So when I first took a few courses on how to do "Online Learning" I was introduced to a tool called Flippity. At first I didn't think it was really useful, but over the last few months it has become my new favorite! Why you ask? Well it may just be easier to show you. The diversity of using these has been amazing... honestly it took me alittle bit of ingineuity and creativity to figure out how to make it work for me, but the potential is massive.
This one website has allowed me to convert many of my hands-on activities into a "hands-on" method online. It it far from superior to the actual kenestetic learning activities I usually do, but given the need to find a way to make it work, it has been AMAZING! Flippity allows you to make board games, jepoardy games (although I prefer jepoardylabs), spin wheels, manipulatives, scavenger hunts, flash cards, and SO many more. This is all for FREE (even better!) and it is done using google spreadsheets published to the web (don't even get me started on the computer science invovled... all I can say is I'm eternally grateful to whomever created it! My favorite flippity is by far the Manipulatives one but I have used several. Granted they take time to make but they are relatively useful here. Check out a few that I have made (feel free to use them, or go to Flippity and make your own!) Board Game Review: DP Ecology Manipulatives: Chordate class matching & Organelle matching Random Name Picker: Phylum/ Class randomizer Scavenger Hunt + Flash Cards: Tanscription/ Translation Hunt & tRNA cards
I have so many more, but this will give you a taste of what is possible. Happy building!
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Finding ways to make online learning engaging is challenging, to say the least. It is easiest to revert to simply lecturing at students. While I have the advantage of having small class sizes, a wealthy school, as well as one to one laptop school, the daunting tasking of making online learning interesting is still hard no matter what you do!
After taking a few "how to teach online" courses this summer a few things stick out:
Anyway, four sites I've found that I think will be super helpful over the coming months:
Off to a good start but still have a long way to go. I need to look more into Google Classroom but for now I'll stick with what I've got! So Classification is far from my favorite topic to teach about, but as it is required for the DP Biology curriculum there isn't much else to do. It also happens to be one of those things that to some degree you are required to memorize. But I enjoy finding ways to make students remember things.
When it comes to trying to determine how to help students remember the various phylum and their characteristics, this becomes harder. How to teach this in such a way that it is no longer just memorized but also builds awareness of organisms and their characteristics? While I enjoy taking my students outside, I don't exactly live near an ocean so some of the phylum required are harder to obtain. Videos work well but are not physical enough engage students for retention. So I have found 5 layers of learning that have worked well.
The changes that occurred to the IB DP Biology curriculum, first exams in 2016, made a lot of people angry. (well at least some of the veteran DP teachers I know.) Most of the anger came over the addition of the history of science being required at specific points along the curriculum. Things such as the rejection of Davison-Danelli's model of the cell membrane by Singer and Nicholson, or the discovery of DNA and the roles of Watson, Crick, and Franklin, or William Harvey and his contribution to our understanding of physiology in various ways. While I am not sure the fuss was as much about having to change curriculum versus actually teaching the history of science, I think that most of us need to do more teaching of the history of science.
Teaching the history of science plays a large role in helping students to understand how science knowledge is constantly changing and evolving. It reminds them that it is a method of knowing not the only way of knowing. History reminds us that without the discoveries of the past, much of what we know today would be non-existent. It is finding ways to teach history that I make it interesting. Various methods I have found useful: evidenced based conclusions that use real data to help students see what the original investigators saw (I have used this in the Cell Membrane as well as Genetics) and movies (DNA and evolution). I've also used timelines and more of a TOK strategy for the purpose of the origin of the cell and a different approach to DNA history. But whenever possible, actually doing a similar experiment to what the discoverer had done is the best. My favorite is having students actually reenact William Harvey's vein experiment- at least to some degree. It is a simple band around the arm and students can see the flow of blood using veins. (Use the kid with the biggest veins it will be the easiest to see). It never ceases to amaze students and they generally remember who Harvey is afterwords! Whenever possible such a simple experiment really does help students to better understand what previous scientists had done. It also gives them a better appreciation for just how difficult it was to find their conclusions given the materials they had to work with. History helps students appreciate science and where it has come from and how knowledge has changed with discovery. Do not ignore the history of science, whether it be George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, or Watson and Crick- history is important to the discovery of science. Both their successes and their failures! In my DP Biology Year 1 class yesterday we did an activity that helps to demonstrate the relationship between SA:V ratios and diffusion rate. It's a fairly typical experiment done at the AP level for most Biology classrooms. I've done this experiment before in various forms with various strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to share some of them here. First let me say that one of my favorite ways to engage students with this experiment is to simply ask them the question: Why do cells not become the size of elephants? Its a fun way to make them begin to consider why cells divide instead of continuing to grow larger. Typical answers depending on when you teach this lab could vary in complexity. However, I encourage you not to accept answers that simply say "because they divide" instead of giving reasons for WHY they divide. Again the point is to guide them into understanding that cells divide BECAUSE of their need to diffuse nutrients and waste in and out quickly not because they simply do divide. That being said: a few tips
Starting at a new school in some ways is like teaching a brand new subject all over again. Despite teaching subjects I have taught before, you can't help but have to redo everything all over again, at least in some ways. :)
Given that I have still been impressed with the diversity of my new school. Despite being a private school, I have met kids who are from France, Nigeria, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and a girl who has spent the last 7 years in Singapore. One student who is two weeks away from getting his Eagle Scout badge... serious pretty cool stuff. So despite being in a metropolis of an American city, I can honestly say that I feel more at home. I love diversity. :) I walked into a science classroom yesterday that was as clean as the first day of school. I didn't think much of it, as any teacher enjoys a clean classroom, but I started to think: it's almost 1.5 months in to school, there are no signs of any experiments in this classroom. It made me start to wonder... Can you do science with a clean classroom? Sure I had days were I was simply so overwhelmed with the amount of equipment that was piling up on the counters or the grime that had not been cleaned up by students (as they were suppose to clean it up). But I wonder at the thought of doing and teaching science without actually running experiments. I asked the students and they said they had done a simulation for the unit (which I had done before and it works well) but there are so many other cool experiments that can be done to help students understand the power of enzymatic reactions. So I encourage you to run experiments within a classroom. Even if it takes more energy and more effort. Is not the whole point to help students better understand concepts? How can you learn concepts by watching videos and by listening to someone talk (no matter how good of a speaker they are)? Research demonstrates that in order to truly engage students we must engage their prior knowledge, misconceptions, and experiences. If they have no experiences, then we must first create them before teaching them. Sure a video is cleaner, even easier to come up with- but the real question is:
DOES A VIDEO ACTUALLY HELP THEM LEARN, UNDERSTAND, and ENGAGE? Personally, I love videos and there are times and places that call for them. Experiments that are too pricy or too difficult to do in a classroom definitely could be shown. But when the experiment can easily be done by students (even in groups), then why show it unless you are preparing them for doing an experiment. But then I would question, why give them the information when science is about discovery! Ah, you've found a soap box. I'm not saying I'm anywhere near perfect at this, but I question the teaching methods of any science teacher whose classroom is as clean as this one was (perhaps I shall give it the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe it was just cleaned, but from what the students said I highly doubt it). Ask yourself: HOW DO I ENGAGE STUDENTS WITH MATERIAL? HOW DO I CHALLENGE UNDERSTANDING TO PROVIDE MASTERY OF INFORMATION RATHER THAN SIMPLY INFORM? What is a final exam? How should it be orchestrated to truly test the ability of students to demonstrate all they understand? I am reminded today that sometimes the traditional methods are perhaps not the best representation of what students understand. Sure traditional tests have a purpose, but I wonder if I am actually teaching my students anything through them?
Where are these questions coming from? A fellow teacher from my days in teachers training posted what he required his Honours Chemistry students to do for their final exam on Facebook. Let's just say it brought back so much of what I have been taught about education. This then prompted me to consider the idea that traditional tests are not always helpful in really seeing understanding. Application of ideas are a much better indication of understanding. You could say this is one thing that really frustrates me about the IB program. While it is rigorous, I do get frustrated at times that the content does not always allow time for students to really apply what they know real life. The question then becomes how to do this within the constrains of what is expected. I want my students to apply what they know. To truly gain an understanding of the importance of the interactions of life. So I wonder, how do you do this? I am constrained by the necessary fact that the IB does external exams. Yet, it is not enough to simply have kids memorise information. They must UNDERSTAND and APPLY it, which I'm not sure the DP program always does the best job of integrating. Anyone done some interesting final exams in Biology that truly require kids to apply what they know? I love taking kids outside the 4 walls of the classroom. While it is difficult to find the time and sometimes the money to do so, I really think it is a great opportunity. Whether it is running an ecology project to survey the local landscape, or teaching kids how chi-squared tests and random sampling play an important part in generating accurate data, or simply teaching about the importance of observation or perhaps it is just teaching kids that you can learn anywhere... no matter the reason I find the it does make for a great teacher.
Like any good teacher, there is always a purpose to it though. So for today's experiment, my students designed and developed an experiment that "tested an abiotic or a biotic factor that affects biodiversity." It's a challenging lab simply because it is so open ended AND my 10th graders have never experienced anything quite like it. I spend a day teaching them some basic methodology on how to survey and collect bugs (which is rather funny actually). This at least gives them some methods to use or at a minimum a place to start. They have 3 hours to either 1) collect all their data or 2) set their entire experiment up so they can come back and collect the data later. Some of these kids probably have never spent a total of 3 hours outside of the classroom let alone outdoors. My favorite part of this experiment: watching the kids scream.. 'It's a bug" or the kids today squirming about there possibly being snakes. While I admit that I'm not really a fan of either, it is funny to watch 15 year old boys scream like 5 year old girls because they had a bug on them. The learning is not so much about the experiment and the methodology as it is trying to teach students that Biology is about life. To study life we must be in it! But beyond that Biology is in some ways a more difficult science because we can't control it all the time. Many of my students walk away realizing that while people claim it is the easiest science, they begin to agree those people truly have never really done Biology. So... as I tell my 10th graders when they complain about the control variables: WELCOME TO BIOLOGY! Today in class we were talking about the Human Genome Project which then led us into talking about the ethics of biotechnology. Which is obviously always an interesting discussion. We, of course, had to mention movies like GATTACA (for all of us over 25) and The Island (for those younger). It is always interesting to discuss ethics with students.
This then led into a discussion of how the Human Genome Project can be used in science, which of course leads me to the databases we used today in class. Databases are an awesome way to learn about real science and the work that scientists are trying to do. Today in my SL Biology class I had students working with two databases: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Both contain some awesome information regarding genes and being able to sort through the 1,000s of genes that exist in the human genome (OMIM) or search for the actual DNA sequences using NCBI. This technology allows for the ability to do some really cool science that we would never have considered doing years ago. Including the NCBI's ability to BLAST sequences in comparison to other sequences. Obviously it is important to teach students how a BLAST works and some of the pitfalls of DNA comparison, still it makes for some really cool science. If you are interested in the assignment I had my students do or in the directions on how to do a BLAST. Please check out the following document: Gene Database Investigation. As always... please give credit where credit is due. :) |
AuthorThese reflections are meant to be connected to classroom happenings. See About Me page. Archives
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