A few weeks ago, I mentioned an upcoming conference in my area (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill), the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. I will be facilitating a session called Teaching Science: using online tools in the science classroom, and like most of the other sessions, it will be unconference in nature. In other words, my job will not be to teach, but to generate conversation.
Odds are that people will be coming in with lots of questions and answers. But I would like to have some sort of starting place, if only in my own mind regarding the issues surrounding using live web applications in science education.
So, what are some of the questions/issues that you might be curious about as a science teacher or if you were a science teacher. The range will likely be kindergarten through higher ed skewed toward high school and college.
Thanks in advance!
Dave,
I currently teach science to grades 2-5. Having over 400 students that I teach every week has made it difficult to do the blogging thing. However, I’m in the process of starting a Science Wiki Club with a few students from each class. We will meet after school to add, edit and delete information on this wiki. The wiki is in its infancy as I have been the only contributor… http://www.evaturnerscience.wikispaces.com
I have used Classblogmeister in the past for my students to post and comment on blogs. I can’t see myself doing this with over 400 students. If you have any suggestions that would be great!
Dave,
I teach grades 1-3 science. I am just getting into using online tools with my younger kids (also teach gr 6-9 computer)and have used only used Voice Thread. I don’t know about others- but as a “special” I only have the kids for 40 minutes twice a week and focus on “hands-on” science for this age group. Voice Thread was a good tool for us to get what we were doing out to the community. The caveat with the younger kids is that they need to “play” with the technology before using it and I would rather be doing a hands-on science experiment. I take the kids to the computer lab and go online to sites like edheads, etc. but this is more of a culmination of a long project. I have trouble visualizing how I could use more online tools with the kids, rather than using tools to display the kids’ work, especially given the limited amount of time I have. Maybe I just need more information about what’s out there for this age group.
I teach 7-9 science and the biggest obstacle that I have had is the organization and implementation of online tools such as blogs and wikis. How does one find time to set up the tools for student use – am I missing some information that would speed this process up or make it easier? A list of websites that have some easy to use (and setup) tools would be helpful.
As a science teacher I would like my students to be able to blog about current events and controversial issues and I would like them to explore the nature of science and misconceptions in science. Any blogging ideas that would address any of those topics?
I have found the folks at wikispaces to be great as far as helping you set up a wiki for kids. It’s free-you don’t need email addresses for kids and essentially send them a list of kids names and the passwords you want- in plain text- and they have it all set up for you. The interface is easy to use, the only problem I have run into is that kids cannot edit the same page at the same time- they really need to be able to work on several topics at once so you don’t have this issue. So, this could work on misconceptions… a page for each “myth” and a reminder to kids about editing. I did wikis with my 7th graders…with mixed results- collaboration is a skill that needs to be taught.
I teach 8th grade science and I have two main issues. First, I like to do many of the on-line simulations that are on line for things that can not easily be done in a classroom setting. However, there are not enough machines and the bandwidth is not large enough to handle the number of computers. Makes it tough! Second is access outside the home. With the large number of assessments, we do not have time in the schedule to allow kids to view stuff. I have a blog that my kids and parents need to access. I cannot guarantee that all will look at it NOR can I guarantee that kids have the access. Any ideas?
Hi Dave,
Not a question per se but a link to one of the original Science education bloggers ~ the Otterman. His name is Sivasothi N. and he is a lecturer in Biological Science at the National University of Singapore. Prior to that he was a curator~researcher at the Raffle Museum of Biodiversity Research. Siva and I had worked on a CD-ROM seven years ago and we have been friends ever since.
Siva has been blogging for many years and he was using social media to harness his students and like minded souls in Singapore to participate in environmental programmes such as the International Coastal Cleanup, voluntary docent or guiding work and to garner support to lobby the government for action on various environment issues.
Long, long ago he set up blogs with his students as co-authors. His main personal blog is “The Otterman”.
His area of research was Otters.
http://blog.sivasothi.com/
If you look at his blog log you can see the blogs he co-authors as well as the blogs for his current courses.
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/otterman/
He is a brilliant example of how blogging and the web can be used to support education in a very practical, collaborative and community minded manner.
Regards
John
David,
What are YOUR ideas about teaching science with technology?
My job at this event will not be to teach my ideas. Neither is it the purpose of this blog entry. But since you asked…
1. It doesn’t have anything to do with technology. It has to do with the fact that an important representation of our students are using information in ways different from most of their teachers. They work and share ideas in communities, learn from networks, engage in conversations and often by contributing valuable information products. Science and other instruction need to be utilizing these new avenues of communication.
2. Much of the science that I was taught isn’t true any more. Even more of what my father was taught isn’t true any more. We live in a time when we are learning so much that is new about our environment and the laws that control our environment that the notion of teaching science as if it was a completed work is nothing less than arrogant. I think that what we should be teaching instead is how to be a scientist — how to think like a scientist (and a mathematician, a historian, a book reviewer, etc.)
3. I think that learners should be empowered to learn by experimenting, and not just with dead cats and test tubes. They should be empowered to experiment with data. When information is confined to paper, there is only so much that we can do to really work that data. But when so much of the information is digital and networked, then students can learn by working that information and building/constructing new knowledge from that information.
What do I think science teachers and students should be doing with technology? They should be blogging. they should be working within social networks. They should not merely be reading textbooks. They should be writing their textbooks. They should have, at their disposal, tools for analyzing and manipulating information, data-mining a global conversation, and tapping into local resources. They should be publishing what they are learning to broad audiences.
The specific technologies are fluid. They are emerging almost daily. But the practices for which many science educators have been striving for years are just now becoming easily accessible. It’s just a matter of understanding the conditions that make that so and learning to leverage those conditions — and it can’t be done without contemporary information and communication technologies.
2¢ Worth…
In regards to wikis and blogs, teachers need to know that it is an evolution also. I have had a wiki
for 9 months and everyday it gets better. Start small. Blogging I have only used in earnest in the last few months. I still want to blog with all my classes but tend to think too big with questions. I need to remember to think small. The act of consistent blogging makes the difference.
David, I have used blogmeister (not as often as I should) and have to say it is a wonderful tool. Your approach to this conference is refreshing. I had recently blogged about a course in authentic learning and 21st century skills I am taking as a classrooms for the future teacher. It is better than sitting in a lecture, but the best way to learn is to be immersed in the conversation. I made a statement that we should be reading posts from some of the greatest minds (yours included) and commenting to learn. Lofty I know but I wish there were a way to do this. I learned more about blogging and feel more prepared to have students blog by spending time becoming a blogger myself.
David, I would love to have a conversation with you regarding integration of technology into an inquiry based science curriculum. Our 1:1 wireless setup at Cary Academy has allowed me to explore countless possibilities in this area. I will list a few here, but again, I would enjoy speaking in person if you get the chance by Skype, phone, etc. My middle schoolers and I have experimented (no pun intended) with blogging by mining government databases to explore trends in US energy consumption, wiki use for student created content, online applet use to investigate misperceptions about concepts, online applet use for formative and summative assessment through screencasting, screencasting to produce student created teaching videos, multimedia wiki creation to demonstrate robotics programming and challenge achievement, lab protocol development through a collaborative space so that other lab groups can critique peer protocols, use of applets to predict data that will be collected in our lab, etc.
I would ask them how they are going about teaching the 1st what is some ways they keep them occupied.
Wow,
I wish I could be at the conference and pick the brains of folks like you. I teach an online chemistry class for Iowa schools that cannot find a certified chem. teacher. I retired from face to face chem teaching after 27 years. I use lots of virtual labs (and some face to face labs 4x a year…it is a crazy blend but it works). I want to use WIKIs more effectively for data collection and collaboration and am looking for good ideas on how to do that. My students are colloecting data and need a good collaborative format that allows for fluid data charts that are updated as new groups complete their experiments. I am going to log into the session online and see what I can learn.
Thanks!
Shannon
I am a graduate student who is interested in pursuing teaching at the college level, either at a small liberal arts college, or a community college and I will be attending the science blogging conference. I agree that above all, students need to be taught what it means to be a scientist and how to be a scientist. Knowledge of the field is important, of course, but as you said, Dave, the “facts” are always changing. So it is more important to teach kids the process of science and how to think like a scientist than to try and fill kids’ heads with every “fact” available about mitosis. And, ultimately, the kind of critical thinking necessary to do science will be more useful to them than memorization of vocabulary (particularly if they do not go on to be scientists). However, I have no idea how to approach this in the classroom. Graduate school does not teach you how to teach. And my training is in bench science and wet-lab work. I have no idea where to go to data-mine. So, what are the resources available? How do we find these things? Is there some sort of community or resource for college teachers that talks about these things?
While the conference has the word “blogging” in the title, this does not mean that we have to limit the discussion to just blogs. Everything about reading, writing, publishing, teaching, learning and even doing science online is fair game for the discussion.
While Dave will lead a session on science education online from a teacher’s perspective, there will also be a session on science education from students’ perspective.
There will be also two sessions that are focused on Open Science – one on Open Access Publishing and the other one on Open Notebook Science. The latter means posting day-to-day experiments, data and thoughts on a wiki or a blog = pre-publication. The former means publishing scientific papers in venues which makes the work freely accessible to everyone PLUS free for everyone to donwload the data, reanalyze, translate, copy+paste elsewhere, etc. as long as the original source is cited and linked to. How does this affect K-12 education? College education?