Rethinking Teaching in the Sciences: April 7-27, 2008

Hello:

Chris Horgan, Curriculum Co-ordinator, Centre for Academic Learner Services (aka CALS), SAIT Polytechnic.

I don't personally have a science background (I'm an English major), but we deliver a number of science courses F2F/blended and fully on-line and so the more I know about options around using technology to deliver science-related curriculum, the more useful I can be in my joint roles of curriculum co-ordinator/project manager and the more useful my conversations will be with both SMEs and Instructional Designers.

I expect to lurk most of the time.

I look forward to following an interesting discussion.

Cheers, Chris

Emma, it sounds like we have a lot in common! Your roundabout journey to your current position as eLearning Coordinator mirrors mine.

I will be especially interested, when you're able to jump in, to hear more about the medical simulations you were involved in last year.

Hi to everyone,
I have been teaching science in middle school and high school for over thirty years. I have taught in Colorado, Oklahoma, Mainland China, and Canada. Currently I teach at a First Nations school on a little island off the central coast of BC, Canada. This topic is one that is dear to my heart. I have been integrating as much technology as I can into my classroom F2F in the form of experiments, internet resources, online courses and textbooks, etc., etc. I am going to be reading and processing until I feel inspired to add to the dialog. I am looking forward to the discussions. I find it interesting that people outside of science education itself are jumping in and welcome their insights. Please continue. One of the benefits of access to broadband and ICT resources is the ability to make observations from other parts of the world (collaboration with other science classrooms and students) and gather data that can be used in our experiments and projects. Wiki's, blogs, and you tube are becoming a valid resource for student support and discussions. Enough for now, it is past my bedtime and after all, we have three weeks. Oh, by the way, I have ten internet connected computers in my science lab/classroom, a digital projector, vhs/dvd machine, printer, scanner, subscriptions to online resources, my desktop computer and then various handheld devices that belong to me and of course the students have mp3 players, cell phones, psp devices. Talk about ICT! Blended classroom experiences between old school and the new technologies exist and give us the necessary transition potential across the digital divide and into the 21st century. Back to bed--I got distracted.
Rob

Welcome, Marsha! I recognize your face from other SCoPE discussions. I will be starting to teach an online algebra course for literacy level learners, beginning April 21st. The course, offered through AlphaRoute (using Moodle) is called "Letters for Numbers: A first look at Algebra". I'm not kidding when I say it's at a basic level, & I mean REALLY basic. I'd be interested to hear anything about your experience with interactive apps in teaching algebra.

I think to understand science (& I will include math in there too) requires that one develop a particular kind of thinking; almost a new philosophy. But how do we teach a new pattern of thinking? -- it almost requires a kind of 'imprinting' process (to borrow a term from biology). Given your experience, do you have any thoughts on that?

Hello,

My name is Erin Barley, and I'm the W Coordinator for the Faculty of Science at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC). This is a new position, and my role is to provide support for science courses that incorporate and emphasize writing in teaching. The pedagogy behind this 'W' initiative is that students will 'learn to write' (i.e., that well designed assignments will help students develop as writers), and will 'write to learn' (i.e., that writing engages students with course material and enhances their comprehension). I also teach General Biology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences.

My teaching experience and my preference is to teach face to face. I use power point in lectures, overheads in labs and tutorials, and I can't imagine managing larger classes (60-300 students) without WebCT. But to be honest, I'm not a gadget person and I find the sheer volume of new teaching technologies rather overwhelming.

I joined this discussion because I was caught by the title "Rethinking Teaching in Science". I look forward to hearing about the experiences of other science instructors with various technologies, and to discussing the role that technology can and should play in teaching science.

Erin

Since my field is Physics I will talk about the ICT resources we promote among our teachers.
In Physics I think that animations, simulations or virtual labs are the most useful resources we can use to support content delivered by the teacher.
They allow students to visualize phenomena in the case of animations, to perform experiments in the case of simulations or virtual labs and that is what science is about really: applying the scientific method to get to knowledge instead of just memorizing laws and equations.
There are many websites where we can find this kind of resources. I will talk about one of them: PHET , Physics Education Project of Colorado University, has Physics simulations that are free to use and download. I have created a couple of lessons using them adding interactive template-based activities so that students following the stages of the scientific method and using these simulations will arrive to Hooke´s Law in one case and Ohm´s Law in the other. You can see the one on Hooke´s Law translated into English although it takes some time to load...sorry
Other ICT resources are more like electronic books that just translate the regular content into electronic format: multimedia lessons with hyperlinks, quizzes... that can be used as "classroom textbook", class extension, self-assesment...
But most important in my opinion is that ICT can be used as a new way to learn:

• projects that are shared through presentations, blogs, wikis... where students get to use digital devices such as cameras, video, sound recorders...,

• in groups through collaborative applications such as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet...
• performing critical thinking activities that involve digital literacy skills such as search for information, selection, evaluation and presentation of new information. Webquests are an excellent way to do that.

I think that ICT should be used in the Science classroom to:

• have the students learn science by "doing" science even if it has to be virtually and also to
• turn students into "prosumers" that is consumers of information but also producers of new information created with the help of technology and shared with the world.