AP Stats at the STEM Expo

I moved up the timing of my statistical inference/experiment design test this spring (usually its the "capstone" project kids do as their final) so that we could participate in our district's STEM Expo tonight. (I think its really just the traditional science fair repackaged, but I'll go with it. LOL)

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, I enlisted the help of a doctoral student from Washington University to give some tips/insight on making and presenting their posters, and we spent the last 5 days of class working on our survey instruments, analyzing the results, and presenting them on a poster.

This is the first time these projects/experiments have ever had an audience beyond myself, so I'm really excited to see my students out in the "real world" talking about statistical inference. I literally had a student email me over the weekend and tell me she would change whatever I asked and do whatever I demanded so her poster could be perfect. You've gotta love that.

The NYU research poster guide and continued support from +Ryan Watkins ended up being a huge help, and after an assist from the CAD teacher downstairs, I'm real excited with how these posters turned out.

I had one student who could not make the Expo, so I had him present last week to our friends at another high school in our district in AP Chem.

There's always something special about seeing kids describe and defend their work that is better than most of the feedback that a teacher could ever give traditionally. They often find errors in their writing, their process, and bits that are confusing or could be more clearly explained as they try to sort out what their work SAYS with what it is actually supposed to be communicating.

We found a few errors in the graphical representations or calculations as we were sharing with parents at the Expo, but I was so thrilled that they found them and corrected the mistakes that I couldn't be anything but proud of them. If you'll notice the poster in the video, he has a lot less going on... he actually only did about half of the work, and I don't know if he noticed it until he got to the end of describing his methods after a couple minutes and didn't really have much to SAY about it - nothing to interpret. There's a verbal pause where (I hope) he realizes he's done, but shouldn't be.

"Hangout" with an Expert

My district is holding a STEM Expo next week, and I thought this was an excellent opportunity for my AP Stats students to present the statistical significance projects they design and conduct at the end of the semester each year.

The only problem with my vision was that I don't have any experience on what presenting a poster at a science conference looks like. From what I've heard from a couple of my friends that are/were STEM graduate students, its not really the same as showing some PowerPoint slides and discussing.

Enter my friend of a friend, Washington University doctoral student, Ryan Watkins, who has presented a poster a few different conferences. She did me a super solid and met with my class at 7:30 this morning.

Ryan's bio:

Ryan is a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, finishing her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science. She graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2010 with Bachelor's Degrees in both Physics and Space Science. She have completed three NASA internships — two at Kennedy Space Center as an undergrad and one at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She was appointed as a NASA Student Ambassador in 2008 and is actively involved in STEM outreach at all age levels. She has published papers about the effects of rocket exhaust on lunar soil and is currently studying volcanic regions on the Moon using orbital images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. She plans to continue researching the Moon and become involved in planning future planetary missions after she graduates. She dreams of becoming an astronaut one day, and hopefully be the first woman to walk on the Moon.

Before the Hangout, I sent Ryan's bio to my students through Google Classroom and had them all respond with 2 questions to get help them prepare and make the most of our time. I think the best question from a learning/work perspective came didn't actually get asked.

"What are the qualities a good STEM poster should have (kind of like an informal rubric I could refer back to)?"

It's not entirely common that I will have students (especially earlier than the day before the due date) ask for a rubric to guide their work. And that he even thought to ask someone else (sort of outside the classroom setting) is especially impressive to me. (She ended up sending this great resource from NYU with tips, tools, and guidelines for research posters right after our Hangout)

HANGOUT VS. FACETIME VS. SKYPE
I chose to do this via Google Hangout today for a couple of reasons:

• I wanted to let another AP teacher in the district whose kids are also presenting at the Expo in on the broadcast
• I wanted to archive it in case my chronically absent students were absent, or the kids just wanted to watch it again.

I could have accomplished the 1st goal via a regular Hangout, but to record it, I would have to have been running screencasting software on top of my window (which would be the only way of recording a FaceTime or Skype), I was worried about lag on my network as it was, so asking my computer to also due more seemed like pressing my luck.

The best feature of doing the video chat via Google Hangout was that I could do it as "Hangouts On Air," which automatically broadcasts the chat live to your YouTube channel and then archives as a regular YouTube upload after the fact (which is how it is embedded earlier in this post).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Video chatting or live streaming can be taxing on a network, so if at all possible, you should try to schedule your chat away from peak times (for us, its lunch time), or at the least, inform your technology department and perhaps they can clear some extra bandwidth for you ahead of time.

We spent several minutes before we actually got started getting "in" the Hangout and then getting my settings right before we even "started" the interview, so if you're crunched for time, its good to know that you can start the Hangout before you actually start broadcasting it.

Hangouts On Air and Hangouts actually live in different areas of your Google world. Hangouts you setup via Google+ or the Hangouts app, but Hangouts On Air need to be setup through your YouTube account. Here's some info on getting started with Hangouts On Air.

(How to) Start A Classroom PBIS Lottery

"Menos cinco," I heard my Spanish teacher call out time and time again after I was talking or otherwise off task. My teacher had started a behavior point system because of a handful of us sophomores with impulse control issues. I don't know if there was a set list of behaviors that warranted "menos cinco," or if it was just anytime we were disruptive, but if the tactic was aimed at me in particular, it was quite unsuccessful. 

I heard recently on a +Freakonomics  podcast about a recent trend by economists to attempt to modify behavior using lotteries that participants "paid" into with appropriate behaviors. (http://freakonomics.com/2010/11/18/freakonomics-radio-could-a-lottery-be-the-answer-to-americas-poor-savings-rate/)

A bank offered "Save to Win" savings account and attempted to get owners to put more money in their accounts by giving them a ticket each time they made a desposit. Whatever money they deposited was still theirs to keep, (as opposed to traditional lotteries that aim to raise revenue from profits - education in my home state of Missouri), and anyone that entered the lottery by saving into their account had a chance to win. In the study, there was a statistically significant increase in deposits during the lottery period.

On the heels of one of the least motivated group of students I've had in class, I wondered, "Could you get the same effect in a classroom? Could I provide incentives to get more students to do the things they should be doing anyway (completing homework, helping peers, bringing materials, staying on-task, asking questions, etc.) that would cost me nothing?

INCENTIVES

What do your students most often ask for or want? Here's a quick list for my band of brothers:

Hall passes

Homework passes (assignment excused)

Free time

Candy

Supplies (paper/pencil/calculator)

OPERATIONS

There are a few things you'll have to decide:

How will students get tickets?

What will you use for tickets? (Ready-made raffle tickets? Handmade and photocopied? Digital entires via a Google form?)

Who will keep track of tickets?

How long will you go between pulling winners? 

Could an individual student give his "winnings" to another student?

Can students operate "office pool" style and split the winnings (assuming the incentive is something that could quantifiably be broken)

Is there anything a student could do to lose tickets? (If you're doing this true PBIS style, this would have to be "no, there are no punitive consequences")

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Some kids are going to find ANY reason to sit and do nothing (and drag their peers along with them) but for the kids that need DAILY feedback or praise, and the kids who are less motivated by "get a good grade on this week's quiz," a PBIS lotto to give out something that may not even cost you a cent is worth a try.

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT THAN A CLASS STORE, WHERE KIDS BUY THINGS YOURE GIVING AWAY AS WINNINGS WITH TEACHER-BUCKS THAT THEY'VE EARNED?

It will probably look rather similar to a currency-based system, but with at least one distinction. When  I was trying to earn Mole Dollars in my Chemistry class, once I got the notion that what I really wanted was going to be out of my reach of my potential income, I stopped caring about earning mole dollars. I would either give them to friends or just shove them into my chem folder without thinking about them any more until the next stray mole-earning event.

Granted, even in a lottery system, those that earn more tickets have a higher chance of winning, but anyone with a ticket still has a shot. If you follow the NBA draft lottery, you know the Cleveland Cavaliers could tell you that even the improbable happens sometimes. (They were recently awarded the first pick in this year's draft while holding the least probably of winning the lottery of all the teams participating.)

The same trait of traditional lotteries that makes otherwise rational people spend money on a chance instead of saving it to buy tangible goods will give some of your student who might otherwise check out that day a chance to win. 

Who doesn't like feeling like a winner? :)