Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 53) Little Shop of Physics the Colorado Rural Electric Association, CSU’s Academic Enhancement Program, and, more recently, the Center for Multi-scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMMAP), a CSU group funded by the National Science Foundation that is studying cloud formation and how it affects climate. Though Little Shop accepts donations from the schools it visits, Jones is firm in his stance that these remain donations only. “Our core principle is that no one has to pay, ever,” he says. “I will shake down PTAs, and I will shake A Different Light: Sheila Ferguson (right) and down granting agencies, but students study the differnever kids.” ence between fluorescent Interestingly, Jones adds, the lightbulbs and incandescent ones (which waste energy use of everyday household maby emitting large amounts terials—now so integral to the of invisible infrared light). Jones Little Shop aesthetic—wasn’t an explains. original focus. “If I had had more “You can do this. We’ve done it; we’re money at the beginning, Little Shop probably would have had a very different look sharing this with you. It’s just a mile from here to it,” he says. “We didn’t have money. So, in- where all this stuff was put together, and it’s stead, we just adapted stuff, and it became a built out of parts that you could get.” To that end, Little Shop targets as wide an theme.” That theme, expressed in school visits, teacher workshops, and open houses with par- audience as it can: During the weeklong 2007 ents and families, is that anyone can do this. spring break, Little Shop joined forces with Little Shop isn’t just intellectually accessible; it’s CSU’s Native American Student Services to bring a vanload of undergraduates and materialso hands-on science at public school prices. “A big part of the message is empowerment,” als to schools and communities in the Navajo and Southern Ute reservations in Colorado and New Mexico. Students whose elementary school curricula offered very little science, or who had no plans for college, were able to see science in everyday objects—and scientists as everyday people. At the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, in Colorado Springs, Little Shop members found deaf students so enamored with Voice-o-Vision—an adapted black-and-white TV that graphically displays sound waves created by speaking into a microphone—that they later returned to help those students build Voice-o-Visions of their own. “That was the noisiest classroom I have ever been in!” recalls teacher-in-residence Sheila Ferguson. “They were really letting it all out just to see what it looked like.” Jones says he sees this kind of empowerment—tied to a personal “A-ha!” moment— again and again. When Little Shop visited Lesher Middle School in April, Jones says, “Some of the kids asked, ‘Who builds all this stuff?’ And I said, ‘We do! We build it.’ It was so amazing to them, because there’s this tremendous disconnect. Things are designed and built ‘elsewhere.’ The idea that the people there were the creative force behind it was really quite something to the kids.” It is quite something to teachers, too—and not only to teachers from the Poudre School District. Workshops have been offered in Azerbaijan, Belize, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, and Ethiopia, and the workshops have drawn teachers to the United States from Chile, Gambia, and Korea. Whether educators are from Ethiopia’s Abbiyi Addi College or Azerbaijan’s Baku Teacher Training Institute, Jones encourages them to explore in the same way students do. Jones’s class prep includes a visit to the local market in each destination, where he finds inexpensive materials such as bottles, boxes, and tubes; he then integrates the objects into the workshop. Teachers from Korea, for instance, tried their hand at Iron Physics Teacher, an inclass competition that required SEPTEMBER 2007 EDUTOPIA 53 Tie-Dye Pride: The Little Shop of Physics is a way of life for its members.
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