Describes efforts to include cooperative learning and multimedia in a general chemistry lecture course at the State University of New York College at Oneonta. Highlights include the need for a new course design due to declining student performance, the use of presentation software, costs, student reactions, and differences in teaching styles. (LRW)

Presents an activity of students hunting for dirt in the classroom to launch a study of the environment and to provide children with an exercise in which they learn and use the skills of collecting, labeling, organizing, observational drawing, classifying, hypothesizing, and summarizing. (PR)

Students explore the workings of the lever, wheel and axle, and the inclined plane as they build simple toys--a bulldozer and a road grader. The project takes four weeks. Diagrams and procedures are included. (PR)

Discusses reasons why inservice workshops often fail to impact science teaching. Describes restructuring of a workshop series so that teachers become real science learners, struggling with their own ideas about different scientific concepts as they design experiments and share theories with their peers. (JRH)

Examined (n=36) teachers' perceptions and use of interactive videodiscs (IVD) in the teaching of science. Perceptions tended to be positive. Major barriers to IVD usage were limited equipment availability and lack of time to develop and implement IVD-based lessons. (Author/MKR)

Argues that questioning used artfully can transform a classroom from a traditional lecture setting into a lively student-centered community. Outlines three different kinds of questions. Compares learning to ask good questions with learning to bat in professional baseball, and discusses several elements involved in developing excellent questioning…

Explores the efficacy of promoting a beginning chemistry teacher's curriculum development and teaching practices through the use of computers. Observes and analyzes the teacher's instructional practices both before and after the web site treatment which includes pictorial analogies, historical cases of science, and discrepant events. Reports…

Describes the objective behind this special issue: to identify a science content area (physics for eighth to eleventh graders), work with science teachers to produce a set of content materials, and present a common content outline to a group of instructional designers. The first article describes the derivation of the content outline. The next…

Discusses the categories of spatial thinking and explains methods for helping students develop spatial thinking skills, ask open-ended questions, and choose student-centered activities. Provides activity examples that involve spatial thinking for elementary grades. (YDS)

Focuses on issues related to safety, education, and entertainment in classroom demonstrations. Explains to preservice teachers how to conduct a demonstration to motivate students. Lists several elements that should be included for a successful demonstration which include purpose, planning, repeatability, simplicity, safety, visibility, and…

Assessed the impact of elementary science experiences on the development of sixth-graders' epistemological views. Found that, compared to students in a traditional science classroom, those in a constructivist classroom developed an epistemological stance toward science that focused on the central role of ideas in the knowledge acquisition process.…

Discusses increasing students' time on task and provides data showing where time is lost. Suggests several steps to prevent time loss. First published in 1994. (YDS)

Evaluates the participation of high school students in the activities of an international conference on experimental biology. Students develop criteria to overcome difficulties with vocabulary and content and acquire updated scientific information. (Author/DDR)

Reports on the development of a series of assignments for use in a basic microbiology course involving sophomore-, junior-, and senior-level students from five different biology majors. Assignments include writing, a class debate, and case history studies. (Author/MM)

This article describes the PROVE strategy, which provides students with learning disabilities with a procedure for naming a concept, providing evidence (both why and how), and defending it. Research results are presented that indicate students with (n=12) and without (n=26) disabilities benefited from the PROVE strategy. (Contains references.) (CR)