All posts by Daniel Bibawy

SbS Chapter 3

Reflection

Daniel Bibawy

10/01/13

The chapter starts off by giving reasons as to why learning takes place in informal science. The first is juxtaposition, which I understood as realizing that something is not the way you thought it was. I think this is a great tool to use when learning something, as it is an eye-opening and memorable experience and will help you remember this experience in the future. Multiple modes is giving a learner several methods to learn something and allowing the person to understand it in multiple ways. Interactivity is what the chapter focused on the most. Interactivity is the process of an informal science learner having a personal experience or interaction with the exhibit shown in front of him or her and making this experience more memorable through the personal interaction the learner has with it. There was an interactive exhibit of a skeleton during which children were allowed to play and fiddle around with it and after the exhibit, an astonishing 96% of the children were able to accurately draw a skeleton, even after some time after seeing the exhibit. Such numbers are difficult to argue with.

There was an activity named “Cell Lab” during which participants were able to conduct a variety of experiments in a wet-lab which were guided by the museum that housed these labs. One thing I thought was especially interactive about this activity was that the participants would put on the attire of a scientist (goggles, lab coat, gloves) which served to purposes: it assured the safety of the participants and really made them feel that they were scientists doing chemical experiments. This experiment brought out all 6 strands of science learning discussed in chapter two. It sparked the interest of the science learner, discussed in strand 1. They learn more and further their knowledge of the science topic as strand 2 talks about. They use the scientific method of asking questions, developing hypotheses and discovering answers to their questions discussed in strands 3 and 4. They use the technology of science and identify themselves as scientists, discussed in strands 5 and 6.

An exhibit called “The Mind” shows a plethora of ways in which a thought or mental dilemma can have physical manifestations. For example in one of the exhibits, participants choose, or choose not, to drink out of a toilet shaped fountain that has clean water and tell how they found the taste of the water.

This chapter really opened my eyes to the effect science can have on its learners. For the group of teens discussed in the last portion of the chapter, their lives were changed from having failing grades in high school to becoming college graduates because of the science experiment they had conducted for two years and saw come to fruition. I never thought of science as life changing in this regard. I suppose that when you put so much time and effort into a project and see it work out, it is a rewarding experience and helps mold a teenager, or even an adults, self-image and self-approval.

Everyday Science Visual- Kisa, Adrienne, Mohammed, Daniel

Everyday Science Kisa Adrienne Daniel Mohammed

When we discussed the data we found, we wrote down the topics that all of our interviews touched. When we were finished, we found that our interviews touched on so many topics, many of which we would not consider science by everyday standards, yet our interviewees found it important to include in the interviews. Our visual is meant to show that almost all of these topics connect to each other in one way or another and that science is much wider and broader than what we normally consider it to be. Doing this project and having these interviews showed us that many people consider everyday things to be scientific, such as the clothing designer and the baker. It opened our eyes to the idea that science is not solely biology, physics, and chemistry.

SbS Chapter 2

Reflection

Reading this chapter, I went through a range of emotions. In the beginning of the chapter, it seemed to me like the author was trying to convey the idea that science requires a lot of work to understand (an idea I will return to), when he writes about the jargon and terminology of science. However, when he gave the example of the Project FeederWatch, I understood his purpose in including the earlier idea of the difficulty of science. It contrasted nicely and helped get his point across. However, when he wrote about the strands of science, it began to seem a little unrealistic to me. Some of the strands are very difficult and require a lot out of the casual science learner who would like to learn more about science but doesn’t want to do a lot of work to do so. For example, strand 3 is “Engaging in Scientific Reasoning,” which would involve a lot of effort and time be put in by a casual science learner. Perhaps the casual admirer of science wouldn’t like to sit and discuss his findings. Perhaps he would be intimidated by the jargon and complexity of what he found. Strand 5, “Using the Tools and Language of Science,” discusses this. It says that the learner would begin to understand the language and jargon, which might be too much work for him/her. Strand 6, “Identifying with a Scientific Enterprise,” was the one that seemed most unrealistic to me. It gave an example of an amateur gardener hypothetically doing a lot of his own research and volunteering in a greenhouse or botanic garden. I just don’t think that anyone who is just casually into science would go through all that trouble, nor do most people have the time to invest in something that is just a hobby. Perhaps I am being cynical and perhaps I’m underestimating the success that strand 1 “Sparking Interest and Excitement,” would have to bring people to do all this just for the sake of a hobby. I believe some of the main aspects that made Project FeederWatch so successful was that it was anonymous, easily accessible, and quick. I think that it was anonymous was important because there was no pressure on the birdfeeder to look good or bad in front of anyone and he felt free to be honest with what he or she observed. I think it was important that it was easily accessible and quick because it didn’t ask a lot out of the birdfeeder to go online and submit their observations. I do like the idea as a whole of getting people more involved; I just think the way the book went about it was a bit impractical.

“The 95 Percent Solution”

Reflection

Daniel Bibawy

09.05.13

As I read “The 95 Percent Solution,” I came up with one conclusion on my own. You only really learn anything when you are interested in it. This may seem obvious to you, but to me I did not really understand this until I started college. Even the things that we are taught in school, we do not really embrace and understand unless we care about them and care to learn them ourselves. For example, I would not say I am the type of person who takes an interest in many things, let alone things of a more educational nature, yet I do find myself interested and even fascinated by psychology. One of the few books I read in high school for my own leisure was a psychology book that I was so engrossed in that for a couple of years after I finished reading it, I felt I had a decent grasp on psychology until I started my first semester in college and took an intro to psychology class that furthered my knowledge of psychology and increased my admiration for it. My point is that you will not actually learn anything unless you care to take an interest in it yourself. Otherwise it will be memorization and useless jargon that has no meaning to you. For this reason I think the amateur astrology students in the club had more knowledge than the undergraduate college students who majored in astrology. I also think this is the reason that older Americans performed more highly than international adults in science: because the things they learned in science were of their own interest and volition.

Introduction

A) My name is Daniel Bibawy. I am a second year psychology major in the Macaulay Honors program in Brooklyn College. I am studying to become a physical therapist, the lone person in the program who is studying for this.

B) Being that my career choice is a science-oriented one, this Seminar will be of the most relevance to me than previous seminars. I expect to learn about science in this class in a way I have not in the past. Specifically, I expect to see science in a different light than the memorizations in biology and the formulas in chemistry that have become my definition of science. I expect this class to widen my views and ideas of science.

C) In the Bioblitz, my group studied and watched birds, looking specifically for their behavioral differences, such as how each species acts as a group. We also studied the birds’ superficial aspects, such as the color of their feathers and the specific calls they make to one another. The importance, I must admit, seemed minimal to me. I did not understand the importance of watching birds and learning to differentiate this bird from that bird by its calls or by its feathers or things of that nature.

D) In our group we had a number of professionals watching the birds with us. The one we spoke with and taught us the most was of course the ornithologist. I was amazed by how much he knew and how he could differentiate the birds by the most minimal of feather colors from a good distance. His enthusiasm for what he was doing also inspired me, namely because I could never share the same enthusiasm for birds that he does. There were other professionals with us as well. There was a journalist from the NY Times interviewing several students, including myself, and someone working from the park, perhaps for safety reasons considering we were moving as a big group. I believe these people were doing this for work and got paid for what they did. However, the journalist and the ornithologist seemed to really be enjoying what they were doing, which was refreshing. I respected them for their admiration for what we were doing, even though I myself could not see the practicality of it.

E) I don’t particularly see the benefit as citizens, however I think this is something everyone should at least try for a number of reasons. It’s nice to get out and out of the house and the ventilated air and appreciate nature just for what it is. Something I took out of the BioBlitz was that I realized that there is so much life in the world and the world is so vast and varied and just so beautiful. It’s nice to just stand outside and relax and just watch the birds fly in the park. It’s a peaceful experience everyone should at least try, just to see if it’s something they would like.

F) Although I did not particularly enjoy the BioBlitz, I’m glad I was a part of it. I have never gone birdwatching in my life, and odds are I would’ve never went bird watching if I was not forced to by the Macaulay Honors program. I do not tend to step out of my comfort zone often and try new things, and that is something I really do appreciate about being a part of Macaulay Honors. This was not the first time I had a “first time” experience as a result of something I did with Macaulay Honors, but it was one of the few times I did not enjoy what we did. I would not like to go on another BioBlitz, but I did appreciate that I had the experience to go this time.