The group met last Friday. They have decided to look at both the elementary and the high school textbooks. They zeroed in on the three major publishers and people have been assigned to get copies of the book. …., Diwa, Phoenix.

Are there numbers? Not centralized; publishers go directly to the principals, so Dept. Ed doesn’t have numbers.

Preparation for research grant proposal.

No research questions yet. Basing it on concepts map used by group in US downscaled to adapt it to the Philippines. US group already prepared a concept map (ex: biology) and used it to evaluate the textbooks. Really just biology, not chemistry or physics. Elementary math, middle grade science, biology and algebra were reviewed by the US group. Comparison between concept map and textbook. Middle science methodology was different. AAAS Project 2061.

Framework is important. Task is large. Need to be explicit about the approach.

Some concern about authors and reviewers. We can choose the areas. We can begin with the grade school science. Suggestion: 3-7 grade school so that it’s more focused.

What do the question marks on the timeline mean? (Explanation: uncertain personnel)

Evaluation of information technology

I wonder what I can do to help computer education at the grade school level.

I need to know how many schools teach computing and what they teach.

I suspect that most schools do not teach computing; the few that do teach software skills like Microsoft Office use. However, programming may help kids in their other subjects. Problem-solving

How would I go about learning more about computer education at the grade school level?

Note about grade school and high school. More grade school students. Conceptual capabilities. Abstract concepts.

Need for peer review and editing.

Difference between local textbooks and American texts. Local textbooks tend to be thin series. Are American texts thicker? Not that much – lab activities are incorporated into the texts and the paper is probably thicker. Local texts have a different manual.

Not including teacher’s manual and lab manual. Focusing on text book because it requires too much work and public schools don’t really use them. We’re also not doing the workbooks.

Problem with conflict of interest.

Problem with identification in review. Coded.

Suggestion: Framework and then evaluators.

Suggestion: Use the framework of TIMSS. Content specifications, performance expectations – make a table. But TIMSS is not complete? Test at the end rank. TIMSS was not written for textbook. The AAS framework was specifically written for textbooks, and it will be easier to adapt.

Research for chemistry demonstration development. Originality? Evaluation of demonstration. If it’s not original, it might be hard to publish. Scholarly grants want original.

Methodology for evaluating chemistry demonstrations.

Cha – thesis on misconceptions. Language, culture, preconceived notions. They use local language. They get confused with mass and weight, the definitions… She discovered – she was supposed to develop experiments to correct the misconceptions – for some things it is so difficult to find experiments to differentiate. Maybe these are the areas that you can look into. Value in the cognitive area there. Beam balance versus spring balance – there’s no cancellation of forces. What they will see is that these are two different things.

Mental models postponed for personal reasons.