Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description

• Grade Level:Upper Elementary - Middle School

• Subject Area: Science

Brief Description

    Students will work collaboratively, via the Internet, with another class/school/country, to share and analyze data. They will interact with another class to construct a reasonable explanation for the evidence they have gathered. They will use logic and critical thinking skills to explore the relationships between evidence & explanations.
Objectives

    Students will:

• Contact another school.
• Share and compare data.
• Discuss and explain similarities and differences in data.

Materials and Resources

    In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements:none
2. Special software requirements: Any operating system that includes a database with the ability to run a query that can also report averages.
3. Internet access: choose one Low-speed (less than 28,000 BPS via modem).

Activity Description

     Pre-activity Preparation

     Locate another class via email that is willing to work collaboratively with you on this project. There are listserves that you can join and post an interest in a particular subject/idea or project. Contact a school that is already on the web for a list of teachers.

     Activity

• Discuss the data gathered from lesson 2.

  Did the students infer diet, lifestyle or activity level could be a factor in heart rate? If so, maybe contacting a school in another country where their diet and lifestyle is different than ours. Did the students find that age made a difference? Maybe contact a class or group of people that are of a different age group than yours.

• Online - Share data and explanations with partner class.
  

• In class - As a large group (with LCD screen or TV hook-up for display purposes), compare data.

Did they have similarities and differences common with yours? Was there any evidence that was inconsistant? What were the explanations they came up with? Does the combined data support or contradict your original explanation?
• Use the evidence to collaborate as a class to form an explanation for the differences in heart rates.

• Online - Share explanations with partner class. Are there any Questions? Is there any more evidence needed?

• Form a collaborative conclusion based on the evidence.

Back to Heart Rate Unit