Think-a-bell and the balancing of STEM

STEM and its central role in transforming communities is widely known, frequently discussed, and even occasionally supported.

For Some STEM is about the 21st century skills needed  to drive innovation, for others it’s a skill set to equip people with the tools to solve problems.Within the context of approaches to education and learning it’s the opportunity to engage with rich and open challenges – that require and support complex problem solving, application of multi-disciplinary knowledge, and allow and value creative and individual strategies. All educators wish to see their specialty represented, and more letters try to climb into the STEM acronym each week. This is only an issue for people who think of STEM as a family of useful disciplines - rather than an approach to supporting higher order thinking. While many STEM educational programs are being developed and delivered to teachers and students, the components that constitute STEM are often not present in a balanced fashion. The STEAM all too often seems to go out of the STEM as you progress through the list. Yet mathematical or computational thinking (with its emphasis on logic, pattern, and relationships) is known to be critical to general scientific literacy, and is also a key competency that allows learners to acquire and apply new knowledge, and solve problems. It is a skill set in demand by a wide range of industries, and gives young people possessing it a passport to a diverse range of opportunities.

Within our teacher professional development initiatives, we have been increasingly gaining experience in programs which support teachers in the development of skills and confidence in using inquiry and hands on learning in the areas of mathematics, logic and computational thinking. Our work is very indebted to the resources and experiences of groups in New Zealand, San Francisco, and the UK, but a fusion cuisine of our own is emerging.

 We have trialed these with students, teachers (primary and secondary), pre-service teachers and the academics supervising them. We have taken these activities to Korea, China, Brunei, Mongolia, and shared them with educators from Malaysia, and Indonesia. We have even trailed then in Queensland and Canberra. With each trial, we hear how educators are seeing the value and applicability of the approach, the relevance of the material, and we absorb their interpretations of how they would apply and adapt the activities within the classroom, and to different ages.

A classic introductory activity we use as much as an ice breaker as a learning activity is to have the group sort themselves in order of birthdays.  One half of the group is sorted by an individual, who can only compare two people’s dates of birth at a time, and swap their positions. A simple rule, a basic algorithm. Within the other group, anyone can ask anyone, and re-arrange each other. The rule is simple, but the resulting activity is complex and hard to define. Yet for any average to large size group, the second strategy is far more time efficient.

I often then move to an activity, based on a sorting network – a set of paths on the floor. This activity borrows from the work of Tim Bell in New Zealand and his computational thinking work. Six people with a token…. a playing card, or number are placed at random starting points at one end of the network. They following the paths ( in masking tape) and step forward forming 3 pairs. Each pair compares their numbers, and the one with the high value follows the right hand path out of the sorting box, the low value ..the left path. They find themselves forming a new pair, another comparison, and another path to follow. After a few rounds they reach the end, each in their own box. Now all sorted ( if they followed the rules).

The maths teachers we worked with recently – teachers of primary and secondary maths, accelerated classes and classes with special needs students, all warmed to the activity. We repeated the activity, not with numbers, but with hand bells – each a different note. At each round the sound of bells peeling filled the space, along with much laughter. We progressed to a fully sorted line up of campanologists. We got the group to ring their bells in sequence… it was not pleasant. We did not have a smooth scale. Back to the start.. and try again. But this time the pairs waited for some silence so they could better hear the notes. We also found a couple of the teachers were really tone deaf. But with patience and collaboration…we … scaled the problem.

In subsequent discussions the teachers digested the activity, and were keenly developing new applications of the sorting net.  For younger students, we could give shapes of different numbers of sides, of different areas, of color, of lengths, of …

The sorting net is really just a way to visualize the processes of sorting we started the day with. It gives the activity a tangible structure, but also a way to approach solving problems. It also created a lasting piece of mental infrastructure for the educators to deploy.

The rest of the day was full of equally great moments, exploring rice and chess, pie plates and pi plates, catapults and color wheels…it was all STEM, or was it METS..but all great and all rich in mathematics and logic, and visualizing things.

Oops, there’s the bell.........Got to go.