Getting it less wrong.

Since the beginning of the institute on Monday, we have talked about science as a process of getting things "less wrong".  While I applaud that way of thinking about science, I voiced a concern in an earlier response to the first or second session (don't remember which) that this might be a difficult concept for students in Grades 5 and 6 to grasp, as they are just beginning to make inferences and draw logical conclusions. 

What I would like to look at, then, are interactive, web and real-time based games that help the students think about "getting things less wrong" and working with science as a process of revising and editing their stories about the world around them. 

To that effect, I have already begun investigations on physics and chemistry (the areas I teach) games online for kids, as can be found in my previous blog entry.  Some of the links on those pages allow the students to test things out without immediate feedback as to how "wrong" their story, guess, or explanation of a process is.  This, in turn, forces the students to try something different in order to produce the desired or expected outcome.