June 23, 2009 Class
The digital domain reviews were interesting and particularly relevant to me. Both of the presenters are future biology teachers. Their reviews were opportunities for me to see different technology resources available for my teaching. In class it was brought up that in schools there are not a lot of opportunities for teacher communities that allow educators to share new lesson ideas or problem solve situations as a group. Such organizations of teachers would greatly benefit teacher ability by learning what methods seem to work the best. As teachers become more comfortable with the internet I think more online technique sharing communities will develop among teachers over vast distances. In this class, hearing my peers’ suggestions for biology related resources was very close to a non-virtual learning community. One resource was found at www.scratch.mit.edu/projects/boldbait. This was an animation program that allows students to create creatures and set them to motion. I think in a biology class this may be useful in teaching students classification. I have seen an example of an activity that allows students to identify fictitious monsters using a dichotomous key. If a teacher were to design several animated creatures using this site they could create their own key that might also include organism habits and behaviors. This would take the key to a new level and allow students to practice their observation abilities. Another resource was at www.dnaftb.org/1/concept/. This site was about DNA. It traces the history of DNA through discovery and applications. The website has a lot of good pictures but also has a lot of reading to accompany them. This site looks like it could be a substitute for a textbook assignment as it is very detailed. As a result of the detail a teacher may decide to only use certain parts of this website and make the rest of the site available for students to research on their own if they are interested. The last presentation was on a couple of game related websites. These were www.biologyjunction.com and www.quia.com/shared/bio. These sites have many different games. These games would be useful for review of material; however, they do not seem to test students higher order thinking. Students rely on simple recall for many of the games on these websites.
After the digital reviews we worked on creating a lesson that integrates technology based on water. Every discipline has a different way of looking at the same thing; water is a great example of this. A physical education or health teacher looks at water as a way to stay healthy and hydrated. A history teacher sees water as a necessary platform to start a civilization or a useful way to transport goods. As a biology teacher, I see water as a necessity of all life. My group, made of biology teachers, designed a lesson looking at how human might affect the water cycle. We tied in agricultural techniques and how they affect invertebrate species in a nearby stream. The lesson worked to encourage higher order, biology like, thinking about water. Students would have the opportunity to create a study and then use Microsoft Excel® to draw conclusions about data they found. In science the ability to manipulate data to make useful conclusions is essential. It is interesting that by looking at numbers in different graphic representations a scientist to make completely different conclusions. Database functions have a special place in science classes, and to some extent math classes, were students are exposed to interpreting the importance of graphs. Graphs are everywhere; newspapers, profit reports, and many more places. Science class is a great place to teach students the difference between useful graphs and poorly designed graphs, for this reason I think it is a good idea for teachers of these subjects to help students to really understand how graphs work. This may be the only instruction they get for useful graph interpretation for an entire lifetime.
