Meet the Scientists Paper/Project

         One of the first projects I like to do with my high school classes is called Meet the Scientists.  This project I did when I was in college as an education student at Miami University.  There are various versions of this lesson that science teachers are usually exposed too depending on the age group they teach.  I have mostly freshman in high school so I start out with a research paper about the scientist  they are assigned.  This also serves as an introduction to APA citation (Which I can then hold them accountable for the rest of the year on other projects).  In this project the students will research more "unknown" scientists that have had a huge impact on our lives. These are the type of scientists they would not normally be exposed too. The list of scientists that I use are comprised of scientists that have made an impact on our society and must be a woman or a person of non-white ethnicity. In a nutshell "No old white guys!"


         In Meet the Scientist I start out with the bell ringer "Draw a picture of a scientist in your journal."   After giving them a few minutes I ask them to raise their hands and share some aspects about their scientists.  I always get the man with the crazy hair, glasses, white lab coat holding some kind of erlenmeyer flask.  Then I ask "tell me some names of scientists that you have heard of before." Too no surprise I always get Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Bill Nye the science guy, some remember Alfred Wegener and Galileo.  Maybe some extras here and there, but these are by far the most popular.

          I then begin to follow with the introduction to the project where we discuss that the stereotypes of scientist do not apply to ALL scientists.  I then give them the scientists and let them pick which one they would like to do a project on.  I make sure to let them know if they pick a scientists of the opposite gender they may have to impersonate them.

         After the students turn in their research papers I introduce them to their project. This will look different for every school depending on the technology they have.  We are very luck at my school in that all of the students have MacBook Air laptops they can take home.  I do have some really good ideas for non-tech classrooms as well.

The Project

I have attached in the paper that I give my students to introduce the paper and for them reference along the way.  Link Here.

Most of my students made 3 types of projects:

1) Whiteboard animations
     a) Here is a link to one on Neil DeGrasse Tyson that a student did in my class.

2) Personal narrative as scientists
      a) Where it was just them dressed and acting like their scientists in the video.

3) Interview of scientist
     a) This is where scientists can either interview each other

4) Making a video as a their scientists


Non-Tech classrooms: If you do not have access to computers or video cameras there is still a lot of things that are cheap and accessible.

Some Ideas might be

• Make a twitter feed on a blank wall and have them draw their profile pictures and write "tweets" that might have come from their scientists. (Also can be fun with the use of hashtags) 
• Have them do an in class presentation as their scientists (more fun in costume) 
• Have them do a meet and greet as themselves in class and as character 
• Or they can have the option of what type of project they do