A day late and a dollar short... again!!! (Review of backward design.)

I knew there was something missing... and here it is! My blog post about the backward design lesson plan. I had written the plan for a group of young campers, hoping to get permission to work with the local nature camp but it ended up not working out. So I pressed my husband and my daughter, a recent college graduate, into service.

I did my lesson in two parts. The first was a discussion, to establish what the students knew about the scientific definition of life, habitats, ecosystems and so on. My husband was a bit puzzled since he hasn't been in a classroom for many years and he couldn't understand why I kept turning his answers into more questions.

Once we had had our discussion period, it was time to head out into the woods for real-life observation of the local ecosystem. My husband declined to go with us, so I gave my daughter a circle of rope and directed her to toss it into a clearing. She did, spread it out, and then sat down and began to diagram. I reminded her that diagrams must be labeled. I also had her make a T-chart, and note living things on one side, and non living things on the other.

I noticed when she was done that she had misclassified sticks and dead leaves as non-living. This is an error commonly made by third graders, the age group for whom I intended the lesson. It serves as a reminder to emphasize the differences between living, non-living and formerly living, ie, dead.

This is a lesson I would have enjoyed doing with students. It's a shame it didn't work out with the nature camp, and unfortunately, I teach nowhere near any sites that could reasonably be substituted. But the experience of working with backward design was worthwhile and with practice could prove to be a very efficient way to plan lessons.

My experience with Prezi

It ended up being an interesting, if sometimes frustrating, experience working with Prezi to create my presentation on the bog turtle. I had quite a few challenges working with some of the small nuances, and even the "help" section sometimes assumed some things were clear which really weren't, at least to me. 

When I get stuck on a computer problem, I normally get up and walk around a bit. I think I walked at least five miles in the course of this project! But I finally got it done, and I think it went pretty well, overall. 

I would have liked to have been able to put some music in there, but I didn't see that as an option. If anyone knows how it could be done, I'd love to know. 

Here's the link!

http://prezi.com/qwov48nl1bpq/the-bog-turtle/

Ask a Scientist

My question, which is "How can the body maintain viability of brain and egg cells over the course of many years, when other cell types of the body reproduce and die as a normal part of life?" has not yet been answered. I'll keep checking back, though I suspect that this site gets many questions and the odds of getting an answer are not high.

It was there, I had to use it...

                                     
                                                                  I just had to.

Testing Presentation Tools

This week's exploration of presentation tools took quite a bit of time, since I have no experience with this kind of thing at all. I've never even made a PowerPoint presentation! After looking at what was available, I focused on two tools: Animoto and Prezi.

Prezi is the more complex of the two, but having viewed some of the samples available on the website, I have to admit I am very impressed with what can be done with it. I may have intimidated myself a bit, since I looked at some very complex and polished projects. I'm more at the "drawing stick figures" level at this point. Since you could get the middle level account using your school email, I went ahead and registered. I 

will be doing a bit more exploration this week before I make a final decision. 

Animoto was very simple to use and user friendly, though the presentations not oriented in the same fashion, it's more for "social networking" type sharing. That being said, I was able to use it right away and have already produced my little 30 second trial video, posted in a separate post on this blog. This would be very easy for students to use, and I believe they would enjoy it, even if the free presentations are limited to 30 seconds.

So I still haven't decided which I will use, since both have advantages. My initial reaction is to go with Prezi, but I won't know until later this week. 

My Animoto Video: A test of Web 2.0 tools

My Animoto Video

I tried out Animoto, which was easy to use even for a rank beginner like me. I had to use my favorite subject, of course!

Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum

One of the topics I have to cover with my students is the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s not easy getting them interested in it based on what it in their textbooks, and no wonder. The information is wordy, larded with unfamiliar terms that have little day to day use, and the two dimensional static pictures do very little to convey the information in a way that makes sense to visually oriented learners.

One of the sites I’ve heard mentioned quite a number of times since I’ve been at Walden has been BrainPop, so I finally took a good look at it. They have a wonderful set of videos and activities on all aspects of electricity and magnetism, including of course the electromagnetic spectrum. I know my students would get involved in the activities found there, and would even take the little quizzes, which I could use as informal assessments, opportunities to see where I need to reinforce teaching; or even as extra credit.

The challenge with using the program is two-fold: first and foremost is the cost. Our school does have one laptop cart which I can use on a rotating basis, but it is extremely unlikely that our budget would be able to pay the cost for the “laptop cart” license. It’s hard for me to get funding for anything for science that is not in the district mandated curriculum, since science is not counted toward our school’s “AYP” score. Any money not already spoken for goes to support extras for reading and math, which are the big two in our state’s high stakes testing. (There are ways to try to get it funded by applying for grants; I will have to see if I can have any success that way.)

The second problem has to do with the state of our laptops. They are already extremely shopworn, and we just don’t have enough to go around for an entire class. Also, there are four classes vying for their use at all times. So this presents an ongoing challenge for use of technology in our classrooms. It’s really a shame, since our students come from low SES homes, and need high tech education even more than their more fortunate peers, who are likely to have access to good technological resources outside of school and to have technologically savvy parents. One of the intentions of public schooling is to level the playing field for all students, but we still aren’t there yet, despite good intentions and some progress.

There are free sites that I can use also, NASA has some good material, unfortunately much of it is written well above the reading levels of my middle years students, and they don’t have the “catchy” animations of BrainPop, but they are free and have no advertising. The BBC has some interactive game-type programs that allow students to manipulate mirrors and reflections. This is aimed at slightly younger students, but I believe middle school students will enjoy playing with it as well. They also have a “mystery” program where you need to use knowledge about light to help the hero find her way out of the hall of mirrors. I have noticed in the past that the BBC is linked in closely with the UK national curriculum, which is very helpful even for me as an American teacher.

I want to try to get my students to think about using computers as work tools as much as possible, not just as glorified entertainment devices. It is critical that they make this connection so that they will not be left behind their age mates when the time comes to compete for jobs.

List of websites of interest to this topic:

http://www.brainpop.com/science/energy/electromagneticspectrum/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/physical_processes/light/play.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/10_11/see_things.shtml

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/teachers/lessons/roygbiv/roygbiv.html

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/cosmic-colors/redirected/#/review/cosmic-colors/preloader.swf?path=/review/cosmic-colors/cosmic_colors

A note: I apologize to my classmates for being late with this, my district moved our deadline for report cards ahead by one week and unfortunately my blog got caught in the landslide. I hope this didn't inconvenience anyone too much!--Eileen