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Rate of Reaction Videos

November 27, 2007 in Education, Science, Technology | No comments

Inspired by Dale Basler’s stop-motion video project in physics, I recently had my freshman biophys students make videos that examine the factors affecting the rate of a chemical reaction.

We used a lab from an Addison-Wesley Chemistry lab manual entitled “Factors Affecting Reaction Rates”. This lab was ideal, as the instructions are already neatly divided into 4 parts, whereby each part examines what can affect the rate of a chemical reaction (temperature, concentration, surface area and use of catalyst). Students were divided into 8 groups of 3 (2 groups for each concept).

These were the guidelines for the videos:

  • 1-2 minutes in length
  • Describe setup & document experiment
  • Discuss results (with graph or data table)
  • Show balanced reaction
  • Discuss concept

This was a 5-day project (2 days in lab, 1 for taping, and 2 for editing in the computer lab). I gave the students just the basics in order to use Windows MovieMaker, and helped them on-the-fly with questions.

Besides the final project, perhaps the best part of the project was viewing them all in class. Not only were we able to discuss the concept in each video, but students also critiqued each video in content and in quality. This evolved into a really productive discussion on how important it is to be able to communicate science effectively.

This turned out to be a great project that the students really enjoyed. The only negative comment I heard was “the reactions were kinda boring” (all kids want fire and flames). Now that I know the students can handle this type of work, my mind is spinning on what movies they can make in the future using other science tools – graphical analysis, digital microscopy and RasMol (molecular visualization software) come to mind immediately.

Here is an example video:

 

 

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Gettysburg Address as Powerpoint

November 19, 2007 in Education, Technology | No comments

To illuminate how Powerpoint presentations can be abused, Peter Norvig (research director at Google) has recreated Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as a Powerpoint Presentation. [Link]

My favorite part is the introduction (we’ve all been here/seen this):

Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that’s not right. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I’m your president. While we’re waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It’s great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn’t live without it, could we? Oh – is it ready? OK, here we go.

To distill something as profound as the Gettysburg Address into a Powerpoint presentation is utterly ludicrous.Thus, Norvig makes a poignant example of how effective oral communication can get lost in the bells and whistles of technology.

Powerpoint (and other technologies) should be tools that support our teaching – not replace it. That’s something that we as educators need to teach to our kids, and to ourselves. I regularly make a point to preview my Powerpoint slides and remove as much of the text as I possibly can. I try to remember that I am the teacher – the presentation isn’t.

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DE Streaming vs. Safari Montage

October 19, 2007 in Education, Technology | 1 comment

I am fortunate enough to teach in a school that provides both Discovery Education Streaming and Safari Montage for streaming video. They both contain good content (from different media companies), but there are a few differences. Here is a rundown of those differences (presented in alphabetical order):

de-streamingDiscovery Education Streaming (formerly United Streaming)

  • Accessible anywhere via internet (on-site server available at extra cost)
  • Individual teacher signup required
  • Streaming video, audio, sound effect, articles, quizzes, events, lesson plans, images, clip art, etc
  • 4,000+ video titles
  • All content downloadable, some editable
  • Content can be made available with password protection (i.e. within Blackboard)
  • Some content grainy, lower quality video
  • Professional Development component through Discovery Education and the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) including webinars, online training, regional support, and much more
  • Content: Discovery & Discovery Education Titles (including Planet Earth), Suburst, AIMS Multimedia, Weston Woods, and many others

safari_splashSafari Montage

  • On-site server only = no outside access, but reliable intranet connection
  • No individual teacher signup necessary
  • Streaming video only
  • 1,000+ video titles
  • Broadcast quality video
  • Content: WGBH/PBS, Schlesinger Media, National Geographic, Sesame Street, BBC, A&E, Disney Education, etc.


Summary

The content from each provider is quite different, so educators of different levels and content areas might prefer one service over another (for instance, DE Streaming has some exceptional content for high school science, and Safari Montage carries Bill Nye the Science Guy, which might be better for elementary and middle school science).

The School Library Journal Recently compared the two services, giving DE Streaming an A- and Safari Montage an A+. Safari Montage earned the ‘plus’ distinction due to the higher quality of their videos.

While DE Streaming quality isn’t as good as Safari, DE Streaming offers more for students and teachers. DE Streaming provides a slew of professional development opportunities, more media options and their content is accessible anywhere and is downloadable. This allows DE Streaming content to be more flexible. Some titles are even editable, so educators and students can manipulate them in multimedia presentations.


More on DE Streaming and Safari Montage:

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Margarine for Learning

October 5, 2007 in Education, Science | No comments

Today is the Friday of Homecoming week, and you can feel the energy pulsing through the students and staff in the building. During the week we have plenty of spirit building activities, such as dress-up days, music in the halls, voting for homecoming court, penny wars between the student classes, and a float-building party with bonfire and games on Thursday night.

As we get closer to the pep assembly and game on Friday, the students’ minds drift farther away from the classroom. This can be an obvious frustration for any educator who doesn’t want to waste class time. I see many teachers showing movies for entertainment, giving large tests, or simply shutting down and letting their classes talk the entire hour about their weekend plans.

 

One way that I engage my chemistry students right up until the pep assembly is with a margarine lab. Essentially, the students select a margarine sample, heat it up until is separates into oil and water, freeze the oil, and extract the water. By getting the mass at each step, they are able to easily calculate the percent of water in margarine.

I am watching my students do the lab right now. They are active, engaged, enjoying the oh-so-buttery-good smell in the lab, and even doing a little math. In fact, it’s the same math that we will see in the future when calculating % composition. It’s perfect activity to keep my students active and even trick them into learning.

On a day like this, what are your tricks to keep students motivated to learn?

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Digi-Peeve: The World is Flat

August 31, 2007 in Education | No comments

By now, you have probably heard of Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” (April 2005). While this is a very worthwhile book that addresses globalization in the 21st century (you should read it if you haven’t), it is over two years old and is not the only resource that can enlighten us about our global landscape.

But more importantly, we should be careful about its take-home message for education. While shock presenters keep spewing threatening statistics (the recent viral video Shift Happens tells a similar story with the same ‘flat earth’ message), many people fail to recognize that rapid globalization has already taken place.

Perhaps Tom Hoffman explains it best in eSchool News:

“One mistake educators might make in reading this book is to consciously or unconsciously frame it as a predictive work rather than a descriptive one. This book is not about what is coming. It is about what has already happened. We’re collectively failing to implement technologies and techniques which are creating opportunity around the world.”

As educators, we are often wooed by the latest idea that becomes stale as soon as another novel idea takes its place (cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, authentic assessment, and many others come to mind). Thus, we must be careful that we do not simply get caught up in the buzz about The World is Flat without recognizing its dynamic impact on education. We should be vitally aware that technology has dramatically changed our global landscape, and our teaching should already reflect that not only in what we teach, but in how we teach.

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Is Your Principal Reading Your E-mail?

August 26, 2007 in Education, Technology | 1 comment

In the September 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest, an article entitled Is Your Boss Spying on You? (by Kim Zetter) caught my eye. While this article is applicable to anyone who has internet access at work, it is especially valid for educators.

Not only is my district reading my e-mail and following my website history, my e-mail is public record. Thus, you should be extremely careful about how you discuss students in e-mail messages, and you should never disclose personal information that you wouldn’t want to see in a newspaper. In short, school e-mail should be used for school business only. It is also worthy to note that there are inappropriate times to use e-mail, especially when a phone call or face-to-face conversation could be utilized more effectively and privately. See Basics of Online Communication.

Every year we are reminded by our teachers’ union to be careful about our online activities. There are obvious things to avoid, like accessing pornography, selling e-bay items during class time, creating/forwarding offensive e-mail messages, etc. But there are some gray areas to avoid too. For instance, I worry about surfing the web (even education sites) during class time. Even though this may be valid prep work to enhance my curriculum, I am not actively engaged with my classes when I am online.

Mostly, I see internet use at school as a professional issue. If we as educators want to be viewed as professionals, then we must act like professionals. This definitely means that we should be careful of our internet use in school, but we should also be careful of our online presence outside of school as well. The article addresses the infamous ‘drunken-pirate-wants-to-be-a-teacher’ story:

Stacy Snyder was working toward a bachelor of science in education and a teaching certificate from Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Her supervising teacher at the high school where she was doing in-class training says Snyder was inviting students to visit her MySpace page. Among the contents: a photo of Snyder wearing a pirate hat and holding a plastic cup. A caption read “Drunken Pirate.” High school officials called Snyder’s MySpace activity inappropriate and unprofessional. Subsequently, she says, she had to forfeit the teaching certificate and switch to a bachelor of arts degree. She has sued Millersville for what she says is unfair punishment; the university refutes her claims. In any case, her teaching career may be over already.

Whether you agree with the outcome of this case or not, it sends a clear message that people are following and perhaps judging your online presence. While this may not be too concerning for veteran teachers protected by strong unions, it should make any pre-service or probationary teacher wary.

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Schools Need to Front the Change

May 10, 2007 in Education, Technology | No comments

Last week, a study (pdf) and a survey (pdf) got me thinking about education’s role in emerging technology.

The Study:
A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users from the Pew Internet & American Life Project

Addressing people’s assets, actions, attitudes towards information and communications technology (ICT), this study sorts American adults into three distinct groups (and subgroups) with the following results:

Elite Tech Users (31%)
Middle-of-the-road Tech User (20%)
Few Tech Assets (49%)

The most alarming aspect of the study is that a very large group of Americans (49%) are not accessing or participating in modern digital life (or minimally so). At least in adults, this is stark evidence of a digital divide in America.


The Survey
Smoking, Drugs and Obesity Top Public’s List of Health Problems for Children from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health

As a relatively new health concern, internet safety (26%) beat out school violence (24%), sexually transmitted infections (24%) and abuse and neglect (22%) – taking 7th place as among the top 10 U.S.health concerns.

From the study:
“Recently, state and federal legislators appear to have responded to public concerns about Internet safety for children, considering new legislation and issuing consumer alerts.” As teachers, we have seen these actions again and again, where valuable websites are routinely blocked.


What Schools Can Do
It seems to me that our schools should be on the front line of both of these concerns to effect positive change. As we are concerned about the future of all American students, then we should supply access and training for proper ICT use.

  1. Fair Access. To address the digital divide so that our emerging workforce is digitally literate, schools need to provide fair and consistent access to new technology. This access needs to be reflected in equivalent hardware, software and availability no matter the location or socioeconomic status of the school.
  1. Teach Safe and Proper Use of ICT. Like any tool, ICT can be a wondrous instrument, but it can also be abused as well. Instead of shielding kids from what could be harmful, we must teach and model to them safe and proper use of ICT.

[Originally seen on TechCrunch: The Growing Digital Divide and TechCrunch: Internet More Dangerous than…]

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Complementing United Streaming

June 21, 2006 in Education, Technology | No comments

I recently found this website from TIME magazine entitled “80 Days that Changed the World.” This is really the web version of the book, with the same title. [Link]. It seems to me that this would be a fabulous resource to complement United Streaming. For instance, students can surf through the 80 days to identify a specific event, then use United Streaming media to develop a project around this event.

For fun, I identified a handful of science-specific events, then search United Streaming for related content. Here are the results:

What are some other sites that people have found that might complement United Streaming in a similar fashion?

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Good Night and Good Luck

May 14, 2006 in Education, Technology | No comments

While watching Good Night and Good Luck last night (an excellent film surrounding the Joseph McCarthy era of communist accusations), I was inspired by a line from Edward R. Murrow’s keynote address at the RTNDA Convention in Chicago, October, 1958:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. (the full address can be found here).

Of course, Murrow is talking about television. Besides the obvious political undertones, I was reminded of how that television and media have great power to teach in our modern classrooms, but unless this technology is properly used – it is simply wires and lights in a box. This is true of all new technology in the classroom; it has to be effectively used in order to be a powerful tool for learning.

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Redesigning Education

April 12, 2006 in Education | No comments

Last night, Oprah visited with Bill and Melinda Gates to discuss what she called a “silent epidemic” – graduation rates and educational structure in the US. Some frightening statistics about student dropout rates and preparedness were quite shocking, whereby the Gates called for educational efforts that should be focused on teaching students the skills they’ll need to be competitive in the world ecomony of today and into the future. Check out the what Oprah has to say on “American Schools in Crisis.”

This sentiment was also shared in Edutopia, a magazine distributed (free for educators!) by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) – founded in 1991 as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools.

Check out “Risky Business” (the edutopia article) by James Daly. It raises some provocative questions about the state of public education, and what needs to be done to allow for a successful future for out children.

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