Students and Technology

Students are not as tech-savy as one might think. They can thumb with lightening speed on their cell phones and they can download videos and music, but there are a lot of skills that don't rise to the surface when they make their personal priority decisions. I discovered this in an assignment that was due yesterday by my 9th-grade biology students.  An article by Prof Hacker today, On not assuming students’ technical skills, has prompted this reflection.

This past summer students collected, identified, and created displays of insects. To continue the learning, I asked students to take pictures of their favorite insects and create a field guide of their catch on Wikispaces.  The assignment I gave started with a class period of everyone simply signing up for a free wikispaces account and requesting to join the insect wiki I had previously created. (This took an entire period only because of the poor internet service in my classroom and the sharing of ten laptops by all students. Some students waited over five minutes just to log onto system.) The second step was to create a page using a template I had created. Thirdly students, in pairs, were to research and complete the required information, citing all sources, and finally they were to add pictures to the wiki.  We will work on tagging posts later. At each step, I projected on the screen the webpage and demonstrated how to complete the task. The assignment was broken down into these pieces and students were given a week to complete. I work in a district where 99% of the students have computers on internet and the vast majority have cell phones.

My surprise came when students began emailing their files or turning in paper versions of their report. Reasons for not filling in the wiki came in the form of "I couldn't find the page" (there was a link on their school webpage assignment), "it wouldn't let me edit" (they had not confirmed their account through their personal email), "it kept disappearing" (click save), "how do I add the picture?" (showed the icon again), "my picture doesn't show" (the add picture instructions say double-click), and so on.  As students came to me with their problems, I pulled the page up on the screen, would have the student log in and talk them through it, using their example to guide others in the class and having the student "drive" through it, so to speak, always being supportive and understanding of the problem so the student did not feel like he or she had a stupid question.

Although the assignment was due yesterday, I gave the non-honors students the weekend to complete the assignment. Giving a couple more days to feel successful is more important to me than an arbitrary deadline. I am still looking forward to this field guide.

Jack-O-Lantern Carving by Combustion

Every year at Halloween I demonstrate a combustion reaction in a pumpkin. Adding calcium carbide to water produces acetylene gas. In air, with a spark, the acetylene ignites explosively. I conduct this reaction in a pumpkin that has been pre-carved and the face pieces replaced. It is always exciting for the students - so exciting that they often can't get a good video. Watch.

Step 1: CaC2 + 2 H2O → C2H2 + Ca(OH)2

Step 2: C2H2 + O2 → CO2 + H2O

A Matter of Balance

So many competing interests coming into the public classroom make creating lesson plans a real balancing act. In my science classroom, while striving to teach an authentic curriculum that meets the state frameworks, I want to:

• create a constructivist learning environment




• connect the course to the students world




• meet the students on their individual levels and on their technological turf




• attain higher order thinking skills




• continue learning with my students and give them practice for becoming life-long learners

My teaching incorporates literacy, art, history, and math into the science lessons. It is hard work for the students and I reach out to them to let me know if the work appears too "random", if they are not understanding the "why" of what I am doing. My time during the school day is consumed by watching the students, reading the students, helping the students, and reaching out to them in many different ways. My lesson planning comes after hours and can become trouble when my home responsibilities begin to get neglected. I've often told people I feel like a starfish, trying to reach out in many directions to many people at once. It's hard to keep my head above water... or sand. But every day is a brand new day and an aha moment from just one student keeps me going.

Starfish photo attribute: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/ / CC BY 2.0

When a Chemist has a Birthday

We can't have a wimpy little birthday candle, right?

The gummy bear sacrifice:




Above, when heated, potassium chlorate decomposes: 2KClO3 --> 2KCl + 3O2
This reaction provides enough oxygen to ignite and oxidize the sugar in a gummy bear.
C12H22O11 +3 O2 --> 9 C + 3 CO2 +H2O.

--------------------------------------------

There should be fireworks too. ;)

The "So What?" of Nuclear Chemistry

Tried to give my students a connection to real life while studying nuclear chemistry including half-lives and radiation. I asked them to read the article "Life Returns to an Eerie Chernobyl", consider NPR's "Voices of Chernobyl: Survivor Stories", go to Chernobyl Facts site for more info, use Google Earth to look at pictures of Pripyat in the Ukraine, and finally give me a reflection on it all: - Based on the SCIENCE of nuclear chemistry, do you think the area is safe for people to live and grow food in? - What do you think should be done with the land? The students answered the reflection prompts and really did not reflect at any depth. Need to practice this more.

Nature Poem and Love Poem

Sharing an Oscar Wilde poem:

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each springimpassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some freshblossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedalfashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!.

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!.

-- Oscar Wilde

Field Guide to Local Species

The insects collected for the summer project will be used throughout the year to teach many different biology concepts. Students will be creating web-based pages of an insect and its habits, lifestyle, and living requirements. These pages will be contained together to make a field guide of insects we have observed in the area. Later, students will add tree species to the field guide.

For each insect in the "Field Guide to Our Biology Catch" students will provide a picture (preferably from their collection) of the insect and:

• Latin name
• Common name
• Family
• Description: shape, size, color, antennae, palps, wings, legs, thorax, abdomen
• Food
• Life cycle: stages of development, life expectancy
• Habitat
• Range
• Interesting Facts (optional)
• Cite Resources
  
  
• Thus far into the assignment, the students have joined Wikispaces.com and are starting their research. Watch here for the results.