Day 1
- About the class: This is "Act Like a Scientist Class". It's all about asking questions and figuring out how to go about answering them, by any means necessary. The first thing you need, though, to be able to notice and ask interesting questions, is to measure.
- The measurement game
- You are going to be given a wooden dowel, which has been cut to a particular length. This dowel is your measuring device, with which you will measure a number of objects in the room.
- First name your measuring unit. (As in "Stick", so you can say "the whiteboard is 21 sticks wide") Choose a better aname than "stick".
- Measure the height of each person in your group in your unit
- You will need to construct auxiliary measuring devices to complete this task accurately. So you can subdivide for small objects, and so you can scale up for large ones
- Make a partitioned unit derived from your unit
- Make a composed unit from your unit
- Measure: your team whiteboard (length and width), the room itself (length, width, and height), and a paperclip (length and width).
- Make a table with all of your measurements, expressed in original units, in partitioned units, and in composed units. Put it into a google doc spreadsheet which I will share with you
- So what are some of the lessons learned from the measurement game?
- different ways to do it?
- can we convert between different ways?
- which way is "best"?
- how can we tell what is best? What does it mean for a measurement to be "better"?
- Informational survey, on google forms.
Day 2
- Course mechanics: Groups.
- Notetaker -- only responsible for recording questions/problems we are trying to solve, the methods employed to solve them, and any results we get. Usually on computer
- Manager -- makes sure everyone else is on task. Helps notetaker figure out what to write down
- Whiteboarder -- sketches, quick data-recording, figuring stuff out
- Intern -- research, data entry, second computer (sometimes)
The jobs are really important to getting things done. We'll practice a lot, and you'll get feedback on how well you are doing as a contributor to your group. Groups will change every 2 or 3 weeks, and the jobs will cycle within the group daily so you will all have a chance at each job in each group you are in. Your manager will get hit if you or the group is off task a lot. I'll use Class Dojo, similar to how Scott used it, to keep track of this.
- Discussion: Within your groups there are 5 to 6 different units defined, which we've put in the google doc table.
- What do you notice about this table?
- What do you wonder? (What questions can we answer about it?)
- Prepare instructions for your unit -- explain how to make your composed unit and your partitioned unit from the original. Pass these to another group.
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