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in and around 2011-2012
a an American high school student by the
name of Jack andraka you may know his
developed by himself a novel test for
detecting early stage pancreatic cancer
and let me tell you that’s quite an
achievement for a teenager you will
understand and he was a teenager by the
time actually a month after he turned 16
he gave a TED lecture this one sorry a
TED lecture on the topic and I advise
everyone to see that lecture I very much
like it and Jack andraka clearly is a
very keen bright young researcher the
type of research we want to solve big
problems and it is in our best interest
of all of us to make sure we have many
bright young researchers coming up
aligned for the future and one way to
get that done is education obviously and
high school education I think is where
that should start we typically think of
research and academia in universities
university education but I believe I
firmly believe that should start in high
school and one way to in which we
actually educate students towards
becoming maybe a researcher or a great
mind is via science science projects in
high school and that’s what I want to
talk about science projects don’t worry
about the sly disappearing I just made
that happen yeah sometimes people worry
we use science projects in an
expectation that students will learn the
intricacies of science the principles of
science things like how to formulate the
hypotheses how to test the hypothesis
maybe how to construct rational
arguments how to deal with data how to
reflect on your own on your own results
how to report your results so that other
people can understand them and maybe
verify them that’s what we expect from
science projects that’s why we give our
high schools
students science projects but here’s the
thing and this is what I want to talk
about about these science projects these
science projects are not intended to
know let me go back one step I just
mentioned a few principles of academia
of general academic thinking and there’s
one that’s actually missing from this
list that I believe and that is academic
freedom academic freedom it’s something
that I did not mention that it’s very
often not mentioned to high school
students as a principal of science all
the other things are but not academic
freedom and I believe that’s a very yeah
not a good thing that’s my message for
today
academic freedom to me is the option or
the choice that you have as a scientist
as a researcher to study your own
interests to pursue your own interest
and you know in the real world of
academia of science that is not an easy
thing it’s not a given thing you can do
that which I’m happy about that it isn’t
because you know we need to solve big
problems and we cannot do that if every
scientist just goes pursuing whatever
they want to pursue so we need to you
know pull our resources together we need
to focus our attention in the same
direction to solve big problems
sustainability problems healthcare
problems energy problems etc and but
these big problems are not the type of
problems that I believe high school
students should be working on in their
science projects and I believe that high
school students should be working on
much more playful projects should be
working in much more playful manner when
it when it comes to academic thinking
academic doing doing science and that’s
why I really wanted to talk about
academic playfulness
for students that is really my message
for today but I’ll give you two examples
of projects did I find nice examples of
academic playfulness and admittedly that
they’re they’re not high school project
have to admit that our project from my
own students but as an example they
serve very well
I think and the first one you know to
explain this you need to understand that
I always tell my own students and I tell
many high school students you know in in
the Netherlands I always tell them you
know if you want to research something
and you don’t know what yeah yet what
then look at your own surroundings look
in your own life look make observations
of what happens to you in your daily
life ask questions of what’s going on
around you
really simple opposition are up survey
shion’s personal inspirations personal
interests are great starting point for
scientific research and having said that
to my own students a few years ago one
student walked into my office and his
name is Ian from the Eck and he said
Martin yeah I made an observation in my
daily life he said I like to play
computer games and every few months or
so you know I buy a new computer game
because the old one is doing boring but
he said I made a second observation and
that is that I have a cat and I don’t
buy a new cat every few months because
it becomes boring you know so he said
that could it be that there’s a quality
in the behavior of my cat that is not in
the behavior of the opponents that I
fight in the computer games and these
are computerized opponents algorithmic
opponents and he said and if so if that
is the case could it be that this
quality is transferable to a video game
if I do not play it against a
computerized opponent but against my cat
or any other animal that’s the question
he came in with I think that’s a really
nice question to start doing research so
we talked about it and we both concluded
cats are horrible to use in science
they’re unpredictable and too big too
expensive people love them too much so
we decided to settle with a different
type of animal and insect namely
crickets and them devised by himself
this experiment that I kind of like and
I want to tell you about and it revolves
around a game known as pac-man you
probably know it it’s a maze game and in
the wind built a small version of
pac-man and in this version of pac-man
the four ghosts in keep inky blinky and
Clyde we’re not controlled
algorithmically by you know a computer
algorithm some computer code no no they
were controlled by crickets real living
crickets and his crickets did not only
live they lived inside a facsimile maze
of the one in the game that LEM had
built out of scrap bits of wood and the
crickets would live in there walk around
and they were monitored by webcam and
their positions were tracked and used as
positions for
ghosts in the game as such wim could
play pac-man against crickets and he
used this setup it was technically maybe
slightly more difficult but not much and
as such he could study the question that
he set out to study and in that sense
you know the project could have been
better in terms of research could have
definitely been improved however what I
really like about it is that it is a
nice research that came from the
personal inspiration of a student and
that really engaged that student in
scientific reefer research even so much
so that years after this project wim
decided to do a PhD on animal
incorporated computer games that he’s
actually he’s working on his PhD in this
field right now this is how engaged he
got into science and that should be the
point of science projects in education
that should be the point of science of
projects in education let me tell you
about a second project another student
his name is Venus both he came to him
into my office he said Martin I have an
ID you know these huge flocks of birds
that fly around in the sky it’s really
beautiful
I guess you know what I’m talking about
he said I want to control him I want to
fly my drone into these flocks of birds
and want to take control over the whole
flock I want to I want to be able to
steer that flock where I want them to go
well that is quite an ambition quite an
ambitious project and we soon decide
that that is very difficult because you
have no idea how to construct these
flocks of birds or even if you don’t
want to construct them you have nobody
were to find them or when to find him so
let alone be there with your drone and
then hope that you can control them so
we immediately saw you know that’s a bit
of a difficult project but don’t me as
an educator I am an educator I told him
let’s let let’s work on this idea let’s
talk about it so we talked about it and
we concluded that his actual interest
was really in the interaction between
drones and birds that had his
fascination that is what he really
wanted to know that it was underlying
his first project proposal so now we
said well let’s study that it so that’s
what Venus did and he did it in this but
I find a very nice way he what he did is
for last summer for several weeks and
I’m talking four or five weeks he got up
every morning between
six and went to the local park near his
house and he would feed the birds there
just put some birdseed around and some
mealworms and you can actually oh sorry
wrong button you can actually see them
here there in the middle the worms and
the birdseed it was a very low-cost
experiment it had a small camera a
smartphone and an off-the-shelf drone
that he already owned and a weight scale
to measure the weight of the worms and
to see how much were eaten by the birds
from the container he would basically
feed the birds what he did he put the
camera right next to the food and it
would observe birds eating his birdseed
and his mealworms penis himself would be
sitting away a hundred metres ready with
his drone and every time he could
actually see the birds he could see the
camera feed so every time he saw a bird
entering the feeding zone he would
conceptually throw a dice he would make
a random decision then and this random
decision has three possible outcomes one
he wouldn’t do anything that was the
first option the second option was his
drone would take off and it would fly
100 meters straight towards the bird
basically attacking it and once it
reached a birdie would loop fly back and
land that was the second option or the
third option was when a bird landed the
drone would take off and he would fly in
a straight line not after bird but past
it that’s a sort of fly by maneuver and
then it would return and all the time
Adina’s was filming the location of the
food where the food was where where the
birds were and every day after he got
back from two hours in the morning
spending in the park he would analyze
his footage very meticulously frame by
frame and he would note on the exact
frame numbers when a bird appeared in
the shot when it left and he knew what
type of birds they were he also knew
what the condition was was there no
drone was there an attacking drone or a
fly by drone and by noting all this data
and correlating bird species to the time
that they spent feeding to the condition
under which to drugs flew he could
actually make he could actually discover
how different species of birds react
differently to drones which is very
important it’s it’s a topic it was on a
radio recently that one of the city
councils in Holland wants to use drones
to detect marijuana illegal marijuana
growth and the people are saying we
can’t do that because we do not know how
birds react well thanks to a single
student with a radically absurd ID we do
now we’re currently writing a journal
article for a biological journal Venus
me and someone from the biology
department based on his data why am I
telling you this I’m telling you this
because you know I told you
academic playfulness is such an
important thing to engage students in
the process of science at a young age
preferably at the high school level that
is the perfect time maybe you’re
thinking yeah Martin okay so we agree
that’s it well let me surprise you
that’s not really the point I’m making
what a point I’m I want to make is that
academic playfulness should be made more
explicit in high school education at
least as I see it around me in science
projects students should be told that
they can study whatever it is that they
want to study there should be told that
they should be told that the topics that
they select can be from their personal
inspiration or personal fascination be
it I don’t know hardrock be it hockey
whatever they can study whatever they
want that really is my message and by
doing that by engaging young people in
the process of science and acting
scientifically we basically put forth a
stronger generation of future scientists
that we really need to solve big world
problems
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