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I was honored to give a presentation yesterday to colleagues in Utah on strategies to promote engagement in the sciences when teaching in a 100% distance learning setting.
Rather than share an exhaustive list og best practices (which are constantly evolving), I decided to give participants a snap shot of my current thinking on distance learning science pedagogy which is heavily informed by constant reflective practice. Click here for a link to a PDF of the presentation which features my top four current strategies. I am sure these will change...but sharing reflection and iteration, I feel, is very powerful. At least for me. And it's my blog. :) Continuing with my goal of bringing more SUSTAINABLE and ACCESSIBLE hands-on labs to the distance learning setting, below is another summary of the activity that was used to follow up the one described here. I hope you find it useful in your own planning for those of you that are still 100% distance. Step 1: Play this video for students to watch individually. Video is edited to strategically withhold the ending. Step 2: Challenge students to complete the experimental setup and post videos of conclusions on the Padlet board here. See screenshot of portion of Padlet board below. Students were given the below instructions: When you are ready, prop your camera over the dish (with help from a family member or holding with your other hand) record a video of you completing the experiment shown in the above video. Note: if you want to do it more than once, you need to rinse all soap out and start over. Step 3: Students viewed and commented on one another's work. Step 4: Students hypothesized, in Zoom breakouts: Why, on a molecular level, the soap-water combination forces the pepper to the side of the dish. Step 5: Students then repeated the above steps with this similar video edited to end prior to the experimental reveal. Video conclusions were posted here. See screenshot of portion of Padlet board below: Step 6: Students viewed this reveal video followed by a group discussion/lecture to fill in missing gaps and relate back to previous instruction.
I wrote last about my desire to bring more hands-on learning to my 100% distance learning curriculum in chemistry and biology. I am going to begin this process SLOWLY leveraging materials students have at home, and as distance learning continues in our county, begin creating kits for students. I found this to be a fabulous resource for lab activities students can do at home (disclaimer: I realize I'm really behind on this and most STEM teachers are already doing fabulous stuff with students in the distance learning setting). Below is a summary of how I implemented my first SIMPLE activity. For pedagogical/content insight, students in this class just finished a unit on bonding and Lewis Structures. This week is a purely conceptual unit full of Intermolecular Forces activities (hence this lab). Once complete, we will circle back to Molecular Geometry and then build up an algorithmic understanding of polarity and IMFs. I am hoping the ability to circle back to this week as a reference point will provide a nice conceptual anchor. Anyways, below is the first guided inquiry activity. Click here for week's lesson document that students are working from. Step 1: Play this video and ask students to guess how many drops will fit on penny in the Zoom chat. See screenshot. Step 2: Challenge students to repeat experiment and post video of work here.
Step 3: Students viewed and commented on one another's work. Step 4: Students viewed this water and hypothesized, in Zoom breakouts, why you can fit more water on the penny than any other substance. Students were challenged to relate their hypothesis, in some way, back to the covalent Lewis structure for each substance (not: the goal of this portion was to create a clear sense cognitive tension and information gap awareness between what they know, Lewis Structures, and what they don't know, interaction BETWEEN lewis structure). Basically, I WANT them to mess this step up so that subsequent instruction has a cognitive anchor. Step 5: Students viewed this video to SLIGHTLY close the information gap in preparation for concrete instruction (see comments above) in the coming weeks. Essentially, the next few weeks are one larger Hero's Journey/5E Cycle. Today I gave a short presentation to my colleagues on my use of ONE Google Doc to drastically simplifying how my students access and engage with our lessons during this temporary time of online learning. Click here to access the document referenced in the video and here to access a recording of the presentation. The presentation recording is also embedded below.
This is a simple post to remind all STEM educators out there that the HTML5 PhET simulations are A M A Z I N G tools for online teaching. Given the varying types of devices that students are using while under quarantine, simulation upgrade to HTML5 means students can interact with the simulation on ANY device (tablet, phone, computer) drastically dropping Extraneous Cognitive Load for the student.
PhET has always been a favorite resource for me, but the growing list of HTML5 simulations makes it irreplaceable right now. Click here for an example of how I leveraged PhET in the context of Google Forms to scaffold my students from Molecular Geometry into Molecule Polarity in today's online lesson. The simulation used is also embedded below. Which brings up another incredible point about HTML5 simulations: YOU CAN PLACE THEM DIRECTLY IN YOUR WEBSITE FOR USE WITHOUT THE NEED FOR A DOWNLOAD! So legit. |
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