Soda Snake Demo

I started writing this up on my personal area on the TecHKnow wiki. I'd decided to use it as a team training exercise at school and use some of the training theory that I'd picked up both from SLC courses and from one of my tech team who is doing an Ultraversity course in IT and Pedagogy (paperless, totally online and group discussion of work and based on student's work role!)

At our first session, I handed out the Science Museum instructions and all six of us had a go. Mine was a rip roaring success if I say so myself (the photo on the TecHKnow wiki) whilst the others resulted in one burnt Yorkshire pudding, 3 black sea anemones and one no go. Perfect introduction to the Kolb's cycle (nothing to do with biochemistry!) which is about having an experience, reflecting upon that experience, formalising what you've learnt from the experience and deciding how to incorporate what you have learnt into the next experience. Sounds like daft common sense, doesn't it? But there's a whole lot of useful thinking that goes with it. As school science technicians, we are so very busy, that we often don't have time to raise our heads up and see the obvious, or how important having time for reflection is, especially reflection that involves your colleagues.

Anyhow, over two more sessions, we discussed what the factors were in getting a successful result and what was the purpose and usefulness of this particular experiment as a demo, and what were all the factors that made any experiment suitable as a class demo. The most important (after safety of course) was that it consistently worked. Soda snake experiments were made using damp sand, fine sand, coarse sand, different amounts of sand, soil, enlarging the containing hole, different alcohols, etc, etc. At the end of the third session we thought we had cracked it - identified the ingredients for 100% success, as well as enjoyed and appreciated the joys of collegiate work-based learning. Cameras and tripods were booked from ICT so we could each record our success for posterity in the fourth and final glorious session.

AND not one of them b..... well worked!

AND that's why I've disappointed TecHKnow's expectation of a soda snake wiki entry.



On a more positive note, all our team now knows how to use the cameras and tripods and theif limitations, which will be useful in the future.

AND this evening, I tried again at home and it worked superbly. I THINK I know why. If it works at school on Monday (INSET day), TecHKnow will be getting my Wiki contribution at long last! See for yourself.