Above & Beyond Technology in Learning

Useful diagrams

Fake News or Not? Internet Credibility

5Es of Internet Credibility

by Kathy Schrock

Who? Who wrote the pages and are they an expert? How can you find out more about them?

What?  What does the author say is the purpose of the site?  What makes the site easy to use?  What info is included? And what makes it different from other sites? 

When?  When was it created? When was it last updated?

Where?  Where does the info come from? Where can one find out more about the sponsor of the site?  

Why? Why is info useful for my purpose? why is this page better than another?

Fake News or Not??

Share your experience on your blogs.  

GenoChoice: Create Your Own Genetically Healthy Child Online.  

• content is not projected in a scientific process that makes me believe its credibility.  The created/updated date is the future, The information presented is not hosted by a reputable scientific agency. 

Dog Island. 

• As crazy as this is, it believe it is a legit site.  There are interactive simulations and windows that lead to further information about dog island.  There is ample information about the creators of the site.  there is no soliciting of information. 

ExplOratorium. 

• Looks legit, and is great scientific knowledge.  Interactive and educational. 

Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. 

• As real as this site looks and interacts, I find the content to be made up.  It is not hosted by a science organization, nor do I relate to the topic of a tree octopus. 

Science Kids

• Interactive and educationally sound for children.  Site has multiple windows on various topics and interrelate.  

Teaching inquiry with Webquests

WebQuests...

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web

parts (elements) of WQ - 

• Engagement/Introductdion
• Explore/Investigate/Task
• Explain/reflect/process
• Elaborate/conclusion
• Evaluate/assess

WebQuests on Weather:
Fourth Grade Severe Weather

• This WebQuest will be helpful for my inquiry 
• Lacks an evaluation element

Climate Change

Weather Vs. Climate

Weather, Climate, Global Warming, Greenhouse Effects

WebQuest on Weather and Climate Change

Engagement:
You are scientists researching the climate of a region and how climate change may be affecting it.  More specifically, you will be meteorologist and first research the local weather patterns during each season and determine the various climate.  Then you will look into climate change and how it may or may not be affecting the region.

Explore:
Using the internet, your team of scientists will create a powerpoint or slideshow of the different types of weather that make up your region's climate.  Include any extreme weather that is know to exist in the region.  Then discuss if the climate is changing and how it is affecting the region.  You will print out worksheets to guide you.  Your teams three minute powerpoint/slide show will describe the region you have been assigned, weather patterns, severe weather situations, climate, if climate change is prevalent, how it is affecting the region, and how the region is adapting or not.

Explain: Let's get started..

• Your region has been provided for you.  Make a slide that includes the name of the region and where geographically it is located in the world. http://www.worldatlas.com/
• Print out the guiding sheets to help collect weather and climate data.  These will help to stay organized and guide you in completing each slide. 

• Look up data using  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.htmlto determine weather and climate.  If you use outside resources, please reference them. 
• watch this video on weather and climate and make notes on your guided sheets to about the difference between them. http://www.brainpop.com/science/weather/climatetypes/
• For your region, find and state the following data for your region and include in a slide
• Date, temperature, humidity, wind speed & direction, visibility, and dew point using this link http://www.weather.com/
• research for severe weather patterns and how your region was affected.  Make a slide.
• Make a paragraph about how your region was affected and what they did or could have done to protect themselves from the natural disasters.  
• Does climate change affect the region?  How? Make a slide on the issue

Elaborate:

• Make a paragraph about how your region was affected and what they did or could have done to protect themselves from the natural disasters.  
• Does climate change affect the region?  How? Make a slide on the issue
• Share your presentation with your classmates

Evaluate:
Students will complete guided worksheets and turn them in.  Slideshow will be graded off rubric (facts, creativity, higher order of thinking)

Read It Chapter 8 & 9

Using Technology to Enhance Science Learning

Chapter 8

"Technology for its own sake has just as much potential to destroy the message as it does to enhance it."

My thoughts:  I agree with kindergarteners learning how to peruse through computers at school, exploring, and navigating through programs designed for their level.  Technology is unavoidable, and very prevalent to their education.  Not every child will have access to their own computer, and if they do, the exposer may not be educational, so I highly agree that schools should teach children age appropriate skills.  

Recent reports are coming out about young children and screen time.  I wonder where we draw the line on what is reasonable and ok screen time.  Is reading books online hindering brain development in young children?  Is it part of the problem of screen time addiction?  

I found an article that I would like to share 

click here for article

When using technology, it's important not to let it get ahead of the lesson.  It should be used to enhance learning and stimulate thinking, not for entertainment value.  That's where I struggle.  I tend to put videos of songs into my lesson plans so to meet the technology need, but I have often wondered its engagement factor.  

Using Technology to Enhance evidence-based learning:

• Science Webquest
• Asking a scientist-I like this idea.  Websites that allow a real scientist to answer student questions.
• Computer probe interfaces
• Digital Microscopes
• Virtual imaging
• Authentic science experiences
• Simulations-allow students to manipulate variables and see how the interactions among variables change the system.  Explorelearning.com

There is a time for technology in learning, but there is a time for students to rely on their own creativity, peer sharing & collaborating that can enhance learning as well.  Using technology can be a crutch.  It's important to know the difference in engaging them and enabling them.  

Chapter 9 
Adapting the Science Curriculum

• Todays classrooms are a multicultural community of children of different learning levels and languages. Providing reading material and science materials for non-english speakers is important.  Students who's english language skill are not as fluent should not be considered low learners.  Providing them material that they can understand and read, will allow them to learn and process content.  Science is tough enough, let alone trying to learn with minimal understanding.  
• Integrating children with special needs in science education through differential learning strategies.  
• Addressing needs of children with special gifts and talents through enrichments activities, challenge projects and other opportunities to use their unique talents and abilities.  Providing enriching experiences to advance understanding of science practices can also benefit all students. 

Living Science Chapter 13-15

Life Science

Here is the link to the slide

chapter 13
Living Sciences: resources for teaching Living Science:

I learn best by visual tactics.  Science is hard enough of a subject to learn as it is based on many facts and concepts. While teaching students science, I know I will use technology, posters, visuals and other tools to help students understand the principles of life science.  Asking studens to read and be expected to understand is a daunting task.  Science should be an inquiry based learning experience.   

  8 Characteristics of Life

system- group of organs that work together to perform a major function

• In humans, systems include skeletal system, muscular system, respiratory, nervous system, excretory and reproductive systems.  

Classifying Living Things

Animal Kingdom
Animal Kingdom includes the invertebrates (animals with backbones, including hydra, jellyfishes, corals worms, mollusks, and jointed-leg animals) and vertebrates (animals with backbones, including fish, frogs, birds, and mammals). 

Chapter 14

The Human Body

The Digestive System:

• the process through which the body breaks down the molecules that make up the food that has been eaten and prepares them to react with oxygen to produce energy. 

Skeletal-Muscular system:

Respiratory System:

Again, the importance of using multi-sensory tools to help teach science.  Visual aids are an important tool in learning science.  

Chapter 15

Lesson Ideas

Ideas for Unit topics should align with Next Generation standards and school curriculum, text books, workshops, and student discussions.  Begin with a Unit Title, then create a question for students to explore.  this question serves as the anchor for the unit.  Inquiry lesson of the unit should contribute to a deeper, more comprehensive answer to the unit question.  An Inquiry-based lesson helps to engage students in exploring the topic and makes connection with prior knowledge and new information.  It also provides them freedom and responsibility of their own learning.   

Starter Ideas/Webquest/Discovery Centers/Wonder Walls/Attention getters

This chapter is a great resource for future lesson planning!!!!

Reading to Learn it: Chapters 1-3

Notes for Reading

Chapter 1
Science seeks explanation to everyday questions.

Science=strategies

• teaching what to do when you don't know the answer, 
• science thinking skill=tools to discovery

Science is a way of knowing, explanations of the natural world, uses evidence to support it's clains.  

• systematic quest
• dynamic body of knowledge generated through a systematic quest for explanations

Body of knowledge:  

• energy can change form
• Matter can change form
• magnetic poles repel each other

Inquiry Processing

Descriptive                              Explanatory                           Experimental 

Questioning.                            hypothesizing.                        predicting

Classifying                              inferring                                  identifying

Comparing                              interpretive                             communicating

                                                                                                controlling variables

Scientific Method

Science as a set of value

1. truth
2. freedom
3. skepticism
4. order
5. originality
6. communication

Scientific method is taught appropriately to the grade level, and will always reverse back around; reassessing. 

Chapter 2. How Children Learn Science

• Science is a way of knowing based on evidence-seeking explanations based on evidence
• children come to you with prior knowledge about science
• science is a progression
• children learn science by doing science
• there is variation in the rate of cognitive development among children.
• Constructivism is a theory of human learning that is rooted in cognitive psychology and to a lesser extent, behavioral psychology. 

1. naive conception
2. assimilation and accommodating
3. contributions of neuroscience

Chapter 3.  

Discovery seeks explanations based on observations, evidence and reflection

Discovery learning=connect to past and future; interactive learning

Inquiry=careful and systematic method of asking questions and seeking answers/explanations

Learning through inquiry means students construct knowledge through the processes of asking questions, seeking evidence, formulation explanations based on evidence and justifying their explanations. 

Learning to inquire-students become aware of and consciously apply the processess assoc with inquiry as part of their thinking strategies. 

Inquiry questions- 

• information-seeking
• wonderment question-proposed relationship between 2 variables
• how does it work
• how to solve a problem question

Use Models to represent their understanding

Investigate

analyze and interpret data-display data

mathematical and computation thinking

construct explanations

obtaining evaluation and communication info

Inquiry skills

1. descriptive models-
• observing                    
• using space/time relation
• using measurement
• questioning
• classifying, impose order
2. Explanatory model-
• inferring-using logic to make assumptions from what we observe and question
• hypothesizing-a proposed relationship put forth to explain a phenomenon.  (predictions=the basis for an experiment)
3. Experimental Model
• experiments test predictions
• Predictions- spec. forcast of a future observation or event.  Based on observation measurement and inferences about relationship betw. variable
• 
  

• Identifying Variables=factors that can make a difference in an investigation
• independent variable-variable being tested
• dependent variable-change that is measured 
• controlled variable -effect of one variable all other factors must stay the same, only ind & dependent variable change.

ex. 1. color of flower-independent

butterflies-dependent

time, lighting, same butterflies-controlled.  

2. Bread in plastic bag in Room temp & in fridge...

how long till it molds?  temp(Independent changes), time (dependent), Bread & bag are same (controlled).

4. Interpreting Data-

• finding patterns and trends based on the data collected in an investigation. 

Resources: Future Teaching Folder

"When I Become a Teacher"

This is where I am posting useful websites that I come across during this class for future use.

Websites:

• NASA.gov: great site!  Videos, the latest news, huge resource for science

• US Geological Survey- Full of resources and information, but not easy to navigate.  This site can provide additional support for a variety of topics, but not to use as 'the source

• Worldwide Telescope- This is amazing!!  When you can't get a field trip to a planetarium, this is the next best thing. Tthe graphics are incredible, and there are 'guided' trips through space.  It really is a great resource. 

• GLOBE - Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment- This is a science program, site provides resources for teachers and students.  This is a site that could be used, but not my favorite. 

• NSTA Freebies for Science Teachers-  This site actually took me to many of the sites mentioned above.  It is a very useful resource.  I found a link to ZeroWaste Challenge that lead to more resources.  This is very usefull!

• ViewPure - how to keep youtube videos without adds-This is very usefull and welcomed!  adds can take away from the overall lesson and flow.  this is a great site to have and remember. 

NY Teaching Elementary Science Resources

Teachingchannel.org


Gizmo=simulations

Mystery Science 

NGSS hub and essential  Questions


EdTPA Handbook

Unit Planning:

• The basics of lesson and unit planning
• Unit plan Design Steps
• The Essential Elements of unit plan design
• Solving Problems in Unit plan design
• Teacher-student continuum - Dr. Smirnova's lecture for student teachers.

Games:
Visit Bloom's Taxonomy in Apps site where the tasks are aligned with technology/Web 2.0 tools and interactive applications.



Videos: