Here's a slideshow of hands-on science photos from my last practicum teaching science 9 and science 10.
I've thought about doing this post for months... it was always on the bottom of my to-do list, until now. Here's a slideshow of hands-on science photos from my last practicum teaching science 9 and science 10.
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I like the easiness of just entering grades into a computer, finding the average, and I'm done. But - I wish more schools (including post-secondary) were not so focused on percentages and averages, but actually looked at the proficiency and improvement of a student over time through a given unit. See this example article which is awesome! http://cherraolthof.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/who-will-pack-your-parachute I know which student I would use to pack my parachute. Before the "older" generation chime in, recognize that there are a lot of researchers and professionals who study assessment practices, what works and what doesn't, and how to properly guage student success before getting emotional about the 'fact' that an average grade is not necessarily the best method of showing what a student knows. Well - I've got 5 full teaching days with edmodo in my two classes. So far, it's been pretty good. I've got a few gripes about the overall platform design/web coding (javascript instead of individual pages in many cases), inability to edit a quiz once it's published, the mobile site and app are very crippled, and some navigation issues. But overall, I think it is a good platform. My workflow has been to link a youtube video, then immediately following, I create a "quiz" with only ~4 questions about the video to allow the students to demonstrate understanding of the concepts in the video. I use this as a formative assessment, to see areas where I need to focus, or give additional help to certain students. Student engagement/buy-in is still challenging, even though there are assignments which are for report card marks and lecture videos only available online. I'm open to suggestions from others about this topic in the comments below... For the students who have engaged - it is a good way to have a lighter view on the class topics - to find articles, youtube videos, or just comments and questions about science. It's familiar facebook-like appearance help in this case, also. I will be doing more of a professional project around this topic, and creating a resource for the school admin and teaching staff which includes some research, interviews, and 'how-to' information. I'll be keeping the blog updated infrequently with details and findings as I work through the semester. Cheers!
Image hot-linked directly from
http://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching/flipping_a_class/what_is_flipped Many teachers have heard of and are using the idea of a flipped classroom. Some are only providing videos to students to watch at home, to allow more time in the classroom for experiments, discussions, projects, or challenging homework Q&A time. The problem that some of these teachers might face is that students aren't accountable to watch the videos - and many of them simply don't. This teacher (Ramsey Musallam) has found a way to engage students during this stage of their learning, how to hold them accountable, and how to help them learn concepts better. The video embedded in this page shows an example of one of his flipped lectures. He's using a combination of video and Google docs forms - the video on the page for students to learn from, then a form underneath that students must fill out with their names, summary of the video, and the important part - to finish his last example and provide an answer. He always shows two examples in his videos, but the second one he doesn't finish fully, and lets the students finish it. I thought this was brilliant! This form also allows him to capture all of the responses from the students in a single location, can sort them, check for duplicates (plagiarism), and he shows the list to the class on the projector screen - double accountability! I found it very interesting that he was then taking the responses and pasting into a wordle word cloud, and using that as a discussion stem about the subject! How smart... this is useful technolo The other great example of student engagement and interaction with flip teaching is the use of ed.ted.com - a central location to find educational videos, then create questions and discussion about the video. This method also encourages student accountability, and allows the teacher to gather student responses for grades, or progress. In any case, I will be teaching with a flipped classroom in the future, and hopefully will get a good taste of it during my PSIII placement. Another great resource to learn more about flipped teaching can be found at http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-flipped-classroom-model-a-full-picture/ |
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