Alternate Energy Project

Using my course's wiki on blackboard my students will work in interdisciplinary groups of 4 to first find online data related to an alternate energy source for a foreign country of their choice. They will then create a presentation that includes some audio feed. These presentations will be loaded onto the wiki and students will be required to post comments on at least three of their classmates' presentations.

Below is a sample of a presentation. I used Jing to go through the presentation and capture my own audio commentary.

Revision of my Guiding Principles for Technology Use

Here were my original principles and my revisions:

It is obvious from reading what wrote 5 weeks ago that I was completely uninformed about web 2.0. What I now would like to include in my guiding principles are:

1) I should not feel that I have to assign a grade to everything that my students produce. I might be surprised that in some cases that the learning for the sake of learning might be motivation enough. For instance if I ask students to comment on a blog and I don't award grades to the comments...that's ok.

2) Give more web 2.0 choices to my students especially for creative projects. For instance, instead of giving students a choice of a PowerPoint, a poster or a trifold, I can also suggest a glogster, screencasting or some other cool new media.

3) Encourage use of Google Docs (and use it myself) to give students constant access to their documents.

Guiding Principles for Using Technology

The physical teachnology (Was that a typo or a flash of brilliance?) that I have in my classroom includes:

1. My laptop computer with heavily filtered connection to the internet

2. An LCD projector

3. A mimio interactive white board tool

4. A laptop cart with 12 student computers for up to 30 students

5. An array of probes that interface with the computers for data collection

After some reading and reflection I will try to live by the following principles of technology use:

1) Using a laptop computer ¹ learning from technology.

2) Since students have to share the computers, assign their groups so that they have experience “adapting to different personalities and communication styles.”

3) The epitome of a computer experience for the students results in the students producing something or participating in something that results in stimulating lifelong learning.

4) Evaluate the merit of using a high tech probe vs. a low teach measuring tool for data collection. Greater precision and accuracy do not outweigh the value of the students “feeling” the data, as with force probes and spring scales.

5) Incorporate the LCD projector and mimio tool for student use vs. instructor use to provide the students the opportunity to share what they have produced.

Reflection on new web tool

I spent most of this morning reading the new National Science Framework. I took three pages of notes with some sort of professional development for my department in mind. After I typed it up I read it out loud and noticed that it took 8 minutes; too long for a voice thread. Oh,that reminds me of the new web tool that I used this week. My Web Tools instructor used Voice Thread to record his thought on the new National Science Framework, so when I went on to record my comments, I had to create another account :-) and explore yet another web tool. This one asked for permission to access my computer's camera and microphone before I could record. Cool! In the end it was easy to use and not too different from the screen casting experience that I had last month.

I recorded at least 4 different threads. I retrospect it would have been better to make my comments match the slides that my instructor had prepared, but I'm working against a vacation deadline here!

I plan to send my 2-pages of highlights to the science specialist for my county, she might be interested.

Reflection on D2L discussions

It is only Tuesday so there is more discussion to come, but I think I can safely say that I got some good feedback on the discussion board.

1) I am not alone in feeling that I could be more advanced in my use of technology and that I need to practice with it to improve my skills.

2) My classmates have some great ideas on how to include more relevant web 2.0 tools in their classrooms.

3) The web tools that I have selected to incorporate into my teaching will not just be for the sake of using them. They will improve students' learning.

Ideas for class project

I teach at an International Baccalaureate (IB) high school. IB stresses an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and to that end they require that our students do an interdisciplinary project. In the past we have given the students Energy as the theme of their project, had them organize themselves into mixed science groups of 4 students and they have looked to data that would defend the development of an alternate energy source in a country other than where we live. There is a lot of room for improvement here that would incorporate what I have learned in this course.

First, the students will each have a wiki to contribute their ideas to, and they will watch the In Plain English video as a tutorial first.

Next, the six teachers who teach these 9 classes of students will find some sample "stimulative" data sets. We will each use the sets of data to practice looking at trends and drawing conclusions. The students will also learn what types of agencies and organizations provide data for analysis for this project.

After the students create their data-based research project on Power Point, they will post it on their wikis and other students will view them and comment on at least 3 of them.

Those are my ideas so far. I'd love suggestions for how I could improve the project or use more web tools.

Reflection on exploring blogs and wikis

The most interesting sentence that I read while doing this week's assignments was in the D2L article on blogging, "Blogging can give reticent students and English language learners (ELLs) a safe space to participate confidently." Getting those students to participate more fully in their learning experience has been a desire of mine since I started teaching at a very diverse school. I have already seen the unexpected contributions of some of the quieter students when they used wikis. Collaborative projects work so much better when the group of students has a wiki than when they had to try to meet after school or in a public library.

One of my concerns , however involves the commenting process. Right now the students create and post a Power Point using their wikis. The next step is that I want students to review each other's projects and comment on them on a hard copy of a comment form that I collect later; in other words, they don't see each other's comments yet. I am concerned that when I make the commenting an online, published thing, I will see a lot of, "I agree with what the previous commenter said." Has it been your experience that telling the students that their comments should be unique is enough? Also, any good ideas of how to keep track of these comments besides a simple tally sheet?

Comment about my Create an Argument Assignment

First of all here is my Create an Argument assignment on being fast! I am hopeful that the students will benefit in the following ways:

1) They will learn about HOW speeds of people and things are measured.

2) They will see real examples of average and instantaneous speeds.

3) They will be engaged in the activity because of the authenticity of the data.

4) They will become curious about the conversion between mph and m/s.

The Fastest Things on Earth

People and things are moving from place to place all the time. Sometimes the very purpose of moving is to determine who or what moves the fastest. Running events in track, NASCAR races, many Olympic competitions are just a few of the examples of when being fastest is important.

Consider some of the data on the following site: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/index-topics.shtml

Is fast about the time it takes to go a certain distance?

Is fast about speed, velocity or acceleration?

Is fast an average thing or an instantaneous thing?

You’ll have to answer these questions with your group before you tackle the big question:

What are the fastest things on Earth?**Excluding light

With your group, develop an explanation that can be used to answer this simple, but important, question. Make sure you have good evidence and reasoning to support your explanation. You can record any observations or notes you make as you work in the space below.

Interactive poster session

Once your group has developed an explanation that answers this question, prepare a Glogster that you can use to share and justify your ideas. Your Glogster should include all the information shown in the diagram. (OK the diagram didn't copy over, but you've all seen it in the article.)

Remember, as you critique the work of others, you have to decide whether their conclusions are valid or acceptable based quality of their explanation and how well they are able to support their ideas. In other words, you need to determine if their argument is persuasive and convincing. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is their explanation sufficient (i.e., it explains everything it needs to) and coherent (i.e., it is free from contradictions)?

• Did they use genuine evidence (i.e., They organized their data in a way that shows a trend over time, a relationship between variables, or a difference between groups)?

• Did they use enough evidence to support their ideas (i.e., They used more than one piece of evidence and all their ideas are supported by evidence)?

• Is there any counterevidence that does not support their explanation?

• How well does their explanation fit with other theories and laws that are used in science to explain or describe how the world works?

• Is their rationale adequate (i.e., They explain why the evidence was used and why it supports the explanation)?

• Is their reasoning appropriate (rational and sound)?

Taken from Generate and Argument by Sampson and Grooms in The Science Teacher, summer 2010.

Relevant information about this problem

Average speed is defined as distance traveled divided by the time to travel.

Average velocity is defined as displacement (change in position) divided by the time to change position.

Acceleration is defined as change in velocity divided by the time to change velocity.

Instantaneous speed and velocity relate how fast something is going at one instant in time. For example: As I constantly accelerate my car from 0 to 60 mph it passes through 50mph for a split second. At that moment in time my instantaneous speed was 50. If I was able to accelerate constantly my average speed would have been 30 mph for the entire acceleration period.

Units

In the metric system the fundamental unit for time is the second, s.

The fundamental unit for distances and displacements is the meter, m.

The derived unit for speed and velocity is the meter per second, m/s.

The derived unit for acceleration is the meter per second squared, m/s².