Dear Angelo:

You can use a team debate if you are interested in developing critical thinking skills but relate the topic to students' prior reading/experience/ or science issue that affects their world. Here's the link on RG of how to organize the debate that I hope would be helpful for you:

Conference Paper Debating: A Dynamic Teaching Strategy for Motivating Student...

Many thanks,

Debra

I am working on a research... teaching by, invention... try to read the project on my page... it maybe helpful.

Dear Angelo,

Depending on the goals of your training I would suggest considering two topics:

1.) Simple Physics Experiments With Everyday Materials

You will find a lot of simple experiments you can conduct with everyday materials both online and in journals like The Physics Teachers. The biggest advantage of these kind of experiments are in my experience that pupils often know the materials from their every experience and they quite often show fascinating phenomena. Some of them are very good ways to illustrate a physics law qualitatively. They often are a good way to start a lesson because they keep the pupils wondering what is going on and might motivate to analyze the scientific background.

2.) Smartphone Physics

Depending on your students it might be interesting to use the various possibilities their smartphone has as a sensor. I suggest the very well-crafted app Phyphox (http://www.rwth-aachen.de/cms/root/Die-RWTH/Aktuell/Pressemitteilungen/September/~lwwh/Physiker-der-RWTH-entwickeln-Experimenti/?lidx=1), available for both iOs and Android for free. You might be interested into the experiments Jochen Kuhn and colleagues developed and published in a series of papers in The Physics Teacher (e.g. https://www.aapt.org/Resources/iPhysics-Labs.cfm), but there are a lot more experiments to discover, e.g. just recently: Article Using smartphone thermal cameras to engage students’ misconc...

Hope that helps.

Best regards

Christoph

Entre los materiales para la enseñanza no deben faltar los métodos vivenciales que exigen del profesor mucha creatividad, tampoco deben faltar los metodos de situaciones que pone la realidad al alcance de los estudiantes y tambien requiere creatividad. Creo que ningún recurso puede sustituir a la creatividad y compromiso del profesor.

Angelo, I salute your goal to assist your upcoming workshop participants in your country by engaging in STEM with improvised materials. As a former Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Swaziland, Africa (1981-1984) I developed a preference (driven initially by need but later by preference) for using locally available (and economical) materials, also. One improvised material I have used in my STEM PD workshops that I lead is a used plastic bottle (with its screw top) such as a small Gatorade bottle that is not a smooth cylinder (important to clean and sanitize the bottle before use). I challenge my participants, working in teams of 4 to figure out a way to fill the provided bottle half way (by volume) with water using only the bottle. I also provide them a pitcher of water to use in this challange and a stirring rod (which could be made of any material available). Each team of participants is provided these materials along with piece of colored tape (could be simply masking tape) to place on the outside of the bottle (bottom of tape aligned with top of water) that indicates the level of the water they have decided is exactly at the halfway fill mark in the bottle. Participants struggle to decided where that level, is since almost all recognize due to the bottle shape it would not be at what they see is the halfway height point. Some guess where the halfway point may be using an "eyeball strategy", while others come come to see that the bottle has a plastic seam line along its vertical shape which can be used to find the halfway by volume level of the water by turning the bottle sideways and by trial and error filling the bottle with water from a pitcher until the water level aligns with the seam. Participants place their team's water bottle with top secured and tape on the outside of the bottle side by side for comparison. Invariably, the bottles have differing places they have placed their tape. We debrief on their methods of coming to a "solution"to the challenge, with the the goal of deciding which strategy may be most fruitful in solving the challenge most accurately. We discuss the notion of "elegance" in strategy selection which for science is oftentimes associated with the notion of choosing the simplistic strategy which is shown to arrive at correct solution to a problem. The participants then usually select the seam strategy as fulfilling that criterion in this case. I then wonder if there may be a way to check to see if the seam strategy really has lead them to the same answer since there always seems to be some slight variation in the bottle levels of water even when the seam strategy is used. I suggest if they considered using the concept of set theory to consider a solution to the challenge. That is, if by volume the level of the water they have suggested fills the bottle by half, the other half (currently holding air) must be an equal volume in the bottle, since one half by one half equals a whole in set theory. Therefore, they can check whatever water level they may have thought represents half of the bottle's volume, by simply turning the bottle over vertically (make sure the cap is on tightly so no water may come out) and seeing if the resulting water level is exactly at the same point on the tape they placed earlier on the outside of the bottle to show the level of the bottle filled halfway by volume by water. This type of strategy using an application of set theory most engages their attention and their appreciation as being most elegant in this case, due to its ease in use and accuracy. As a STEM activity, we then take time in identifying what learners could learn about the "S"--gravity's impact on water in a closed container on Earth and methodology analysis of solution, "T" the technology used to produce the water bottle, "E" the design process to solve the problem, and "M" the use of a concept from mathematics to solve the problem. And, what about the bottle stirrer they ask? Why were they provided that? My response--when solving authentic challenges no one engaged in STEM knows upfront what equipment may be of value to solve the problem. The stirrer is provided not to imply it is of essential value in this instance to solve the problem (which most assume it must be, since it was provided to them in this challenge as they learned by school science always is the case if equipment is provided in a so-called school STEM inquiry experience in such as in a laboratory exercise. Lesson to notice is that in real life problems in STEM do not come all set up with directions on what may be needed (equipment, for example) to solve them. In fact, available equipment (in this instance, the stirrer) may indeed actually distract them as it may have done for some in this activity (even though when it was provided it was NOT stated it must be used to solve the challenge).

If you (or others who read this response to your question) should use my STEM activity with improvised materials that I developed (could be others have also come up with the same or a similar idea for the same improvised materials although I have never seen such activities or was influenced by any to come up with this idea) , I hope you may find success with it as I have with it over the years. If you do use it, please share your experience using it with your participants as shaped by your needs as a STEM teacher educator and your participants needs and interests. I always grow as an educator when we share our teaching stories, successes and challenges (as I think of them, as opportunities to continue learning my craft!).

All the Best, Randy

Firstly:

Try to guided your workshop participants to integrated the content and value in their teaching learning process. For examples of this idea was I wrote in my paper:

PEMBELAJARAN BIOLOGI ABAD 21 DALAM DESAIN DAN STRATEGI, UNTUK MENJAWAB TANTANGAN PENDIDIKAN GLOBAL(Teaching biology in 21st century: Design and strategis to overcome the opportunity of global education)

Secondly: improve your training process effectively through modeling, that means you have to demonstrates how to do the teaching learning process you interested in and ask the participants to observe and then imitated.

Thank you for asking by asking a question to get the students' attention and then start talking about the subject so that the learning process is effective

I've made test wells out of the bottoms of soda bottles, and then pH indicators from boiling flowers and other veg in distilled water (like purple cabbage). You can also get usable chemicals from your local food store (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/references/guide-to-purchasing-chemicals). I've also gotten radioactive sources from local stores too (brazil nuts, bananas, clay based kitty litter, cigarettes). Soda bottles are great things to use, you can do all kinds of labs and activities. Here is soda bottle hydrology: https://www.unf.edu/~tcavanau/projects/products/sodabottle/bottle.htm#contents

Across the board in all your instructional materials link the lesson to achieving sustainability for your society and nation as the topic has been discussed at length at conferences. This paper can give an idea of how your can leverage education to this end.

Conference Paper Leveraging Environmental Education for Achieving Sustainability

Best regards,

Debra

An old resource could be useful: UNESCO's Source Book for Science Teachers - can be googled and is well worth a look.

It is high time this sort of thing became more popular.

I agree with Debra Sharon Ferdinand-James