Back to School!

Well summer was a blast but I found myself looking forward to getting back to school.  I had to opportunity to visit the Galileo Museo in Florence Italy this summer and I believe I finally found the question that my student's will have to answer when we look free fall motion.  I have been modifying a lab that looks at objects rolling down a ramp - a crude simulation of Galileo's work with free fall and the Uniform Law of Acceleration.  Students over the years have been great about providing feedback to make the lab better but I felt there was a missing piece- a question that when answered would show how velocity changes over time. All it took was to look at the recreated ramp in the Museo and it hit me.  Thankfully I had my iPad and was taking lots of notes in Noteability.  I am excited to try this out but we have much to do before that happens.
A review of  the nature of science and learning about measurements (specifically the metric system) that lead into building desktop catapults.  We can ask a variety of good scientific questions, create hypotheses, establish controls, procedures, collect data, and analyze the data and use all of this to lead into describing how objects move.  Stay tuned!

Students Teaching Each Other about the Periodic Table

I tell my 8th grade physical science students the periodic table is a work of art worthy of a place in the Louvre.  Most roll their eyes a bit but I want them to wonder why I make that claim.  Unlocking chemistry comes from understanding how the table is set up and the patterns that emerge from the structure are what excite me.  I have no use for memorizing the elements, serious waste of time, but knowing why the alkali metals react with the halogens requires a understanding of atomic structure, electron configuration, bonding, and energy.  My goal introducing the table to MS students is to create a basic understanding of the different groups of elements; why they are grouped in certain ways and obvious trends and patterns that don't require an advanced understanding of electron configuration.  Last year when I ready to teach this part of the chemistry unit I had just returned from an iPad Summit in Atlanta.  Our school was interesting in using technology to help students create and communicate their understanding of content in new and different ways.  We had a classroom set of iPads and some apps that we had been trying out on a pilot basis.  One fo the apps that looked appealing was Aurasma, an augmented reality app.  I thought it might be fun to have students teach each other about the periodic table using the Aurasma app as a platform. I randomly sorted the classes into 9 groups, each responsible for creating a video about their periodic table group.  The videos were incorporated into the app along with a trigger image so other students could access those videos by holding their iPad over the trigger image (think QR codes for another reference).  The project worked well but there were areas to improve.  Using the video on the iPad did not allow students to edit (we did not have a movie making app yet) so the quality level was inconsistent as was the content presented.  It was challenging for all students to describe what they learned from their peers. Fast forward to the present and our MS is 1:1 iPads with the iMovie app.  The process for sharing will be the same but students will have very specific content expectations, their videos will be created in iMovie and then exported to Aurasma, and I will be evaluating a 1st draft of student videos to give feedback before they share with the rest of their class.

Spent part of the weekend looking at the first draft of the iMovies and making suggestions about content and format.  Students had an additional day in class to make edits before we shared with the rest of the class. The overall quality of the videos from a content standpoint was improved from last year with more focus on trends and less on individual element information.

Presentation day turned out to be nothing like I expected.  We were able to load the iMovies into Aurasma and create triggers to link the movie to an image but only the device where the video was created could trigger the movie to play (still trying to troubleshoot the problem within Aurasma).  This was a problem.  The purpose of the gallery walk was the allow students to view each other's work through their own iPads.  I did a quick back up plan and set up stations in the gallery where students could show their movie to other students but it lacked some structure and soon students were wandering without purpose.  Thankfully there were two enterprising students who came to the rescue.  They suggested exporting the iMovie to the camera roll and then uploading to Google Drive and sharing it with me so I could show all the movies in the classroom via the LCD projector.  Brilliant!  The rest of the classes worked well with this set-up because it gave us some time between the videos to talk about the content.  The ultimate goal was maintained even if the process was changed on the fly.  Next year I plan to try this out with the Thinglink app, but know I have a very functional fall back plan if needed.

What if They Don't Get it All the First Time?

My last blog post discussed how students used Book Creator to construct a story of an element.  In the story they had to research and include information about electrons, protons, neutrons, physical properties, etc...  Prior to that project we had gone over the history of the atom using a Nearpod presentation that required students to be active in the presentation.  I thought we had covered some of the basics about the atom including the relationship between the particles and some information found on the periodic table.  They even completed some practice problems finding atomic mass or the number of particles from information given in the periodic table.  So far so good.... until I gave them a quiz (not a pop quiz either) that asked students to determine/infer information about the atom.  The quiz was created and assigned through Schoology so I had immediate access to the data and could tell that only a fraction of the students had what I would consider a proficient view of atoms (21/69 students).  I really didn't need the data because I could hear the groans as they worked through the questions.  The average score was a 64/100, hardly inspiring considering that we spent a fair amount of time working through this information before the quiz.  I thought about what this meant for the way the material was taught and learned.  I started thinking about what Bill Rich called the "expert blind spot".  I don't think twice about the relationship between atomic particles and info on the periodic table but because the concept is so abstract that MS students may need additional support/instruction before they internalize the ideas.  So, the next day I created a table on the whiteboard and had students recreate it using Noteability.  Each row contained an atomic particle and the columns summarized the charge, mass, and location.  When we filled in the table, I asked questions about which particles contributed mass, which contribute charge and how that relates to atomic number and atomic mass. This was a cleaner, neater presentation of information. I told the classes they were going to take another quiz on atoms in a few days.
The results of the test showed improvement. The majority of the students improved.  The number of students with a proficient grade rose from 21 to 31 and the average quiz score was 72/100.  I asked each class if they studied and again most of the students said they spent some time reviewing or quizzing each other.
In a perfect world students who still struggled would receive additional instruction, practice and take this assessment until they demonstrated proficiency.  I think back to more conversations with Bill Rich about the need to measure less things more frequently.  This situation clearly speaks to that ideal but the challenge is to put that into play while meeting the many other required obligations from district, state,and federal agencies.

Using Book Creator to Learn About Elements

During our chemistry unit I like to spend some time digging into the elements and the periodic table with my students.  I am personally fascinated with the periodic table and how so much information is contained in it's structure.  In the past I have had students pick an element to study in a little more detail by having them research and fill out a worksheet with basic information about that element; #protons, electrons, neutrons, classification, discovered by, physical/chemical properties, and uses.  It is pretty dry and not terribly engaging but it does provide an avenue to then look at groups of elements on the periodic table.
This year our MS has gone 1:1 with iPads for all students and with that has come a shift in the way I look at assignments.  I still wanted my students to examine an element in more detail but the use of the Book Creator app gave the students a platform for them to engage in the content in a more creative manner.  Basicially, I asked them to tell the story of their element.  The information that I asked them research stayed the same as in previous years but their ability to personalize the story in a way that interested them made the project seem less pedantic.  They had full license to write the story any way they wanted; poems, children's book, textbook, drawings, images, voice over images, etc...  The result was a collection of fascinating ways to describe the basic chemistry of an element.  The writing of a story asked students to be cognitive of how the information was going to fit within their  work.  I believe the connections made by finding or drawing images/pictures that supported their writing strengthened their understanding of the content.  A wonderful sidebar to this is that I enjoyed, immensely, reading through the stories and assessing their work far more than if I had to review 75 fact sheets about each element.  We are going to extend our work to groups of elements and tell the story using iMovie and the app Aurasma to teach other each other about the periodic table.  More on that later.