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Revved up by science
Mobile lab get students excited about learning
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FarkKrystal Premo was so excited to be in the state’s Mobile Science Lab last week she was almost glowing. The sixth-grader used a syringe to drip yeast into a beaker clutched by her classmate, Morgan Kersey.
“We love it,” Kersey said of science.
The two girls watched the computer screen in front of them while it drew a graph showing the amount of gas produced by the yeast cells.
Their enthusiasm is just the thing Hermosa science teacher Sandy VanVleck was hoping to see out of students.
VanVleck and fellow Hermosa science teacher Mary Smith traveled to Black Hills State University in Spearfish this summer to take part in a weeklong training that is required before the mobile lab visits schools.
The project began under the direction of former Gov. Bill Janklow and members of the Math, Science and Technology Council. Two 53-foot semi-trailer trucks were converted into mobile labs, which are state-funded. BHSU helps run the program.
The purpose of the lab is to provide students with an opportunity to use laboratory equipment that is not available in public school classrooms. The students also have access to experiments that use chemicals that teachers cannot store in classrooms.
There are actually two labs that travel around the state, said coordinator Jerry Opbroek, who was also the onsite technician at Hermosa. He said 61 schools are scheduled for stops this year and a majority of them are smaller, rural schools.
Despite dealing with state-of-the-art equipment, Opbroek said he’s never had problems with students being careless or undisciplined.
“The students here are great,” he said. “Everywhere I go, they’re great.”
VanVleck said the students are taking advantage of a rare opportunity.
“It’s experiments they normally don’t get to do,” she said. “They see things that bring a ‘wow.’”
At Hermosa, the students also rotated throughout classrooms during a two-day period, working on experiments and science lessons, VanVleck said.
Some of the experiments on the truck included measuring temperatures in ice water, measuring hand strength, a pH that measures levels in different colored vegetables and examining check cells.
VanVleck said the only bad part about the mobile science labs is that students can’t stay in them all day.
“We were hoping for more time,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting my first-graders to get as excited as they were.”
Tacked up around the mobile labs are descriptions of careers in science — dentistry, pharmaceuticals, paleontology — so students can see the connections between their classroom work and the real world.
The concept might have more of an effect on the students getting closer to high school, but even the younger students walked away with a memento from the labs, VanVleck said.
One of the labs involved burning a penny and turning it into gold, and each one of those student got to take one home.
VanVleck said she knows it had an impact on the students.
“One little boy said, ‘So, this is what it’s about,’” she said. “It got them excited and that’s really fun.”
Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com
Kelsey Delaney, left, and Desiree Bell, both fourth-graders at Hermosa Public School, watch as a yeast experiment is demonstrated before the start of a lab Dec. 2 in Hermosa. The South Dakota Mobile Science Lab stopped in Hermosa for two days to give students an opportunity to participate in hands-on experience. (Kristina Barker/Journal staff)
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