2009 Volume 50 Issue 1 Pages 35-49
The aim of this research is to consider the better cooperation between scientists and schools by devising, in collaboration with scientists, experimental lessons in the life environmental studies. The thus developed experimental lessons were presented as "Wild plant investigation." In the class that executed the experimental lesson, one activity was "Finding seasonal things" in life environmental study for second-grade elementary school children. The lesson was characterized in that scientists participated not only in lesson planning and the face-to-face teaching, but also in selecting learning materials and creating a learning environment on the Web, featuring an "interactive virtual botanical garden." Thus the scientists designed a lesson that blended face-to-face and online learning. The interactive virtual botanical garden, an online illustrated guide to Japanese flora, makes use of an information-sharing system called "clippicKids," which was developed by the project group comprising of the author and other members. The virtual botanical garden is characterized by its capability to provide an interactive environment by linking mobile phones and the Web. The information sharing system has enabled learners to add plant image and text data via mobile phone to the illustrated guide to the Japanese flora, which was compiled on the Web by plant ecologists beforehand. Our lesson assessment results indicated the effectiveness of the above-mentioned experimental lesson. Based on assessments of the experimental lesson using the information-sharing system, we examined the extent to which schoolchildren understood the plants they studied, and what they thought of the lesson activities. We also studied the effectiveness of scientists' participation in daily class lessons, on the basis of interviews with scientists who conducted outreach activities and teachers who gave the lesson.
