CSRP Project 5B3 (Gladstone Area Mathematics, Science and Engineering Teachers Program) got off to an early start on Monday 7 November. Heather Moller, GAMSET Chair and the Head of Science at Tannum Sands State High School, organised professional development activities for two groups of science and mathematics teachers in the Gladstone area. By the end of the day, some 40 teachers and staff were involved in the first PD activities offered by the GAMSET-QAL-CSRP partners.
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Heather travelled with Nick Welham (Senior MTEC Lecture in Metallurgy at Murdoch University) and Dan Churach (CSRP Education Manager) to Biloela, the small mining and agricultural community some 100 kilometres southwest of Gladstone. A morning PD was held there for the five science teachers and the laboratory technician at Biloela State High School. A 90-minute short course entitled “Copper recovery from oxide ores by leaching, cementation and electrowinning” was presented. The course highlighted the chemical pathways needed to extract copper metal from a copper oxide ore.
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After a brief introductory presentation concerning the applications of these techniques in industry, the experimental procedure of the PD was explained. Each teacher was able to use simple equipment (e.g., plastic water bottles, dry cell batteries, laboratory beakers, etc.) to leach copper into solution. The blue coloured copper ions were then extracted from the solution in two ways. The first employed a cementation process which made use of steel wool. The electrons in the iron were transferred to the copper ions allowing copper metal to deposit out of solution onto the steel wool surface. The second technique utilized a flow of electrical current for the supply of electrons to the copper ions resulting in pure copper metal plating onto a stainless steel cathode.
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Upon completion of the laboratory experiments, the teachers discussed ways of integrating the background material and experimental procedures into school curriculum. There was a group consensus on the versatility of this simple electron exchange chemistry in that it could be used with students from late primary on up into tertiary level with increasingly deeper levels of understanding. Though because of time constrains the PD necessarily had a more prescribed series of steps in the hands on activity, it was agreed that there was a great deal of room for students designing their own investigations to test a variety of variables concerning voltage, current, temperature, concentration of copper, etc. There was also discussion concerning the cross-curricular nature of the exercise in light of issues arising involving sampling techniques (mathematics), sustainability issues (biology and ecology), profit and lose issues (business and economics), etc.
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Monday afternoon Gladstone State High School hosted the same PD activity. This session involved 30 participants from Gladstone Senior High School, Chanel College, St Stephens Lutheran College, Tannum Sands Senior High School and Toolooa Senior High School. The hands on activities and curriculum discussions followed a similarly to the morning session.
| All participants at both sessions received a booklet describing the activities and mineral samples to take back to their classrooms. An afternoon tea preceding the professional development work and a wine and cheese get-together afterwards were both sponsored by Queensland Alumina Limited. The social events provided ample time for teacher networking and input concerning future directions the GAMSET professional development efforts may take. |  |