Over the last year, coaches and center coordinators have shared with us stories about their experiences with ScienceQuest. As your team works through each phase of ScienceQuest, stories from past SQ coaches and coordinators may give you ideas to address challenges or inspire you to try something new.

Share your own story by emailing sciencequest@edc.org.

| Set Up Teams | Phase 1: Immerse in Science | Phase 2: Make a Plan |
| Phase 3: Investigate | Phase 4: Build a Web Site |

Set Up Teams

Find Coaches

At Pelham Village in Framingham, the lab coordinator invited a young woman to be a coach, knowing that she was excited about kids, and eager to learn more about web page creation herself. She agreed when an older student offered to baby-sit her child during the coaching time.

In Roxbury, the lab coordinator talked to the proprietor of a local restaurant about having her daughter join a ScienceQuest team. The girl's mother asked questions about the project, and she got motivated to volunteer with ScienceQuest. Since the restaurant was not busy between 3 PM and 5 PM, she became a coach and worked with kids during her afternoon free time.

Find Youth Team Members

Cruz Management has an after school program in a different building from the computer center, so kids don't regularly come over to the computer center after school. In order to let kids know about ScienceQuest, the computer center director decided to take the computer to them! She and one of the coaches went to the after school program to describe ScienceQuest to the kids, taking a portable computer with them. Each kid was asked to describe his or her interests, and then the coach showed the kid how to look up Internet information about that topic. Interested kids then signed up for the program. Ten kids signed up-five on Tuesdays and five on Thursdays. At the end of the project, the center director designed a ScienceQuest mural with pictures of the kids at work. The mural attracted more kids to the project, and the next round of ScienceQuest had begun.

Castle Square Tenants' Organization runs a very busy after school tutoring and computer center. High School students are employed as homework tutors to the younger kids, and everyone has some free time on the computers. The team members were requesting a special role within the center, but they were too young to be tutors and too old for regular after school program. ScienceQuest fit the bill. The center director established rules for participation: be the right age, commit to the project and have completed all homework before ScienceQuest time started. Eight youths joined the first year, and others were on a waiting list.

Prepare the Lab

At High Point Village, the lab coordinator cleared out a bottom file drawer in her office adjoining the lab and let the kids store their notebooks and other materials there. In addition, during ScienceQuest time, no other kids were allowed into the room. This created a special atmosphere that encouraged the youth to feel the value of their work.

Phase 1: Immerse in Science

Science with Toys

At one of the initial ScienceQuest sessions, the High Point coach handed each team member small toys including magnetic marbles, magnifying glasses, and prism slides. The coach invited the youth participants to examine each object, play with it to learn how it worked, and then describe what they found to the others. The team members then asked themselves, "What more do I want to know?" The assistant coaches kept track of the team's ideas on a poster board hanging on the wall. Before the session ended, team members recorded in their journals what they had learned and what more they wanted to know.

The Ten Minute Field Trip

In another immersion activity, the kids went outside in the late New England spring snow in search of signs of animal life in the just-thawed ground around their neighborhood. Before the walk, they had posed the following questions: How do animals spend the winter? What do they do when the weather warms up and the snow melts? Each team member recorded his or her questions on a sheet prepared by the coaches. During the walk, they took notes on their observations, including both those observations that addressed their questions as well as observations that led to other questions.

At Home Scientists

At Castle Square, the coach used the immersion period to expose the kids to home-based science experiments. For the first four weeks, he brought in different materials with which to carry out experiments. One day he brought in a hair dryer and a ping-pong ball, and the kids looked at the relationship between gravity and friction. Another day he brought in K'nex and the kids designed complex structures, focusing on aspects of engineering design. After doing the experiment, the kids sometimes went to the Internet to learn more about the phenomenon they were looking at. Their immersion stage focused on doing and reading.

Phase 2: Make a Plan

Yucky Bacteria

The Yucky Bacteria team was ready to start work. First they needed a plan to find out about bacteria. The ScienceQuest science specialist planned a visit to a marine biologist at the Aquarium. The biologist showed them some web sites about human bacteria and healthy living. They decided to collect water samples from the following sources: a nearby river, the water tap, and a commercial water bottle. With this plan of activities, the team was set to begin. They knew they would be taking pictures and notes along the way.

Volcanic Action

At Battle Farms in Brockton, MA, the team was inspired by a video on volcanoes. As a result, the team decided to walk around the center to search for local rocks. One quest that the team asked themselves was, "Were there any volcanoes in my neighborhood?" The team made a list of possible sources of information: books, Internet sites about volcanoes, "ask geologists" on the web, and personal observations about rocks the team had found. Over the next week, the team found web sites that would be valuable to them in their searches.

Phase 3: Investigate!

Animal Explorations

The Mane Team planned an expedition to the zoo. Dana, a team coach, called ahead to make certain that a zookeeper would guide the team through the zoo's lion section. To prepare, ScienceQuest coaches helped the team gather preliminary information and develop questions to ask the zookeeper. The team found basic information in encyclopedias and on web sites. Team members brainstormed questions based on what they had learned in their research. In addition, the team wanted to be sure that they would be able to record information gathered at the zoo. Team members decided to record their visit to the zoo with a video camera. This prompted an ad-hoc practice session with the camera.

Once at the zoo, the zookeeper answered the team's questions. In addition to video taping their favorite animals, team members recorded their observations by taking notes and drawing pictures.

Later, back at the center, each team illustrated one lion fact, with annotations that included captions and additional information. As team members expanded their knowledge about lions, they posed more questions. To continue gathering information, they returned to reading reference materials and watching video footage. The coaches integrated stories of lions into their activities by reading Aesop's Fables.

Air Jordan?

The Somerville ScienceQuest team developed the following question: "How does Michael Jordan jump so high?" In order to learn more, they focused their research on sports specialists. They went to the Boston Sports Museum and spoke with a local physical therapist. While gathering research, one team member discovered, "It turns out that Michael Jordan doesn't jump that much higher. It's just the cameras that make it look that way." The Somerville team had started their investigation with a sports science question. The team's research led them to study another area -- perception on television.

Phase 4: Build a Web Site

What's a Good Site?

One team reviewed web sites already completed by other teams before they started theirs. One girl noted, "It's good, but isn't it sort of short? I can make a much better one." This prompted a discussion of criteria for a good web site. The group then designed their own site by using index cards for each page, arranging them on the wall, and then writing the name of each page on it as it was being created.

Planning a Web Site

At Cruz Management one of the groups developed a web site they called "Animals and Imitators." Each child had a specific interest: rabbits, dogs, wolves, and robots. When they were ready to build their web site, they decided to work together on the home page and then have each child develop two pages for their particular specialty. That way the kids both worked together on design, and had a chance to develop their own pages. The first step for the kids was to draft a page design on chart paper. They pulled out magic markers and paper and began to experiment with layout, text, photos, and links. Once they had a general idea of how they wanted their page to look, they went to the computer and started to design it. Each kid had a series of 'web goals,' which included internal links, external links, background design, photo, and typeface font, size, and color. The coach focused on each child building their pages on their own and learning the skills for themselves.

Putting It Together

The String Telephone team's web building process included team members taking turns at the keyboard to do the following: make a headline; adjust the font type, color, and size to their liking; insert a picture from a team activity; write a paragraph about their experiment; and make a table summarizing their experimental data. Finally, they mounted the draft site to a temporary host on a web server.