Using Scratch to Teach 21st Century Scien5fic Thinking Skills Y. Debbie Liu Dec. 9, 2009 21st Century Scien/fic Thinking Role of Digital Technology Scratch Lessons for Mechanis/c Thinking Systems Thinking: Thinking with an awareness of complex causal system Mechanis/c Thinking: Thinking with a mechanical or engineering undertone Interdisciplinary Thinking: Thinking flexibly across different disciplines Quan/ta/ve Thinking: Thinking with mathema5cs Distributed Thinking: Thinking beyond the individual mind to involve other persons or technology Three major reasons behind why digital technology should be used to teach 21st century scien5fic thinking skills: 1)  Situated Learning: Learning is situated in the same digitally rich culture in which the thinking skills are developed and used by the scien5fic community 2)  Crea/ve Thinking: Digital technologies lend well to support crea5ve thinking 3)  Digital Fluency: Digital fluency is cri5cal in our media-­‐
rich par5cipatory culture 1)  Help students understand how modern scien5sts think mechanis5cally 2)  Have prac5ce thinking mechanis5cally by simula5ng how synthe5c biologists think in the field 3)  Help students recognize mechanis5c thinking even when it is not in the context of science, as in their own work via Scratch. !"#$%"&'($)'*"+(,-$./'001$
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How are scientists thinking
mechanistically in the 21st century?
Photo courtesy: http://syntheticbiology.org/
Understanding Goals
! The rapid advancement of technology and the accumulation of information are changing
the patterns of scientific thinking and research in the 21st century.
! Designing and creating novel organisms by combining various biological components
from different cells is one way scientists think mechanistically in the 21st century.
! Designing and creating Scratch projects using graphical programming blocks is one way
students can display mechanistic thinking.
! Identifying characteristics of successful scientist and their thinking patterns, help us
become better (science) students by applying these skills to our own learning.
Background Information
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Beyond the Scientific Method
The scientific method has been commonly taught in science classrooms and textbooks as the
only correct way to conduct scientific investigations. This leaves students with the impression
Day 1
that all of science proceeds in much the same way. Unfortunately, this view is not entirely
Lesson Plan:
accurate. Perhaps some scientists might conduct their work in this manner, but rarely do they use
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In fact, scientists throughout history conduct their research in a variety of ways. The exact
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21st Century Scientific Thinking Skills
With the explosion of advancements in scientific knowledge and technology at the turn of the
lore
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Lesson 1 Familiarize students with Scratch programming language. At this point, Scratch presented simply as medium for crea5ve expression. Lesson 2 Expose students to crea5ve field of synthe5c biology to illustrate how scien5sts think mechanis5cally via case study of Jay Keasling, one of the pioneers of synthe5c biology. Analyzing how modern scien5st work and think provide students with broader view of scien5fic inquiry. Ask students to demonstrate their understanding of what they have learned so far by crea5ng a Scratch project. Lesson 3 Have students prac5ce thinking mechanis5cally by simula5ng how synthe5c biologists think in the field via ac5vity adapted from actual synthe5c biology experiment (designing a microbe that can use starch and water to make hydrogen gas). Have students reflect on experience with Scratch, and recognize they have been engaging in mechanis5c thinking while working on their own Scratch projects. Encourage students to transfer their understanding of mechanis5c thinking across different domains. Gain an apprecia5on of how studying trends in scien5sts’ way of thinking can help students in their own thinking. MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu
MAS.714J / STS.445J Technologies for Creative Learning
Fall 2009
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