Can you hear your muscles? You bet! As 18 eager kindergarten kids found out when they visited Dr. Dave Collins?s human neurophysiology lab, you can not only hear them, they make different sounds and of different intensity depending on whether the muscle is contracting or relaxing.
The learning experience was all part of a field trip for youngster aged three and a half to five years attending the University of Alberta Child Study Centre which is part of the Faculty of Education.
The kids, whose curiosity about bones sparked the trip to the neuroscience lab, were in Collins?s lab to find out about muscles and what they could do ? and to listen to them. Collins, a neuroscientist and expert in how the nervous system controls human movement, had the kids enthralled - and swarming to help place electrodes on his muscles and then their own which enabled them to see and hear the tiny electrical signals that muscles give off when they contract by amplifying these signals and playing them through a normal stereo system.
Collins says he wanted to keep things simple for his tiny visitors. ?I wanted this to be a very interactive experience because little kids like to participate and be the scientist.?
?I wanted the kids to see that we have muscles and they help us move, but also that different muscles do different things. We have little muscles, such as those in our hands, to do little things and big muscles, like those in our legs, to do big things, like helping us walk.?
Teacher Lesley Revell who accompanied the class says the kids love to find out about how things work by experiencing it themselves. ?When they come in (to a lab) they like to look around and touch things and Dave had some anatomical models out, like the heart, that they could hold and touch, opening up the ventricles to look inside.?
It?s the kind of experience children at the Centre, which includes grades K to 6, enjoy often, visiting labs across campus as their interest in different areas is piqued. ?The philosophy of the Centre is that we believe in inquiry based learning. We like children to have a voice in what they learning and to spark their natural curiosity ? and to develop skills that are useful throughout their schooling and life,? says Revell. Those skills, she says, would include things like interviewing people, talking with people, collecting and analyzing data and ?being able to question what?s happening in the world and come up with some neat ideas about it.?
Collins was very enthusiastic about the trip ? and keen to do it again. ?I love talking to kids,? he says, ?asking them grown-up questions and seeing what they?re thinking. They?re often thinking about a lot more than we give them credit for. And if you ask questions in a certain way, they can say some pretty surprising things!
?I can see their questions being different in the kinds of things they?d want to learn developing (as they progress through the grades). I?d like to see that development and have them come into the lab. I?d like to give them free rein to explore their curiosity.?
University of Alberta Child Study Centre: http://www.childstudycentre.ualberta.ca/index.cfm
Dr. Collins?s Human Neurophysiology lab: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dcollins/
The learning experience was all part of a field trip for youngster aged three and a half to five years attending the University of Alberta Child Study Centre which is part of the Faculty of Education.
The kids, whose curiosity about bones sparked the trip to the neuroscience lab, were in Collins?s lab to find out about muscles and what they could do ? and to listen to them. Collins, a neuroscientist and expert in how the nervous system controls human movement, had the kids enthralled - and swarming to help place electrodes on his muscles and then their own which enabled them to see and hear the tiny electrical signals that muscles give off when they contract by amplifying these signals and playing them through a normal stereo system.
Collins says he wanted to keep things simple for his tiny visitors. ?I wanted this to be a very interactive experience because little kids like to participate and be the scientist.?
?I wanted the kids to see that we have muscles and they help us move, but also that different muscles do different things. We have little muscles, such as those in our hands, to do little things and big muscles, like those in our legs, to do big things, like helping us walk.?
Teacher Lesley Revell who accompanied the class says the kids love to find out about how things work by experiencing it themselves. ?When they come in (to a lab) they like to look around and touch things and Dave had some anatomical models out, like the heart, that they could hold and touch, opening up the ventricles to look inside.?
It?s the kind of experience children at the Centre, which includes grades K to 6, enjoy often, visiting labs across campus as their interest in different areas is piqued. ?The philosophy of the Centre is that we believe in inquiry based learning. We like children to have a voice in what they learning and to spark their natural curiosity ? and to develop skills that are useful throughout their schooling and life,? says Revell. Those skills, she says, would include things like interviewing people, talking with people, collecting and analyzing data and ?being able to question what?s happening in the world and come up with some neat ideas about it.?
Collins was very enthusiastic about the trip ? and keen to do it again. ?I love talking to kids,? he says, ?asking them grown-up questions and seeing what they?re thinking. They?re often thinking about a lot more than we give them credit for. And if you ask questions in a certain way, they can say some pretty surprising things!
?I can see their questions being different in the kinds of things they?d want to learn developing (as they progress through the grades). I?d like to see that development and have them come into the lab. I?d like to give them free rein to explore their curiosity.?
University of Alberta Child Study Centre: http://www.childstudycentre.ualberta.ca/index.cfm
Dr. Collins?s Human Neurophysiology lab: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dcollins/