Category Archives: Resource Sharing Forum

Scratch is an online, drag and drop, programming environment developed at MIT. The interface facilitates both animation and interactive programming. Scratch has a large and supportive community where users share their projects and can view the coding of other members’ projects and can freely remix them. A novel feature of this environment is the remix tree. It tracks where each remixed project comes from all the way back to the initial creation as well as displaying all other projects that came from the same root work.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Google Expeditions is an application that allows students to embark on virtual field trips or expeditions from the classroom. The expeditions are focused on a variety of different subjects and curricular areas, including a number of science-based content areas (i.e. anatomy, environmental, ecosystem, space, and so on). Each expedition contains a number of 360 degree “scenes” from around the world for the explorers to view (i.e., “Submarine Science” contains six scenes to view/explore).

Google Expeditions offers two roles: that of a guide (the teacher) or of an explorer (the students). In the “guide” role, each scene contains an introduction to each scene, questions (beginner, intermediate, and advanced questions), and information to guide explorers through each scene. Each scene includes points of interest or important information/artifacts related to the topic, which are represented for explorers by arrows and targets in their view. Many expeditions include stops (scenes) at educational institutes or museums. For example, “Climate Change” takes the explorer to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and “Rocks, Minerals, and Gems” takes the explorer to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

Google Expedition “Kits” are available for purchase, but are incredibly expensive. Cardboard viewers are also available, but again cost money that I would imagine many administrators might struggle to rationalize in their school budgets (because they are literally just viewers made from cardboard). Information is provided on the website to explain how teachers can use Google Expeditions in their classrooms without purchasing the kit, and cardboard viewers could be constructed by the teacher/student, although it would take a little time. I have used the app with my tablet without a viewer and feel that this is a possibility as well, although teachers would want to try this ahead of time to see what they think (it does detract from the VR experience). Google Expeditions does require internet access and mobile devices (a tablet is recommended for the guide and phones for the explorers), and specific device requirements must be met.

Google expeditions connects well to our current studies as it provides students with a virtual-reality style environment that can be used to enhance existing curricular topics in science. Google expeditions allows students to experience an environment they likely would not have been exposed to otherwise. It is limited in the fact that while the experience does include 360 degree scenes, students are not able to virtually travel through the scenes and are restricted to viewing from one spot. While ideally, students each use their own mobile device to view each scene, students are all explorers of the same scene at the same time and have the opportunity to orally share what they are viewing/experiencing with their classmates as they explore the scene through their viewers.

Learn more about Google Expeditions: https://edu.google.com/expeditions/#about

Desmos is available as a web-based application through any Internet browser, as well as in downloadable mobile app form on both Apple and Android devices.  Its most attractive feature is that it is free, yet it offers students many of the capabilities of a Texas Instruments graphing calculator, plus the options to save and share graphs and projects.  It also includes the option of accessing pre-built simulations of concepts such as linear regression.  The touch-screen or mouse-based interactive capabilities make it very user friendly for the generation of students who are familiar with such methods.  Desmos is a way that all of my students, regardless of socioeconomic status, can have access to high-quality digital graphing tools.  We use it regularly in my classroom for concepts such as solving linear inequality systems, analyzing slope, and visualizing graphed data, and many of my students have also downloaded it or accessed it on personal devices.

The user guide at https://desmos.s3.amazonaws.com/Desmos_User_Guide.pdf offers an overview of many of its capabilities.

https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine 

This resource allows students to visualize the climate change over time. There are four topics to choose from: sea level, sea ice, global temperature and carbon dioxide. It’s a simple tool that can be used to introduce what climate change is and how it is affecting the indicators of the environment. This connects to resolving student misconceptions of scientific knowledge as a topic like climate change is not easily grasped by students as it cannot be visualized, but this tool can demonstrate in simple ways what global warming is. Students can then perhaps split into groups to study what has caused the changes in each indicator.

This is a multimedia course for learners interested in studying environmental science. The Web site provides access to course content and activities developed by leading scientists and researchers in the field. It includes many areas of study using different types of learning materials. The learning materials are augmented with videos and some with simulations such as the food chain. I found the videos informative and the simulations fairly easy to manipulate. I would use the food chain simulation with my own class in our ecosystems

https://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/index.html

This is a free online, resource for Physics 11 and 12 classes, mostly.  Topics include Kinematic Graph Interpretation, Waves, and Polarity, each has an interactive, quantitative and/or qualitative activity for students to investigate. Some work sheets are provided and the authors have recently included a host of interesting videos on a variety of different topics.

Unfortunately, it is possible for students to simply “guess and check” on the simulations until they pass a level.  The accompanying worksheets would mitigate this negative outcome, however. I would be inclined to use this site as a reinforcement activity, as opposed to a learning activity, so that as many students as possible would actually use the principles of physics.  It would be great if educators could embed questions, in between levels, to check for understanding, as students navigated through levels.

Of the videos that I have seen, they could be used in a Jasper Style or WISE platform as points of discussion and problem solving.  They each seem to revolve around a single concept in physics; students could discuss the principles of physics at play in the videos, in a forum on WISE or as a class discussion.

Although this may be better digested by a high school crowd, the metaphor that this instructor uses to simulate space-time is extremely visual. I would LOVE to have this in my classroom one day.  In the video, Mr. Burns simulates how masses are gravitationally attracted to each other, why smaller objects orbit larger objects, why the planets are moving in the same direction around the Sun and how the moon can orbit the Earth, whilst also orbiting the Sun.  Should someone physically recreate this metaphor in their room, I think that it would satisfy most of, if not all, the requirements for an effective metaphor.

PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) proposed by Lee Shulman and TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) put forth by Mishra and Koehler are both valuable theories as they focus on the blending of curriculum for teachers. Mishra and Koehler extend Shulman’s theory by adding a technological component which has become an important part of education today.

In reading (or re-reading the articles this week- I believe I have read them all in previous MET courses) I was struck by quotes I hadn’t really even noticed before. For example, Shulman (1986) states: Teachers must not only be capable of defining for students the accepted truths in a domain. They must also be able to explain why a particular proposition is deemed warranted, why it is worth knowing, and how it relates to other propositions, both within the discipline and without, both in theory and in practice. This quote really struck home for me as I realized it states exactly why we need the PCK model. To be effective teachers we can not just be experts on Content, or Pedagogy but rather we need to blend these with other facets of the students education so they can see cross-curricular connections. Teaching each subject as if it were a fishbowl and untouched by other elements creates compartmentalized knowledge that does not help the student understand the world.

In the second article by Shulman (1987) he states that one of the frustrations of teaching as an occupation and profession is its extensive individual and collective amnesia, the consistence with which the best creations of its practitioners are lost to both contemporary and future peers. I actually stopped and said “yes” this is exactly what happens? Why does it happen? How have we not learned from this? How is it our profession does not function like architecture, medicine and engineering, where lessons are learned, ideas are shared and curriculum improves?

Finally, Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) article on TPACK is an extension of Shulman’s work on PCK. For those who have heard about, yet not studied TPACK an error is often made. People throw technology into their lessons with out stopping to wonder why and if it is indeed improving the lesson. My favourite quote from this article is : “ In other words, merely knowing how to use technology is not the same as knowing how to teach with it. (p1033).” Knowing how to push buttons or work a program does not mean it is improving your programming. Teaching with technology should immediately imply that something different is happening. I have become very interested in the learning by design format and believe it applies directly to the idea of PBL’s (problem-based learning) in the classroom. Learning by Design is the PBL of the teacher.

An example of how I use PCK in science is when we study the solar system, even before the availability of videos like Cosmos by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, it was a very visual and hands-on unit. Students created models of our solar system not in the usual sense (similar size balls coloured differently and hung on a clotes hanger) but rather to scale (obviously with in reason but they had to understand that and explain it, it also requried an understanding of scale). This activity required students to use math skills in measuring and finding replicas of the size of each planet in relation to each other. It involved problem-solving and collaboration ( I can’t tell you how many groups ended up frustrated when they chose thin thread to represent the distance- thin thread tangles easily and when it is metres long it is even harder to control). Students had to figure out how to store their projects so they didn’t return each day to a jumble of threads.

In addition to their own amazement at the distance of the planets in realtion to each other and their size, they also had to find a way to demonstrate and explain this to students in grade one and two. They were also in charge of assessing how well the younger studetns understood their lesson.

When the students have completed the unit (including seasons etc) the groups take part in the final assignment. Each group is provided with a scenario. The scenarios are open-ended and require debate with in the group to make a decision. One of the example scenario’s (this works well in my area as we are 40 minutes from Niagara Falls, students understand the seasons here, we cover the war of 1812 in great detail and there are always activities to attend, we read novels like The Bully Boys by Eric Walters so students can look at the war from a different perspective).

The scenario reads something like:
The war between Canada and the US has been going on for three years now. You are a group of General Brock’s advisors. He has stated the final push for the war must come in the next year, but when is the best time to launch the attack? As his advisors, you must come up with a proposal of when the attack should occur (why is this the best choice, preparation, surprise etc), how the attack will occur (what is the best plan that costs the least in terms of supplies and lives)?
It is great to see the kids get involved in this. They present their findings and usually, a debate ensues. (Go in summer we can travel lighter, Go in winter we can walk across the Niagara river and not need boats).

There are a ton of cross-curricular activities that help the students to see the connections to the real world.

Catherine

References:
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. The Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054

Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4 -14.

Shulman, L.S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching. The foundations of a new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1)1-23