Category Archives: Resource Sharing Forum

This resource share forum is a place for you and your peers to contribute free or low-cost digital resources to the whole class that exemplify the lesson topic, for example, “Knowledge Representation and Information Visualization for Learning Math or Science”.

Virtual Experience – Learning about Sustainability

Here’s a website that we are going to use in our upcoming science unit. We are looking at the process of how our food gets from “seed to plate,” how technology has affected this process over time, and how some farmers are looking at how to make the process more sustainable for the future. On this website, there are interactive 360 videos, as well as activity sheets that you could use to reinforce the concepts. Because my students are younger I plan on modifying these and making them more age appropriate.

http://www.discoveringfarmland.com/virtual-experiences?utm_source=DiscoveryEducation.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=VFTpromoPage

 

 

Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants – A must see, can’t miss website!

I came across a website, Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants.  I found this site to be very cool, and definitely a resource I will look at using in my classroom.  They have many online lessons and expeditions that anyone can join, including livestream lessons with explorers and scientists.  For example, Jut Wynne talks about discovering 5 new species of cave millipedes in China.  What I really appreciated is that any class can simply hit the livestream button to participate, and could also signup to be one of a few “camera classes” to interact.  This site also uploads all their videos to YouTube for easy access, and to review later or watch something you missed.  It meets so many of the STEM criteria, demonstrating real science, connecting to scientists, exploring possible careers, and exploring new concepts or issues.  If I were teaching history, I might have my class follow Paul Salopek on his 7 year walk around the world, tracking his progress and reading his reports on the blog Out of Eden.  Being a science teacher, I am interested in checking out the Water Brothers as a intro/segue into a PBL lesson on spreading disease through water that I am developing.  There are so many cool topics here, I can’t even address them all except to say that there are over 300, and from watching a few of them, they are tech up to date, interesting, and talk about “real science” – the process of not knowing the answer, making and testing hypotheses.  The web site is sleek, engaging, and well designed, truly a gem of a find!

www.DNAi.org – Recommended Networked Community

This website explores everything to do with DNA – its discovery, its importance, how it stores information and makes proteins, and how it can be manipulated for our purposes.  It is highly interactive with information, videos, and activities, as well as having lesson resources and tools to build your own lessons.  There is also a blog with news stories to keep up to date, links to Twitter feeds, and an opportunity to sign up to a learning community.  Highly recommended!

Drones: Virtual Field Trips

Locate a math or science virtual, web-based expedition and share how you might use it with your class or with students.

This is not a web-based expedition site, rather ways drones can be used in the classroom.

https://www.k12irc.org/tools/drones.php

Drones have become increasingly cheaper and more accessible for schools to purchase them. Palaigeorgiou, G., Malandrakis, G., & Tsolopani, C. 2017  article found two major conclusions that developed from their experiment with drones. First, drone-based Virtual field trips provided a novelty effect where is learning enjoyable and captivating. Second,  drone-based VFT offered a better overview of the field under examination. The researchers added that “drones certainly have a ‘wow factor’, but their learning efficiency in the different educational settings has to be examined thoroughly” (p. 342)

Palaigeorgiou, G., Malandrakis, G., & Tsolopani, C. (2017, July). Learning with Drones: flying windows for classroom virtual field trips. In Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2017 IEEE 17th International Conference on (pp. 338-342). IEEE.

Google Arts & Culture-Museum Tours

Contribute a URL to another museum with recommended math or science online exhibits to our Resource Share Forum

https://artsandculture.google.com/project/streetviews

As most of the tours are for the cultural experience (virtual tours), however, I have not doubt these maps will be more interactive in the near future. In saying that, a teacher could QR code selected museums and attach inquiry projects/tasks to each one.

Skype Virtual Field Trips

This is my first resource in booking virtual field trips at my school and let me tell you, they have some amazing experiences!

https://education.microsoft.com/skype-in-the-classroom/virtual-field-trips

You do need a free account to log in but then to have access to a community full of resources.  The trips are easy to arrange and facilitate.  Some are better than others.  My personal favourite has been with Thomas Edison’s laboratory and the trip was called Idea to Product.  The tour took us behind the scenes into his labs, storage area, and office to demonstrate the design process.  Other highlights include The Canadian Canoe Museum, the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, and the Sea Turtle Hospital in Mission, Florida.

I have a trip booked with a class next week called “Walking with the Dinosaurs” and it takes place in India.  For us in Brandon, Manitoba, we are pretty excited about what this might look like!

AR and VR Oh My!!

Education has a long and sad legacy of being decades behind in technology. Innovative technologies such as coding, robotics, web design, media creation and more are simply seen at best as an unnecessary extra and at worst just for fun or a distraction. Many students and parents rely upon clubs and afterschool programs to experience these “extras”. Technology in many schools is reduced to Google, PowerPoint and repeat. I believe it is not a matter of “if” but “when” this technology is part of our everyday lives, how long can we close the schoolhouse doors and try to remain immune?  One of the limitations of educational adoption is a lack of easy to use creation software. Until that is available there are some amazing creation tools available that allow educators to start off with AR in a relevant and rigorous way. I had the opportunity to use Z-Space as part of the FETC conference this past January. I have to say that putting on those glasses was one of the most amazing educational experiences ever! You are able to dissect, examine and co-create interactive experiences in front of your eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd2tgj6KBGs and https://zspace.com/. Another amazing app that allows for teachers to create and annotate content is EON AVR. Teachers have the ability to create and customize their own lessons and you can switch between AR and VR with the click of a button. https://www.eonreality.com/eon-experience-avr/

Ready to make Chemistry and Anatomy come to life… well your students are going to LOVE Anatomy 4D and Elements 4D. Imagine taking paper cubes with the periodic table of elements and putting them together to create chemical reactions in front of your eyes!

Finally if you have not had a chance to explore Merge VR well you are missing out. While it is coming onto the scene as an entertainment platform we are seeing an explosion of potential educational content. This amazing tool puts learning literally at your fingertips!

AR/VR technology has the potential to transform teaching and learning, and I believe will become a powerful assistive technology for many students allowing them to learn in ways never before possible. AR and VR will only remain missing from education if we allow it to.

Trish

Vernier Probeware and Logger Pro

In our school, the science dept has purchased a number of Vernier probes.  They can be used easily for data collection and for student designed experiments.  They can be used with both portable handheld (LabQuest) devices and computers (LoggerPro) for data analysis and group collaboration.  I have found them to be very user friendly and effective.  Some of the probes we have include photovoltage gates, pH, O2 and CO2 sensors, and a photospectrometer.  These provide many opportunities for students to do fieldwork, or to create inquiry labs in biology, chemistry and physics.  Vernier also has a great selection of predetermined labs in a wide range of areas that make use of the probes.  There’s nothing worse than having them sit on a shelf collecting dust.

Molecules with Jmol

One of the units in my Bio12 course is biochemistry.  I have found a couple of sites that work well to show 3D molecules to help students visualize important biomolecules.  Molecular modelling kits work well as manipulatives for small molecules, but not for complex polymers like DNA, cellulose or proteins.  These sites work with the jmol platform, using Java.  They are intuitive to work with, have a large selection of molecules, and allow students to manipulate not only the molecules but also certain methods of viewing (for example hydrogen bonds, or polarity).   These concepts are often very hard for students to grasp if they are unable to visualize them.

These sites are completely free.

·         http://biotopics.co.uk/jsmol/jscontents.html

Dave