The e-Lab study guide, a workflow for student learning.
Image Courtesy of Liz Quigg |
Do people learn more about science when they experiment with real data? The leaders of the Interactions in Understanding the Universe initiative think so, and they are using the grid to get data from current experiments into classrooms and museums.
"The idea behind I2U2 is to have a framework available so that when an experiment joins the grid, a toolkit and consultants will be ready to help them build a formal and informal educational program," said Marjorie Bardeen from Fermilab, one of the I2U2 principal investigators.
The I2U2 goal is to support and strengthen the education and outreach activities of grid-based scientific experiments. The project, recently funded by the National Science Foundation, will provide two options to scientists building an educational program: e-Labs, for use by students in a formal educational setting; and i-Labs for informal education, such as museum exhibits. The I2U2 team of teachers, scientists and grid developers is creating an e-Lab toolkit for use by scientific collaborations, and is piloting the i-Labs with the Chicago's Adler Planetarium.
A pilot e-Lab is already up and running. The QuarkNet/Grid Cosmic Ray e-Lab provides a framework for student-driven investigations with experimental particle physics data. Since the spring of 2005, students from 240 high schools have run 11,000 analyses on data collected from 200 cosmic ray detectors across the country. Students use grid tools and a Web interface to access the data, perform experiments, publish their data through online posters, and even discuss their results.
"This is where the students really do the science," added Bardeen. "They don't usually get these peer-to-peer interactions in the classroom, where they finish a lab, get a grade and move on immediately."
The first i-Lab, which will also focus on cosmic rays, is currently under development. A museum-exhibit-quality cosmic ray detector has been constructed by a team at the University of Notre Dame for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The I2U2 team is now developing tools to integrate the detector with the Web and the grid to create an experiment that will catch museumgoers' attention and interest.
"The goal with the i-Labs is to help people understand what science is and how scientists work," said Bardeen. "We think of this as an experiment, since we've never tried something like this before. We are eager to see how people react to the museum experience."
Learn more at the Cosmic Ray e-Lab Web site.
—Katie Yurkewicz
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