Serial dilution is often a difficult concept for students to understand. In this short dry lab exercise, students perform serial dilutions using seed beads. This exercise helps students gain skill at performing dilutions without using reagents, bacterial cultures, or viral cultures, while being able to visualize the process.

Illusionists use mirrors to create appearances that conflict with our notions of reality. This paper discusses an activity involving the Pulfrich effect that, in the end, makes use of a mirror to distinguish between appearance and reality.

The idea of using a dice game to simulate radioactive decay is not new. However, modern pedagogy encourages, if not requires, us to provide multiple representations and visualizations for our students. The advantage of interactive engagement methods also has been made clear. Here we describe a highly visual and interactive use of dice to develop…

There have been two articles in this journal that described a pair of collision carts used to demonstrate vividly the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions. One cart had a series of washers that were mounted rigidly on a rigid wooden framework, the other had washers mounted on rubber bands stretched across a framework. The rigidly…

This paper analyzes the educational impact of the OpenOrbiter Small Spacecraft Development Initiative, a CubeSat development program underway at the University of North Dakota. OpenOrbiter includes traditional STEM activities (e.g., spacecraft engineering, software development); it also incorporates students from non-STEM disciplines not generally…

Seven years ago The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) was launched with its emphasis on key competencies as "the capabilities that young people need for growing, working, and participating in their communities" ("Ministry of Education," 2007, p. 38). This raises the question of what dispositions are required for students to…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators are facing the challenge of attracting more students. The disparity between the need for engineers and the enrollment of engineering students is growing (Genalo, Bruning, & Adams, 2000), and career aspirations of high school students are inconsistent with the employment…

An activity involving analysis of art in biology courses was designed with the goals of piquing undergraduates' curiosity, broadening the ways in which college students meaningfully engage with course content and concepts, and developing aspects of students' higher-level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. To meet these…

Through the construction of arguments, students are invited to make sense of the concept of a species and its connection to both extinction and local biomes. Scientific argumentation is the process by which scientists engage in discourse aimed at developing common knowledge about the natural world (Driver et al. 1994). This article describes a 5E…

When teachers, parents, and community members work together, children benefit (Henderson and Mapp 2002). This is especially true when the collaboration is coordinated and focused as it was for the Greenteam, a science ecology club and an event created by a network of educators, elementary students, and science professionals. The club and a…

Of the eight scientific practices highlighted in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas," the first is for students to develop abilities to ask questions and define problems (NRC 2012). Constructing a range of questions about an object or phenomenon validates not only what students have…

Using an interactive map-based PDF, students learn key concepts related to biodiversity while developing data-analysis and critical-thinking skills. The Bird Island lesson provides students with experience in translating geospatial data into bar graphs, then interpreting these graphs to compare biodiversity across ecoregions on a fictional island.…

In this two-part activity, high school biology students examine human karyotyping, sex-chromosome-linked disorders, and the relationship between biological sex and gender. Through interactive simulations and a structured discussion lab, students create a human karyotype and diagnose chromosomal disorders in hypothetical patients, as well as…

The "Learn to Think" (LTT) Intervention Program was developed for raising thinking abilities of primary and secondary school students. It has been implemented in more than 300 schools, and more than 200,000 students took part in the experiment over a 10"year span. Several longitudinal intervention studies showed that LTT could…

"Inquiry" is a nearly ubiquitous part of recommendations for effective practice in school science worldwide. Teachers often experience difficulties, however, in engaging students in inquiry activities in which they are asked to explore physical phenomena (and energy) and, from their inquiries, derive appropriate conclusions about nature. It has…