The Evolution of a Projector

How I spent the first week of my summer vacation

The First AttemptUse the Digital Rocky Mountain Biological Lab websitehttp://www.rmbl.info/rockymountainbiolab/digital_rmbl_home.html

And an investigative case to provide AP Bio students the opportunity to use data set to explore ecological relationships such as predator-prey.

The 2nd attemptLook for other sources of data

Maybe wolf dataMaybe the Isle Royale wolf/moose datahttp://www.isleroyalewolf.org/which is great data but maybe that isn’t what

we want to doWe get side-tracked and hungry and tired

FinallyWe decide to use something we saw-

Ebird and the idea of arrival and departure time. It was something that the students could use to collect data of their choosing.

What to do?Of course, we had to do a case because cases

are cool.We wanted them to learn how to use Excel at

least to start.We wanted them to learn about the nature of

scienceWe decided to focus on a younger student—

like the ones Karen teaches in 9th grade.

What do we expect the students to know or be able to do before the case?

Know thatTables are used to organize dataGraphs are a way to visualize dataBirds migrate

Know how to make a line graph Know what an observation is 

ObjectivesBy the end, students understand--The nature of science—how we learn things in

sciencethat there are questions and we try to understand them and it leads it to more questions

You don’t have to follow the textbook scientific method

That data comes from different sources but not all sources are reliable or complete

Excel can be used to organize data and generate graphs

There is a difference between cause and effect and correlation.

Birds of a Feather Squawk Together

“Bye.” Stacey waved to her parents as she watched the car disappear in the distance. Once more, Stacey and her younger brother, Dylan, were staying at their grandparents’ home in Princeton, NJ, while their parents were traveling for work. It was an unusually warm evening in the middle of April. The next day, Stacey woke up earlier than usual, sat up in bed and looked out the window. “Oh—what is all of that noise? “ She groaned and fell back down on her pillow. “It’s those birds, again. Don’t they ever go away?” When she realized she wasn’t going to fall back asleep, Stacey got up, put on some clothes and trudged downstairs. As she entered the kitchen, Stacey looked out the window and could see a cardinal at the bird feeder. She also could see other types of birds hopping around the yard. Dylan sat at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. “Good morning, Stacey. Would you like some breakfast?” Her grandmother was standing in the kitchen by the stove.  

“Oh, I don’t know. Those birds woke me up. I don’t see why they have to make all of that noise. ” Her grandfather seemed oblivious to the fact that Stacey was annoyed by the bird behavior. He just nodded his head and said, “Yes, it seems like every year we hear the wood thrush earlier and earlier in the month. I am sure than when your mother was a child, we never heard or saw them until May.”  “Oh dear, I don’t know about that. I am sure we have always had them around. In fact, I never know when I should put the hummingbird feeder out. Maybe it should stay out all year. Now, what can I fix you for breakfast, Stacey? I promised your mother that we would make sure you would get some decent food.” Stacey thought for a moment. “I guess I will have some scrambled eggs, then.”

After the storyYour First Assignment:  1. Go to the ebird website (www.ebird.org) and click on Explore Data. What types of information could you find using this website? 

2. Do you think it is reliable? Why or why not? 3. If we wanted to answer the grandmother’s question about when to put out the hummingbird feeder, what information would you use? Class discussion of all of this followed by….

The First ProductWorking with a partner, determine the best

time of year to put out the birdfeeder and explain to the grandmother why that is the appropriate time.

Getting to the Final Product Go back to the What Do I Need to Know chart. Discuss the quality of the questions. What questions seem more scientific? Which questions require more data to be able to try to answer? What questions can be answered with the website? What other kinds of data do you need?

Have students choose an open-ended question and working in groups of 3, begin to collect data in a format of your choosing. Be ready to talk about your data in 15 minutes.

Climate.gov (NOAA, NCDC)

Data SourcesCornell Whatbird for individual bird info/range

mapseBird Arrivals/Departures – look-up for each yearNOAA Data – downloaded (climate.gov)

Cool interface for looking up, but time consuming and buggy

Hours of Sunlight (Navy Website)

Other: Julian date calendar tableWish List: Insect Data, NPP, other indicators of

climate change?

ebird arrivals/departures

Example Graphs

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 2923-Dec

22-Jan

21-Feb

22-Mar

21-Apr

21-May

20-Jun

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

Eastern Wood-Pewee

Red-Eyed Vireo

Date

of

Fir

st S

ighti

ng o

f Year

in

eB

ird

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 290

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Mean April Temperatures in Flemington, NJ for 1982-2012

Year (1982-2012)

Montl

y M

ean T

em

pera

ture

for

Apri

l (d

egre

es

C)

And In the End….Introduce Excel as a way to organize data. Use a sample data chart and demonstrate how you can generate a graph. All data must be in an excel spreadsheet and graph their data. Students produce a poster (ppt slide) which is sent to the teacher. Students use the “claim-evidence-reasoning” where their claim is the answer to the question; the data is the evidence and the reasoning explains why the evidence supports the claim. Each group presents its slide to the class. Whole class discussion of: Did you “do science?” Did you prove anything? Did you show cause and effect or was it correlation? What other questions do you have based on the work you did?