Predict… Observe… Explain…
As a scientist POE’s or Predict-Observe-Explain are central to my teaching method so when I was reading Melissa’s comments about using POE’s on computers I was immediately interested.
In a POE, for you non science people, students predict what they think is going to happen in the experiment, observe the experiment taking place and then explain what happened and why it happened. This is especially interesting when school students or even university students predict incorrectly which happened for us in our POE in first semester…
POE’s are great as Melissa says as they encourage discussion, collaboration and scientific thinking in students. Using learning designs as discussed by Kearney, POE’s could be used more frequently in class as the observation of the experiment could be repeated multiple times…
So the questions for you know are…
1 – PREDICT what will happen when you put two eggs into pure water… OBSERVE and EXPLAIN
“Egg Video 1″ from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwxx1s-cjlQ
2 – PREDICT what will happen when you put the same two eggs into salty water… OBSERVE and EXPLAIN
“Egg Video 2″ from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mnes2E8HSE
3 – PREDICT what will happen when you put the same two eggs into a combination of fresh and salty water… OBSERVE and EXPLAIN
“Egg Video 3″ from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaS0lQGJn5U
