EduBlog Response

http://pchsfysicstchr.edublogs.org/2012/03/11/the-problem-with-problem-based-learning/

I like the idea of problem based teaching, since it gives the students more control over what they're learning and why they're learning it. That being said, it's up to the students to come up with a research question so they can gather the necessary sources and materials. The issue here is for teachers to help students identify a research question that is both challenging and feasible, and given the amount of trouble people had in my PhD days, this will be very difficult.

I do agree with the author of this post that teachers must continuously learn in order to properly guide their students; my advisor was constantly reading current literature in order to formulate new questions for upcoming grant proposals, and likewise, I had to read literature in order to find sufficient background information for my project. However, that was a doctoral program, and much of the pressure to design the experiments and search for relevant journal articles was on me. When I first started out, my advisor provided me with a few articles to kick start my reading and build my background knowledge on the lab's research interests. There was quite a bit of hand-holding as I somehow managed to stumble through my first year, and eventually found a good routine to reading paper efficiently, taking notes, and coming up with possible research questions. After I passed prelims, things started shifting and it became more on me to come up with ideas, while my advisor's role became more mentor-like rather than lecturer-like.

At the high school level, I would imagine it to be more like the first year of grad school, with less restrictions on what counted as reliable resources. While I was stuck using PubMed and books lying around the lab, there's nothing stopping a high school student from searching the textbook first for some background information. The teacher then becomes more like a consultant, asking the student about how they propose to continue their research, rather than the source of all knowledge.

The author talks about the difference between "ill-structured" and "well-structured" questions, and while most scientists, not to mention grant agencies, would like to see well-structure questions, I don't see anything wrong with starting with an ill-structured question, breaking it down, and the assigning the well-structured components to different groups. After all, scientists do collaborate...

Digital Storytelling

One of the group projects in our tech class was to present on a teaching tool that could potentially be used in our own classrooms. Last week one group talked to us about Digital Storytelling, an application that allows users to upload pictures and create a slideshow while recording audio. The end product is basically a slideshow similar to that in PowerPoint, with your recording playing in the background.

We had a seminar class this past summer, and one group had talked about how planning and teaching lessons was like telling a story, and using Digital Storytelling would be a great way to showcase the visual while creating your own narration to go with it. I have used YouTube videos to show students more difficult concepts in my own teaching, but since it was someone else's video, I couldn't tailor the video narration to suit my students' needs. Students in more advanced classes could skip over some of the introductory information in some videos and go straight to the key concept, while some students may benefit more from hearing the introductory portion as a reminder.

Digital Storytelling wasn't without its problems; we had some issues with adding more stills to our presentation, and other issues with recording and playback. Figuring out the functions of Digital Storytelling took some playing around on the app, but overall I think this would be a good way to make my own videos and narration for my students.

Guest Presenter

We recently had a guest speaker in our technology class to talk to us about cell phone use in classrooms. Before this session, we read an interview transcript and excerpts from her blog, and I thought it sounded way too idealistic. Students are on their phones all day long, and it takes some special skill to have them put down the phones and pay attention, and now she wanted to have them continue to use their phones and learn? It just sounded silly.

Her presentation to us during class made her out to be a little less idealistic about using cell phones in class, especially since she was having students complete surveys or do polls on their phones. To tackle the issue of student distraction, she asked all students to put their phones face down on the top right hand corner of their desks, and to close all laptops.

She had several activities for use on our phones, but overall it was all about using cell phones to answer survey questions. The only difference was how long the surveys were. She also mentioned logging into virtual classrooms using smartphones, but we logged into the classroom using our computers instead. Virtual classrooms, while a good idea, may not work on smartphone/tablet as well as they do on the computer, even if there is an app specifically designed for phone or tablet.

I'm sure that there are plenty of teaching tools one can do on a cell, but I remained unimpressed by her talk. It just seemed like using it to poll students on their opinions, not necessarily to help them learn more. And until I see evidence that students are learning when they're whipping out their phones to do these silly surveys, I remain skeptical.

Technology in my Placement

The high school classroom has changed considerably since I graduated; all of my high school classrooms had whiteboards or chalkboards, with a separate projector screen that rolled into the ceiling. The only place we had internet was the computer lab, and USB flashdrives were just starting to enter the market.
Fast-forward to today, where I'm currently student-teaching at a high needs school about 30 minutes away. All the classrooms have chalkboards, but half the chalkboard is covered with a SmartBoard and its projector. We also have a communal cart of iPads that can be checked out for student use. That being said, there is not much else. The staff computers in the classrooms are old desktops that run Windows 7 on machines designed for Windows XP, while the only computer lab is in the school library. WiFi is spotty on days it actually exists, but most days there is no WiFi unless the teacher brings in a separate router, which is part of the communal iPad cart.
While I can see how fancy technology can enhance learning, I think that technology can also distract students from engaging in class. So many students, especially during the first two periods, are on their phones between discussions (or are permanently stuck to their phones no matter what else is going on). Without WiFi, they dig into their data plan. Imagine what would happen if there was open WiFi at the school.
The SmartBoard in the class has its own pros and cons. I like it since it allows me to mark up my presentations in real time, but since it takes up half of the only existing chalkboard, I have limited space. Somehow when I teach, I take up as many chalkboards/whiteboards as possible. So when I fill up the SmartBoard, I only have half a chalkboard left to write, which leaves me with the dilemma of what to erase first, especially if I'm moving through material at a much faster rate than the students are accustomed to, but more on my lesson-pacing later. The SmartBoard, like all the other electronics in the classroom, is prone to freezing, shutting down, and general malfunction. At least with the chalkboard or whiteboard, the only issues I anticipate are running out of writing utensils and not having an eraser.
Overall I enjoy my placement without the myriad of fancy technology available. It's not a matter of training staff to use the technology, but also knowing what to do in case fancy technology fails. I prefer students to be less distracted, hence still looking for whiteboards in every classroom I'm in.

Connections Across Disciplines

I just started at my placement school last week, and although I'm working primarily in a science classroom, my mentor teacher is letting me observe classrooms outside of my focus area. Being a math minor, I took off during planning period yesterday to observe a geometry classroom, where the students were working with line segment addition/subtraction and line segment congruence. I was surprised by the amount of class discussion and variety of activities that students did, which led to them coming up with the theorems of segment addition and congruence on their own.

I wasn't surprised at the inquiry based learning and student exploration, since this was common in my college science classes. I was really surprised that discussion-based learning could exist in a math class. We didn't have such discussion in my own high school math classes. I had the same teacher for both Geometry and Algebra II, and although we did do some exploration on our own, our teacher did most, if not all, of the demos that would show us concepts. For example, when we were learning about conic sections, we first read the definition of a parabola and an ellipse. Just reading the definition of a parabola, with strange words like "focus" and "directrix", was enough to bore most students to tears, but the activity using wax paper, where we drew a point and a line, then repeatedly folded the paper so that the line and point intersected. Multiple folds resulted in a parabola appearing in the wax paper.

Unfortunately student explorations like the parabola in wax paper were few and far between. Often times we would break up into small groups and work on problems, so seeing this geometry class where students came up with the theorems themselves was a very different approach and needed few materials aside from a ruler and a worksheet.

For classrooms that have more access to technology, three of my classmates designed a math lesson using GeoGebra, an interactive drawing program that allows students to draw and manipulate graphs, figures, and angles. The lesson was about drawing lines when given points, then drawing lines with given equations using GeoGebra. The purpose was for students to see the connections between equation and the drawing of the line on the coordinate plane. Since GeoGebra shows equations, it was also important for students to calculate the equation of the line on their own before checking with GeoGebra, providing them with a way to check their work and discuss the meaning of vocabulary words like "slope" and "intercept".

I'm really enjoying the interactive way of teaching math, and I've never thought of math as being very interactive before. When I was volunteering at summer school in Algebra I, the teacher used GeoGebra to graph parabolas, showing the equation along with the graph. He could drag the parabola to make it wider, narrower, or upside down, and the equation would change along with it. Students were much more engaged, and better understood the relationship between the graph shape and the effect of changing the x^2 coefficient in the equation. This also meant that students decreased rote learning and had higher retention, while teachers found it easier to scaffold future information.

Looking back, I wish I had a more interactive math experience. I loved my math classes in high school and college, but I never thought about math as being inquiry-based until now. I will also admit that I didn't see the connection between the x^2 coefficient and the parabola shape until well after I finished Algebra I.

Organizing Online

When it comes to teaching and tutoring, I'm pretty old-fashioned. I make good use of whiteboards, chalkboards, pads of paper, anything I can use to write, doodle, and demonstrate my way through a lesson. I heavily rely on PowerPoint to show pictures and animations, and occasionally will use YouTube clips. It was effective, but if I had to make slides from scratch, like I did when teaching community college, it could be a real pain to gather the necessary sources (pictures, text, video) and put them in a logical order.

I've never even heard of Blendspace until last week, when I had to do a small presentation on it and how I could use it in my future classroom. I could upload files from my computer onto the site (called a "canvas"), or I could drag and drop videos, links, photos, and other resources straight from the web, which meant no more opening a gazillion windows trying to gather all the necessary media. Furthermore, since I synced Blendspace with my Google and DropBox accounts, I could drag and drop files from my Google Drive/DropBox onto the canvas. It also meant I could watch YouTube clips right on the canvas, instead of clicking on a link and getting transported to a new window. Much easier.

Blendspace also has an assessment feature, which allows instructors to make multiple choice questions right on the canvas. Although I would not substitute this feature for written exams and quizzes, I think it would be an excellent way to poll students' understanding during class, like many of my college professors did.

That being said, Blendspace can also be used to goof off. When toggling around with mine, I uploaded a presentation on cell respiration and then proceeded to fill the rest of the canvas with video clips from the Dark Knight trilogy and Season 4 of Archer.

I will admit that Blendspace definitely breaks up the monotony of a chalk talk.

Integration

We recently had a group project called "Connections Across Disciplines" where we created a lesson plan based on our specialties. My group examined the use of games, this time a protein-folding computer game called Fold-It, to introduce students to protein structure, protein function, and scientific research. The original idea was to have students explore this game on their own devices -- a laptop, tablet, or smartphone -- until we realized that Fold-It only worked on a computer and had to modify our lesson plan accordingly.

I was introduced to Fold-It in grad school when we were discussing current topics in protein research. From a scientist standpoint, Fold-It generates useful new information about how proteins fold and contributes to current research. From a high school student's stance, the game could potentially teach them about the importance of protein structure and function in biological systems. It also gives students a better picture of what proteins look like, instead of staring at a blob and trying to make believe it's an enzyme. Looking back, I wish I had a chance to use this game in my own AP Bio class; it would have made more sense to me to play around on the game and manipulating protein side chains on the computer instead of memorizing the definition of secondary and tertiary structure.

It wasn't until college when I started seeing more connections between my science classes, as well as across disciplines, like in science and non-science courses. I think it's unfortunate that we don't teach classes in a more integrated manner and help students better understand the purpose and application behind the things they're learning. The protein-folding game, for instance, uses computers and a game-like modality to teach students about macromolecule function. It also exposes students to the research side of things, making it clear that there is much to learn beyond of what is in the textbook. On the flip side, sewing different pieces together may make it confusing for students who like to compartmentalize information, and I can certainly anticipate students complaining about me putting a research twist on practically everything. I'll justify it with "We're learning about it because it's awesome!" Enough said.