National Iron Science Teacher Competition (Nov.22)

The crowd started assembling early here at the staging ground for the National Iron Science Teacher competitive. Exploding Beakers had arrived with the morning light to find a group of volunteer and competitors going through last minute preparations for the annual competition as hundreds of science student all eager to cheer on the best, and most innovative Science teachers across Canada.

At exactly 10:00, the auditorium lights dimmed, the music got noticably louder, as lights the overhead exploded in colored lights and sporks. From a cloud of dry ice, as the Discover Channel hosts emerged to kick short the festivities.


Culled from four regional competitions, the teams from Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, and the ultimate winners, Unintelligent Design from Manitoba. Highly entertaining, each team provided twelve minute lessons around the theme of "The Body", that could perhaps be said to represent the ideal in a visually-oriented (raised on TV) culture. Many of the teams were able to pack much information into their skits, with one team even adding details about mechanics and levers in their presentation on digestion.



The one thing we would have liked to have seen more of though, was more interaction with the audience along inquiry lines. While most groups organized thier skit around the presentation of a problem, none managed it as a problem to be solved, with the development of a set of criteria for a possible solution, gathering evidence throughout their lesson to be compared against that criteria for evaluation. Only the team from Alberta, with their CSI-inspired presentation came close.



In other related news, Larissa Drozda, from St. Margaret School, was revealed as the Western Canadian winner of the My Science Teacher competition, an online student contest run in conjunction with the Iron Science Teacher festivities.