Kate K’s Science Teaching

My philosophy of technology in the science classroom became clearer thoughout this course. When I was first asked to blog about this, I had didn’t really know what was expected. I thought I knew how I felt about using technology in a science classroom, but never thought about the philosophy behind it and was a little concerned that I needed to figure mine out in a matter of weeks. Sure- it would change over time (I assumed), but I was struggling with a place to start. Sitting down with Mike for both of the interviews was a great way for me to take the time to reflect and talk through things. The reflection time after the camp each day was also a great opportunity for me to develop this philosophy. I look forward to reading this in two years (or even one year) to see how I’ve changed. This is important for me to understand now in order to assess myself later so that I am an effective (and fun) science educator.
Technology in the science classroom needs to be integrated at appropriate times. It should be used as a “scaffold” according to Flick and Bell and not as a deterrent from the objectives of the lesson. Sometimes the technology will take the focus away due to its “flash”, complications, too much information for the students to try to absorb on top of understanding the basic content, or the students may feel intimidated.
Intimidation is important to address when determining how technology skills need to be addressed. I can remember sitting in my sixth grade science classroom and feeling overwhelmed with staining an onion. The science teacher was always the one to be using the equipment and I thought that scientists were these untouchables that worked in rooms with stainless steel, so I didn’t think that I could handle using the stain and microscope. It was also intimidating because I didn’t have any prior experience using the equipment. Children need to have the opportunity to use equipment in a ‘stress free’ environment. At the science camp, the students were able to play with the equipment. They were still able to understand how it worked and what it was used for, but they had the chance to discover on their own (with a few necessary prompts here and there). My students got a better idea of what dissolved oxygen is when the DO probe broke, and we had to go through the logic of why the numbers were wrong. They also had a chance to see that mistakes happen in science and that you can’t just depend on technology to give you the right answer. When students discover on their own and feel comfortable, they have the opportunity to create their own path to understanding science and not just follow a path that was carved out for them.
Science and technology are great partners in understanding natural phenomena. When used in a thoughtful manner (not deterring from the content, student led discovery, a stress-free environment) students can explore and discover science in an exciting way. Using a microscope to see the algae that the students had picked up themselves and watching it get consumed is much more meaningful than explaining on how algae breaks down and showing a static picture. The science camp showed me how technology (DO probes, auger plates, Excel, etc…) provided the most exciting and significant impact on students understanding of DO and bacteria. As an educator, I will take advantage of the unique features of technology and work with students in a way that it is fun but easy to understand.
Race, class, gender, and disability need to be considered when using technology because it can be just as harmful as useful. Complex concepts such as social inequality can be critically examined by students using GIS. On the other hand science and technology can exaggerate the divide between race, class, gender, and disability. I was still shocked (not completely but I had hoped to see something different) when I saw the majority of the students draw a white, male in a lab coat when they were asked to draw a scientist. In my classroom, I hope to integrate what is going on in the students’ lives with technology. The article about Miguel proved a great example of how you can lose a student if you don’t tap into what he/she is passionate about. It is important to take advantage of teachable opportunities and let students learn in a framework that relates to their lives.
The thought of having my own classroom still seems like a foreign concept. I feel that I am more prepared and better equipped to be a teacher- not quite there, but excited to improve.

I hope that I never forget the lessons learned and experiences gained from this class and the camp experience. From the initial planning until the last two students walked out the door, an initial foundation was built for me as a science educator. The planning for this project presented opportunities for me to grow in my ability to communicate with my peers/colleagues. We really struggled but still remained supportive of each other. It was great to see that when push came to shove, we were there for each other.
The camp was a roller-costar of emotions. I started out the week nervous and not feeling too confident. As we got into the groups, I felt ‘safer’ paired up with one of the more experienced teachers. However I was happy when I had to work with my own group the next day. This forced me to take the lead and was a great opportunity for me to improve my skills as an educator. I still felt supported by the rest of the educators so I was confident that I would be able to lead well. There were times that I caught myself ‘teaching’ but I am now better at catching myself when I do. As the students prepared for their presentations, I began to get a little nervous again. As I heard them present to another group, my nerves calmed. Team Groundhog knew what they were doing!! All of the students (young and old) learned and had a great time. It was the best time I ever had learning about water quality and education.

I hope that I never forget the lessons learned and experiences gained from this class and the camp experience. From the initial planning until the last two students walked out the door, an initial foundation was built for me as a science educator. The planning for this project presented opportunities for me to grow in my ability to communicate with my peers/colleagues. We really struggled but still remained supportive of each other. It was great to see that when push came to shove, we were there for each other.
The camp was a roller-costar of emotions. I started out the week nervous and not feeling too confident. As we got into the groups, I felt ‘safer’ paired up with one of the more experienced teachers. However I was happy when I had to work with my own group the next day. This forced me to take the lead and was a great opportunity for me to improve my skills as an educator. I still felt supported by the rest of the educators so I was confident that I would be able to lead well. There were times that I caught myself ‘teaching’ but I am now better at catching myself when I do. As the students prepared for their presentations, I began to get a little nervous again. As I heard them present to another group, my nerves calmed. Team Groundhog knew what they were doing!! All of the students (young and old) learned and had a great time. It was the best time I ever had learning about water quality and education.

Today was the big day. I thought that I would be more anxious than I was. I felt comfortable with what the students had accomplished on Thursday, and was only a little concerned about how they were going to do when they had to explain their poster. One of my students had missed Thursday, so I wanted to make sure that she knew what was going on and didn’t feel separate from the group.
My group had a tendency to loose focus when creating the poster. They were having a fun time, but they also used that time to annoy each other because I had structured this activity loosely. When time was becoming an issue, I got the groups attention and reminded them of the importance of understanding what is on the poster, not just how it looks.
Working with the students to explain their poster was a challenging experience. I felt unsure how to facilitate this. I helped to talk them through the poster by having them review what we had done this week in order to build up to this activity and reminded them of what they would be doing at 11am. This was a good time for us to connect the different parts of the poster and why they designed the poster as seen.
The students saw that there were about four parts of the poster and so each of them could explain on of the parts. The student that had the strongest grasp of the model (and who changed it a bit when she wrote it) decided that she would do that part. I had hoped that one of the quieter students would volunteer but I didn’t want make the students do something they weren’t comfortable with. I think that this was the right thing to do in this circumstance, and I feel confident that each of the girls would be able to explain it well.
The girls decided to change these roles after they presented to Orlando’s group and found that two of them felt more comfortable explaining other sections.
They did great when they presented their poster. I enjoyed hanging back and only having to prompt them a little. I loved watching the rest of the presentations and was so proud of all of the students.

I arrived to the camp a little late due to meeting that I had to go to. When I finally arrived, I walked into a room filled with activity. My team (minus 1 student) was busy working on creating their titles for the poster board and a diagram of where the sampling took place.
Today’s main challenge was to get the students to sit down and type out stuff “like school.” I had one student that didn’t really care what she was doing but would do any task that was asked of her. Another was just eager to get to designing what the poster looked like and didn’t want to type. The other student was great about realizing her partner’s interests/lack of, and charged ahead with the boring typing. I really appreciated her mature attitude.
Overall, I had a great time getting to know my team (minus 1) today. During our break I took Team Groundhog (as they decided to call themselves after seeing one at Charlotte beach) for a walk to the quad that is in front of the library. We talked about college (they were impressed at how big college is), and they started talking about their concerns for middle school. I realized how much I respect and like my team. I’ll miss them (even if tomorrow is a crazy day!).

It was an interesting day at the lab. (I’m very happy that we got to be inside!) The pre-activities were fun and I learned that I am out of the loop when it comes to movies.
Then, I finally saw the NOS cube in action. It lived up to its reputation! I really enjoyed this activity with the students. It was amazing to hear them talk through their observations. Even better was to see the list of what they think about science from test tubes to questions…
I thought that the paint activity was a good way of explaining analyzing. The students seemed to enjoy creating art as well!
The lab presented some challenges but was a great experience overall. We hadn’t seen the layout so we didn’t have a strong plan of how to organize the students. This made it harder for me to go through the activities because I wasn’t always sure of what was going on. My team was great and happily went with the flow, but I think they would have gotten more out of the activities if there were some smoother transitions. But those were just little bumps. The students enjoyed the microscopes and counting the bacteria. I was grateful that there weren’t too many bacteria colonies!! All of my team counted the last plate. When they all got different numbers, they picked up that this counting difference may have occurred with all of their plates.
I can’t believe the week is more than halfway over.

Today was my day to lead. Things didn’t go quite as I had planned, but I think that the day went well overall. I needed to be a stronger leader/organizer for the larger group in general. This is a confidence that I will work on and build as I gain more experience. One thing that wasn’t planned but went well was the addition of new kids and the creation of a new group. Since I was no longer with a more experienced teacher, I had to step up as a facilitator. Using what I had learned throughout this class as well as my observations from yesterday, I tried my best to not tell the kids what to do and let them discover on their own.
In preparing for today, Greg (thank you!) helped me out. One activity that went over great that he told me about was having the kids draw what a scientist looks like. This was a good activity for the bus, and I think that the students were able to grasp that all scientists don’t always look like the typical white male in a lab coat and goggles.
The individual team reviews were a good chance to make sure that the kids knew what and why. My group was also able to come up with a data table and map on their own!
The large group activity at the beach did not go over well. By that point, the new kids were in the water, so I thought that we could meet down at the beach. Note to self: the beach is noisy and full of distractions so it’s not a good place to have a large group to have a conversation. Overall, it was a good chance for the students to talk with each other about what their experimental design was.
My kids had a good time sampling in the water. They made some great observations (why are people swimming in the stinky water?) and loved the whirlypacks.
All of the kids and teachers were troopers today. It was so hot! But everyone was able to accomplish their sampling and enjoy ice cream at the end.

Today was such a fun time! I got to learn first hand about inquiry based teaching and a bunch of kids got to design an experiment on their own and enjoy that process.
The bus ride was interesting because a practical activity was planned as an icebreaker/apk. The kids seemed to enjoy talking about their own experiences/what they knew about the beach, unfortunately it was kind of hard to hear each other- but it went well overall.
The boat activity was great— Orlando rocks! The kids were able to learn about modeling as well as get comfortable with each other.
I felt a little uncomfortable when it came to the concept map. I wasn’t too sure about how to facilitate it, but luckily our team leaders were divided up well! The students were able to add in their own sticky notes and ours (along with a few others) came up with a connection to pollution. I’m interested to find out more about what they think about pollution so I’ll be using that as a journal question tomorrow.
The plan (or lack of) with the equipment allowed the students to truly explore. I had fun making turbulence!
Throughout the morning, I was working on doing the mind shift from how I learned about science to practicing the inquiry-based science that I’ve been reading about. It is a lot harder to facilitate students into developing their own model/design than to just write out directions. Many moments today (boat, using the equipment, coming up with the model) showed how meaningful it was for the students to figure out things on their own and not just follow the recipe.

The paper (Chinn & Molhatra, 2000) provided an interesting critique of open-ended inquiry related to authentic scientific inquiry. This reminded me of some of my concerns with the type of testing and analysis we were performing at Durand beach. I am not very experienced in teaching or development of school inquiry tasks. However, I have experience in authentic scientific inquiry tasks. I used specific tests and analysis to test environment issues like water quality. These regulations had to be followed, within reason. However, I have learned that I need to switch gears and focus on what is important to school-based inquiry tasks like the process.

There are benefits of using open-ended inquiry based tasks. These include the hands-on approach with components such as “observation and experiments.” When students use this approach to learning science, they can develop the skills that can be transferred to explaining models or real-life situations.

There are drawbacks of using open-ended school-based inquiry tasks. The main one argued in this paper is that students are not necessarily doing authentic science. Students are studying science under a different epistemology than what professional scientists practice under. Students are not using the same thinking process; therefore they are missing critical aspects of authentic science.

More research needs to be done on the development of “database tasks, evidence evaluation, and verbal design.” The textbook experiments do not place emphasis on these types of critical scientific skills. A better analysis of evaluation also needs to be developed.

In general, open-ended/school-based inquiry tasks are beneficial for students learning about science. There is room for improvement, especially in the area of aligning school-based inquiry with authentic inquiry.

Tomorrow I will be conducting a teacher workshop all day on the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in science education, so this blog and reading (Flick & Bell, 2001) have come along at an ideal time. This reading and reflection were useful for me to take a step back and analyze how I have used technology in science in the past and how I hope to consciously use it in the future (including tomorrow!).

My philosophy statement on technology in the science classroom will likely change after the camp, but this is what I have been able to develop so far. We should take advantage of the tie between technology and science. Students have an opportunity to learn and explore the world in a new manner when using technology. When they are able to explore more easily, students have more chances and resources to critically and creatively think about what they are learning. I would like to create a classroom environment that allows students to learn how to use technology in a similar manner that it is used in by professionals. I believe this will also encourage interest and wonder in science because it clearly shows science in action. Also I feel that as a teacher, I will need to be involved in activities in and around my school. It is important that as a professional, I continue to learn about new ideas, technologies, social issues, community project, etc… These other activities will help me in using technology in the classroom because I will see how other groups take advantage of it and can apply it to my classroom.

There were two main ideas that struck me as important because they relate to my work now as well as the work I hope to do in the future. The first deals with the issue of using technology in science in a meaningful way. The second relates to who actually has access to this technology.

Using technology in a meaningful way is important for me to understand and put into practice because part of what I my job deals with integrating technology into environmental health sciences education. Meaningful refers to how supportive the technology is for the curriculum. I found that the guidelines in Flick and Bell (2001) were useful in describing ‘meaningful’ technology in science education. “Technology should be introduced in the context of science education, technology should address worthwhile science with appropriate pedagogy, technology instruction in science should take advantage of the unique features of science, technology should make scientific views more accessible, and technology instruction should develop students’ understanding of the relationship between technology and science.”

New technologies are offered to schools in order to help students’ learning process. It runs the risks of deterring the learning process and not being meaningful if it does not follow most of the guidelines as stated in Flick and Bell (2001). Wireless Internet on laptops is a great idea, but if the students are not instructed well they can end up web surfing for their favorite music instead of researching. I quickly learned that I will get nowhere in educating teachers about GIS unless I can clearly explain how it applies to what they’re doing in class!

A lot my work deals with social and environmental injustice in the city. Before I started going to inner city schools or homes, I had never appreciated how fortunate I am. Concerning to technology and science. I had always gone to schools with plenty of computers, techno-savvy teachers, and etc… We were able to ‘take advantage of the unique features of technology’ like live video conferencing in middle school in order to learn more about the wetlands in Florida. Instead of reading about the Everglades, we were able to explore them (kind of!). City schools may miss out on opportunities, experiences, and even basic needs that suburban students take for granted. This includes having computers in all of the classrooms or heat. The city schools may have access to some types of technology, but the necessary support may not always be provided so it’s wasted. I’ve seen technology used well and as also wasted at some schools I have worked with.

Tuesday night update:
My workshop went well! There were some minor glitches but overall I think that the teachers learned a little about GIS and had fun as well! The teachers were wonderful & helpful with their questions, comments, critiques, and jokes. I must admit that I look forward to tomorrow in which I won’t be doing any presenting but will be able to work with the teachers in a much less stressful (for me) environment!