Apple Technology Review, Fall 1997: Science with eMates

Learning Science by Doing Science, page 9

Conclusion

Accompanying students during this experience suggests that the eMate is a very useful field tool. However, the findings reported here are but preliminary indications of how powerful a tool it may become. The ACOT video Science on the Nooksack documents this field experience and includes interviews with the students and teachers. The video demonstrates, as a result of such new tools, that students are better able to focus on the significance of the patterns of their data and to become researchers by doing "real" science.

Although this report has focused on high school science students using probeware, the eMate is certainly not limited to such students. It should prove useful to college students and graduates with its graphing calculator, as well as to elementary students with its typing tutors. Nor is its usefulness confined to math and science courses. Because of its exceptional battery life, portability, and durability, the eMate adapts well to classes such as this one that extend beyond the school walls. It is at hand whenever students are ready to record their thoughts. As K 12 schools begin to adopt the eMate, more studies need to focus upon its use by these students and the novel learning opportunities that it affords.

Students used eMates as field notebooks

The eMate became the students' complete field notebook.

Science on the Nooksack (running time: 9 minutes, 17 seconds) is available from Starting Line (1-800/825-2145 within the U.S. or 303/297-8070 outside the U.S.; part number, V10052; cost, $8.00). A thumbnail digital movie version of the film (15.4MB) is available on the ACOT website at http://www.research.apple.com/go/acot/nook.isdn.mov. A companion report to this ATG Review article has been posted to ACOT's World Wide Web site at http://www.research.apple.com/go/acot/eMateRpt/eM01intro.html. That report contains many pictures of Science with eMates with eProbes as well as screen shots of their sketches. Perhaps most importantly, it also contains, in an appendix, a complete explanation of Tucker's course as well as an indexed table of teachers' comments upon this experiment. These transcriptions are based upon almost two hours of interviews with the teachers during the period.
This ACOT site also contains several other resources for teachers using eMates. A news article on the ACOT Web site reports on the collaboration of students using eMates to monitor water quality at Celebration City, Florida, with other students monitoring similar factors in St. Louis, Missouri. ACOT students at West High School in Columbus, Ohio, monitoring a land lab owned by the Nature Conservancy, have had a similar experience using the eMates with eProbes to monitor effluent from a housing development into nearby Darby Creek, a designated national prisitine river system.

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