scientific community, as well as by hands-on experience. The students will learn how measurements are obtained and what is being measured. They will also be linked to the World Wide Web where their experimental results will be broadcast. Hence, the students will become members of the greater scientific community. Our program will bring dedicated university professors and their graduate students into a direct working relationship with high school teachers and their students. The stated goals of the University of California Urban Community-School Collaborative are in concert with all that LAPTAG wishes to do.
The primary motivation for this project is to give secondary school students a chance to have a quality science education. This includes meaningful research and hands-on laboratory experiences. The experiments are designed to validate the contribution of the individual student by making the results accessible to the world. Importantly, LAPTAG serves not merely students who are already succeeding, but students from all backgrounds. For instance, at Palisades High School, over seventy percent of the students are bused in from low-income neighborhoods in South Central and East Los Angeles.
Computer networking has been an important feature of LAPTAG's effort from the start. Students are beginning to exchange ideas with students in other schools on a regular basis. The concept of a large experiment distributed over many schools, all with a common objective, has never been attempted in our area before. Facing and dealing with all of the problems, social and technological, has turned into a unique experience. Such large scale experiments are common to the world of real science but are new to our students. A measure of the success of this effort will come when students from several schools will strive to cooperate in the goals of the project rather than stressing the usual interscholastic competition.
In its final stages the experiment will be "real time". As data is collected the network of computers involved will make decisions about what to save and how to display it on the spot. Data will be instantly be available on the Web. We are writing a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a network of seismometers. In the interim Laptag is involved with an air quality measurement experiment and a distance astronomy proposal.
Accomplishments under the previous UCOP grant:
Network Day at UCLA in which high school teachers and administrators were introduced to the World Wide Web and surfed it for an afternoon
Half day UNIX workshop for LAPTAG teachers at UCLA. Each participant received a textbook on UNIX
Through our Home Page the LAPTAG schools learned of Network Day 96 in California. All LAPTAG schools were wired as a result.
Several LAPTAG teachers have already built seismometers. LAPTAG purchased a commercial one for calibration. Calculator-based laboratory equipment (CBL) were purchased to lend to LAPTAG members who are interested in experimenting with data gathering sensors in their classrooms.
All LAPTAG schools have a home page on the WWW. (http://highschool.physics.ucla.edu/laptag)
A LAPTAG newsletter is now available on-line to keep LAPTAG members informed about what we are doing and about upcoming events.
LAPTAG pays a high school student to help beginners set up their home page and maintain the body of home pages
LAPTAG wrote a proposal to the NSF. NSF requested that we re-submit the proposal for the next funding cycle.
LAPTAG Science Curriculum
An open meeting on curriculum was held to discuss some of the problems faced by students in making the transition from high school to college science courses and to determine how LAPTAG can help make this transition more successful. Our open meeting on curriculum was very enlightening. We discovered that there is tremendous interest in developing a physics curriculum or a set of standards that will prepare students properly for success in college-level science programs. College teachers felt frustrated that they must re-teach "basic principles" that should have been taught in high-school, while high-school teachers were not sure what "basic principles" should be taught. LAPTAG members expressed an interest on starting an on-line dialogue on the science curriculum with the goal of developing a recommended "model" curriculum. This model curriculum could eventually incorporate sample lessons, problem sets, and even exams that incorporate the combined experience and wisdom of an entire community of educators.
LAPTAG summer astronomy course on the World Wide Web.
A summer astronomy course was offered using our LAPTAG server. Four of the high school teachers designed the course. GTE gave us a grant to install ISDN lines at the homes of the participating students free of charge for the duration of the course. Course material was offered to the world over the WWW.
Support of students for Web authoring
Support of high school teachers for proposal writing
LAPTAG has allowed schools to leverage our efforts to help themselves.
LAPTAG has fostered a sense of community between everybody involved with it.
This grant will support the following activities for LAPTAG.
Support for LAPTAG members who will write a new draft of the proposal to the National Science Foundation; funds to purchase computers to link high schools to the Internet for the air sampling and seismometer projects. In recognition of their professionalism and expertise, we feel that the high school teachers involved in these efforts should be paid for their service.
Evaluate what we do! We will interview students and teachers involved with these pilot programs to see how the Web site development, distributed experiments and the summer astronomy course impacted their educational experience. This will be done with evaluation forms which could be administered on the Web through e-mail.
Continue LAPTAG summer astronomy course on the World Wide Web. This course has been very successful. Students taking it have discovered a variable star. We have had inquiries from students abroad who wish to take it. Web based courses can be held without borders.
Upgrade the LAPTAG WWW server
We have purchased a Sun sparkstation with some funds from the previous UCOP grant and with UCLA Physics department support. We wish to add memory to this machine to deal with the ever increasing number of visitors to the LAPTAG Websites.
Purchase materials to buy more seismometers to "hit the ground running" for the NSF grant. These instruments are locally available and inexpensive. They have been highly rated by the Southern California Earthquake center (who will partner with us on the NSF grant). The seismometers will be used at the schools to calibrate the instruments they have been building and used to startup a pilot earthquake study.
Extend our collaboration to elementary schools
We would like to investigate other possible ways of networking: for example, setting up tutorial networks for students, or designing physics educational programs that have student participation and are student-tested as they are being developed.
Community service: Create presentations for parents on what science is and who we are. We will have a full day (possibly more than one) meeting for the parents in the LAPTAG schools to explain what we are doing and how this alliance and the use of modern technology will greatly enhance their child's educational experience.
Continue the development of LAPTAG Web sites and introduction of Web technology (JAVA, PERL, VRML) to enhance what we already have. High school students will do this and we will pay them.
Host more tours of labs.
LAPTAG has set out to change dramatically the role of both the teacher and the student in the classroom. Success in this goal will depend largely on how well the students, as well as the teacher, can be freed from the limitations of the present classroom experience. In one final, summarizing statement, our main objective is that students come to regard the classroom not as a closed room but as a magic door to a world of knowledge that is accessible, constantly changing, and highly rewarding.
Method:
An award from the University of California Urban Community-School Collaborative will be used as seed money for the development of a strong proposal to the National Science Foundation, and for the initiation of some of the distributed science projects. Drafting a new proposal to NSF requires the time and attention of LAPTAG teachers during the summer. High school teachers are entitled to treatment as professionals. Although they already volunteer a great deal of their time for academic pursuits, it is not appropriate to ask them to devote time to proposal preparation when high school teachers must seek outside sources for summer salaries. An executive committee has been formed to manage the proposal process. The executive committee members: Fred Carrington, Grant High School; Walter Gekelman, UCLA; Barbara Gonzalez, UCLA; Bill Layton, Palisades High School; Nuria Rodriguez, Santa Monica College; and Joe Wise, Crossroads School; meet on a regular basis at UCLA. Short Curriculum Vitae for the members appear in the appendix.
A major component of all the distributed experiments proposed by LAPTAG is the rapid communication between members of the alliance. Cooperation in data collection and dissemination of information is imperative. Communication will be facilitated by the formation of a computer network. LAPTAG proposes the purchase of computers to initiate the computer network. In addition funds are required to support graduate students who will serve as network consultants for the high school teachers. Although a successful UNIX workshop was conducted last year, high school teachers will require additional support in the maintenance and operation of the network. Four of the LAPTAG schools plan to begin an air quality survey project this summer. The computer network is essential to effective collaboration between the schools.
LAPTAG has purchased a commercial seismometer manufactured in the Los Angeles area on our previous UCOP grant. This commercial seismometer is being lent to teachers that have already constructed a velocity-based seismometer for calibration purposes. LAPTAG teachers would also like to purchase materials for the construction of an accelerometer-based seismometer. This seismometer was featured in a recent issue of Scientific American.2. All of the seismometer models must be tested to determine optimal performance parameters at the school sites.
LAPTAG teachers have engaged in several serious discussions about the science curriculum. The AAAS and NRC science standards, although widely circulated, have yet to achieve consensus in the educational community. Rather than succumb to the void of inactivity, LAPTAG members would like to challenge their local community to develop a science curriculum. We propose to provide support for the high school teachers to develop high quality software and other curriculum materials.
This collaboration has the full support of the UCLA administration. The Dean of the College of Letters and Science, Prof. Roberto Peccei, has provided funds for parking, postage, and copying since the inception of LAPTAG. He also purchased a large disk for storage of the LAPTAG home page, http://coke.physics.ucla.edu/LAPTAG. The Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Theodore Mitchell, is assisting in the process of procuring funding for purchasing computers for network purposes.
The seed money that we are requesting will forge an innovative new style of collaboration between university professors, graduate students, professional scientists, high school teachers, and high school students. We will design and build instruments. We will establish a computer network. We will develop and implement a new science curriculum. We will revolutionize the way that science is taught in the high school.
Who will be affected?
Although the intended student will vary from school to school, the following general pattern has emerged from our pilot projects and is representative of all the LAPTAG schools:
1. The intensely involved student:
In every school there will be a few students (less than 10) who will be consumed by the project. They will become enthusiastic (almost obsessed) with the computer-network activities and the problems related to the seismic survey. Naturally, they gain the most from the experience.
2. The student who hangs around:
The intensely involved students always have friends who are interested but who don't share their enthusiasm. These "hangers" represent about twice the number of students as the intensely involved and they seem to appreciate that something interesting is going on but they don't feel they have the advanced skills to really take part.
3. The student who must do the teacher's assignments:
Both Math and Physics teachers are beginning to appreciate the value of data that is created by a real experiment. Assignments are finding their way it classes even though the students themselves did not participate in the actual data taking. The number of students involved here could easily be in excess of 200. As the word gets out to the rest of the school that "we" are involved in a real and important experiment, the problems generated related to this experiment serve as motivation to the rest of the students even through they are simply presented as assigned work
Budget
Summer Astronomy Course
student and teacher support
NSF Proposal Development
High school teacher salaries
Miscellaneous Expenses
Copying
Parking
Postage