PROMOTING JOY OF LEARNING BY TURNING PHONE INTO SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT
MOE HQ/CPDD1/SCIENCE: MR LEONG TZE KWANG
MOE HQ/ETD/TECHNOLOGY FOR LEARNING: MR WEE LOO KANG LAWRENCE
“DARE TO DO”
Summary of Project:
Challenge: Students find it difficult to grasp some scientific concepts. Teachers find it challenging to teach these topics using only theoretical equations and word problems. However, the teachers are unable to conduct experiments to help deepen understanding because the tools required are usually costly.Solution: Develop Web apps with customized accessories that students may easily install on their personal smartphones to conduct scientific inquiry anywhere and at any time.
Questions:
What is SLS?
Student Learning Space, MOEHQ produced learning management system used by all Singapore Schools to allow students to learn anytime, anywhere and at any pace.The spectrum analyzer needs to be paired with a 3D printed Spectrometer. Where is it located (e.g. science lab?), what did it cost the school to obtain, and is it easy to use? Without this tool, can students still conduct their experiments outside of the lab/classroom?
The webpage in on the internet and 3D printed Spectrometer accessories are located in the school lab. It costs $10 to 3D print. The soft copy of the design are shared with schools so that they can print more and allow students to bring them home for experimentation.The spectrometer (webpage and accessories) is designed to be simple to use. The students simply attach 3D printed Spectrometer accessory to their phone and conduct the experiment from their handphone mobile browser visiting the webpage.
How to use the spectrometer to detect gas lamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQiUvY94uMc
How to use spectrometer to detect other objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVV14jZyAqg
Alternatively, students can construct a spectrometer accessory using a small piece of diffraction grating (cost less than 10 cents) and cardboard/toilet roll.
Otherwise, the experiment can only be conducted when there’s a single long and narrow light source.
Same question applies to the radioactivity geiger sensor.
Where is it located (e.g. science lab?), what did it cost the school to obtain, and is it easy to use? Without this tool, can students still conduct their experiments outside of the lab/classroom?
The webpage in on the internet and the geiger sensor is also found in the lab. This cost around $40. More can be purchased online.The geiger counter webpage and sensor is designed to be simple to use. The students simply attach it to their phone via the microphone jack and conduct the experiment from their mobile phone internet browser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypMTHXsLHrg
We realised you didn’t ask about the sound analyser. This could work without any equipment other than the student smart phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u_djWwm0u8&t=7s
How did this idea to use the smartphone as a scientific tool in classroom lessons come about?(I know that the team received feedback about the costly nature of scientific equipment, but what was it that tipped you over into action?)
We have been conducting many workshops on designing meaningful experiments and noticed that there was a lack of experiments in modern physics.
We did tried designing some experiments but we realised few teachers were adopting these experiments in our earlier workshops. They feedback that the solutions were difficult to conduct or expensive (or both).
However we did not give up because we strongly believe that physics need to taught from concrete to abstract. The students need to be shown the phenomenon and learn using the phenomenon instead of starting from theoretical equation. The inquiry approach will allow students to explore deeper into the concept in an engaging way.
Since almost every students have a smartphone, we brainstormed on how can we make use of the phone to do some of these experiments.
There were many ideas, in the end we managed to make 3 working ones and 1(light polarizer) is still a work in progress.
How and at which point did you realise that your idea might be feasible and might actually work out?
We were teachers before so we had an ideal end product in our mind that we would like our students to be able to use.
We knew that idea were feasible when we were able to obtain some meaningful data from our phones.
What kind of hurdles – mental, practical, physical – did you have to overcome as you embarked on your project?
a. Were there difficulties that made you abandon or postpone any part of your original plans?
b. Were there new discoveries during the development that led you down different (and perhaps even better) paths?
After we came up with each idea, we quickly do rapid prototyping to test if the idea were feasible. Ideas that didn’t seem feasible at the moment were put aside to be revisited later. We continued to improve ideas that seems promising. Once we have a working prototype, we quickly show some teachers to get their feedback and asked if they were willing to let their students try them.
There were many difficulties along the way. However, our focus is always to make a better in whatever ways we could.
We believe that every discovery during development will always lead us to a better path even if it means we have to abandon previous hard work.
There were technical difficulties. It’s difficult for our experimental data to obey with theory taught in schools. Real world is always messier but if the data is too far from theory, schools will not be willing to use it since it will confuse students. Often the whole experiment have to be totally revamped to make it feasible.
eg. for the spectrometer experiment, initially we were thinking of only giving students diffraction grating to make it really low cost but it was still very difficult for students to do the experiment.
However the background ambient light make it difficult for our app to detect the light source intended and experiment needed to be conducted in pitch darkness.
We then added a paper spectrometer to improve the image which means our codes have to be redo from scratch.
Later on, we experimented with 3D printing spectrometer to further enhance the image. We did not have any 3D printing nor expertise so I approached my friend from NUSH to help out with the project.
We then move on to improve the 3D spectrometer design, adjusting the slit size to receive the best possible image and also adding a groove to allow students to use a rubber band to attach it to their phones.
Finally when it comes to detecting the gas lamp, it was difficult to identify the gas as the brightness of gas lamp varies. We have to collect lots of data and optimise our algorithm many times to produce a satisfactory result.
With every app, we went through similar challenges and rounds of reiteration to improve them.
The other difficulty was time. This is not our only piece of work. We have to balance our time.
How did your breakthrough impact yourself and your team, your colleagues and your students?
Impact to self and team: We learn a lot from doing the project. We learn how to allow mobile phone internet browser to talk to the sensors in smartphones to collect data, how to make a clean user interface that is easy for students to use without need of long instructions. The experience will help us to continue to innovate.Students: Students in our pilot school were intrigued with physics and so excited with what they see. They said that they wished more lessons were conducted this way.
Teachers: We hope that our little contribution can help shape the belief of other teachers and shape the way they teach.
Quote from our late former MM Lee “To the young and the not so old, I say, look at that horizon, follow that rainbow, go ride it”. We enjoyed the process of innovating and we hope that every student can have the joy of learning.
This quote is most appropriate with a screen show of our app below.
Thank you!
13 September 2019
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