Science in the Classroom

The essence of science is not instrumentation or methods but creative thinking – asking questions and getting the appropriate data to answer them.  As you so well know, data is becoming increasingly available.  It is, of course, standard procedure to ask a question first and then collect the appropriate data.  However, any data set will have application to many questions beyond those originally imagined.  With sensors, satellites, medicine and the economy vast data sets are now publicly available.  What if we turn the process around and ask what questions can be answered from a specific data source?  What if one provided an encyclopedia illustrating specific questions that can be answered with specific data sources.  Science classrooms could use this guide to develop a question about their community, their family, their pets, etc and use the guide to find and analyze appropriate data.  This process would integrate math and science around specific questions.  The students in your course must have identified many different useful data sources.  Could these be the beginning of such an encyclopedia?  Could your students, as part of their project, imagine many of the questions that could be answered by their data source?