ULearn16: Breakout Five - Hands on science workshop with NanoGirl and OMGTech!

When I went through the breakouts menu and this option came up I was pretty excited.  NanoGirl, aka Michelle Dickinson, is the science poster girl for New Zealand.  She has given science a prominence few others have in the media and she is raising the profile and coolness of science among the student population.

I personally have a mixed relationship to science.  At primary school it wasn't something I actually thought about specifically.  At my primary school I remember us doing bush studies, stream studies, rocky shore studies and going over to the principal's house to look at flowers.  At high school it was a mixed bag.  I really liked chemistry (I love reactions), but biology was a bit so-so (especially trying to understand eye colour and familiar relations!) and physics may as well have been Greek to me.

As a teacher I have tended to favour topics such as kitchen science (chemistry), space, animals, water, testing material, eggs.... the most memorable foray into physics was a push and pull topic.

So I choose this breakout partly to fangirl a bit, but also to see what Michelle had to offer us teachers in inspiration for teaching science.  This is the blurb that was put up on the ULearn breakout page:

This workshop is designed to give hands on experience with different science experiments for primary school level education. Science is traditionally perceived as a difficult subject requiring expensive equipment and specialist knowledge.
In this fast paced 60 minute workshop, different experiments will be carried out while following a teacher’s guide pack to show how simple science experiments can be and how curiosity led learning can tie in to curriculum based topics. With over a decade of academic teaching experience and a passion for getting students more interested in science and technology, Dr Michelle Dickinson will be able to answer any of your science questions while you try each of the experiments yourself.

Below is my Storify of my tweets and pictures.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

When I walked into the room I grabbed one of these brochures off the table.  OMGTech has been set up to give every primary & intermediate school in NZ the opportunity to take part in its award winning workshops over the next three years.  It appears they use volunteers to provide these experiences.  They are also providing teachers with inspiration and ready to go plans to take back to the classroom.

When I sad down at the table, these items were on the table... and every other table.  This was my first clue that we would be having an interactive session.

 At the beginning of the session, we got some sad news... no NanoGirl today.  Sadly she had a clashing engagement.  However, they had sorted out an able replacement, Paula Hay (aka @heymrshay) from Network for Learning and a science teacher, to step in.  Paula did a fabulous job.

We were asked to get a balloon and a skewer first.  The challenge was to make a balloon kebab, with the skewer going from one end to the other.  This was scary for me as I really hate it when balloons pop in my hands or near me.

Balloons started pop, pop, popping all over the room.

I figured that going in the blowing up end of the balloon was probably the best thing to do.  And apparently it is the way to go because the polymers at that part of the balloon are not so stretched and degraded.  So I got the skewer in, paused for the photo and then proceeded to piece the other side.  As you can see, I was successful and did not pop my balloon.

However, you can see that over the rest of the session it continued to deflate slowly.

Our next activity was an old favourite, vinegar and baking soda.  So I poured the vinegar into our small as lemonade bottle, while the teachers on the other side of the table tipped baking soda into the balloon.  Tip: use the funnel to help you get the baking soda into the balloon before using it to get the vinegar into the funnel.

Then she twisted the balloon so that the baking soda was contained and secured the end of the balloon over the bottle opening.  She then untwisted the balloon and let the reaction begin.

 The reaction happened and this is how much our balloon inflated.  So we decided to do it again.

So we used more vinegar, more baking soda, and being responsible teachers, we used the bucket in case of disaster.

 I'd say we got a bigger inflation this time.

We did find that some of the liquid ended up inside the balloon and then the balloon flopped down.  So you could get kids to experiment with what the optimum amounts of vinegar and baking soda may be for optimum inflation and erection.

 Next we were asked to grab a bowl and tip enough milk into it to cover the bottom.  There were four food dye colours available for us to use.

We also put some dishwashing liquid into another bowl and we needed to have a cotton bud each.

We put food colouring around the edge of the milk, then dipped our cotton bud into the dishwashing liquid.

Then you dip your cotton bud into the milk and watch the magic happen.

 I decided to try this again from scratch.

Cool as aye!

Now I asked on Twitter what I would be doing with this lot in the photo.  One cheeky tweeter tweeted back that I was making fondue.  Sadly, no.

I was actually making a catapult.  Here is my step by steps:

And here are my videos of failure... well my first attempt at using my catapult was the best... if only I had longer to problem solve it out more....

This was one of the best breakouts I have ever attended.  It was reminiscent of what the old Advisory Service used to be like, practical and hands on, before former Education Minister Anne Tolley killed them off in 2009.

If you get the opportunity to work with OMGTech at any point, do so.  I am now wondering what their coding and robotics breakouts are like.....

By the way, OMGTech is in The Pond.

#edblognz ULearn15 Blogger Selfie Challenge #cenz

If at Ulearn - Find a blogger you admire, shake their hand and take a selfie with them to post on your blog. Then find a new blogger and do the same! If you’re feeling really generous buy them a coffee! Write about it too!

This last week I went to ULearn15 at Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland.  This is my fifth ULearn in a row, and at each one I have found inspiration and met amazing people and reconnected with old friends from many areas of my life. 

This year the networking was awesome.  I got to meet bloggers and tweeters and inspirational educators who I've been connecting with for up to four years (the amount of time I have been on Twitter as I joined at the end of ULearn11).  This is how I have built up and widened my Personal Learning Network and become a connected educator through Twitter and going to ULearn, Educamps and EduIgnites.

On Wednesday night I attended the Twitter Dinner.  There were about 55 people there, not all of whom were attending ULearn.  @digitallearnin organised the evening and had us interacting with a game of Twitter Bingo, as you can see below.

First up for the selfie challenge was @st3ph007 or StephT who has the blog Four Seasons in One Kiwi.  I've always really enjoyed reading her blog posts.  They challenge me in some of my thinking.  Often I agree, at times I do not.  @st3ph007 has also supported @kerriattamatea in her establishment of the #BFC630NZ quick education chat each week day morning of term which I have participated in on occasion.  @st3ph007 also is a regular participant in #edchatnz and has been known to put her wisdom out on Facebook pages I frequent too.  It was fabulous to finally meet Steph and hear her passion for education in the flesh.

One of the Breakouts I went to at ULearn15 was presented by @Cherie59789095 and it was about networks and clusters, a hot topic currently.  It took me a few minutes to click on to the fact that I had been interacting with the presenter on Twitter for quite a while as I wasn't able to click into the online resource for about 10 or so minutes.  I had the opportunity to have a long chat with Cherie later in the evening after the Gala Dinner and I was thrilled to make the face to face connection with such an amazing leader.

During Brunch on the last day @vanschaijik who is also known as Sonya, sat beside me, and soon after we were joined by @mrehu.  Sonya is one of the admins for #edblognz and is a big driver behind TeachMeetNZ, a virtual PLD meeting space.  Sonya has also been a connected educator in many other ways too, which you can check out at http://sonyavanschaijik.com/.

I have been following @mrehu for nearly two years, I think, and at the Gala Dinner I met one of his teachers, @KNgarangione, who had come to ULearn15 with a group of the staff and she raved about working with him.  So it was a bonus to sit down with Maurice for a few minutes and shoot the breeze about our highlights at the conference.

And lastly, after a false start the afternoon before where our timing was out, @mjbuckland and I finally caught up and had that f2f meet up and chat about the conference this year and in the past, Twitter and the "take homes" we have. 

Alas, I failed to meet any new bloggers at ULearn15, but if you are a fairly new blogger and you are reading this and would like to help me out with a virtual meeting, or a f2f if you are in Hamilton, Cambridge or Te Awamutu, drop me a line at @melulater or through the comments.

It was great to meet all these people in the flesh for the first time this year, but also great to meet up with many other awesome educators that I have been meeting over the last few years, especially since 2012's ULearn.

Cathedral Cove..... #edblognz

The Challenge:
Write a blog post about your favourite movie/song/piece of art including how it relates to your life as an educator.

This is my favourite piece of artwork.  It is by Diana Adams, a New Zealand artist, and is of Cathedral Cove.  I have a copy of this artwork, which was given as a gift to me by my brother and his wife one Christmas.

I love this picture because, firstly, Mercury Bay on the Coromandel is my most favourite place in the world.  Although we holiday closer to Whitianga, Cathedral Cove is the most iconic part of Mercury Bay to many people.  When I was on my OE in the early 2000s I carried with me a picture of the view out into Mercury Bay from our family beach house my Dad's family built 60 years ago in 1955 when he was at primary school.  My beach is the place where I am the happiest, the calmest.  It is my turangawaewae.

How does it fit in with my life as an educator? 

When I was a child I learnt so much at the beach.  How to fish.  About friendships.  About how families operate.  About nature.  About how to ski underwater.  About time management - or lack of it in my case. 

I lived in Whitianga for two years and taught at two local schools.  I loved the lifestyle and made some true lifelong friends, as well as getting to spend extra special time with my Grandma who was in her 90s and passed away a year after I moved away for a new school. 

It is a place I draw inspiration on as a teacher for how I teach and what I teach at times.  I took my class to my beach as part of my camp in 2012, because it is the safest beach I know.  See the post:  Room 3 Camp March 2012 - Day Three.  I've used it as inspiration for doing art, such as in this post Beach Scenes where I was inspired by walks along the beach and the bunny tails glued on the art were actually from my beach!

When I take work up to the beach to do, like reports, records, planning and the like, it never seems like hard work when you have this view to look out upon.  I am calm and focused with the sound of the waves pushing in and out on the beach.