Making Science Cool Videos

Posted by on February 08, 2010

Making Science Cool

The After-School Corporation has produced a series of short videos that make the case for science after school. Each video is 1-2 minutes in length and shows kids engaging in hands-on science activities after school.

Why Do Science After School?
Engaging in science after school is not a substitute for having kids acquire basic math/science skills and knowledge at school. It’s a way to excite kids about acquiring that knowledge, to involve them in tactile, surprising, real-world applications. See the telescope build by Harlem third graders in this video:

http://www.vimeo.com/8896015

Oobleck
Oobleck is a hands-on science activity that introduces kids to inquiry, observation and states of matter. Here’s one after-school educator trying Oobleck for the first time with her kids:

http://www.vimeo.com/8896274

Science Training for After-School Educators
Programs don’t need science or math experts to lead activities. Well-trained after-school educators are in some ways better prepared to model the inquiry process, given that they discover the answers to science inquiries alongside kids. See the difference training can make:

http://www.vimeo.com/8896687

Who Does Science?
At the beginning of the After-School Science PLUS curriculum, after-school educators ask kids to draw pictures of scientists. After several months of science programming, the kids do the “Who Does Science?” activity again. This time, the results are very different:

http://www.vimeo.com/8896981

The videos are on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/user/tascorp#p/c/430BD5F2864A98D4), as well as Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/album/170022), for easy embedding and sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. They also live on the TASC Web site here: http://www.tascorp.org/section/resources/articles/science_2010.