How I Can Understand Science

Science is often difficult to understand because it requires thinking. 

If a person is not a thinker he or she won't understand a lot of what they read in Science. 

This misunderstanding is often interpreted by the non-thinking reader as confusion in what Science is trying to put across.

It then becomes a cycle that feeds itself and the reader begins to feel that Science is rubbish and contradicts itself. 

The reader then forms the belief that people just look around for the scientific facts that back up their position and in part, the reader is right. That's because some of the people who do this are non-thinkers. 

So the answer is: "read, digest (that means think) repeat. 
No one learns everything on the first pass." - Dr. K

A Hierarchy of Learning

My work environment has been a bit noisy lately. The school is having the roof renovated. The building’s air-conditioning units have been disconnected during the time of this refurbishment.

It being summer, there’s a need to open windows and to bring in industrial air-conditioning units to maintain a workable atmosphere within the building. At the beginning of this week, contractors wheeled two of these units into the space close to my office area, plugged them into the mains and switched them on.

Other units were similarly introduced at points throughout the building. The Science teachers who worked in the areas, including myself, viewed this activity with amusement. It was evident that the contractors knew nothing about thermodynamics.

It sucks

The heat exchange part of an air-conditioning unit operates in a way similar to a refrigerator. In normal use, the unit sucks warm air from the room through a cooling unit and filter. Fresh air from outside the building is drawn in through windows and other openings to replace the heated air expelled during the process.

The resulting chilled air is blown back into the room while the removed heat is air-pumped to the exterior, usually through a duct in a window.

In the case of the units that we observed, there was no such venting. Instead, the hot air from the action of the cooling unit was being pumped back into the room. It was as if a fridge had been turned on and its door had been left wide open. In such a circumstance, the fridge does nothing more than make a noise and heat the room.

The overall effect of the air-conditioning units being used in this way was not unlike that of using large blow heaters. In no time, people started to complain about the rising temperature.

A little learning

Science is a wonderful thing. Its principles are being utilised in just about every piece of technology that contributes to our lives today. Of course, an understanding of scientific principles isn’t always necessary to use or install the equipment that puts these principles into effect.

There are at least three levels of understanding that can allow one to realise the significance of a scientific idea, such as the thermodynamic principles that were put to use in the construction of the air-conditioning units:

1. It works provided certain conditions are met according to a recipe for installation. For the air-conditioning unit to be effective, it has to be functioning and have its required vents clear, one of which has to be ducted to the exterior.
   
   
2. It works as it follows the thermodynamic idea that heat can be pumped by using a small amount of energy that is eventually released as heat (which is why the fridge with its door open does nothing more than heat up the room).
   
   
3. It works, and its function can be explained by thermodynamic principles:
   
   a) energy can neither be created nor destroyed,
   
   b) heat energy is released when a gas is compressed so that it condenses to a liquid and this same heat is taken in when the liquid is allowed to evaporate – this is what happens in the heat exchange unit of a fridge,
   
   c) some energy will always be wasted when heat energy is pumped using mechanical means – entropy is always increased as a consequence.
   

Understanding at level 3 can be achieved by senior secondary school Physics students.

Level 2 can be understood by able students of Junior Science.

Working recipes that define the factors that are important in level 1 need only be followed when it comes to the correct and appropriate installation of a piece of technology in general circumstances.

The example that I unpack here shows how related learning can apply at various levels to the curriculum. What is significant is that the most elementary levels of learning are still important to the correct use of technologies that involve sophisticated principles in their design and construction.

Sorted

As it happens, the contractors were notified by Science teachers about the correct use of the air-conditioning units which were immediately switched off. Appropriate locations near windows were then found. Necessary ducts to the outside of the building were fitted correctly to the machines within 24 hours.


Through all this, the cicadas continued their sibilant summer chorus.

Science, Context and Humour

When was the last time you laughed at a joke? Where did you hear it? Was it on TV? Or was it on a video clip or podcast?

Susan Greenfield says, “Everything that happens to you will be seen in terms of previous experiences.“

Your brain “can see one thing in terms of something else and that’s your unique perspective”, even when it comes to appreciating a joke.

Here’s what she says:





If you are a scientist or if you are just interested in Science, you may also be familiar with the erroneous opinion that Science is humourless. A joke is a cognitive jolt based on your previous experiences. This jolt can happen even if these experiences are to do with Science.

So let yourself go! Abrogate your sense of self and have “a cognitive time” with some Science humour from Brian Malow.

Touch and Taste - Now Sight

We are all familiar with the discomfort of a hair in the mouth. This extreme sensitivity of the surface of the tongue is in addition to its usual function to do with taste.

At the Université de Montréal School of Optometry, research into this sensitivity is being used to assist the blind to see.

Daniel Chebat has been researching neuropsychology at the Université de Montréal School of Optometry. He works with special technology that uses the digital output from a camera to provide electrical impulses to a small area on the surface of the tongue.

We see with our brain

Normally, information from the eye passes to the middle of the brain. The information is then passed through the brain to the visual cortex where it is interpreted as sight.

Apparently, impulses sensed by the tongue and registered by the part of the brain that interprets touch can be reinterpreted by the visual cortex. With training, a person can learn to use their visual cortex to interpret these impulses as sight. The equipment used in Chebat’s research permits people who are blind to see.

An amazing organ

It seems the tongue is an amazing organ. It offers a rare portal for information to the brain. Future improvements to existing technology may offer a unique way for the blind to see with their tongue.

Daniel Sieberg reports on the revolutionary technology - BrainPort:

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Pick the Strawberries! GPS Website Gold Rush

If you enjoy Science, and don’t mind reading online, you’ll never be bored visiting LiveScience.com. There is always something there that’s new, interesting, innovative and worth a read.

You might say,

I know lots of Science sites. What’s special about this one?

Well, it’s set up like a blog. Each article is a post. You can comment on the posts and discuss their content with other readers and sometimes with the author.

You could say,

Science sites I know always have the same stuff.
I don’t want to read the same stuff all the time.

LiveScience posts several times a day, so you’re never short of new things to read. You might then say,

What! Several posts per day! How could I possibly read all those?

You don’t have to. But I recommend you pop the address in your RSS reader rather than bookmark the site.

Just take your pick

The feeds are short summaries, so you can scroll quickly through six or a dozen of them on your RSS reader to see what takes your fancy.

That’s what I do. Like picking strawberries – I pick ripe and juicy ones. There’s no way I’d sit and gorge them all. But I don’t have to. There will be another pick of fresh juicies to harvest tomorrow.

You’ll maybe say,

What if I want to see what’s gone before?

You can do that too. The site has a great archive and a fine search mechanism that’s easy to use. It also has categories that you can browse, for these tabs are displayed across the header of the site:


They give access to the latest articles in the category of your choice.

What do I best like about LiveScience?

LiveScience is hosted by Imaginova, a leading digital and commerce company.The articles are well written, well sourced and invariably well provided with links to the source sites to give you more background information. It’s like a Science newscast, giving you the latest on the most recent that’s hit the news in the world of Science, with the opportunity to read more.

And it’s not all reading either. There are diagrams, displays and illustrations galore, often with informative videos or podcasts, appropriate and relevant to the topic.

So if you’d like to taste today’s selection of LiveScience fare, check out this strawberry. You might toss the address into your RSS reader for future munching.

Go on! Spoil yourself.

Pick the strawberries!

A Green Pen Society contribution

You Learn Something New Every Day

portrait 1580 artist unknown - public domain

This month could well be historical in a truly revolutionary way and in more ways than one. Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer whose life spanned the 15^th and 16^th centuries. His brave claim went against the belief of the time that the earth was the centre of the universe. He put the sun there instead.

In his revolutionary book, On The revolutions Of The Celestial Spheres, Copernicus explained the observed motions of celestial objects in a theory that earned the name Copernican Revolution.

After almost four hundred years, he could be immortalised in the name that’s suggested for the heaviest known element, number 112 in the Periodic Table of the Elements. The new element, first created in 1996 by the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, is 277 times heavier than the lightest element, hydrogen.

Following recent confirmation of its existence, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has recommended that it be named Copernicium, and gave it the symbol Cp.

If there is no significant objection, within six months Copernicium will become the official name for a special element – a fitting accomplishment in the International Year of Astronomy.

Professor Martyn Poliakoff, Associated Professor Peter Licence
Research Fellow Meghan Gray, Nottingham University

A Toy, a Puzzle, a Model, or a Cat

Though it has enjoyed some use as a model in teaching Science, its potential for use in other disciplines lies near the core of cognition, recognition, learning, discovery, deduction and development, not the least of which is development of the imagination.

Yet in education, the ‘black box’ experiment is often dismissed as a curiosity - an artefact of philosophy, relegated sooner or later to the too hard pile, while we get on with 'proper' learning.

The ‘black box’ experiment appeals to all ages. It can be used as a toy, a puzzle, a model or a teaching resource. Here's how it works:

• One or more objects are sealed in a box easily held in the hand,
  
  
• the box contents cannot be seen and are unknown to the experimenter who deduces their structures by observation,
  
  
• the box remains sealed at all times.

A collaboration tool

With the appropriate guidance, the 'black box' experiment can be used in the study of how to work as a team. Here the collective knowledge, experience and skill of each participant have the opportunity to be put to collaborative use.

One approach to this is to allow each participant to handle the box for a fixed period of time, while making observations and being observed by others in the group. Strategies for collating and considering what’s been found can be presented at appropriate points in the study, or developed according to individual or team initiative.

At no point during or after any activity is there a need to open the box. The learning goal is nothing to do with what’s inside the box. The whole point of the pursuit is unambiguously about what is unknown. It’s about how notion and ideas formed during observations can be gathered and used in developing strategies to explain what’s observed.

Devising experiments to confirm or refute belief in first formed ideas is a development of that approach. They embody recognition of the need for further experiments to find out more.

Classical black box stuff

A classical example of how the 'black box' idea was put to use is the series of developments that led to the present day vision of the structure of atoms. While atoms and their structure are now often taken for granted, they were considered ‘black boxes’ at the beginning of last (20^th) century. In those days, no one knew what they contained.

In 1904, J J Thompson proposed the ‘plum pudding’ model for atoms. Thompson is accredited with the discovery of the negatively charged electron. His observations of the behaviour of matter under special circumstances led him to think that the electron was a component of atoms.

Thompson’s first formed notion of atoms was of negatively charged plums (electrons) floating around in balls of positively charged pudding. All of his deduction could be described as based on his observations made during a series of many ‘black box’ experiments.

Less than a decade later, Ernest Rutherford conducted a famous ‘black box’ experiment when he interpreted observations which suggested that atoms were not like plum puddings at all. His famous gold leaf experiment suggested strongly that, far from being solid like pudding, atoms have a huge amount of empty space within them, with tiny but heavy positive centres.

Electrons occupy only a small part of that empty space.

Each time new things are learnt about the structure of atoms, they are the result of ‘black box’ type experiments. In 2009 we have different ideas of atoms than Rutherford’s models, but those ideas are almost certain to be quite different from the vision Science will have of atoms in the year 2109.

Life in a black box

An amazing series of ‘black box’ experiments was performed in the middle of last century by Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin. They used, among other observations, the intricate, complex data from
X-ray crystallography studies.

These studies involved observing and interpreting thousands of photographs taken when X-rays are scattered by strands of dna.

The elucidation of the structure of dna was an outstanding demonstration of analytical Chemistry, all of which required ‘black box’ observing, experimenting and deduction.

Cynefin and other pursuits

A model most recently developed to describe problems, situations and systems was invented and refined by David Snowden. It has very recently been given an airing on several blogs I follow, notably Tom Haskins’ and Harold Jarche’s.

Wikipedia describes Cynefin as drawing on “research into complex adaptive systems theory, cognitive science, Anthropology and narrative patterns, as well as evolutionary psychology. It 'explores the relationship between man, experience and context’ and proposes new approaches to communication, decision-making, policy-making and knowledge management in complex social environments.”

Given that no one really knows precisely how human communities behave and function, much of this understanding was brought together by sophisticated ‘black box’ observation and study. It began as an approach to knowledge management and has developed beyond that, in various stages, to a study of international relationships.

Car maintenance

Have you ever taken your car to the service depot when it developed a mechanical fault? Though such faults are often apparent, their remedies are not always easily identified. Sometimes even the trained mechanic can be puzzled as to what’s wrong.

A few perfunctory diagnostics might be applied. Failing any useful information from these, a closer look at the symptoms may be made. By a process of elimination, it may be possible to identify, if not the problem, at least where the problem could lie. This approach is really following a series of ‘black box’ experiments.

Rediscovery and understanding

In recent posts on Sue Waters’ and Larry Ferlazzo’s blogs the function and behaviour of PostRank in rating blog posts have been discussed intricately. I was only too happy to provide Sue with some information and analysis data I’d gathered from my own posts. The ideas unfolding in these discussions are results of a series of ‘black box’ experiments.

I’ve no doubt that someone somewhere will know the answers to many of the questions Sue and I have asked on how these applications work. In the absence of explicit information on function, bloggers frequently utilise the ‘black box’ approach to solve problems collaboratively and to find out how things work. Incidentally, it was while thinking about Sue’s admirable pursuit of cogent answers to practical questions that the idea for this post came to mind.

And the cat

In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger rationalised one of the most celebrated paradoxes in quantum theory in a description using the closed box idea specifically applied to observation. Of course, it is not possible to tell what is really happening inside Schrödinger’s closed box.

The strange nature of quantum mechanics is that opening the box doesn’t throw any light on the matter. Paradoxical? I’ll say! What it does is to seal the fate of the poor cat.

The Starlight Reserve

Have you ever thought of what it would be like to look up at the night sky and see, among thousands of brilliant stars, Herschel’s Jewel Box, or the beautiful Hercules star cluster?

This is the International Year of Astronomy. There is fascinating activity in an area of land in New Zealand, known as MacKenzie Country. Very little smoke or other pollutants rise to the sky from its less than 2000 inhabitants, so cloudless nights are abundantly rich in starlight.

Jet streams - high-altitude, high-speed wind currents - usually flow from the west at high speeds in the upper atmosphere and can spoil the view of the night sky. But there's no significant turbulence in the air above MacKenzie Country, for there is no jet stream near enough.

For these reasons, MacKenzie Country is tipped to host the first world heritage site in the sky.

Graeme Murray is the director of Earth and Sky Ltd, which has exclusive tourist rights at the Mt John Observatory, a main centre for astronomy research in New Zealand.

Murray’s dream is to establish a World Heritage Starlight Reserve in the MacKenzie Country by obtaining recognition and protection for sky in the region from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

UNESCO support for the project may well be celebrated this year.
New Zealand could then become the centre for The Startlight Reserve in this, the International Year of Astronomy.

Learning Resources

In a previous post I responded to a request from Rupa Rajagopalan. She asked me to outline how I built a digital resource, and left a comment on that post requesting more on the same theme. In this post I feature a few other resources, with some detail on their usefulness.

Spice in variety:

I’m not advocating the exclusive use of digital resources for any purpose. My own feeling about digital resources is that one’s enough at a time. You may already have met my Death by Chocolate principle:

A poor chef may include chocolate as an ingredient in every dish, but it is a shortsighted one who excludes its use altogether. If the only recipe available that includes it is mediocre, then chocolate should be off the menu. Good chefs choose menus wisely.

A helping of fun goes a long way with the use of any resource. Applying some thought to how it may be introduced to the learner can spice up even a relatively mundane resource.

Learning objectives:

Resources are chosen to best fit a learning objective, whether it's to introduce a new topic, provide example problems, or for a revision purpose. Ideally a single digital resource should embrace one and only one learning objective.

I believe that within strict limits, there may be some exceptions to this such as when a resource may be used to provide enrichment around a topic. The Virtual Electric Lab is a resource of this type. It was built as an introduction to electrical circuits and their simple components.

Digital no substitute:

I must explain, however, that none of the resources that can be found in the Virtual Electric Lab is any substitute for practical experience in connecting circuits. Where possible, the learner should be introduced to the practical aspects of simple electrical circuitry. Hands-on experience in handling such equipment is essential. This also permits the learner to become more familiar with simple electrical components.

Young distance learners may not have access to such equipment, however, and this can also involve an additional matter of cost.

Electrical currents:

Being modularised, the individual labs can be used for separate objectives depending on the development and ability of the learner. The current lab can be introduced as a separate module, using the stations approach to introducing electrical components as resistors.

Electrical meters:

The meter lab similarly permits the presentation of voltmeters and ammeters and how they are used in circuits. Both of the above resources adhere to their respective objectives.

Bells and whistles:

If a broader sweep of the topic is in order, as would fit an able learner, then the complete lab with bells and whistles can be accessed. Again and depending on the ability of the learner and context of its application, a find-the-thimble approach can be incorporated into the lesson.

For instance, a learner may be given a few questions to find answers to on the way, such as; who gave the Christmas lectures on the candle? Or how many turns per minute does the wind turbine make?

In the main, the resources are interactive in that the learner is prompted to the next step within the resource and in some instances given simple questions that provide direct feedback to the learner.

Playing with an incinerator:

Sometimes it can be downright dangerous to expect a learner to find some things out by practical hands-on experience. An instance of this is learning about the relative efficiencies of complete and incomplete combustion in an incinerator.

The Virtual Incinerator mimics the conditions of a real incinerator. It permits the learner to play about with it and make such observations as necessary to learn about complete combustion, with a certain level of safety.

The suck-it-and-see-approach:

Drawing scientific graphs is a skill that science learners need to acquire sooner or later. While a suck-it-and-see approach is used in this resource, some learner direction may be required before the resource is accessed by the learner. Provided the learner hasn’t used this resource previously, it can be used as an excellent revision tool for drawing graphs.

Punnett Squares:

Simple genetics can be fun. This resource introduces drawing Punnett squares, showing the outcomes of genetic crosses. It is a module that would form part of a course in genetics. Several methods are used to provide helpful feedback to the learner on example genetic crosses.

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Need More Memory? Graphene's The Answer

Memory chips have been increasing in size since they were first made. Each new development meant that larger chips could be manufactured.

But there’s a limit to the useful size of a standard silicon chip. In recent years, big chips just haven’t been able to keep up with demands as far as speed and a few other properties are concerned.

Electrical resistance:

The reason for these limitations is because of a significant resistance to the flow of electrical current in a large chip, putting a limit on the speed at which signals can be transmitted within a chip. But this physical restriction may well be lifted through the use of thin layers of carbon known as graphene.

Astonishing properties:

Towards the end of last century, nanotubes and buckyballs - tiny structures made out of arrays of carbon atoms - were well known to have astonishing properties of strength, flexibility and ability to conduct electrical current. The single layers of carbon atoms that make graphene have similar properties to these nanostructures.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have discovered a way to make best use of the amazing properties of this form of carbon. The recent breakthrough, using a chemical process, permits sheets of graphene to be made, far larger than ever before.

Graphene sheets so produced have a lower resistance, by several orders of magnitude, than similar sheets produced by other methods.

Memory chips of the future could well have huge storage capacity. It’s all to do with the property of carbon in thin layers to conduct an electrical current extremely easily. This permits individual parts of a chip to be made far more compact.

On-off power ratio:

Power consumption is a key feature of this future technology. The on-off power ratio of a graphene chip is huge – a million to one. Graphene has other useful advantages of being able to operate at extremes of temperature.

In the near future, mobile phones, cameras and laptops could have unbelievable memory capacity using the graphene chip.

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Science, technology, the silicon chip & social need

Isaac Asimov defined science as a search for understanding of nature.

The great dogma of philosophy that was laid down by Plato and Socrates reigned supreme till the middle of the 17^th century when Isaac Newton brought a new rigour to methods of scientific investigation. Since then, the search for understanding of nature, or science as we know it, has accelerated to well beyond the warp levels.

Benjamin Franklin described homo-sapiens as tool-making animals and carved the way for descriptions of technology that included the word ‘tool’. Technologists have since been described as tool-makers, a term that dates the start of such technological practices at about 70,000 BC when, it is believed, the Neanderthals had a degree of specialisation in tool-making.

It was not until the late 19^th century that Thomas Alva Edison, hailed as the pioneer of modern technological research, made a quantum leap and fused the methods of technology with those of science.

Giants of human activity

So what makes the distinction between these giants of human activity, technology and science? It is similar to the difference between knowing how to make a candle and understanding how it works.

The demarcation becomes clearer when the technologist is asked to make separate candles from samples of tallow wax and fluorinated wax. Both are easy to make, but it takes an understanding of scientific principles to explain why one works and the other doesn’t.

The candle had been in use for thousands of years, but it only became the subject of scientific investigation when Michael Faraday saw it.

The birth of modern technology

Faraday’s experiments with electricity became a base for Edison’s research. In his unique effort to find a suitable substance for the filament of his electric light bulb, Edison introduced technology to scientific investigation. It was from this new and special relationship that modern technology was born.

Throughout the entire history of technology, the drive for most technological development has been a social need. For Alexander Graham Bell, both the scientific background and the social resources, such as transmission wires for electrical signals, had been in existence for several decades before he invented his telephone. Yet at a time when Bell had great enthusiasm for the development of his idea, the social need and general social acceptance of his invention were almost nonexistent.

Years before that, many experimenters had toyed with the commercialisation of similar devices. It took determination and fortitude for Bell to persist in his attempts to float his technology as a commercially practical venture. The fact that he succeeded was more a mark of his entrepreneurial genius, than his kill as an inventor.

Technology can create need

Dependency on the benefits of a particular technology can create a need. This happened when electric traction was adopted in the subway systems, like the London Underground, which coincided with the widespread development of electricity generation in the late 19^th century. Until then, successful commercial generation depended on the development of other uses for electricity.

Edison’s electric light alone could not provide a continuous demand for electrical energy, since its use was confined mainly to the hours of darkness. The subway system sparked off a demand for round-the-clock electricity generation that became one of the most remarkable technological successes of the 20^th century.

In less than 50 years, the cranky looking thermionic valve, a development of Edison's light bulb, that launched the age of radio and television, was supplanted by the modest transistor replicated in microscopic array on wafers of clinically grown silicon. This is now commonly known as the silicon chip.

Learning Objects & Other Useful Outdated Things

I read about the perceived demise of the learning object, or at least the preparation for its passing and I wonder.

I use learning objects, now called learning resources, in my teaching. They can be integrated into parts of modules and used for spot learning when necessary. They’re interactive and kids like them for this reason.

I’d never consider making up a module that contained more than one or two learning resources. I apply my Death by Chocolate metaphor

A poor chef may include chocolate as an ingredient in every dish, but it is a shortsighted one who excludes its use altogether. If the only recipe available that includes it is mediocre, then chocolate should be off the menu. Good chefs choose menus wisely.

Learning resources are easy to use. They can be sent by email, in a link or embedded as a link in an html or word file. They are splendidly useful when students need a patch somewhere in their learning, or need a shot of repetitive practice in a skill routine.

Here’s one suitable for year 10 and above on drawing graphs. Here’s another on body defenses, another on acid-base titration curves, one on genetic crosses and another on practice in circuit calculations. You can tell that I’m a Science teacher.

Fun for kids:

Learning resources can be fun for kids as well as assisting with their learning. Complex learning resources built around a theme can take advantage of virtual environments as in this year 10 Digital Electric Lab, or the guided Journey in the Solar System, or the mini-projects on the Southern Night Sky. My feeling is that there’s life in the old RLO yet.

The Lone Ranger:

Before I built my own web-based set of learning resources (they used to call people like me Lone Rangers), I'd look for sites on the Internet that I could email in a link to students. I still do this from time to time but these are rarely interactive in the way learning resources should be and there can be other problems.

Reputable sites on obscure topics are often hard to come by. The special site I spent so long looking for might suddenly disappear, leaving the frustrated student the option of getting back to me with the same plea for help. Or worse, the content of the site may change and the whole focus of it may alter, putting me in a professionally compromising situation. That doesn’t make me feel safe, let alone how I feel about the safety of the kids.

How safe is kid safe?

There are still some useful ways of using the Internet safely, however, and I’ll explain one here. I have found it specially good for helping kids with projects.


I use Onekey. I find it more flexible than Gogoogle for Onekey permits the use of Boolean search symbols – not necessarily for the kids to use, but for me. Let’s say there’s a project where kids need to gather data from various sources (and not always the Internet). If the objective does not involve having to do an Internet search (a task fraught with problems for poorly supervised distance learners) the student can be sent a safe list of sites.

Safer, reliable links:

Here’s a way that ensures safety and reduces the likelihood of sites being unavailable when the student goes to use them. I never list the individual sites on the digital worksheet. I tweak the search criteria so that I have a suitable number of hits on the final search: 10 to 20 is a good range to work from, depending on the project and student ability. Then I use the resulting search address for a link.

Here’s the criteria I used for listing suitable sites on a project involving making huge soap bubbles:

+huge +soap +bubble -gum -vending -wax -lube -bath -punk -nitro +mixture +recipe +glycerine

I enter the criteria in the search line and do the search. Then I copy the resulting search address into the Huge Bubbles link in a word or html file with the rest of the worksheet instructions. When the student accesses the link, it may not necessarily list all the same sites that I saw. There may be a few new ones and others may have dropped off the list, but it is almost certain that they will all be relevant to the topic.

The more time spent tweaking the original search criteria the greater the success.

Advantages of this method are:

• it delivers a safe list of Internet sites
• the sites invariably all work
• they are always relevant to the topic
• I can roughly control the range of sites listed.

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