Collaborative Technologies

One of the many reasons that I love science is the exploration and discovery involved.  More than just a search for answers, science searches for reasons.  In real life scientists take a problem, learn about it, think about it, make hypothesis, test their hypothesis, reconfigure, test again, consult colleagues.  I always have my students preform a scientific investigation where they develop the hypothesis and decide how to test their hypothesis, what data to collect and how to collect it.  I usually have them work in small groups.  After reading in RSS for Educators about the use of wikis to increase productivity and how many organizations use it as an intranet I got the idea to use a wiki as a collaboration site for the investigative teams and a place where they could publish their findings for peer review.  Most often the groups have similar questions to start their investigations, though each group may be looking a the efects of different variables.  The use of a wiki would allow students to see what their classmates are doing, to share resources, and ask questions of each other.  The wiki allows the teacher to be aware of each groups progress every step of the way.  This would increase the chances of catching students who have gotten off topic or derailed in some other way and getting them back on track.  I really like the idea of having students "publish" their findings for peer review.  This would give them an introduction to publishing in professional journals.

This could be done for free with the free wikis out their since my students have access to laptops and wireless internet at school.  However, I think it would be good to look into some of the k12 subscription packages offered.  Wikispaces, for instance, has packages that cost $2000/year for a school or $4000/year for a district.  Both of these packages offer unlimited users, unlimited wikis, private wikis, SSL security, and single sign-on.  Being able to make a wiki private and secure would help with some of the issues about student privacy on the internet.  Single sign-on integrates wikispaces with an existing system so students could log-in through another already existing system. 

Movies in the classroom

I first used iMovie on the mac laptops in a free fall lab.  A common subject in Physics, it is hard to analyze because things fall so quickly to the ground.  The students and I took some objects that could be dropped safely to the stairwell and a background drop marked every 10 cm.  Students spread apart up and down the stair well.  We had droppers, filmmakers, catchers.  We took the two video cameras back to class, loaded them onto a laptop, and burned 2 c.d.'s.  The students passed the c.d.'s around the class and loaded the movies onto their laptops.  The students could then analyze these clips to determine the approximate distance that the objects fell for a given period of time.  Using the background to determine distance and the the frame number to determine time, students could determine the average speed at that point and graph distance vs. time.  We had a lot of fun that day and the students really got into it.  They felt like they could "see it".  It also sparked a good discussion on how the angle of the camera could have affected our ability to read the results.    As Lever-Duffy and McDonald mention in Teaching and Learning with Technology--"Visuals are, for most learners, a necessity."
I have found the use of multimedia in the classroom since then to have a positive impact in many ways.  I have had my Physics students (usually junior and seniors) create their own movies for class before.  The Mac laptops with iMovie, a built in camera and microphone on them make this very easy.  It is often mentioned by students as one of their favorite parts of class and a project that really helps them remember the content.  For my lesson I decided to take that idea and work it into a 9th grade biology class.  During the ecosystem unit we concentrate on the flow of energy through ecosystems.  There is knowledge that is supposed to be memorized, but the main idea is the process.  By having my students create a video on energy flow through an ecosystem they can internalize it and put themselves into it. 

Audio Multimedia in the Classroom

Classrooms have traditionally had a strong audio component.  The lecture based class is auditory in nature.  One of the drawbacks of a lecture based class is that it does not intrinsically support differentiated learning.  One of the things that most interest me about audio multimedia use in the classroom is the idea of podcasts made by the teacher for the students.  In A review of Podcasting in Higher Education: Its influence on higher education, McGarr lists three major reasons for using podcast lectures--flexibility, accessibility, and enhancement.  Students can download lectures to their mp3 players and listen when they have time and as often as necessary.  I think that creating podcast as reviews for units would be quite helpful for students.  This idea would be hard to create a lesson plan around as I see it more as supplementary material than part of class.
Another example of using audio technology int he class that piqued my interest was the idea of creating a newscast.  Lever-Duffy and McDonald cite the example of Wendi Telemota in Teaching and Learning with technology.  I have read about other similar examples before.  They are usually done in a history class.  I thought about I could use this idea in science class.  The history of science is often glassed over.  So I decided to have the students do a podcast about Galileo. Imagine how the events of the inquisition played out and report o n it.