Effecting Change at School and District Level

As a one of the two science teachers in my middle school, I am committed to become a leader at my school for STEM education, as well as science education at the middle school level.  Next year we will start writing a curriculum map for our science department.  I plan on being on that committee along with the other science teacher to ensure that we have STEM education as well as inquiry based instruction added to our curriculum.  I have joined the science articulation group, and am the representative at our building to work withe high school and area middle schools to collaborate and discuss our science programs and how we can help our students be successful in middle school and in high school. 

I have been lucky to work with another science teacher that is amazing and is just as passionate about science and math as I am.  We have worked together well and plan on developing an integrated science program at our school that prepares our students with the skills they need to use critical thinking, problem solving, and be prepared for with the 21st century skills they will need to be successful in their futures.  I have also been blessed with a extremely supportive and knowledgeable administrative staff and school board that have made it easy to promote change and rigor to our science program.  I plan to stay abreast of the latest developments on STEM education and work hard to promote STEM education in my classroom and throughout our school for all levels and subjects.  I work with a great group of teachers that really have our students best interest at heart and are willing to try anything new, no matter how much work or change it entails to prepare our students to be successful once they leave our building and move on in the world.  They make it easy to be successful!

Keeping up with Global Competition

I have to say that I have never been that political. I try to stay informed when it comes to politics, the war, deficit spending, but I tend to glaze over when I read articles or listen to programs. I never feel quite informed enough to have a political debate or a heated opinion. I think I prefer to wear my "rose colored" glasses and hope that the people that know what they are doing will work it all out. However, after reading the article, What's Our Sputnik, by Thomas Friedman, I do have to say that I agree one hundred percent with his opinions about the wasted money on the war and our oil dependence.

I know that there has to be some sort of repercussions somewhere that I am not aware about, but I think we should stop all the foreign aid and start to put that money back into our own country. In my opinion, our financial dependence and competition with China, along with our oil dependence with the Middle East is our Sputnik. If we worried about our own country put the money into education, specifically STEM, and technology, we would be preparing our students for the jobs of the future and the innovation that will not make us oil dependent. Innovations that will develop solutions for alternative energies for our homes, factories, and automobiles, and concentrate on environmental issues so we have a healthier planet for us and generations to come.

I feel like we need to stop interfering with everyone else's governments and how we think they should be run and worry about fixing our own. If we stay out and stop funding, then they cannot blame us any longer for their problems, as Friedman states in his article.

I am not sure if what I suggest will work or if it is even a solution. However, I think it is essential to worry about our own borders, our own citizens, our own economy, and especially our education. President Obama, states that he is in support of STEM education. Let’s hope we start to see that support in education reform. I read somewhere that we do not have enough of our own students that are prepared to be in those STEM careers and we have to continually look outside our borders to employ IT professionals and engineers. Something is wrong with that, and we need to start addressing it. The only way that I know how to help is to promote STEM education in my classroom and be a leader in my school in STEM education and awareness. That where I plan to start.

Lesson Plan Implementation

Well, I really loved using this model for plate tectonics, specifically what happens at each of the plate boundaries with the group of 6th grade students last week. Because the theory of plate tectonics is such a large scale idea and a very long and slow process, I find that students have a hard time visualizing the processes that take place at plate boundaries. During implementation, I was able to hear students' comments as they modeled the different processes that take place at plate boundaries using the different materials (graham crackers for crust, fruit roll-ups for oceanic crust, and frosting for the asthenosphere), especially at the divergent boundaries where sea floor spreading occurs and at the two continental crust boundaries where mountains form. Students were able to discuss the process after visualizing it happening, as well as, seeing the larger scale model on the video simulations I during the presentation. I heard comments such as, "oh, I get it now" or "oh, I see how that happens now!" Using this model to simulate a real world process was a great way for students to understand the theory of plate tectonics, As I reflect back on this lesson, I thought adding the video simulations to each part of the model was very helpful for students to first model it on a small scale and then see it through a video on a larger scale so they could relate how it actually happens in the real world. Students were actively engaged in the lesson because it was fun, they were able to manipulate the materials in the model to simulate real world activity, and of course were excited to eat the materials used in the end. One thing that I would change in this lesson would be the order in which we drew the illustrations of each model and answered the questions during the investigation. Because of time restrictions, students should only draw the models during the investigation, then answer questions at the end if time allows, or do as a home work assignment or group discussion the next day so you can get through all 4 models during one class period. Because food is involved you really do not have the luxury to finish the investigation the next day if you run out of time. I know right away when I started doing the lesson that if I kept the lesson going at the same pace we would never get through. I changed it after the first model and had the students use their illustrations to answer the questions that went along with the lab for a post lab assignment. In the end, the lesson went well, the students were engaged, and they gained a better understanding of what takes place at each of the plate boundaries.

Student Awareness

I find it so important for students to be aware of what is happening around the world, whether it is a natural disaster or other disaster or inequity. Last year after the earthquake in Haiti, I took the opportunity to inform my students about what was happening in Haiti. I found video clips, images, and articles of the Sumatra earthquake from a few years earlier and discussed how they did not have warning systems for the tsunami. Once students were able to see footage and read about the destruction and devastation in the area, they were able to personalize it more. I feel when students do not see images and video about devastation around the world they cannot identify with the tragedy. After watching news clips and videos each day in science class after the Haiti tragedy, students wanted to help. Students decided to try and raise money to give to the Red Cross to help those in Haiti. Our school decided to create and sell rubber band bracelets to raise money for Haiti. I think that once students became more informed about these kinds of disasters and what they can do to third world countries, they were able to sympathize more and become involved. I think if give students the opportunity to really understand and see what is happening in the world (a little deeper than what the local news shows), they will begin to identify with the tragedy and the victims and become socially aware of others outside of themselves and their immediate surroundings.

Ask a Scientist

Well, unfortunately, I have not received an answer back from the Ask a Scientist website. I have a feeling that this outcome will probably be common for most of us. However, if this website did actually respond back with answers, I would use it in my classroom for sure. Each week I would have a different student generate a question to ask based on what we were discussing in class. It would be their responsibility to submit the question and then report back to the class the answer. I would have them present it in a presentation of some sort. I would probably let students make that choice. I would also require them to expand a bit more on the subject, maybe giving another example, or explaining how it relates to their everyday lives. Students would also be responsible to explain how the answer helped them gain a better understanding of the content. Each student would be required to do at least one Ask a Scientist mini project throughout the year. I think it would be a great opportunity for students to use technology to inquiry about concepts they are learning about or that they are interested in. By participating in this activity, students would be developing the 21st century skills that they need to be successful in the classroom and throughout their lives.

Evaluating Web 2.0 Presentation Tools

Evaluating Web 2.0 Presentation Tools
The two presentation tools that I choose to investigate were Prezentit and Prezi. Both presentation tools were pretty good and easy to use. I will start with Prezentit. The idea of Prezentit is a great. Basically you can create presentations, just like Power Point. However, the presentations are all on line and you can have more than one person working on the presentation at the same time. This is a great idea for people that are collaborating on projects. They can work together without having to leave their own homes or work places. The software was easy to use and it is free. It does have limited abilities. There are not background templates and styles like there are in Power Point. They make it very easy to add pictures, files, and video to the presentations and anyone can view them because they are available online through any web browser so it is very functional. This is basically an easy version of Power Point that has better accessibility for its users and viewers of the presentations. There is not a manual or any training materials as of yet. I had a hard time trying to figure out how to get the presentation to work and there was nowhere to find the help I needed. I did not find that it does anything special to make a presentation more engaging. However, it is a neat tool for students that are working together on a project at school and can work together either at school or from home without having to physically be together. If you choose to work on your project for this class with a partner, this would be a good presentation tool for you to use, especially if you are not in the same geographic area.
The second presentation tool that I looked at was Prezi and I absolutely love it. Not only does it create presentations that are lively and engaging, it is super easy to use, and there is tons of support and accessibility to training materials, including videos and other presentations that you can look at for ideas or edit for your own use. There is a small fee to use the site, but if you are an educator and you use your professional email address, the subscription is free. Your Prezi presentation can be published and you can invite others to view or edit your Prezi. This feature enables you to again collaborate with others on a project. You can also add the Prezi to your blog if you wish. For the purposes of our endangered species project, this is an excellent presentation tool that can help you to create an engaging presentation. This is the tool that I will be using on my project. I created a Prezi for a presentation that I did for my principal of the benefits of using a Smart board in the classroom. I did a presentation on one of the Smart boards in our school showing ideas of using a Smart board in the science classroom and then finished with a Prezi to close the presentation. I put a link to it below if you are interested in seeing how a prezi presentation looks. My presentation worked and I was one of the teachers that will be receiving a Smart board in their classroom. It should be there when I get back from winter break!

https://prezi.com/secure/b7f001533ae0599c57434642ce8de030a6c139f6/

The Power of the Smart Board on Prezi

21st century skills and resources

I found a few sites that I thought were resourcful for educators and for students. The topic I chose to research was force and motion. The following sites are great places to find classroom resources and lesson plans to use in the classroom that promote 21st century skills while covering science content.

http://www.tryengineering.org/home.php
http://www.scilinks.org/
http://store.discoveryeducation.com/?di=40588027&ti=9000003&ps=739953

At these three websites, there is a plethora of lesson plans and activities that provide content along with promoting the use of 21st century skills. All of the activities include using technology, problem solving, collaboration, and communication skills. My favorite is a lesson from Try Engineering where students use hand held GPS units do explore the idea of position and motion. In this lesson, students explore the technology that makes GPS possible and use GPS units to find cache. Students work in teams to brainstorm recommendations for applying GPS technology to meet the needs of a global society, and present their proposals to the class (Try Technology, 2010).

The next links are resources I found for students to use and explore concepts, while using inquiry skills to solve problems, predict outcomes, and use technology to further explore ideas.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/media/experiments.swf?which_exp=1
http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster/
http://prezi.com/
http://www.wikispaces.com

The last two sites can be used for students to collaborate together inside and outside of school (wikis)along with creating awesome presentations (prezi)that are innovative and allows students to show off their creativity while using technology. Prezi's are a great alternative to Power Point presentations.

One activity that I will be implementing this week is using the GPS units. I am currently teaching motion to my 8th grade class and we have been discussing postition, velocity, vectors, and interpreting graphs of motion. For a follow up lesson before the test, we are going to go Geocaching with the GPS units. I think this will be an excellent way to engage students in the lesson along with giving them a true real world experience to further explore and expand the content.

My only reservation with this investigation is getting it to work (I have had issues in the past with the GPS units) and with getting creative when creating the cache.

The Heat is On Investigation

The four materials I chose to use for the investigation were aluminum foil, a cotton towel, waxed paper, and plastic wrap. I hypothesized that the aluminum foil would work the best to keep the temperature of the water the warmest. I choose aluminum foil only for the fact that I have always used it during food preparation to keep foods warm. Although, after reading the text this week, I was not sure why aluminum foil is used for that purpose since aluminum is a metal and considered a conductor not an insulator.
Upon completion of the investigation, the results showed that the cotton towel was the best insulator with the highest temperature reading of 104°F. Waxed paper was second at 102°F, then foil at 101°F, and finally plastic wrap at 100°F. Conduction is the transfer of heat energy from one molecule to another. I learned this week that materials such as wood, glass, cotton, and wool contain small air spaces. These air spaces keep molecules farther apart making it more difficult for the heat energy to move by conduction from molecule to molecule. Based on my understanding of the resources this week, I believe, the cotton towel was the best insulator due to the fact that there are small air spaces within the fabric, slowing the flow of heat energy and keeping it contained within the mug. I did not expect the cotton towel to be the best insulator and was surprised when reading the resources for this week’s assignment. Based on my own prior experiences, I thought for sure the aluminum foil would have been the material that worked the best. I am guessing that most students would also believe the same.
The only challenge that I encountered is that I had to do a lot of additional reading on the Internet to understand why aluminum foil keeps substances warm or cold. I knew that metals were good conductors of heat but never really thought about the reason of why a conductor would be a good insulator. I found a few websites that stated that the shiny side of aluminum foil reflects heat. So if you want to keep something cold put the shiny side out to reflect the heat. If you want to keep something warm, keep the shiny side in and the heat from the food reflects back inside. I cannot say for sure that this is a scientific fact because I could not find any reputable sources. However, those ideas make sense to me. I plan on doing some more inquiry investigations along with some research to try and find an explanation. Does anyone have an explanation on this issue?
I thought of an ideas while I was doing this investigation. I wanted to use wool, but did not have a sample to use in my house. However, while searching for materials, I thought of a fun experiment to use in the classroom. I would have students test different types of materials used to make socks. Specifically, socks that are marketed for winter sports to keep your feet warm. I would create a scenario where students worked for a sporting goods store or athletic clothing designer and are required to perform tests to decide which material would keep feet the warmest. Students would then create a sales pitch/poster to sell the socks based on the outcome of the experiment. It may need a little more thought but I thought it would be a fun, real-world application for students to investigate.

Week 2 Guided Inquiry Investigation

I was excited for this weeks investigation and being able to put myself in my students shoes and create an inquiry investigation about a provided research question. Even though I do this quite often as an educator that designs labs and investigations for my students, I do not have a lot of experience with physical science investigations so I found it interesting to do this assignment.

I chose the question - Which pendulum will come to rest more quickly - a lighter pendulum or heavier pendulum? I chose to use a pendulum apparatus that I have in my classroom and washers to conduct the investigation. I used 10 washers for the first part of the experiment. I released the pendulum and started a timer and observed the amount of time it took to come to a complete rest. I did three trials and then repeated the same experiment using 5 washers.

The results turned out as I had suspected. The heavier pendulum took much longer to come to a stop then the lighter one. I expected these results because it was common sense to me that the more mass the longer it takes to stop an object. I wasn't expecting the object to take such a long time to come to a rest. It took an average of over 10 minutes for the heavy object and just over 6 minutes for the lighter object.

I thought that the experiment went pretty well and was a pretty easy experiment to come up with. However, that is because I have some background knowledge on the subject and as an educator, I have experience designing investigations. I wonder if my 8th grade students would be able to design an experiment just as easily? I think they would be able to come up with a pretty decent experiment, with enough time to really think about it and maybe have some equipment out already that they can pick from to start the design process in their minds.

What did not work well during the experiment was the time it took to get through the trials. I think it is essential at the very, very least for students to gather data from 3 trials. If students will be required to first design a valid experiment (without having any background knowledge on the topic) and then do the trials, this lesson could take one whole class period to design, a second to collect data, and one more day to come up with a conclusion and theory. Then another day would be required to actually discuss the experiment and clarify any misconceptions. I do not think that 4 days is feasible for one lesson on momentum. I wanted to try do this in a shorter time period so I decided to change the length of the string on the pendulum. I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, it drastically changed to time for the pendulum to come to rest. I will be sure to have the pendulum lengths short when I have students do this experiment in the classroom.

I would like to use this guided inquiry investigation in my classroom with my students. I would use the 5E's model to create a more engaging, real-world investigation. For example, I would engage students with a discussion about momentum and to find out what they know already. Students can then explore by using this guided inquiry investigation. Students could present and explain their ideas and any misconceptions could be discussed here. Students can then elaborate by applying this concept to what they know about sports, cars, or any other real-world application. I would also extend the inquiry investigation and have students investigate changing the length of the pendulum and the angle release of the pendulum.

I essentially want students to investigate momentum and be able to actually define and explain what momentum is and its relationship to mass and velocity. I want students to discover this without having any definitions or lessons beforehand to see if they can discover the relationship on their own. Then I would like to have a lesson and note taking session about momentum followed by a possible extension activity. I think by using the guided inquiry investigation that I designed, students will be able to explore on their own and discover the above relationships.

Iceberg Activity

In response to this weeks iceberg activity, if the polar ice caps melted, there could be many ramifications on the environment. According to the activity, there would not be a rise in water levels because the floating icebergs have already displaced the water. However, where we will run into problems is if the ice caps over land melt. Here, we do not already have displacement taking place. So, glaciers over land that are melting into the oceans will drastically effect the water levels around the world. Not to mention, global weather patterns, ocean currents, and animal and plant life in the areas.

Additional questions that I have about this activity would be how to make this experiment work in a 40 minute science class, or as an activity that is done independently at home. Any ideas?

Lesson Plan

This week has been enlightening and bit overwhelming in lesson planning. The resources for this week really sparked my creativity in planning new opening activities for my science class for this upcoming school year. Creating experiences for my students that expand their perceptions of scientists and engineers, opens their minds to new possibilities and ideas about science.

Creating the lesson plan was a bit more challenging. Although I love to create new and engaging lessons for my students, the lesson plan template that we used was a bit overwhelming. One thing that I noticed was that I already do incorporate many of the components from the template into my lessons already. However, I couldn't imagine planning down to every detail like the template outlines, on a daily basis. Are we expected to have every component from the template in our lessons every day? Maybe someone can give me their opinion on that? I would love to know others thoughts.

I liked the 5 E's lesson plan model. I was taught to use that in my undergrad studies and follow that model when planning my lessons for the week, especially in science. It works well in all subjects really. I usually have a discovery question that students can relate to their lives or previous experiences, followed by an investigation to explore and continue to motivate. Then we talk about it and take notes from the text or from me, then we do a lab or hands on activity to delve deeper into the concepts. I then either have a small project or performance assessment that incorporates several lessons, and finally an assessment. Sometimes the extend project or performance assessment is my final assessment and sometimes the concepts are tested on a unit test later on. I find that my students do well using this model, and it just seems to make so much sense to plan lessons in this format. You can't go wrong!

Science Blog: New Blogger

Science Blog: New Blogger: "Hi, I am new to blogging and am setting up my account for school. Just sending out a test to make sure everything is working. Looking fowa..."

New Blogger

Hi,
I am new to blogging and am setting up my account for school. Just sending out a test to make sure everything is working. Looking foward to discussions with everyone.