Possible project--Science Presentations

While working with the Social Studies teacher on his Business Plan project, I got an email from one of the Science teachers. She was having blue tooth issues--which is unfortunately not something I'm that good at helping with.

While I was trouble shooting, we got to talking. Her students are currently working on presentations for infectious diseases. She wanted to be able to video tape all of the students and put each presentation on a CD. While we were talking, we started throwing around ideas, and got to the idea of allowing the students to edit their presentation videos in Movie Maker. That way, they could edit out long pauses or such.

I told her I was doing something similar with the Social Studies teacher, and invited her to stop down and check out how things were going if she had time. I also said that I would try to estimate, based on that project, how long she would want to give her students for editing.

She seems to like the idea. It gives another dimension to the project, and it gives the kids a chance to basically give themselves a second chance if their presentations don't go off perfectly.

Creek Connections Symposium

I haven't been able to blog for a good long while.

A few weeks back, I went with the Science teacher to the Creek Connections Symposium. This was the culmination of the Creek Project the students have been working on.

The best projects--the ones that did the best job of asking and answering a question relating to fresh water in Western Pennsylvania--were invited to attend. The Science teacher made an observation that was a little disheartening. She mostly invited students that had done computer based projects. Of those who were invited that did not use a computer, none chose to attend. That was a little bit upsetting.

It could have simply been a matter of coincidence. Many students who were invited could not attend because of conflicting schedule (specifically a track meet that day). And, many of the students who did not use computers were more unwilling to make the suggested corrections that they needed to actually attend.

The symposium itself was a great experience. Our students, as freshmen, were amongst the oldest there. There were quite a few "billboard" projects on display. Not many of our students had turned in projects that did nothing more than list facts because of repeated warnings not to, and because of the frequent check up the teacher did to keep them on track.

There were a few excellent and interactive projects, too.

We were the only school that had any technology at all. That did not make us a better school, nor did it make our projects better. I think we were an impressive school. We were also a resource heavy school and had barely enough outlets to run all of the laptops.

I think we were also a brave school. Because of having the computers, I opted out of one of the afternoon activities to pack up and generally keep an eye on things. This was the first time we had been allowed to take the laptops out of school, and I was very invested in making sure things went well.

I did have a chance to do one of the afternoon hands on sessions. These were a series of workshops held by environmental and other science majors of the sponsoring college. It was a great way to make learning more fun. The sessions were hands on, interactive, and, best of all, outside.

Things overall went very well. Our students were well behaved, and may have taken something away from the symposium. Hopefully, they took away that a) hard work has its rewards and b) creating a more interesting project will make it more likely to generate that authentic audience that makes it all worth while.

Creek Project--Update Three

This post is going up very late. I haven't had a lot of time to get to it.

Monday was the first day of presenting projects for the Creek Project. The Biology Teacher and I weren't 100% sure what to expect. The projects today were all from her honors students.

There were some very well done ones. One student recreated a salamander habitat (using craft store eyes as eggs). It was not the most engaging presentation, because the information was put on posters around the scene, but it was visually appealing. And, based on the info, it was clear that the students had learned something about the salamanders.

Students did infuse technology into their projects. One group wrote an original song. The execution was not great--the audio was poor quality (fortunately they provided a lyrics sheet for listeners to read along), and their refrain was a bit long. But, they lyrics showed a good understanding of their question, and the animations that went with it were an engaging mix of scientific and funny. One group did their project in the form of an episode of "House." In it, a fix owner brings in a fish that was harmed by pollutants in the creek, and Dr. House has to diagnose what the pollutants were, based on the fish's symptoms, in order to create a treatment to save the fish. The teacher eventually had to ask for their script because some parts the audio was good, and others it was bad. Another group did a series of sketches with a "water safetey lass" (basically a friendly eco cop) explaining to different people in different scenarios how what they were doing was having a negative effect on creek water.

One of the big concerns was the Photo Story projects. A lot of these students had done Photo Stories for the Helen Keller 3 Days of Sight project. So, feeling comfortable with that program, used it again. However, with laptops were reimaged, and Photo Story was removed. Fortunately, the students were easily able to access non-reimaged laptops to use. However, some of them did not remember the step to convert from a Photo Story to a WMV file. It was easy enough to deal with because the teacher still had Photo Story and I was able to help students convert during the period. I am more concerned because I would like to see student retaining more of the tech skills I am trying to impart. That being said, I did see improved file management.

Another concern was that some of the projects got more caught up in trying to be impressive or interactive, and strayed from the overall idea of teaching something and answering a question. Several of the games did a good job of testing knowledge but a poor job of presenting that knowledge ahead of time. Other projects simply presented research, with no context of an overall question.

We had discussed the idea previously, and came back to it again. The Biology teacher and I both felt that, if the students had been given more structure--been responsible for first coming up with a question, and then doing research, and then being introduced to the idea of being able to display their research/learning in a way of their choosing--more of the projects would have retained focus.

It was encouraging, though, to see students being creative. A lot of them used programs that they were not formally introduced to in school. Others used programs that we had taught them, but were able to discover and use some of the more advanced functions. And, so students who did not use a lot of technology did some very creative low tech things. Next year, going about this project in a more structured way, and still allowing for that creativity, will create even better results.

Creek Project--Update Two

I visited the Biology Class again today. The teacher was introducing the Creek Project to the non-honors students.

With the honors students, kids were introduced to the project, given ideas of what to do for the project, and then allowed to start research and planning, all on the same day. As a result, as we discussed, a lot of students were skimping on the research in favor of coming up with "great" ideas.

For the non-honors, the students were assigned to come up with a questions and do research on it in class. Then, today, after two and a half days of research, they were introduced to the project. The teacher and I went through some of the possibilities--dressing up in character to teach about your topic, creating a game, creating a Photo Story, creating a web site. Like the honors classes, these students will also be allowed to come up with their own project if they get it approved. A lot of these kids also just did the Photo Story in their English class, so this could be a chance for them to shine, by using a program they already know, and being able to make it better from having had practice (and now more time). I also showed them how to link between pages of a ppt, so that they can make clickable interactive games/presentations. Several students also decided to make wiki websites, since they already know how to use wikis from the cell "my space" pages earlier in the year.

On the back of their directions sheet was a worksheet that had to be filled out by Monday--name of partner, topic, question (all of which had already been established prior to today) and how they are going to teach about it. She asked them to be detailed, and not just say "game" or "website." At the bottom was a calendar showing the midpoint date, when they had to present evidence of their progress, and the due date. I told her it was a really good idea. She said that she got the idea from me, when I commented that a lot of the honors students didn't take this seriously yet because they think they have more time than they do--the assignment was given in February, with all the due dates being in March, making it feel like nothing had to be done for "over a month." I fear I was only able to make this observation because my mind works in similar ways at time, and my first reaction to all of the due dates was "wow, they have a long time to do this." Because I'd pointed that out, she decided to give the non-honors class a very clear visual representation (calendar) of how much time they had. It made me feel useful. She's also thinking about putting up a daily count down for the honors kids. I don't think that that's a bad idea at all.

Creek Project--Update One

I'm not going to track the Creek Project on a daily basis. Some days very little if anything happens with it. And some days, something happens, but not enough to prompt a blog entry.

We are closing in on the midway checkpoint. On March 9, 7 days from now, the students will have to turn "evidence" into the Biology teacher. All of them have so far turned in their project sheets--detailing their questions, and their projects.

I have only worked with a few students. I showed one group how to create a voki, or use gizmoz (which tends to work a little better on student computers). I was a little disappointed because the student computers do not all have flash up to date, so neither of these programs were running properly.

I worked with another group to show them how to remove lyrics from an MP3 using Audacity. That way, they will be able to record themselves singing their new lyrics over the music. They plan on working on this from home, though, where they have garage band. Being a PC user at home and school, I'm not as familiar with garage band, and don't know if they will be able to do the same thing. However, I am optimistic. I didn't just show them how to do it. I knew there was a tutorial on youtube, so I did a search, explaining to them what I was searching for and how. After finding the tutorial, I made the students follow it. They had to watch what was happening and read the captions. After a successful run, I made the students repeat the process without the aid of the tutorial. I feel confident that they will remember how to do it in Audacity, and will be able to figure out how to do it in another program.

Today, I touched bases with the Biology teacher again. She is in the process of introducing the project to her non-honors class this week. Yesterday she had them pick a question, and yesterday and today they worked on researching their topic. This way, they are more focused on what the purpose of the project is than on the technology or "product" part of it. Then, once they have gathered their research, she is going to introduce the project. She is still deliberating on how much in class time to give students to work on it. These students do not have a study hall like the honors students, and many of them will not have the ability to work on their projects at home. She has also decided to limit their project choices. They will be able to do a Photo Story, game, poster, or design another project (and get approval). This leaves the students free to be creative with their project design, but it also focuses students who might be overwhelmed with too many choices.

She regrets the order she did things in with the honors classes. Because she introduced the project all at once, a lot of students focused on what they were doing instead of why. Students had decided to do a Photo Story or a web site before deciding what question they were answering. Because of this, the projects might end up not fitting the objectives of the students. One example is a group of students that decided to do a website on fish--but they had no clear idea of what the purpose or function of the website was, or what information would be on it, or how to make it an interesting, engaging site that people would want to visit. I think we both agree, in the future, it would be a good idea to assign students to pick a question before introducing the project. For honors, at least, I still feel that it might be reasonable to have them responsible for doing research while putting together their projects. It would force the students to make intelligent use of their time, and redirect both the project and research based on one another.

Creek Project

One of the science teachers is having students create a creek project.

This is based on year long research that the students do in this class. The collect data on the creek, and do research based on it.

In April, students from all over the state meet to share and discuss their data, research, projects, and experiments. The Science teacher takes several of her classes every year.

This year, she wants to have the students have a little more freedom in what types of projects they do. She has given them the option of creating a photo story, running an experiment, creating and recording music, making a website, or coming up with their own project.

I like this project a lot because it involves creativity and student choice. It also has a ready made audience that students know they will be sharing their work with.

I'm starting working with the teacher today. I will be visiting her classes at the end of the period today, after she has given the assignment. Students will be working with their groups and discussing what types of projects they want to do. By being on hand, I'll be able to help students come up with ideas, understand the work involved in using certain tools, and recommend tools that they might not be familiar with.

This is a long term project that students will mostly be doing outside of class. Because of that, I will not be working with the students much during class. However, the teacher asked if I would work with them during their study hall. I feel that I'm supposed to be working more with the teacher than the students, but this is a way to help students strengthen their tech skills. Also, because there will be so many different tools being used, I'm hoping for the chance to work with the teacher, so she will have a better grasp of those tools, and how to assess these projects.

Cell Project--Day Five

I really was going to post about the project every day--but I got busy with actually doing stuff. I haven't gone through all of the finished wikis yet, so its too soon to say if this was a success or not. So I'll just talk about things that went well and things that need to be improved.

This was my first large scale wiki project. So a predictable problem was that I didn't have all of the answers. Not that much of an issue in my opinion. The teacher gets to see that I don't know everything--which hopefully is encouraging (in that all this stuff if learnable). Also, the kids had to see me work through things. I tried as often as I could to let them actually do as I thought (although I'd say I did all the doing more often than not). But I would try to at least explain what I was doing, or why, or why something would or wouldn't work the way they wanted.

The project went better in some classes than others. I think that's always the case. Children did work on dividing up work and working collaboratively. They had to deal with issues of finding information and media resources. I'm not sure how well they did on review or evaluating media resources, though.

We hit some massive snags along the way--including the wireless going down and wikispaces going down.

The teacher and I both have thoughts on what to do differently next time. She thinks it would be a good idea to provide key words that kids have to include--because they didn't really come across them all in their research. She wants to add more structure to the project.

I want it to be more interactive. Students were "posting comment" on the "my space" page by editing their own pages and pretending to be multiple parts of the cell. I think it would be good to have groups post to one anothers pages--that way you have to know your own part well enough to be it, and read someone else's page and learn their cell well enough to talk to it. I think I understand logistically why we didn't do that. Maybe next time, maybe not.

We had to pull together a PBwiki for one of the classes when wikispaces went down. The commenting feature would have been great for the groups to interact, but they cluttered it up with nonsense before the teacher and I had time to regroup and replan.

Cell Project--Day One

I went down to the Bio class for day one of the cell project. Some of it didn't go well, some of it did.

An overview of the project--we are having students create "my space" type pages using a wiki. Each group will create a page for a certain part of the cell. They will have to include bffs (the student names) hangouts (where its found in the cell) links (resources used) pictures, etc.

Today the kids signed on and began basic editing. In the first class for some reason creating pages didn't go very well. I would have liked to have tried a different method of page creation, but the teacher said she wanted to create the pages. It didn't take long to do. I think that had I been the teacher, that is the route I'd have taken, too. The first failure was a hassle, although we did overcome it. However, in that situation, with limited time, the last thing you want is to waste more time in another class trying to do the same thing in a slightly different way that might also fail when you have a perfectly valid fool-proof alternative.

I spoke with the teacher who is a little of the opinion that the children are more focused on editing things to make them look nice than on the actual research and info involved in the project.

Its a valid concern.

I've done projects with a fun or "irrelevant" element to them. I think I've found that even though kids will focus on the fun bits, they will get to the information and "meat and potatoes" of it. They just do the fun eye catching stuff first.

She has expressed that she originally wanted to have the students do the research--with old fashioned pen and paper--and then have them create the wiki from it. She has also said that perhaps next year she would have them fill in a pre-created format--with the information--and then let them play with and edit the visuals.

I also think that the "irrelevant" part of this project is not so irrelevant. Teamwork, collaboration, communication, basic computer literacy skills such as editing text and saving often, introduction to wikis, taking responsibility for their own learning, multitasking. None of this trumps the actual biology, but is it on the same level?

And more importantly, is this helping? Is anyone going to get anything out of this project? Are any of the above skills going to be taught or strengthened by this project. Will the biology info be conveyed? Will it be conveyed more effectively, or will children learn it any better, or even at an equal level, than if it had been done in the form of notes?