A Teacher’s Thoughts

Ok, so it was the end of February, but the new labs are finished (minus some small punch list items) and we have been fully using our new space.

I certainly have more to add about the wonderful opportunities these labs will provide our middle school students, but for now take a look. The classroom is a combination lab/classroom space, allowing for students to move between equipment intensive investigation to areas where they can engage in group discussion or disruption free thought.

Each of the five lab stations is equipped with a power pole assembly feeding two 20 GFI Duplex outlets and a single data drop. This type of assembly is ideal for deploying laptops at each station, but I have less chance of laptops then desktops so the stations were designed to handle either. Whichever machine makes it to a station, the power pole assembly gets the computer off the wet surface, protecting people and equipment.

Having the technology built right into the lab stations facilitates easy integration of probeware, digital data collection, and analysis.

There are some adjustments still to be made as we work through this first implementation and the feedback from my students has helped greatly. I have to admit I feel very lucky to be able to work with middle school students in this type of lab environment.

The lab bench, beakers, liquids, a balance, data in a notebook these are the makings of the class lab. Now add in the lab report. Follow the way of writing science, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion…Now turn it in, and move forward to the next assignment.

Now consider this: The lab bench, beakers, liquids, a balance, data in a notebook these are the makings of the class lab. Now add in the lab report. Follow the way of writing science, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion…Post the report online seeking feedback and collaboration from your PLN (personal learning network). Go to your PLN, look at what they have done? Are you getting similar results? How do you (the PLN) explain the differences? What questions are you left with?

Or consider this: An open ended question is posed. Begin designing a way to answer the question, posting ideas and methods as you go. Feedback and suggestions come in allowing you to fine-tune your approach while you offer the same courtesy to others. As you collect data it is posted to a wiki set up to answer the question at hand. Other groups looking at the same question, but in different ways, add to the wiki too. Then end result is a collaborative document of evidence.

With companies like Novartis and Intel opening up data on previously closely held secrets and the tools of mass collaboration becoming commonplace in the global economy, science is beginning this big step forward.

As the pace of science quickens, there will be less value in stashing new scientific ideas, methods, and results in subscription-only journals and databases, and more value in wide-open collaborative-knowledge platforms that are refreshed with each new discovery. These changes will enhance the ability of scientists to find, retrieve, sort, evaluate, and filter the wealth of human knowledge, and, of course, to continue to enlarge and improve it.

- The New Science of Sharing

This one reference is chock full of good 21st century literacy skills, skills previously untaught in science classes. The relevance of information skills to science students is central to the processes of science. Using blogs and wikis students can be given the opportunity to develop the habits of mind required of a 21st century scientist. And given the increasing relevance of science to our daily lives shouldn’t we all be scientists?

When I wrote about what someone might see when walking through a technology integrated classroom, my goal was to provide a quick view for a group of administrators and school board members in my district. The list was clearly missing something. Jeff Utecht’s Post on evaluating technology use in the classroom goes this next step giving observers a way to assess the level of technology use in that room. Combine this with the recent post by Kim Cofino on moving teachers into the 21st century and an administrator might have a good framework for creating change.

Following the previous post, it is time to look to the future. Which way to go? Here are some ideas:

Tackle some questions regarding climate change using wikis perhaps. I have done units like this before using a socratic seminar. I saw an interesting post on Julie Lindsay’s blog about the fishbowl technique used by Karl Fisch and some students in Colorado. Amazing. I think I might want to try this.

Our local school to career organization is sponsoring a science and technology fair. This could make a good jumping off point for some independent learning. We have been waiting to launch students with their own blogs this year (really we shouldn’t have waited but here we are mid-year already!) and these could serve as a great place to record their ideas and thoughts as they research. After reading some posts coming from the Science Bloggers Conference in North Carolina over the weekend I only feel more strongly about moving this idea forward.

Water resources
Hard not to want to take advantage of the great local resources for studying water resources. While I would want to focus on current issues and future problems, this will also allow for some good historical geology to meet some state standards.

Spend some more time with those folks at the ISS07 project. Basically, I need to build this into the schedule. I will ask the kids how to make this work since they are interested.

And the big question. How to tie together climate, climate change, water resources and water ecology and our local community? Oh, and finish it before school ends.

As the end of the semester draws near I thought it a good time to reflect on the gains made in class. Its amazing how curriculum and learning can snowball so quickly as the year goes on. One thing leads to another, blending in to what came before. At times it feels like really little progress is being made at all, at least when measured in big terms. Yet on the day to day activity of my room, nothing is more evident than the self-directed learning my students have been able to conduct lately. When I returned to a full time presence in all of my classes, I reminded my students that I expected them to be independent and motivated learners. I reminded them that solving the problem was their job (and of course asking me for help could be a part of the process, but only a part). As it turns out, I was wasting my breath. Not because it went in one ear and out the other but because, it did not need to be said, for the most part they were there. Well, most of them. I have a few left, those who have had their hands held on all occasions, who still have not gained the confidence, despite success. With these students I need to focus, yet without too much intervention. I need to let them know that I care, yet at the same time, leave them to solve their problems with tools other than me. I need to recognize too, though that sometimes it isn’t a lack of confidence, lack of helpful classmates, or lack of skills that keeps a few students from reaching the independence I want for them. Perhaps some of these students can do what I ask, and know it but simply want that connection, with a supportive adult, that they may not get when they leave school each day. Finding that balance is an art.

So where have we been?
• Density review (includes mass, volume, area, and length)
• Density and buoyancy review
• Applying density and buoyancy concepts to gases (previous knowledge was regarding liquids and solids)
• Laboratory techniques review and extension-working with gases requires a far more precise technique of measurement than previously used by these students
• Blog Commenting
• Using News Aggregators
• Using Google Docs for collaboration
• Dealing with minor networking problems
• Internet safety
• Student investigations of space related topics (particular to the ISS07 project)
• Online data collection
• graphing
• correlation
• drawing conclusions from data
• supporting ideas with evidence
• pressure and movement of fluids
• properties of fluids
• relationships between pressure and density
• functional design and design process
• seasonal climate variations
• effects of sun angle and position on earth in climate