Msp Middle School Portalconnections Linking Mathematics to Social Studies Art and Science

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Applied science and the Environment: A Middle School Mix - Introduction

When talking virtually environmental problems, technology can be both villain and hero. We often design, develop, and implement technological solutions to make our lives easier, simply these technologies may take objectionable lasting effects on our environment. On the other hand, engineering science tin can salve the day with efforts to monitor, clean, and repair the surround. If we look at our use of fossil fuels, we tin can meet technology causing and lessening ecology problems. Fossil fuels have been an important source of energy, but our use of them has added pollutants to the air and has contributed to acid rain. To counteract these problems, technological developments have led to innovations in engines and smoke stacks that reduce polluting emissions. Instruments such equally air quality monitors and pollution sensors capture data that we can analyze to ameliorate understand the extent and nature of ecology problems.

Contents

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• 1 Engineering science and the Surroundings: A Eye School Mix - Introduction
• 2 Aquatic Surround
• 3 Wastewater Treatment
• 4 Challenging Pollution
• five GLOBE Programme
• half dozen SMARTR: Virtual Learning Experiences for Students
• 7 Careers
• 8 Latest Scientific discipline News from the New York Times
• 9 National Standards
• 10 Author and Copyright

Units about technology and the surroundings provide perfect opportunities for teachers of engineering, scientific discipline, and mathematics to collaborate. An integrated unit near the environment will permit your students to use scientific discipline and mathematics skills and concepts in a different context. Students besides larn nigh the relationship between technology and society and develop reasoning skills to weigh the risks and benefits of personal and industrial uses of engineering science. When your students report engineering science and the environs, they have the chance to develop technological, scientific, and mathematical literacy all at the same fourth dimension. What an educationally powerful feel!

Studying the impact of technology on the environment involves making predictions in how the technology will touch on and thus change the environment. Predictions are necessarily based on known scientific laws and observed patterns. Patterns of change is a common theme in science and one that the NSDL Strand Map Service provides detailed guidance. These maps illustrate connections betwixt concepts and beyond grade levels. An image of the middle grades (6-8) only part of the Patterns of Alter map appears below. Clicking on a concept within the maps will show NSDL resources relevant to the concept, equally well equally information near related AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks and National Science Education Standards. Movement the pinkish box in the lower right mitt corner of the page to see the grades six-viii learning goals.

Nosotros have selected resources to assistance yous and your students run into the influence of technology on the aquatic environment, understand how technology facilitates the regeneration of clean water through wastewater treatment, and learn about sources of and remedies for pollution problems. We accept also included a comprehensive environmental program that offers your students opportunities to employ engineering to gather and analyze data. Lessons virtually engineering science and the surroundings can relate to technological, scientific, and mathematical national standards. Nosotros offer these resources to kindle your imagination nearly means to develop multifaceted cross-curricular lessons nigh the environment.

Aquatic Environment

Since water covers 70 pct of the Earth, it is especially important to talk over with students the means in which engineering science impacts the aquatic environs. Fifty-fifty in the water, balance is the key. These resource will help your students sympathize how bug upshot when there are besides many or besides few organisms. Students tin too acquire that they may unknowingly contribute to issues in the aquatic surround through routine activities. Yous and your mathematics and scientific discipline colleagues might be interested in collaborating to help students understand the skills and concepts involved in these activities.

Wheeling Jesuit University/NASA-Exploring the Environment: Coral Reefs Is technology part of the problem or part of the solution to the global decline of coral reefs? Students who complete this module, which is part of the NASA-sponsored Exploring the Environment spider web site, will larn that the answer is BOTH. The module follows a problem-based learning approach to help students consider the changes in the environment related to coral reefs. Its jigsaw puzzle metaphor guides students' consideration of some variables that contribute to changes in coral reefs. The module's graphs present an excellent opportunity for students to interpret the meaning found in information displays. In addition, the module contains background information nigh environmental changes, their causes, and technological methods to detect them.

Building a Blossom Harmful algal blooms, too known as HABs, are increasing in frequency effectually the world. Why might this be happening? What tin can be done to find some answers? Students intertwine aspects of technology, science, and mathematics equally they conduct this activeness. They consider how technology, such as transportation and manufacturing, promotes the development of HABs. Even though students are not necessarily working with harmful algae, they comport experiments to determine if sunlight and food enrichment take an impact on the increase in algae population size. Students use colour and smell every bit a qualitative measurement and prison cell counts to quantitatively decide population size. Math skills come into play when they calculate population sizes based on sampling techniques and graph their results.

Activities: Cease Pointless Personal Pollution How can information technology exist that I am polluting just past walking my canis familiaris or washing my car? This article and its associated activities assist students make responsible decisions almost how they perform routine tasks to limit their bear on on h2o quality. The commodity offers environmentally friendly tips about tasks such as car washing, motor maintenance, and lawn fertilization. You can choice and choose from a list of four activities to aid your students study about nonpoint source pollution. Your students tin practice their math skills when they use fractions to determine whether it is better to launder with repeated pocket-size dilutions of dirt with water or one big dilution, calculate population density, and read a pie chart. Students strategize ways to reduce the leaner inbound watersheds from pet waste and perform experiments to come across the effects of fertilizer runoff on dissolved oxygen in the waterways. Not only will your students learn technology, math, and science, but they volition see how applying what they take learned will amend their environment.

Cool Biology Projects: Gone Fishing "Students, pretend you are journalists and your magazine assigned yous to write an commodity to help fishermen predict where the good fishing spots volition be off the New Jersey coast." What an exciting and rich cantankerous-curricular task! As they work in groups to research the story, students learn about the nutrient web in oceanic ecosystems, scientific and technological careers associated with the aquatic environmental, and tools to collect and analyze environmental data. The students gather information by viewing videos and analyzing satellite images and graphs of data collected with Conductivity-Temperature-Depth and Fluorometer sensors. Reading and interpreting graphs is a fundamental part of this activity. The students write their magazine manufactures as the culminating activity of the lesson. Make sure to open the teaching tips; they offering great instructional ideas and background information, likewise as a rubric for scoring the private and group aspects of the project.

Wastewater Treatment

The process of treating municipal wastewater is a powerful example of how technology has affected our surround and society. These resources will help y'all and your students appreciate wastewater treatment and how lucky we are to have it.

Microbe Zoo Accept you lot ever visited a microbe zoo? Most likely you have interacted with microbes in your environment on a daily basis without even knowing it. This site discusses the different microbes that are in the soil, in the water, and even in our food. A special section in the Animal Pavilion, called Poo Corner, describes the microbes that assistance interruption downward fecal textile. It talks about the microbes in septic tanks and community sewage treatment plants. Teachers and parents: beware. If, after visiting this site, your students go for a walk in the woods and ask for plates and glasses, they may be setting upwardly viewing chambers to detect the fungal fruiting bodies sprouting out of herbivorous animals' dung. Cull your tableware carefully.

Challenging Pollution

Although nosotros may non often do information technology, it'due south easy to listing ways that ability plants, automobiles, and handy household products do good u.s.a.. But are these and other technology-driven products and services benign—to us, to the environment, and to other living things? Use one or more of the resources in this department to become your students thinking about the causes and effects of pollution and what individuals, communities, and businesses can do to lessen pollution bug.

Acrid Rain: Students Site You can't talk nearly why acid rain exists or what can exist done well-nigh this environmental problem without addressing humans' utilise of engineering science and natural resources. This site from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does just that. It walks students through the basics of acrid deposition in two complementary tutorials. You may want students to use one or both. The starting time takes the form of five questions, including What Is Acid Pelting?, Why is Acrid Rain Harmful? and What Can Yous Do? Information technology does a truly excellent job of explaining topics similar acidity, the environmental and health furnishings of acid pelting, and the fossil fuel connectedness. If you lot want to connect the tutorial to an assignment, hither are iii ideas:

i. Partner with the social studies teacher and have students larn more about government regulations of air pollution and acid deposition.

ii. Inquire students to share what they take learned, just as the last section of the tutorial encourages them to exercise. They can create a product that communicates almost acid pelting to an audience of their choice (parents, younger students, government leaders, etc.)

3. Have students research the technologies used to command emissions from power plants and include a graph illustrating a central thought in their written report.

The 2d tutorial, chosen the Acrid Rain Animation, uses images and less text to convey some of the same data. Games and activities, which may exist likewise immature for some middle school students, are also offered on the site.

Recycle Urban center If your city, formerly known every bit Dumptown, now bears the esteemed proper name of Recycle City, you must have made some significant and lasting changes! Visit the Activities page for information and ideas for incorporating one or both of this site's two features (an interactive map and a game) into your classes. By clicking around in the quadrants of this fictitious place, students can check out myriad examples of the audio environmental practices that are now the norm in Recycle Metropolis. In the Dumptown Game, students get the metropolis manager who needs to transform Dumptown (a proper noun like that tin't be skillful for the citizens or the local economy!). Students choose which programs to implement, and then watch Dumptown change every bit the programs go into effect. Bar graphs brandish the resulting reductions in waste, and the total cost of the programs is shown. Similar the site suggests, consider giving your students a goal to accomplish equally director that corresponds to the particulars of your curriculum. Reading graphs and working with a $200,000 budget to clean up Dumptown are just two examples of the mathematics embedded in this first-class spider web site. Utilise it to prompt your students to call back about how products and actions can have positive and negative furnishings on the environment. Ask them to consider how their own family, schoolhouse, neighborhood, and metropolis are making cumulative changes to their local environment. What's going well, and where exercise they come across room for improvements? Is there an area in which they tin can influence change?

World Program

If you lot'd like for your students to practice more than take the occasional dip into learning most the environment, consider latching on to this phenomenal plan and using information technology for all the rich learning opportunities it provides. Because it is an unabridged program, we decided to characteristic it in its own section.

The GLOBE Programme Students as scientists—that's the claim that the GLOBE program makes and delivers on. In this K-12 science program, students don't but read about science—they do it, which means that mathematics and technology are in the mix, too. Measurement skills and geometry concepts are central math topics practical in the field sampling activities. Additionally, students collect, represent, and analyze data for many of experiments—the question of when will we ever use this math should never be raised! Technology comes in the form of data-collecting instruments and the capabilities of the World web site. The plan is truly global in at least 2 ways. Students study the Earth system, its soil, atmosphere, water, weather condition, land cover, and more. And the participants are a global network of students, teachers, and scientists who collaborate and share data online.

Students collect data about their local environment, submit the data to the free GLOBE site, and and so apply tools on the site to analyze and visualize their data and the data gathered by other student scientists—past, nowadays, nearby, and far away. And the programme doesn't end there; with such an array of information sets, the research options and research collaborations are nearly endless for your students. Required workshops are held for teachers who want to participate fully in the program, and loads of teacher supports are on the site. Check out the Learn About Globe section and then click on over to the GLOBE videos folio to watch a 10-minute program overview. You but might get hooked!

SMARTR: Virtual Learning Experiences for Students

Visit our educatee site SMARTR to find related science-focused virtual learning experiences for your students! The SMARTR learning experiences were designed both for and past eye school aged students. Students from around the country participated in every stage of SMARTR's development and each of the learning experiences includes multimedia content including videos, simulations, games and virtual activities.

Careers

The FunWorks Visit the FunWorks STEM career website to learn more near a multifariousness of science-related careers that combine technology and the environment such every bit meteorologist and environmental scientist.

Latest Science News from the New York Times

National Standards

These excerpts from the Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Applied science (STL) connect to the topics and resources discussed in this publication.

The Nature of Technology

Standard 3: Students volition develop an agreement of the relationships amid technologies and the connections between engineering and other fields of study.

Engineering and Society

Standard 5: Students will develop an understanding of the effects of applied science on the environment.

Abilities for a Technological Globe

Standard 13: Students volition develop abilities to assess the bear on of products and systems.

National Science Education Standards

These excerpts from the National Science Education Standards speak to the interrelationships between scientific discipline, technology, society, and the environment.

Science and Engineering science

As a event of activities in grades v-eight, all students should develop

UNDERSTANDINGS Almost Scientific discipline AND Engineering science

• Perfectly designed solutions practice not exist. All technological solutions have merchandise-offs, such every bit condom, cost, efficiency, and appearance. Engineers oft build in back-up systems to provide safety. Risk is function of living in a highly technological globe. Reducing hazard often results in new technology.
• Technological designs take constraints. Some constraints are unavoidable, for case, properties of materials, or effects of weather and friction; other constraints limit choices in the blueprint, for case, ecology protection, human safety, and aesthetics.
• Technological solutions accept intended benefits and unintended consequences. Some consequences can be predicted, others cannot.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

As a result of activities in grades five-viii, all students should develop agreement of

NATURAL HAZARDS

• Human being activities too tin can induce hazards through resources acquisition, urban growth, state-use decisions, and waste material disposal. Such activities can accelerate many natural changes.

Scientific discipline AND TECHNOLOGY IN Order

• Engineering science influences society through its products and processes. Applied science influences the quality of life and the means people act and collaborate. Technological changes are often accompanied by social, political, and economic changes that tin can exist beneficial or detrimental to individuals and to lodge. Social needs, attitudes, and values influence the direction of technological evolution.

Read the entire National Science Instruction Standards online for free or register to download the free PDF. The content standards are found in Chapter 6.

NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics

Making the jump from classroom mathematics to real-world situations is oft a claiming for math teachers. Working on an interdisciplinary ecology project with scientific discipline and engineering teachers is an splendid opportunity to engage students in mathematics that applies the concepts and skills found in the Data Analysis and Probability Standard, Connections Standard, and Representation Standard for grades 6-viii.

Author and Copyright

Judy Ridgway, Carolee Barber, and Judy Spicer formerly of Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Scientific discipline and Mathematics Education, Instructional Resource. Judy Ridgway was ENC's Assistant Managing director of Instructional Resources. She is a veteran educator in the biological sciences. Carolee Hairdresser was a science education resource specialist at ENC. She has taught a variety of scientific discipline courses and worked for a conservation organization. Judy Spicer is the mathematics education resources specialist for digital library projects at Ohio State University. She has taught mathematics in grades 9-14.

Please email any comments to msp@msteacher.org.

Connect with colleagues at our social network for middle school math and science teachers at http://msteacher2.org.

Copyright May 2007 - The Ohio State University. Last updated September 19, 2010. This textile is based upon work supported past the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671 and since September 1, 2009 Grant No. 0840824. Whatsoever opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this cloth are those of the author(due south) and do non necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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