FaceTime With a Biologist: Using Technology to Forward the Scientific Process

On Friday, February 12, my first grade class FaceTimed my daughter, Katie.  Katie, a 2012 Morse High School graduate, is currently a senior double majoring in biology and psychology at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.  Since January, 2015, Katie has been doing research on "CRISP-Cas9 mediated inactivation of KCC4a gene in zebrafish" (according to her resume) and consequently has learned to write lab reports to support the scientific process.

Katie as a first grader at Dike-Newell

First Katie showed one of her completed lab reports and asked for comments and questions from my students. Many noticed how neat and organized her report was, how long it was, and that it was typed, not written. Katie commented that she had to write her reports in this manner so that her professors could read them and understand her writing.  

Then, she asked my students specifically what they knew about the scientific process.  Many students could recite the steps: ask a question, generate a hypothesis, gather materials, make observations, and come to a conclusion. She talked about how important it was that their lab reports be neat enough so that they can reread it, and that it was important to be very clear about their observations. This modeling helped my students understand that the quality of their writing matters.

Finally, Katie opened questions and comments to the first graders.  They were very curious about what she was researching.  She told them that she was researching the gene that controls how big zebrafish can grow. Due to security reasons, Katie could not FaceTime from her lab and show them specifically what she was doing. However, the first graders easily connected her research to zebrafish because I showed them some images of zebrafish after we finished FaceTimeing.  

This lesson represented an excellent real life connection between what my students are learning in school today to a job they may want to pursue as an adult.  Connecting learning to real world experiences is a practice that research has identified as contributing to deeper learning outcomes for students (Martinez and McGrath, 2014).  Consequently, I was not surprised when one student told me, "When I grow up, I want to be a scientist. That was just so exciting."

If you would like to learn more about Katie's work, you can read her publications here and here.

Katie as an undergraduate at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts