Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

In the rectangle above, you will find the fundamental concepts and principles that underlie this standard. Below you will find a list of recommended "learning tools" for this standard. All links are in yellow, just click the link. Numbers are for reference only. Use our "Tell a Friend" feature, at the bottom, to send this page to a friend!

Having students work on real world problems, collect & examine data, and draw their own conclusions is at the heart of inquiry. Science as Inquiry (long) focuses on more than a one class project. A web based inquiry science environment is WISE: The Inquiry Based Inquiry Science Environment. For those that are cautious about internet information we provide a user name: Tim Jones and password: inquirytj1. Go to Projects.

Students love skateboards! Now they can design their own and see how well it works. The name of this learning tool is called Energy Skate Park and comes to us from the great web site Phet. You need Java and then just click RUN NOW in the lower right to get started. Learn about conservation of energy with a skater dude! Build tracks, ramps and jumps for the skater and view the kinetic energy, potential energy and friction as he moves. You can also take the skater to different planets or even space!

This learning tool allows students to create their own hurricane and comes to us from NOAA, a leader in science education. The name of the learning tool is Create a Cane. Here students can create a hurricane by making choices of all of the conditions necessary for one to form. Creative and well done. It is harder than you think to create a hurricane!

One of the most spectacular learning tools we have ever seen! The name of this extraordinary learning tool is called Launchball and has been produced by the Science Museum of London. Students love this intuitive interactive. Once they get to the site, have students select "Play the Levels", they don't need a code (they will for saving their work), then have them do the "Warm Up". This will teach them all they need to know to explore this incredible virtual world of electricity, heat, magnetism, forces, motion, and the conducting power of copper. Just incredible!

The Bugscope project provides free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) so that students anywhere in the world can explore the microscopic world of insects. Developed by the Beckman Institute's Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois supports K-16 classrooms worldwide. Bugscope allows teachers everywhere to provide students with the opportunity to become microscopists themselves—the kids propose experiments, explore insect specimens at high-magnification, and discuss what they see with our scientists.

The name of this "learning tool" is called Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Development Activity. In this activity, you will collect and analyze scientific data from an experiment performed by scientists at the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center. You will learn the steps of a scientific experiment, how to use morphometry to collect three-dimensional data, and how to interpret your data. This comes to us from The Biology Project, a premier biology site.

Google Maps is an incredible technical marvel. When you get to the site, just place your address, a comma, and then your zip code. Hit the search button and within a split second you have a map of your area, but the really amazing part is when you hit the "satellite" button on the far right side of the page. Zoom in and out and pan all over the American continent. An amazing feat from Google.

Your students don't have graphing software? No problem, the National Center for Educational Statistics has developed a wonderful "learning tool" called Create a Graph. Students just pick the type of graph, input the data, choose formatting options and print it out or save it. A wonderfully intuitive site. Their Student Classroom is a fun web site to visit and well done.

In Disease Detective, six out of eight people camping in the same area have fallen ill with a serious ailment of unknown origin. Local and state public health officials want you to trace the outbreak to its source so their agencies can implement control measures. In this interactive, students use the basic methods of field epidemiology to solve this medical mystery. This is a “learning tool” by NOVA.

Spectacular is the only word for award winning Moovl. This is a digital online drawing tool with lifelike dynamic properties. It allows children to create drawings that move according to simple rules of science. The environment simulates gravity, collision, & tension so that the pictures move as if they were in the real world. The Java Applet allows children to make predictions & hypotheses about how things in the world work, to visualize their ideas, & to test them out in a trial-&-error approach. The incredible people at Soda produced this great "learning tool".

Good data can be the gateway to inquiry. The name of this "learning tool" is called Tagging of Pacific Pelagics and features the real time data tracking of blue fin tuna, sea turtles, sharks and many other large sea animals. Just click on the tabs at the top to select the type of animal you are interested in. This is an incredible site, full of interesting and accessible data for students to use.

The name of this "learning tool" is called Save Your Skin. In this clever interactive lesson students will make their own sunscreen and then test it to see whether they will have fun or fry on the beach. This is brought to us by a tremendous site called TryScience. This site is a well done combination of home and online experiments and lots of other fun stuff.

The name of this clever "learning tool" is Medical Mysteries. This is a problem-based adventure game that engages you, the player, in the role of scientist, historian, and detective. There are three missions, each with its own learning objectives. The knowledge gained from each mission will help you understand how infectious diseases are spread. This wonderful interactive was developed by the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, Rice University

Making Vaccines is a “learning tool” brought to us by NOVA. A vaccine works by generating an immune response in the body against some kind of pathogen -- a virus or bacteria or some other agent that causes disease. This tool lets you create six vaccines in your own virtual laboratory, using a different technique to produce each one.

At Wonderville, students can explore the many choices to learn about many different areas of science. The versatility of this site allows you to have students work online as well as print out activities. This site is brought to us by Science Alberta Foundation.

Google continues to amaze us all! The name of this learning tool is called Flu Trends. Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems. This learning tools comes to us from the philanthropic arm of Google called Google.org.