IO Inquiry Projects

What we liked...

Loved the Mutant Nation project, very engaging topic
Assessment rubrics that require students to justify their reasoning
Voxopop as a way for students to receive/submit verbal feedback
Project overview can be a great way to really grab students attention, draw them in
Strong cross-curricular connections
Got students to really role-play, very believable
Peer review is of great value
Authenticity
Student choices



Feedback:

"Pendulum isn't just a pendulum anymore, its so much more"
"Liked the history as a way to make the science real and contextual"
"Made students consider how science exists; i.e a real science lab isn't just fill in the blank"

Are students expected to present results once the project is completed. For those that chose to complete a written report-- would they also be expected to present?
Perhaps every group could complete a written report and an oral presentation (depending on time?)
This project covers many Science topics in interesting and creative ways! In high school curriculum is there any other connections not included under the "Science Umbrella"? Some were touched upon in the introduction i.e. History/explorers/geography. Could these be expanded upon?
These activities would help with understanding the subject matter, rather than simple regurgitation of formulas. We really liked that students would have to "figure it out for themselves" rather than being told.

How do you make this engage this to individual students? How do you differentiate instructions so that all your students, even the ones who aren't good at science but need to get into univeristy, can succeed in this task?
I think the "hook" needs to be better. For me, i need something stronger to get me engaged in the project?
I could see this unit being successful in a science school with gifted learners. But we have difficulties picturing greater success with the learning audiences of other less "talented" schools.

I think you both would be great science teachers, but I think I would be bored with writing a lab report. Is there anyway to make this thing sexier? More pimpin?

I don't know if a simple machine is considered technology, but I personally think you could do more. You show videos, you use a google.doc, you use technology to keep track of progress of the experiment, you use skype to bring in a professional, but I don't know (and it might be that I am underquailified to judge) what technology you are using in your Simple Machine Experiment?

Friday thoughts

iPhone apps for a better self: apps to promote health and wellness

The Wii for fitness and learning
-Wii Fit
Assessment practice with Evelyn Hickey
-can get students to create amazing things but how do I assess them?
-need to establish assessment so I know what to assess and so students know what to produce
-making the learning visible

Would love to see an example of this in a diploma level class. This seems really cute for 7 year old's but how does it look for 17 year old's learning to balance redox reactions?

Some assessment loops I drew in paint. Loops above the line can represent feedback provided by the teacher. Loops below the line can represent feedback or assessment from outside the classroom like peers, parents, self, etc. Multiple levels of continuous feedback here is ideal.

March 19 SIPS Class

Started the day with a showcase on Social Media by Kate, Chloe and Sandra.
(designed on prezi.com, great presentation tool) Slide show found here.
-ethics and responsibilities
-many possible uses for social networking
-FOIP, concern with unintended sharing of personal information
-can be a source of great distraction to users
-write a rough draft in txt msg shorthand, then edit the essay later wiv proper English
-alternatives to the big public networks
-www.elgg.org requires some programing background, powerful
-www.edmodo.com easier to use but a little more limited
-www.socialmediaclassroom.com
-www.ning.com can block specific things, free and web-based

Blocking sites...
-distraction
-teaching responsibility versus forced responsibility
-we end up blocking useful sites

Last week in Pro Sem a group presented on social media and its implications. It was really interesting to me because the majority of my Pro Sem class was actually dead against the use of things like facebook or twitter in the classroom. They claimed these networks (possibly societies) had no place in the classroom; they were inappropriate, immature and unregulated. This came as a shock to me because in SIPS we have 25 people all thinking about how we can use these technologies, not how we can avoid them.

Web 1.0: broadcast, one-way, reader separate from publisher
vs
Web 2.0: interactive, sharing, collaboration, reader is publisher

Wiki: anyone can edit.
On a side note, I previously wrote about my observations around the Chilean earthquake and its flooding of the net. I looked back at the history of the 2010 Chilean earthquake page edits on Wikipedia and not surprisingly, the page developed in less than an hour of the first rumble. Throughout the day the wiki grew from a simple two line news post to a full on encyclopedia article as new information was announced and users created and published visual documents related to the quake.


Questions and Googling.
To whom were these questions asked to before Google? What's after Google?

Great Task Reflection

I was a little disappointed in the lack of projects relevant to high school physics available on IO or the Galileo network. These sites were made out to be the mecca of inquiry projects that I can use but it seems that most of the projects were not designed for the high school science curriculum.

Jason and I both have a background in physics so we wanted to find a project that was applicable to us. IO and the Galileo network were unfortunately completely bereft of projects that had any relation to the grade 11 and 12 physics curriculum. We found a basic project outline that we were able to adapt from the Alberta Learning's ICT Illustrative Examples website. The projects listed on the ICT website uses very limited technology, our example simply encouraged the use of computerized spreadsheets. Luckily Jason had an idea (and a previous knowledge) to bring some simple circuitry and programming into the project. We were able to combine the project idea with technology and I'm really happy with the results.

We setup the pendulum apparatus in class last week and immediately saw that people were interesting in what we had. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest things about science; the ability to gather and captivate an audience with nothing more that a ball hanging on a string! Our peer feedback was invaluable for the continued development of our project. We found that some of our directions were too vague. Last semester I learned (the hard way) the importance of giving clear and compete directions to students. As we work this projects into the IO template for our IO inquiry project, we will develop clearer instructions for students as well as make a good set of instructions for other teachers that might want to use the project in their classroom. A good IO projects is one that anyone could use, regardless of their educational background. If I were asked to teach grade 4 social studies, I'd look to IO or Galileo for some ideas.

The world we live in...

**Written a few days ago, forgot to publish**

This morning I learned that a massive 8.8 Earthquake had struck Chile at 3:30AM local time (just after midnight by my calculation in Calgary). I'm working an early morning shift at the Airport here in Calgary and I became aware of the event at about 5:00. I quickly read a few news articles on the web about the Earthquake but there were no pictures or videos available that that time presumably because massive chuncks of infrastructure (electricity, phone lines and mobile networks) were damaged in the quake.

It's now 9:00AM here in Calgary and our flights to Hawaii have been put on delay becuase there is a Tsunami forcast for almost all Pacific costal regions - including Hawaii. This led me to start reading up on the Tsunami predictions and more on the Earthquake. A quick search on Google for "tsunami warning" or for "earchquake" opens up thousands of different articles and websites on the event. There is a section on Google search for "latest results" which updates new search hits by the second. I can't keep up with how many posts are being created on the internet right now that contain the phrase "tsunami warning". Literally every second there is a new hit from newspapers, magazines, television stations, news blogs, personal blogs, tweets, etc... My facebook notification page is rapidly filling up with people's opinions, thoughts and well-wishes for the victims in Chile along with warnings for anyone on or near a beach.

200 years ago there would be no way to warn distant lands about a coming Tsunami

100 years ago the news of this event (and a warning) could be transmitted accross the distance but it would reach so few people that it would hardly be considered useful

20 years ago the warning can be sent yet many people would not be warned in time

In the world we live in, this warning of a potential disaster is almost instantly broadcast around the world in a variety of mediums.

February blogin'

I'm really enjoying the idea of blogging. I was a little reluctant to start one up but I see it as a great place to organize my thoughts and reflect on anything I want. There are many times throughout a day that I think of something I'd like to write about but usually end up forgetting what it is by the time I make it to a computer. I'll have to start making notes so that I can expand on it when I have time.

Last Friday the 29th Mike and I presented our mini-lesson on our new technologies. We decided to each pick a small web-based software/application to present to the class. Our reasoning in this was that we were worried 30 mins might be too long to spend on our chose applications. Looking back, we could have easily spent the full 30 minutes on either of our choices. I spent my planning time learning more about xtranormal while Mike worked with Intel's Showing Evidence tool. This is one thing I intend to explore more of in the coming weeks. I would have never thought of using it in a language arts class because my definition of evidence and proof is (was) limited to science or math. A tool like this definitely has a role in any argumentative case, defending an essay in social studies, character development in a drama class or debating interpretation and meaning of a piece in art class.

I was really impressed by the reaction to xtranormal.com! I was worried the class would find it too juvenile or useless for a classroom. There were a pile of great ideas of how to use it in a class:

• use it to re-create a historical event
• re-write the ending to a story
• develop dialog between characters
• question and answer between two people or groups
• digital storytelling
• giving lesson instructions

I'm sure there were more ideas proposed but I wasn't feeling too hot that morning so I might have missed recording some of them. I really regret missing the second half of the class; this is the one class this semester that I really look forward to going to but I needed to just get some rest and get better. Due to time constraints we didn't have much time to play around with the site or get into a good discussion but I think the list of uses would be much longer after some demo time.

I realized afterward that I didn't provide an artifact to the class for xtranormal. I don't think a paper handout would be the right thing for this showcase so I'd like to just give a link to the website and a link to the videos I showed.

xtranormal substitute teacher plan intro to xtranormal

Science Inquiry

I really enjoyed the presentation by Neil today followed by the min-lesson on Google Docs. I've used Google docs in the past but only as a cloud storage device. I have a laptop, a desktop PC and I often work on stuff on public computers at school or on my computer at work. Docs saved me from having to carry a USB storage stick or emailing files around while I moved from computer to computer. My laptop also has a "Sleeping Beauty" reputation; it will fall into a deep sleep only to be awakened with an empty memory by the princes of PC repair (true story). After losing a full unit plan 4 days before submission in second semester, I would toss my big research papers and writings onto a new Google Doc so that even if my laptop did die again on me, I would still have the work saved in a safe place.

In first year lecture there was a presentation by some teachers from a school that had used Docs as a feedback loop in which students would post their writings in a document, invite the classmates and teacher and then reflect or comment on each others writings. I'm a big fan of having students collaborate and present to each other; I think this instills a sense of pride in one's work. I know that I tend to be a little more critical of my own work if I know it will be subject to the scrutiny of peers. I'm curious to find out how else we can use the free use-anywhere software.

I said above that my documents on Google Docs were safe... There is much discussion these days about the security of cloud computing but I'm confident enough in it to save my school work and the like on there. I would be hesitant to stick my SIN, credit cards, and other similar personal information on something like Docs because there is a certain sense of security I have in keeping these things in a safe box under my bed. Having said that, I've purchased numerous things online with a credit card, given my SIN to appropriate websites, and offered up bountiful amounts of personal information to Facebook. What makes these sites more trustworthy? I guess time will tell if Google's omnipresent features are as safe as they claim.

On a side note...

Running a cool techno-based inquiry project is awesome but how does it look in a school with no money? No smartboards, no laptops, no useful computers, no money for field trips and a small budget for supplies. I know this is a technology based class but this is something that has been on my mind since my placement in a school like the one described above.

Looking back; looking forward

I grew up in a small town with a small school which always seemed to lag behind on the technology curve when compared with my cousins schools in Calgary or friends schools other towns. I don't have a lot of exposure to the effective use of technology in classrooms other than simply using computers to do what could be easily done without them (i.e. word processing or research.) In this class I would really like to develop a virtual library of resources that are available to teachers and students. I know I won't be able to become an expert in most of the tools available out there but it would be good to know what is out there.

Throughout the MT program we have talked about inquiry in just about every lecture, seminar and assignment yet I still am a little confused as to how I might develop worthwhile inquiry projects in my classroom. I'm hoping to develop a sense of how this is done in the SIPS class.

Some things that interest me in technology:

• developing creativity in the sciences
• establishing collaborative links between students (both intra-school and inter-school)
• establishing collaborative links between teachers and with other professionals
• how it is students are able to pick up new technologies and master them
• where technology as a learning tool is headed
• how can I make use of cheap or costless technology
• e-textbooks: will they ever take place of the paper copies? what would a good e-text look like?

I'm quite looking forward to this class!

Chad