THE APPLICATION OF THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN ADDRESSING THE STANDARDS

The above, four inseparable and essential elements, enables students to more successfully address the broad statements in the Standards and the teacher to better determine what is missing in the students background/experience if they are having difficulty.   Students need to set the learning experience in a broad context, focus on scientific data and/information, employ certain skills, and apply the scientific ground rules. If the student lacks success, the teacher will be able to determine more precisely the problem relating to the lack of background/experience in which or what part of the four essential elements.

It will be necessary to develop success indicators to determine how it would be known that students had arrived with the necessary background and experiences in each of the four essentials..

Examples of such broad statements: 
(from the Standards)

	"Ask a (scientific) question about objects, organisms, and events in the (natural) environment."
	"Plan and conduct a simple (scientific) investigation."
	"Use data to construct a reasonable (scientific) explanation."
	"Design and construct a scientific investigation."
	"Identify questions and concepts that guide scientific investigations."
	"Formulate and revise scientific explanations and models using logic and evidence.

PHASE II THE APPLICATION OF THE ESSENTIALS TO EXAMINING WEB-SITES

Once consensus has been achieved in Phase I about operationally defining Science as Inquiry, the foundation is in place for Phase II and beyond, In Phase II and the design of the rubrics (criteria & indicators) to look at web-sites, the committee will use the operational definition to identify web-sites that are most appropriately in support of the definition.   There are other important parameters that we may not address in this stage.

 Our claim will be that: (based upon consensus)

A. The material must be set in a broad context (conceptual framework) of looking at a larger parameter of investigating some aspect of change, organization, systems, and/or interrelationships in the natural world. This is a logical framework for organizing the data and information that will lend to scientific knowledge development.

B. The data and information must be in a field of science that is both relevant and up-to-date.

C. The students must be expected to apply the skills that are essential for making observations, collecting data, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and other such skills.

 D. The material must encourage the nurturing of the use of the scientific ground rules such as respect for data, demand for verification, respect for logic and other scientific reasoning abilities.   This can be done by asking, "how do you know" and "what is the evidence" type questions.

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