My courses at Walden have opened my eyes to the importance of STEM education. Each class I’ve taken has provided me with more insight as to how to change my lessons to include more inquiry and teach my students how to rely more on their own knowledge and less on me as they attempt to discover answers for themselves.
Most of the teachers I work with are unfamiliar with the term STEM education. As a leader in my school I take it as my responsibility to take what I have learned here and pass it along to my colleagues. I hope that I can effect change, not just in my own department, but school-wide. I think all teachers would be shocked to learn that U.S. students are falling behind students in places like China and India and this will motivate them to change their curriculum in order to better prepare our students to be globally competitive.
One of the obstacles I have found, as I’ve tried to change my lessons over the past 18 months, is some resistance to old ways of thinking. I work with other teachers who have been teaching for many years and are comfortable keeping their lessons the same year after year. When I’ve approached some of the teachers in my own department about updating our lessons to include more STEM based activities, they have not seemed interested in taking the time to make the often time consuming revisions that are necessary. The best way I’ve found to overcome this resistance is to make significant revisions to at least one lesson per unit of study and implement it myself, reflect on how it went and make any necessary changes to the lesson. I can then approach other teachers and explain the changes I made and ask for input as to how we can improve it even further. This seems to have worked on most occasions and they are becoming more open to making revisions. Next year I will continue to do the same until I feel that most, if not all, of my lessons meet the criteria of true scientific inquiry. When teaching a new lesson, or a revised lesson, I will often tell my students that it is new and ask for their feedback too. I find that many students like to be challenged and appreciate being asked for feedback.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Where's Our Sputnik?
Thomas Friedman’s article brings to light many of the challenges our nation is facing today in terms of the direction we are heading and the roadmap we are laying out for our children. What will the U.S. look like in another 20 years? Will we be even farther behind nations like China or will we find a way to get excited and motivate our citizens to continue to be the nation that produced such ingenious idea as the Internet?
When the space race began and we saw the launch of Sputnik, we responded by investing in science and math education and produced more students studying math and science than anywhere else. What has happened to this push? Where is our Sputnik? What needs to be done to get our nation excited again about these fields? Do we need to be surpassed by other nations before we really get motivated? Will it be too late by then?
Friedman brought up many valid points about where a lot of wasted money is going. I’m not naïve enough to think we can just pull all of our troops out of the Middle East and the war on terror will end. But when I think about all the money that is going overseas and I look, from the inside, where we are falling short in education, I feel very frustrated and helpless. In my personal opinion, I would love to see our troops come home and focus more money on defending our boarders here and finding ways to become less dependent on foreign oil. If we spent that money on better educating our citizens, especially in STEM education, I feel strongly that we have people right here in this country that can solve these problems if they are given the opportunity to study and thrive in these fields.
When the space race began and we saw the launch of Sputnik, we responded by investing in science and math education and produced more students studying math and science than anywhere else. What has happened to this push? Where is our Sputnik? What needs to be done to get our nation excited again about these fields? Do we need to be surpassed by other nations before we really get motivated? Will it be too late by then?
Friedman brought up many valid points about where a lot of wasted money is going. I’m not naïve enough to think we can just pull all of our troops out of the Middle East and the war on terror will end. But when I think about all the money that is going overseas and I look, from the inside, where we are falling short in education, I feel very frustrated and helpless. In my personal opinion, I would love to see our troops come home and focus more money on defending our boarders here and finding ways to become less dependent on foreign oil. If we spent that money on better educating our citizens, especially in STEM education, I feel strongly that we have people right here in this country that can solve these problems if they are given the opportunity to study and thrive in these fields.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Instructional Lesson Plan Implementation
This lesson was a bit of a struggle for me. Not because I found the topic difficult, but rather because I teach life science so I had to find a group of my 7th graders who were willing to come in to my room on their lunch and work on this activity. Also, the topic has nothing to do with anything we've been working on this year so it just felt out of place. Luckily I have great students who volunteered to come in and help me out. Overall the lesson itself was good, but it's just not the ideal way to teach a lesson.
I do try to use models on a regular basis in my own lessons & I find that they are especially helpful to my classified students because a hands-on approach is much more engaging to them. They worked on locating the location of an earthquake's epicenter using three seismograph readings. My students struggled a bit at first when trying to use drawing compasses and determine the scale they were supposed to use, but once I helped them with the first step, they were able to progress together and locate the epicenter.
I know we have used this lesson plan template throughout our Walden courses and there have been many complaints from people about the template itself. I feel it is very redundant and would never use something like it my daily teaching & lesson plans.
I do try to use models on a regular basis in my own lessons & I find that they are especially helpful to my classified students because a hands-on approach is much more engaging to them. They worked on locating the location of an earthquake's epicenter using three seismograph readings. My students struggled a bit at first when trying to use drawing compasses and determine the scale they were supposed to use, but once I helped them with the first step, they were able to progress together and locate the epicenter.
I know we have used this lesson plan template throughout our Walden courses and there have been many complaints from people about the template itself. I feel it is very redundant and would never use something like it my daily teaching & lesson plans.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Scietifically Literate students
Students who are scientifically literate are able to understand and explain natural phenomena. They can take what they've learned in school and apply their knowledge to concepts that see in the real world.
As educators, we don't have to look far these days for topics of natural disasters. Just turn on the news an you can choose between earthquakes, tsunami's, tornadoes, drought, etc.
Although it was considered a "natural" disaster, I have spent quite a bit of time talking about the BP oil spill in the gulf last year. True, the oil spill was caused by human error, but the effect of what has happened to life in the gulf since then, to me is a natural disaster. Although it's only been a year so we can't even see the true impact, we can look to Prince William Sound and how that area is still trying to recover after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
I use this topic as a way to discuss food chains and the impact the oil spills have on microscopic organisms that are the base of the food chain. Students tend to only see the effect on sea birds, fish & mammals, but it's these microorganisms that keep the food chain going.
As educators, we don't have to look far these days for topics of natural disasters. Just turn on the news an you can choose between earthquakes, tsunami's, tornadoes, drought, etc.
Although it was considered a "natural" disaster, I have spent quite a bit of time talking about the BP oil spill in the gulf last year. True, the oil spill was caused by human error, but the effect of what has happened to life in the gulf since then, to me is a natural disaster. Although it's only been a year so we can't even see the true impact, we can look to Prince William Sound and how that area is still trying to recover after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
I use this topic as a way to discuss food chains and the impact the oil spills have on microscopic organisms that are the base of the food chain. Students tend to only see the effect on sea birds, fish & mammals, but it's these microorganisms that keep the food chain going.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Ask a Scientist
I was really excited to find out there was a website available to post questions on and get answers from real scientists! I was a little disappointed that I posted my question over a week and a half ago and never got a reply. My question was as follows: If cells are constantly performing mitosis to repair dead or damaged tissue, what causes scar tissue to build up & why do some cuts repair themselves leaving no scar behind, while other cuts leave scars?
Since I didn't get an answer form the website, I went to my own real scientist for an answer; my supervisor! I told him the situation and presented him with my question. He explained to me that when a cut is fairly superficial, the cells are still in close enough contact with one another to communicate proper healing and are able to repair the tissue so that it looks as if a cut ever happened. However, if a cut is very deep and/or wide, the cells in the surrounding area are not close enough to be able to communicate and you are left with scar tissue. Makes sense to me!
I'm not sure I would be willing to use this website since I never got a response. I'll be curious to see if others heard anything back. I love the idea of this site and would like to use something similar because I get questions regularly from my students that I can't fully explain and I could post their question immediately and hope for a response.
Since I didn't get an answer form the website, I went to my own real scientist for an answer; my supervisor! I told him the situation and presented him with my question. He explained to me that when a cut is fairly superficial, the cells are still in close enough contact with one another to communicate proper healing and are able to repair the tissue so that it looks as if a cut ever happened. However, if a cut is very deep and/or wide, the cells in the surrounding area are not close enough to be able to communicate and you are left with scar tissue. Makes sense to me!
I'm not sure I would be willing to use this website since I never got a response. I'll be curious to see if others heard anything back. I love the idea of this site and would like to use something similar because I get questions regularly from my students that I can't fully explain and I could post their question immediately and hope for a response.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Web 2.0 presentation tools
The two presentation tools I'm reviewing are Prezi & PowerPoint. After watching the Prezi tutorial, I was excited by some of the presentation tools that come with Prezi and feel it would be a good tool to use for my Course Project. It seems easy enough to use & I like the idea of being able to have my students add to it from their own computers. My biggest concern with Prezi is based on the email we got from Dr. Lyman about the stability of Prezi. I worry that because I am not yet familiar with all the components associated with Prezi, if I run into any issues, I'll loose all my work. I also read a few on-line reviews from other Prezi users who had some similar complaints, although most liked the Prezi interface well enough.
For this reason I'm going to use PowerPoint for my Course Project. I use PowerPoint almost daily in my classroom and am very comfortable with it. I already know how to insert text, pictures and videos. Since I already have it installed on my computer, there is no additional cost to me. (unlike the fee that Prezi requires to register.) I post alot of my PPT presentations on my school website so that mys students can access it from home for additional review help. I worry that I used Prezi, most of my students are not familiar with its uses.
For this reason I'm going to use PowerPoint for my Course Project. I use PowerPoint almost daily in my classroom and am very comfortable with it. I already know how to insert text, pictures and videos. Since I already have it installed on my computer, there is no additional cost to me. (unlike the fee that Prezi requires to register.) I post alot of my PPT presentations on my school website so that mys students can access it from home for additional review help. I worry that I used Prezi, most of my students are not familiar with its uses.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
21st-century learning tools
In this week's application, we were asked to explore an online tool that could boost student’s interest in science. The topic I chose to explore was new ways of looking into the electromagnetic spectrum. I found a great website by The Smithsonian http://americanart.si.edu/education/pdf/Conservation_Electromagnetism_Lesson.pdf
What I liked most about this lesson is that it allows students to explore practical uses of the electromagnetic spectrum in a less traditional way. I have only taught the electromagnetic spectrum and its uses in the scientific realm in the past, but this lesson looks at how it is used in the process of art conservation; something I had never considered before. Students will look at how X-rays are used by art conservationist to look at possible cracks in sculptures that can't be seen by the naked eye. They explore how UV radiation can be used to identify the material in the artwork, and Infrared radiation is used to determine if there are any underdrawings under the painting we can see with visible light.
Students are presented with 3 different pieces of artwork, and their potential flaws, and must determine which type of electromagnetic spectrum wave should be applied. They will then see before & after pictures to really see the significance these tools have.
Because we are so lucky to live outside of NYC, we take our middle school students on a trip to The Metropolitan Museum each year. Our principal has asked us to find a lesson that would relate to the field trip, and is the past I've struggled to find a connection between science & The Met. Now I can teach this lesson prior to our field trip and tie the two together. The only challenge I might face with this lesson is some extra prep work on my part. I would need to find out, before our trip, if there are any paintings or sculptures that the Met might have used such applications on so that I could inform my students of this before we go.
What I liked most about this lesson is that it allows students to explore practical uses of the electromagnetic spectrum in a less traditional way. I have only taught the electromagnetic spectrum and its uses in the scientific realm in the past, but this lesson looks at how it is used in the process of art conservation; something I had never considered before. Students will look at how X-rays are used by art conservationist to look at possible cracks in sculptures that can't be seen by the naked eye. They explore how UV radiation can be used to identify the material in the artwork, and Infrared radiation is used to determine if there are any underdrawings under the painting we can see with visible light.
Students are presented with 3 different pieces of artwork, and their potential flaws, and must determine which type of electromagnetic spectrum wave should be applied. They will then see before & after pictures to really see the significance these tools have.
Because we are so lucky to live outside of NYC, we take our middle school students on a trip to The Metropolitan Museum each year. Our principal has asked us to find a lesson that would relate to the field trip, and is the past I've struggled to find a connection between science & The Met. Now I can teach this lesson prior to our field trip and tie the two together. The only challenge I might face with this lesson is some extra prep work on my part. I would need to find out, before our trip, if there are any paintings or sculptures that the Met might have used such applications on so that I could inform my students of this before we go.
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