Welcome to this Quick Start movie for the SPARK Science Learning System, from PASCO.
In the next few minutes we will look at four ways you can begin using the SPARK Science
Learning System in your science investigations.
Starting here at the Home screen, we can connect a sensor to the top of the device, and the
Home screen changes to show us the name of the sensor we have connected and the measurements
available from that sensor.
In this case I connected a General Science Sensor, which offers four measurements.
Notice that the readings for these measurements are all live.
This means that one of the four ways we can use the SPARK Science Learning System is as
a portable meter.
Simply connect a sensor and stay at the Home screen to view the measurements from that
sensor.
Now if we are interested in recording data, or exploring one of these measurements in
more detail, we can select a measurement by touching it and choose Show at the bottom
of the Home screen.
This instantly creates a four-page SPARKlab. Each page of the SPARKlab has a different
display for the measurement we selected, beginning on page one with a graph of Temperature vs.
Time.
We can begin recording data and seeing it in this Graph display by touching the green
Start button in the lower left of the screen.
Now as that data collection continues, let's look at the other pages of this SPARKlab.
They include a Digits display, a Table, and an analog Meter display of the temperature.
I'll grab the tip of the Temperature Probe in my hand so we can see some sort of temperature
change and return to page one, our graph.
I can stop collecting this first run of data by touching the orange Stop button in the
lower left of the screen.
We can just barely detect the change in temperature because of the large scale of our graph.
Let's look at a few ways we can change our view of the data in the graph.
One of those ways is to simply touch and drag in the center of the graph to move it.
We can also touch and drag either of the axis scales to rescale them.
And there are a lot of additional graph tools that allow us to change our view of the data,
annotate it, and analyze it.
We can access those tools by touching the Graph Tools button in the lower left to open
the Graph Tools Palette.
The button in the upper right of the Graph Tools Palette is called Scale-to-Fit.
If I press Scale-to-Fit, the graph automatically rescales itself to fill itself with data.
Now sometimes I might be interested in analyzing or viewing just a portion of the data run
that I have collected.
In that case I can turn on Select and touch the graph in two places in rapid succession
to define a region of interest.
I can adjust that region, and now tools such as Scale-to-Fit will apply just to the selected
data points.
Let's exit this SPARKlab and return to the Home screen.
If we are interested in a more guided investigation, we can look at the Open path.
This lists the more than 60 PASCO-designed SPARKlabs that are included on the device.
Let's look at one of the Biology labs, Respiration of Germinating Seeds.
This PASCO-designed SPARKlab includes
text and images for background information,
places for student response and assessment like this embedded text box,
innovative features like this Sequencing Challenge which forces students to think more deeply
about the lab procedure,
and of course data displays like this graph for prediction, data collection, and analysis.
These PASCO-designed SPARKlabs also include instructions for students to create an electronic
embedded Journal of their lab procedure as they perform it.
These Journals can be printed out, or shared via USB flash drive.
Let's exit this SPARKlab by returning to the Home screen, and look at one final way we
can use the SPARK Science Learning System, by constructing and building our own investigation.
If I select Build, I'm given the opportunity to design my own SPARKlab page by selecting
measurements and the displays in which I would like to see those measurements.
When I press OK, the page I designed is created for me and I can continue my investigation
by collecting and analyzing data.
If I need additional pages, I can simply continue to build them.
I hope this Quick Start movie has given you an idea of some of the ways you can begin
using the SPARK Science Learning System in your science investigations.
So plug in a sensor and start exploring!