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Classes start back up tomorrow, and two weeks of winter break provided a much needed break from thinking about teaching...NOT!
Teaching is my hobby, and while I had a nice time, space away from teaching freed up space to peruse my "Idea Dump",a notepad of ideas, sites, or tools that I stumble across over the semester, but did not have to reflect on. In the spirit of sharing, below is a RANDOM, science-focused list of the top ten curated over the past two weeks. Not sure what I will implement, but I am excited to dive deeper into this list and will post updates as I do. Enjoy! Currently my freshman Biology class is concluding a unit on cell division.
Rather than the typical unit where students memorize the phases of the "Mitosis" (Anaphase, Metaphase...blah, blah), I decided to take a more applicable, perhaps controversial perspective, and teach the unit through a lens of the Cell Cycle checkpoints, and in particular, cancer biology. After acquiring parent and administrative permission, as I wanted to be sensitive to student personal experience with Cancer, we embarked a 5E/Hero's Journey, learning cycle. Click here for the entire learning cycle. For the "Application" phase of the learning cycle, rather than have students research and present the current state of cancer detection and treatment. I challenge them with the below prompt: After reflecting on what we have learned thus far about cancer treatments, and assuming unlimited resources, develop your own comprehensive cancer treatment idea. Click here to share for details on your submission. (groups of 2-3). With a basic understanding of the Cell Cycle, regulatory proteins, immunology and cellular respiration (The Warburg Effect), students came up with incredible ideas that combined not only information we have learned this year, but also mirrored many of the current cancer treatments without zero prior knowledge of the treatments themselves. Today in class (12/10/2018) we will crowdsource individual team ideas, with the goal of developing a comprehensive treatment plan that students can choose to further develop. Our modo: If Jack can do it, so we can we! Click here for view only access to today's document that contains team idea summaries and a space for our collaborative solution (in progress). If you are like me as a science teacher, you simultaneously live the acronym "STEM" and are exhausted by its overuse in nearly every blog, set of state standards, or professional development seminar that comes to town (Full disclosure: I often facilitate those seminars).
That being said, the more I dive into the world of Robotics (second year as an FRC Mentor and long time Summer Science Camp facilitator), the more potential I see in leveraging that which we often write off as "trendy, and that which we hold dear. Tools common to enrichment programs (MakeyMakey, Arduino, MicroBit etc.) can potentially be powerful tools in my/our Biology and Chemistry classes during the school year, while also engaging students in a disciplines they would not normally see embedded in traditional physical and life science courses. Below are links 5 activities I have done, or plan to do, that merge coding/electronics and biology/chemistry. Enjoy! #1: MakeyMakey Interactive Eukaryotic Cell #2: Lego Mindstorm Natural Selection Simulation #3: Modeling States of Matter with the MicroBit #4: Drop Counter Hack with MakeyMakey #5: Arduino Conductivity Probe Before every major assessment I like to facilitate review activities in class. That being said, I can only handle the Kahoot theme song so much, play so many games of "Chemistry Jeopardy", or figure out another variation of Periodic Table Battleship to satisfy review of the whatever skills we are learning that topic. Not that there is anything wrong with the above games, or the myriad of variations. Indeed, if I played Kahoot everyday my students would be STOKED! However, the above review games, in my mind, always fall short in one area: student creation/invention. This is where Google Forms is a powerful tool! During the past unit on Formula Analysis, distributed a different problem to each team of students. I then asked each of students to input their solution AND a Youtube video of them solving their problem on a whiteboard into a Google Form. I then made the output spreadsheet public, and students spent time solving one another's problems, and watching one another's solutions when they were stuck. Although not as superficially engaging as Kahoot, watching students invent videos to explain their problems, and negotiate not only the problem, but also how to teach it, was incredibly inspiring, and IMO, much more engaging from an outside perspective. Although this post is represents an extremely simple application of Google Forms, one I'm sure many of you have already done before or experimented with in the past, the power of immediately sharing the output formula with students, containing live links to the videos THEY created, was worth sharing. Click here for the Google Form and here for the output spreadsheet. See screenshots below as well.   As a science teacher I struggle with the tension between being "innovative" and the benefits of practical, simple, efficient system. This dichotomy is amplified when, for me, choosing between more advanced sensors (temperature, conductivity, etc.) such as those provided companies like Vernier and Pasco. Anecdotally have found that, rather than leveraging the types of interfaces described above, when I have students design and built their own interfaces they learn more about not only the data they are measuring, but in building the equipment, they develop an appreciate and knowledge of the intricacies involved in capturing the data. This became clear to me when I had students create their own Titration Drop Counter last school year. Albeit not as specific nor aesthetic, the mere act of going this process, I argue, is more meaningful for high school students where the risks associated with inaccurate data collection is low, but the risks of information gaps or underdeveloped conceptual understanding of content, is high. To this end, I have chosen one piece of equipment for each of the 6 units in my 10th grade chemistry class, for students to build and leverage in their laboratory investigations. Below is a list of each piece of equipment, and an associated link that students will use for construction information and hints.      |
Ramsey Musallam is a full-time science teacher in Santa Rosa California.
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