Simulations in Science and Math

One subclass of resource available for math and science on the web is the simulation. Simulations are an important type of resource because they help to support authentic learning, inquiry, conceptual, and procedural learning in the STEM subjects (Roblyer, 2006). For this exercise I review four science simulations for both their usability as well as their content. The four simulations I choose to review were:

1. Projectile Motion from PhET
2. Pie Chart from the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
3. Heart Murmur Simulation from Real Life Education
4. Genome Island from Wesleyan University

Projectile Motion from PhET

The Projectile Motion simulation from PhET university of Colorado Boulder is an introductory level physics simulation appropriate for students in high school or college introductory physics. This simulation allows the user to define starting conditions for an object that will undergo projectile motion. I believe this simulation requires a very basic understanding of physics principals as this understanding makes the interface much more intelligible and user-friendly. After defining the starting conditions the user can then run the simulation to see how far the object flies. changes to the starting conditions were easy to make allowing for quick comparisons between trials.

Pie Chart from the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

The pie chart simulation from the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives was extremely simple to understand and easy to use. The interface was intuitive and user friendly. Students are presented with a scenario where they need to plan for an event. Items are broken down into categories (entered into column 1) and quantities are then provided for each of these categories (column 2). Not only was it quick and simple to produce an initial pie chart, it was very easy to manipulate the chart enabling the user to make changes and then review the subsequent results. This manipulative seemed appropriate for a student just learning about ratios, fractions, and charting.

The next two simulations I experimented with were in Second life. This immersive environment provided the simulations with a greater degree of depth. However, it also complicated the simulations. Navigating in second life can be difficult for newcomers and therefore is a barrier to adoption for many people. I found these simulations to be much more attention grabbing and the added depth made me feel like I was experiencing a full educational experience. Second Life is not appropriate for younger students as the environment is open and other residents of the environment may interact with you. The materials presented in these simulations were intended for undergraduate science majors.

Heart Murmur Simulation from Real Life Education

The heart murmur simulation provided the user with a hospital which could be explored. Inside the clinic environment there were three patient rooms. The first two rooms contained patients with known miladies while the patients in room three were undiagnosed. The goal of the user was to listen to the heart beats of the patients in rooms one and two and to then diagnose the patient in room three based on the information they had gathered. This simulation was quite lifelike as it incorporated recordings of real hearts. This could be a fantastic learning tool for pre-med or veterinary students looking to learn more about heart rhythms.

Genome Island from Wesleyan University

The Genome Island is a very rich interactive environment designed to allow students to explore many topics in genetics. The topics explored are appropriate for an introductory college level genetics class and range from Mendelian Inheritance to chromosomal arrangements to an in-depth look at the human genome. This island contains a wealth of information. It may actually be overwhelming for someone trying to explore it in only a few minutes due to the sheer volume of information available. Aside from the information presented there are also several tasks scattered throughout the island. The tasks are mini scavenger hunts that instruct you to search for key bits of information. As a biologist, I found this island and the heart murmur clinic to be absolutely fascinating. I spent a great deal of time exploring these two areas; I never felt bored in doing so and feel that I barely scratched the surface.

References:

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (4th Edition). Prentice Hall.

Resources for Science and Math

As we all know there are a plethora of resources available out there on the web, but how do we find ones that are useful for us and organize them for later access? One way is to create a custom start page that can be used to organize all of your favorite resources. For this weeks project, I have created a custom start page containing resources that students in my Urban Ecology Module might find useful. To view my start page, please click on the preview below:

There are many sites on this start page that I feel would be helpful to students in an Urban Ecology Module. In no particular order, here are my top 10:

1. National Biological Information Infrastructure: This site provides a great deal of information on local species. This data could be very helpful to students looking to assess the biodiversity of an urban environment.
   
   
2. Ecology.com: Ecology.com provides a good overview of the field of ecology. The site attempts to present information in a fair and unbiased manner. This site could be very useful at the beginning of an ecology unit to help introduce the general concepts.
   
   
3. US Geological Survey: Many students do not necessarily consider the impacts of geology on the flora and fauna that inhabit a particular area. The USGS provides detailed geographic data as well as aerial photography that could be very useful to a student completing a report on Urban Ecology.
   
   
4. Urban Forests - Treelink.org: Treelink is an organization that endeavors to educate the public about the benefits of trees in urban environments. There are several handy resources on this site under the resources area. In particular the "What Tree Is That?" is particularly helpful in identifying trees quickly and accurately. This would benefit students who are attempting to take a census of the flora in a particular area.
   
   
5. Ecological Society of America - Ecology and Me: Ecology and me takes a critical look at the role humans play in the environment. This site would be a good resource for addressing this units essential question "In an urban environment, are humans part of the ecosystem? Why or why not?"
   
   
6. Enature.com - ZipGuides: Much like the Treelink.org "What Tree Is That?" guide, Zipguides is a collection of online nature guides. These guides would benefit students who are attempting to census the diversity in an area.
   
   
7. Living with Urban Wildlife: Living with Urban wildlife is a series of 16 guide books targeted at urban residents. These guidebooks help residents to understand how to live harmoniously alongside the nature that is present in their backyards. These guidebooks could be use as models of awareness raising public service brochures in the e-publishing module.
   
   
8. www.ecologydictionary.org: Need the definition of a ecology term? then you have come to the right place! This online dictionary could assist students in their understanding of terms specific to the field of ecology.
   
   
9. Climate Data Online: Just as geology can effect the biodiversity in an area, so can weather patterns. The NNDC Climate Data Database allows students to look at regional weather patterns. By correlating those pattern with changes in biodiversity, students can begint o make some predictions regarding populations in an area.
   
   
10. All About Birds: Much like the Treelink.org's "What Tree Is That?" guide and Zipguides, All about birds is an online nature guides specifically targeting birds. These guides would benefit students who are attempting to census the diversity in an area.

Writing Across the Curriculum

According to M.D. Roblyer, in her book Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching, "The "language arts" are those language-based processes by which we think, learn, and communicate." In the lower elementary grades this means focusing on the basic fundamentals of learning and communication such as reading, writing, and oral communication. While in the upper grades, this typically means that the curriculum focuses more heavily on literature and composition. However, as students advance further in their academic careers they begin to encounter discipline specific differences in written and oral communication (Roblyer, 2006). This is especially true in the sciences where students are expected to not only be able to communicate in both written and oral English, but to also be able to synthesize complex scientific concepts and integrate them into their communication. In "The science of scientific writing" (1990), Gopen and Swan describe the nuances of science writing by stating:

The substance of science [writing] comprises more than the discovery and recording of data; it extends crucially to include the act of interpretation. It may seem obvious that a scientific document is incomplete without the interpretation of the writer; it may not be so obvious that the document cannot "exist" without the interpretation of each reader. In other words, writers cannot "merely" record data, even if they try. In any recording or articulation, no matter how haphazard or confused, each word resides in one or more distinct structural locations. The resulting structure, even more than the meanings of individual words, significantly influences the reader during the act of interpretation.

So how are our students to learn these subtleties of science writing? How can they move past "merely recording data" and move on to communicating scientific thought clearly?

The pedagogical strategies of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing in the Content Areas both seek to address these very questions. These pedagogies "offer a way of teaching subject-area knowledge at the same time it facilitates the development of thinking and writing skills" (Klein and Aller, 1998). While some educators feel that teaching WAC is a waste of subject specific time, this is contrary to the literature which suggests that WAC aids students in mastering subject specific content. WAC challenges students to not only learn to organize there thoughts in a different format, but they are also challenged to think differently about the subject matter area; when they write students are writing to learn. Written compositions in the sciences ask students to synthesize their knowledge and integrate it into a format that is intelligible by the reader (Klein and Aller, 1998). This helps us to achiever Higher Order Thinking skills in our classrooms.

There are many basic things we can do in the sciences for WAC that address both traditional literacy (reading and writing) and newer digital literacy (recording and publishing) skills. The lab report for example is a great place to begin addressing literacy skills for your students in the sciences, as lab reports are nearly ubiquitous in the sciences. One way to address digital literacy skills through the lab report would be to substitute one report each quarter with a video or audio lab report. Oral presentation is very important in the sciences and recording a digital lab report would give students both practice with an important skill (presenting) as well as aid them in developing 21st century literacy skills. However, there are other simpler way to achieve WAC goals in your classrooms such as discussing with students the importance of images and figures (e.g. what makes a good scientific graphic?), or asking them to create process and concept maps before writing (Roblyer, 2006).

There are many digital tools which can aid you in integrating such WAC projects into your curriculum. For example, for the audio visual lab reports free tools such as Jing (http://www.jingproject.com), Windows Movie Maker, or iMovie can be of great use. For the other projects there are also great free tools on the Internet that could help you realize your pedagogical goals. In a class where you are discussing images in scientific writing a Wiki where you as the instructor post an image and ask students to collaboratively construct a caption could be very telling. In a bad graphic there will be a great deal of dissent on the meaning of the graphic, whereas in a well designed graphic there will be a greater degree of consensus. This can aid your students in critically evaluating their own graphics. While the tools you use are going to be dependent on your specific topic, it is important to note that technology supported WAC is a powerful tool for aiding your students not only in learning how to communicate more effectively but also in learning specific subject matter. This is a benefit no matter how you look at it!

References:

Gopen, G. D. and Swan, J. A. (1990). The science of scientific writing. American Scientist, 78:550-558. Retrieved from http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/the-science-of-scientific-writing/1 March 21, 2010.

Klein, Bill, and Betsy M. Aller (1998). "Writing Across the Curriculum in College Chemistry: A Practical Bibliography." Language and Learning Across the Disciplines 2.3: 25-35.

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (4th Edition). Prentice Hall.

Internet in Education

According to Moore’s law, technology performance is increasing exponentially. Right now, you may be wondering what exactly performance, measured by the number of transistors we can pack on a microchip, has to do with the Internet in the classroom. While it may seem unrelated, Moore's Law has had numerous implications for both our society as well as our classrooms.

The rate of exponential change dictated by Moore's Law means that approximately every two years our technological computing capability doubles. This increase in technological performance is seen on a daily basis on the streets (cell phones and iPods) and in our classrooms in the form of computers and high speed Internet.

The technology of today has changed drastically from that of the past, as has the way in which technology is integrated into every facet our daily lives. The field of education is not immune to this technological shift.

According to Smith, Clark and Blomyer in their 2005 article entitled "A synthesis of new research on K–12 online learning"

"In 1999, about 52 percent of K–12 teachers said they used technology in instruction (Lanahan, 2002). About 90 percent of children ages 7 to 17 reported using computers in school, as did 97 percent of high school students (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2004)" (p. 9). This number suggests that a significant portion of our students and teachers are using technology in their classrooms and the Internet plays a large role in this usage.

The use of the Internet in the classroom empowers us as educators to provide opportunities for our students beyond what is available in our classrooms or neighborhoods. The Internet can enable us to take our students down the street or to the moon with NASA on a virtual field trip. It can enable us to make connections with students in far away places via web conferencing or electronic pen pals. In Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching MD Robyler defines several examples of activity structures that are enhanced through the use of the Internet. Aside from those named above, electronic mentoring, electronic publishing, group collaboration, problem based learning and social action projects are all defined as activity structures that work well with Internet integration.

The Internet can also provide our classrooms with access to informational resources that may otherwise be unavailable.

According to the Pew Research Center's The Internet and Education report (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2001/The-Internet-and-Education.aspx):

"The Internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for teenagers. Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November and December 2000 shows that teens use the Internet as an essential study aid outside the classroom and that the Internet increasingly has a place inside the classroom. The Project surveyed 754 online youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Teens and parents report that Internet is vital to completing school projects and has effectively replaced the library for a large number of online youth. 71% of students report using the Internet at their primary source for their last major project, and they also report accessing online study aids like Sparknotes or CliffNotes. Beyond legitimate assistance with studies via websites, or email or Instant message communication with teachers, students also take advantage of the Internet to cheat, with 18% of students reporting knowing someone who used the Internet to do so."

Access to Internet resources not only provides students with content that is relevant and useful but that is also up to date. Students are able to access real time data through the Internet for their assignments. This could be useful in my thematic unit on Urban Ecology. If students were able to retrieve up to date ecological data on the environment we were studying that would be of great value. Unfortunately, this data was not available so I decided instead to do a web quest for some other basic ecological facts. The web quest is designed to be fun and to also help the students to begin forming a library of helpful sites. The library of web resources will then serve as a class resource for the duration of the thematic unit.

Despite the great promise of the Internet there are still some barriers. For example, high speed Internet is still not ubiquitous in the united states and this prevents some rural communities from effectively accessing these tools in the classroom.

Over the Hedge: Thinking beyond the walled garden

The walled garden, or protected Internet browsing zone, is not a new or, for that matter, an education only concept; rather, walled gardens have decorated the Internet landscape since its inception. According to Webopedia, a walled garden can be defined as "a browsing environment that controls the information and Web sites the user is able to access." Many Internet service providers (ISPs) over the years have created walled gardens for their users, with perhaps the most notable being America OnLine (AOL). While many early Internet users enjoyed the security that a walled environment provided them, the usefulness of such artificial restrictions began to be questioned as the web grew. Michael Mahoney, managing director for EGM Capital, summarized this point by saying:

“As people gain greater sophistication in using the Net, they don't need the walled garden that is AOL. The only reason you pay for AOL is if you think there is lots of great stuff in the garden -- but everything outside the garden is phenomenal so you don't need it.” (Geller, 2002)

However, despite the lushness of the scenery outside of the walled garden environment, this concept is still being applied in the educational environment. Walled gardens provide a controllable browsing environment that help school network administrators keep student away from inappropriate content. Yet there is a trade-off; with increased security comes restricted access to vital content. Students and educators alike are often unable to access Internet resources that could make an impact on their classrooms outside of the walled garden. They are restricted from peaking over the hedge to see what exists beyond the boundaries.

But, here's the truth that no one wanted to tell them.... over the hedge the world is being flattened!

According to Thomas Friedman (2005) in his book The World is Flat, "As a result of the triple convergence, global collaboration and competition -- between individuals and individuals, companies and individuals, companies and companies, and companies and customers -- have been made cheaper, easier, more friction-free, and more productive for more people from more corners of the earth than at any time in the history of the world." This has major implications as education is imperative for success in a globalized world.

How can we are educators take advantage of the tools over the hedge to help prepare out students for this flattened globalized future? Through the use the Internet, email, Web Conferencing, and other web 2.0 collaborative technologies, we can:

• Extend our classrooms beyond the classroom walls
• Regionalize our classroom by interacting with local peers and subject matter experts
• Globalize our classrooms by interacting with others from all over the world

By taking full advantage of the tools available to us over the hedge, we can truly extend our classrooms out into the world and bring the world into our classrooms in essence providing our students with an education without borders.

References:

Friedman, Thomas H. 2005. The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Geller, Marsha (2002). Just an Online Minute... Life After Pittman. Retrieved March 4, 2010 from http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=2875.

Walled Garden: Webopedia retrieved March 4, 2010 from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/walled_garden.html.

Video Blogging - An Experiment

Multimedia Projects in the Classroom - A Video Blog

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The Transcript:

This week we will be trying something a little different;diverting from the plain old text blog to the world of video! What better way can you think of to introduce the benefits of multimedia in the classroom? I have chosen to focus on student use of multimedia in the classroom and in particular multimedia projects.

But before we go any further, what is a multimedia project? Multimedia projects are projects that combine multiple media types such as text, audio, video, pictures, graphics, etc. into a single cohesive unit. Multimedia projects can vary in both style and complexity depending on the subject, grade level and student ability. For example screen casting a presentation or student created digital stories could both qualify as multi media projects. While Multimedia projects are not entirely new to the classroom, tools are now widely available that make this type of project easy and accessible.

As we all know it is becoming increasingly more important that the students of today understand how to communicate and collaborate in a digital world. One tool we can use in the classroom to introduce this 21^st century tool set is the multimedia project. This type of project enables us to introduce many of the 21^st century skill they need to become both literate consumers and producers of digital content.While addressing 21^st century skills is a positive benefit to multimedia use in the classroom there are also several others. M.D. Robyler in her book “Integrating Educational Technology into teaching” cites several benefits to multimedia use, such as:

1. Increase Student Motivation
2. The ability to address multiple modes of learning
3. Application of higher order thinking skills

Multimedia project do this by presenting students with the opportunity to approach a project in a way that is familiar to them and relevant to how students gather, integrate, and synthesize information in the 21st century. Multimedia projects address some of the skills students need to communicate and collaborate in a digital format while challenging students to go further and apply higher order thinking skills. According to Bloom's Digital Taxonomy by Andrew Churches the actions students are taking when constructing multimedia projects such as remixing, synthesizing, editing, and mashing are all examples of HOTS in this digital age.

OK that’s all good, maybe even great, but how do we as educators assess student learning in a multimedia project? There are two ways: process and presentation. The process of planning for and creating a multimedia project requires critical thinking as we already established so it makes some sense to evaluate students not only on the product of their endeavors but also on the process: how did they get where they ended up? The final product can also be evaluated based on content. Multimedia projects offer students a creative way to demonstrate their learning and often this will shine through in their projects.

References:

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (4th Edition). Prentice Hall.

Churches, Andrew (2009). Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy.

Databases and Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets and databases have become staples of todays computing world. They are used across many industries as productivity tools and across many disciplines in the classroom as educational tools. But what exactly are Spreadsheets and databases?

Spreadsheets and databases are both tools which can be used to store and manipulate large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Both spreadsheets and databases, employ a table based data storage system and both allow you to do basic data manipulation functions such as arithmetic functions and sorting (Roblyer, 2006; Thorsen, 2003). However these two tools do offer different affordences.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2010), a spreadsheet is the electronic equivalent of an account's ledger book. While electronic spreadsheets can be used as a ledger for the purpose of organizing numerical data, they can also be used for much more. Roblyer (2006) expands their usefulness to include the manipulation of said data which can include basic arithmetic calculations, charting, and more complex functions. Spreadsheets can aid in the collection, organization, and display of data. In the classroom, spreadsheets offer relative advantage to paper based numerical collection and data manipulation methods. For example, a spreadsheet can facilitate class wide collection of data points allowing an instructor to demonstrate statistics and variation to a class quickly and easily. Spreadsheets can also assist students who have difficulty in arithmetic calculation to manipulate a dataset; this takes the focus off of the student's mathematical ability allowing them to focus on applying higher order thinking skills to the content being presented (Thorsen, 2003).

Databases differ from spreadsheets in their intended purpose. While Databases can preform many of the functions that a spreadsheet can, a database is "usually [a] large collection of data organized especially for rapid search and retrieval" (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2010). Databases can also be comprised of many tables linked together to facilitate data storage and retrieval (Wikipedia, 2010). Unlike spreadsheets, the data display options in a database are typically not as robust as in a spreadsheet. However, databases make up for this in increased flexibility in the types of data that can be stored, text as well as numbers, and in an end user's ability to query the data. Data querying allows a database user to ask more complex questions (those based off of multiple variables or factors) of a database than one can ask of a spreadsheet (Roblyer, 2006). Through the use of queries, student database users gain "useful skills in searching for and using information (Roblyer, 2006)" that is relevant to the questions being posed to them in the classroom. As with the spreadsheet, databases allow students to exercise higher order thinking skills as they tackle their assignments.

As spreadsheets and databases become staples of todays computing world they also become staples in our classrooms. Both tools can be used to support higher order thinking skills in the classroom empowering students to begin synthesizing, analyzing, and applying the data available to them in order to address their academic assignments. While these tools are distinct they both offer relative advantage in the classroom as they empower both the instructor as well as the student.

References:

database. (2010). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved February 20, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/data base

Relational Database. (2010). In Wikipedia. Retrieved February 20, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database.

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (4th Edition). Prentice Hall.

spreadsheet. (2010). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved February 20, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spreadsheet

Thorsen, C. (2003). TechTactics: instructional models for educational computing. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.