August 2009 Archives

I’ve already blogged about climate change videos but wanted to post this film by Leo Murray separately because it really is in a class of its own. It’s a beautifully animated, thought-provoking film, and one which I think students will enjoy watching. You can find the HD version here. There is some good science in the film, with clear explanations of mechanisms that cause climate change and of how we might reach a “tipping point”. (Leo provides a copy of the script, including references here.) However, it is an unashamedly political film and you may want to discuss this with your students. It contains some scary ideas, so I wouldn’t recommend showing it to any classes below Year 9. As other people have commented, the fear of nuclear armageddon with which my generation grew up has been replaced with nightmares of end-of-the-world scenarios caused by climate change. This film may add to those nightmares, but that might not be a bad thing…

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

I imagine every school in the country has got at least one copy of An Inconvenient Truth lying around somewhere, but, in my opinion, there are better free films out there for teachers wanting some kind of video resource to help teach about climate change.

An Inconvenient Truth is just too long for use in class and, frankly, just too boring. Al Gore’s film is worthy but dull and really only suitable for use if you’ve not bothered to plan your lesson or if you want to send a particularly unruly class to sleep. I’m going to be harsh here: if you think that giving up class time to watch the whole of this film is a good idea, you are being lazy.

There are better ways to go about teaching about climate change and engaging your students in the debate. And yes, there is a debate to be had in the classroom - climate change is a rich area for students to learn about “how science works” and it is worthwhile looking at how scientists have come to the consensus they now seem to have reached. For example, what is the evidence for climate change, how did scientists collect it, and is it reliable? Is there any evidence to the contrary?

Fellow science teacher Greg Craven presents an interesting take on these questions in The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See and also does a great job of explaining “how science works”.

The film is smart and funny (in a cheesy way), and at 10 minutes long, is just right for starting a discussion based lesson. You could easily stop and start the film as it progresses and get your students to discuss the questions in the film before Greg answers them. If you want to challenge your students, ask them to find the flaws in Greg’s arguments, if there are any.

Greg has done an entire series of films, which are collected together on his youtube playlist How It All Ends. His film on the nature of science is another one that you might find interesting, but is perhaps not so suitable for use in class.

This classic film is a work of art that just happens to lend itself quite nicely to a bit of KS4 Physics.

“The film starts with a sleeping man at a picnic and every ten seconds, the camera moves ten times further away, measured in meters. When we get to the edge of the known universe, the journey reverses and we get ten times closer with each image. We enter the sleeping man’s hand and go deeper and deeper until we finally reach the level of a quark”.

Below is an embed from youtube, but you can also see the film, and learn more about its history, at its official site.

The film below was my own attempt at making a similar film, albeit on a budget that was many factors of ten smaller…

Pressing the “HQ” button on the youtube player will really improve the viewing quality of this film. For some reason, this button only appears after you’ve initially hit the play button.

No need for further description.

Skin colour matters to our students. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, it’s still something that plays a big role in how they define each other and how they define themselves. I’ve found that my students are fascinated by the brief discussion we have about skin colour when looking at melanin in the P2 unit of the 21st Century Science course. It’s refreshing for them to take a scientific look at the issue and it’s definitely one of the “relevant” bits of the course that actually makes an impact on them. This video provides an in-depth look at the science of skin colour. It’s probably too long to use in class, but definitely worth pointing out to students who might be interested.

This animated film from 1953 is charming. It’s an unashamedly didactic film, but done with wit and style. It contains a lot of material that students are required to learn at GCSE. In may ways, it’s better than some of the more recent films that cover this material and I feel it’s worth showing for the historical content alone (something that is often missing from modern textbook treatments).

If your students can get over giggling at the 1950s narration, I think they’ll find this a really interesting and useful film to watch. At about 15 minutes long, it’s a little long, but a question sheet would help ensure that it would be time well-spent. I’d recommend a film like this for use in an end of topic summary lesson.

It’s surprising how few teachers seem to have heard of the TED Talks. They are, simply, brilliant. More teachers should be “spreading the ideas” in them to their students. I’m going to try and post more videos here that are particularly suitable to the KS4 curriculum. Some of the best talks have no direct link to the curriculum but are nonetheless worth giving up 20 minutes of class time for. I treated one of my Year 10 classes to this talk by Dan Gilbert which shows how science can help us look at things differently, in this case “happiness”. My students liked it so much they were evidently talking about it outside class - I had another class in the same year group ask if I was going to show it to them.

The talk below, about the possibility of life on Mars, is the kind of thing that works really well with a “top set” science class. At 20 minutes, it may seem too long for classroom use, but I’ve found that the TED speakers can hold the attention of a Year 10 class. Moreover, my students seem to appreciate being treated to “grown-up” stuff like this - the fact that the talks are aimed at adults mean they lack the patronising qualities of much of the stuff that is produced specifically for students. Trust me, your students will thank you for introducing them to these talks.

My final tip for using these videos is to make use of the fact that TED allow you to download and save the files - thus avoiding any internet related problems when showing them in class.

The University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos is a genius idea - one that I wish I had come up with myself. I’d really like to recommend the site to teachers because short videos of those elements you can’t show in class would be incredibly useful. Unfortunately, due to the varying quality of the videos, the site fails to live up to its potential. The idea of inter-cutting footage of demonstrations with a scientist talking about the element just doesn’t work in a lot of the videos; I would have preferred the two aspects to be separated. I have some other problems with the videos and the website, but I’m reluctant to write about them here because I like the idea so much that I just feel mean ripping it apart. I know a couple of chemists who virtually froth at the mouth with anger when talking about this site - I totally understand their frustration with it.

If you’re a science teacher, you’ll probably have to teach separation techniques to at least one class at some point in the year. I’m sure you’ll have taught the arts of filtering, distillation and chromatography endless times, but here’s a separation technique I’ll bet you’ve never seen - and one that will make an excellent short demonstration in class when teaching this topic:

This wonderful little film was made by Dr Jim Caryl.

There has been lots written on the benefits of using video for teaching science, much of which seems to make the same couple of points

• animations and other forms of visualization can help get across difficult concepts such as the behaviour of particles or cells

• we can use videos to show experiments and demonstrations that we couldn’t otherwise do.

My own view is that, where possible, we should use videos to supplement rather than replace live demonstrations. However, most science teachers will have had the horrible experience of a demonstration that failed to work and a video back-up is a great way to deal with this. Videos are also a great way to take another look at a demonstration or experiment that you’ve already done without having to set it up again. But we can do even more with science videos - we can use them in the classroom to enthuse, inspire and stimulate debate and we can even help students to make their own videos as a new and exciting way of getting them to engage with the subjects they study.

The web is teeming with free science videos that can brighten up science lessons, making both teaching and learning better and easier. Sadly, there’s no one place you can go to (yet) for all your science teaching needs but I’ll try to post any good videos I come across here on this site. In the meantime, here’s a list of some free video websites and individual videos that you might find useful if you’re a science teacher:

BBC Learning Zone Broadband Class Clips - probably the best site of its sort (and not just because I made a bunch of stuff for it). Curriculum-linked videos and relatively decent search facility.

Moustrap Chain Reaction - Great demonstration model of a nuclear fission chain reaction, also available in slow motion.

The Geiger-Muller Groove - one of my favourite student-made videos, summarising the properties of nuclear radiation. Shows how creative students can be and how video can be used as an innovative teaching tool.

The Stem Cell Debate - Series of short films looking at different aspects of stem cell research. Great resource for students doing coursework on this subject.

Cell Division - why have a diagram when you can see the real thing?

Particle Physics - A history of Particle Physics from the discovery of the electron to the building of the large Hadron Collider. Presented by Prof. Brian Cox. Can be used at KS4 or for A-level Physics.

Richard Feynmann - free videos of the great man’s lectures, thanks to Bill Gates.