In my first few years of teaching, my primary goal was just to keep my head above water. Now that I have survived those first few years, my goals have expanded. The way that scientists work and collaborate has changed dramatically with advances in technology, and therefore the way that I teach students about the nature of science has to change as well. Educators have long known that most students learn better when the activities are hands-on. When students actually get to create something, the results are even better. To really get my students thinking and acting like scientists, I need to provide them opportunities to collaborate, create, and utilize technology as part of a scientific community.
As I’ve begun teaching, it’s become clear that I cannot teach math and science the same way that I was taught--and quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to even if I could. The recently released Next Generation Science Standards place a new emphasis on engineering within science classes. This past year, I incorporated a “Build a Thermometer” lab into my chemistry classes and it was a huge success. Students had to collect data on various materials they could use and then share their data with each other to make decisions based on quality and cost. Moving forward, I would like to “engineerize” more of the labs in my chemistry classes to continue to foster this kind of work. As a part of the Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship, I work directly with fellows that are a part of the KSTF Engineering Task Force. Continued work with this group will be helpful moving forward. Maker Shed also has kits designed to help students create in and out of the classroom. Incorporating some of these kits into my teaching could help provide the scaffolds I need to make my students creators.
The majority of my goals moving forward involve finding ways to help students’ work mimic the work of actual scientists. While hands-on, engineering-based activities are one way to accomplish this, most of these types of tasks cannot be accomplished without successful peer-to-peer collaboration. While I think I’ve had good success with group work in my classes, this does not accurately represent the ways in which scientists collaborate. I would additionally like to find ways to have my students collaborate with students in other schools, with politicians, with other members of their community, and with the scientific community in general. Many of the projects I assign to my students are made using technology anyway, so moving forward I would like to find ways for students to share them, whether it be on Twitter, Youtube, or through the creation of online portfolios (like this one!).
Over the last three years, I have been working in a school with 1:1 computing. All students have personal Chromebooks and we are a Google Apps for Education school. While I’ve been incorporating Google Classroom and the use of some Google tools, I know there are still numerous apps and tools that I have yet to take advantage of. Google has a lot to offer to educators and students, and while this can be beneficial, it can also be very overwhelming. Many teachers in my district who are lacking technological experience are struggling to keep afloat. I’ve led professional development in my district on the basics of Google Drive, but am now looking for a way to become more of a Google expert. Google now offers several levels of free training to become a certified Google Educator. In my spare time, I plan to complete the level 2 certification first and perhaps become a certified trainer after that. I believe this will not only directly benefit the students that I work with by providing them more opportunities to learn, but it will also benefit other teachers in my district when I share what I’ve learned through collaborative professional development.
Ultimately, I am striving to find ways to help my students to better use technology to create and collaborate. If I can show my students how to think and work like scientists do today in the real world, then maybe I can inspire them to use their knowledge and skills to accomplish something great!
Image attributions:
hammer- toolorbit.com
people with word bubbles- jameslogan.org
NGSS- graphite.org
KSTF- kstf.org
Google traingings- edutrainingcenter.withgoogle.com