Apple Technology Review, Fall 1997: Science with eMates

Learning Science by Doing Science, page 6

The teachers often mixed their comments about the tools with comments about constructivism and the MBL method of teaching, in which students, under the challenge of a real science project, discover many of the scientific relationships for themselves. Tucker felt that the eMate and eProbes would help citizens monitor and protect their own environments. He saw this as an important aspect of his mission to teach students to think critically:

Our goal here in Education is not to develop scientists. We all feel good when one of our students becomes a science student, goes on and majors in science. I think our goal is to get students to think critically, to make decisions so that they have more control, better control over their own life activities. I think that that's where it's at.

The wireless, infrared beaming function of the eMate allowed the students to exchange information in the field, enhancing the collaboration among teams.

Mitchell contrasted the way that the students were collaborating, sharing their data among the teams, with the way she had learned science throughout college and graduate school. The second important distinction she noted was that the students were beginning to initiate their own questions, using the teacher as a resource rather than as an authority. As she put it,

These students in the field really feel what they're doing is important, is making a difference. They're coming up with questions that interest them and they're curious about. And they can get enough background knowledge from their teacher. They use their teacher as a resource, not as an answer book.

Teachers' Comments on the eMate

All three of the teachers found the eMate to be a useful and exciting tool for the students. But there were several features that they felt would make the tool even more useful to students and teachers alike.

Recognizing the power inherent in the eMate and eProbe, and what could be further leveraged with proper software, Tucker speculated that the proper combination could allow one to do, for example, a complex substrate assessment very quickly on the spot, something that now would require two weeks. With appropriate software and hardware, "that process would... be so fast that expert salmon habitat biologists (not just school kids) could accomplish this in an afternoon. That has some real potential!" he noted.

Continue