Learning to Learn

I had a terrific project finalization meeting with a freshman student yesterday. I was a little nervous going in because her mother was going to sit in. That doesn't normally bother me, but this was just a beginning exploration for H. She knew she was interested in astronomy and plans to do a full blown project in the fall. As preparation for that, she was dabbling to discover where her interests lie. She thought she'd start with constellations, learn a bit about stars, get a little background information, and use a visit to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory as a capstone for this exploration. All of this would help her determine where to head. The purpose of the meeting yesterday was to determine credit earned for her beginning research and the communication of what she learned, and to fine tune where she would be headed in the fall.

Often times parents expect to hear a litany of factoids--The sun is a star. It is 91 million miles from the earth. The nine planets in our solar system revolve around the sun. No worries, valuers of factoids, many of those important facts came out in our conversation, but that's not where we started. I was excited to see her using those facts to begin to discover and answer her own questions.

I asked H. what she had learned and she shared that she was surprised to learn that stars have life cycles. I asked her why that was important. It was shocking to her to think that the sun won't last forever. "Did you know that it is halfway through its cyle? It's been around for around 5 billion years and only has about 5 billion years left. Sure, that's a long time, but what will people do?" She acknowledged that two sites she visited had posted different ages for the sun and that this was going to take some more research, but the seed was planted. She wants to know more about this.

Another thing that she was interested in was shooting stars. She discovered that they are actually meteors entering the earth's atmosphere. I asked her why they light up when they break through. She wasn't sure but she thought that it was something to do with friction. "Remember Apollo 13. They were worried about their ship burning up when they entered the earth's atmosphere." She went on from there to wonder if maybe it has something to do with the life cyle. She asked me if I had ever seen a light bulb "die." She said that she has seen a brilliant flash right before they burn out. She wonders if a star is dimmer when it is "born" and becomes brighter as it gets ready to "die." These are good questions.

We went on to talk about constellations. I asked her why anyone ever decided to name the shapes created by stars. She was intrigued by the mythology that surrounds them. She said that it is natural for people to want to "make sense of their world" and that creating stories about something as powerful and "eternal" as stars helped them to do that. She wondered if religion maybe does the same thing for people. She was surprised to learn that some constellations are only visible from certain parts of the world. She recognized practical uses for constellations for explorers and sailors to find their way.

H. also talked about what she learned about creating PowerPoint presentations. Her last ppt was jam-packed with text. This time she spent time sifting through and finding key pieces of information. "It was a lot harder to do, but you have to think about your audience. People don't want to read all of that. It's better to give them a great picture and a few details you want them to remember. You can talk about the rest."

Her works cited slide was much improved as well, and I was delighted to hear her explain why that was important. "People need to know where I got my information. They will see from this that I need to check out some of my information from more credible sources. I don't think I should have Wikipedia on here. I'll use it to help me search next time, but I know some of my other sites are more important--you want the ones done by scientists."

She is at the beginning stages of real scientific inquiry. She has a keen desire to learn more and is confident that she knows how to do so. She is paying attention to the steps of her process and using what she knows to think about new information. H. is Learning to Learn.