Posted by David Wetzel
Are you searching for a way to share documents, presentations, slideshows, or a series of photos or images with your students?
Then Voice Thread is the free Web 2.0 tool for you and your students (teachers can register for a free education account).
Voice Thread allows you and your students to add audio, video, and text as part of conversations concerning science or math content.
Comments can be added using a pre-recorded audio file, microphone, call from a phone, or webcam and microphone.
A Voice Thread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. This is great when your class is collaborating on a project with students in another time zone or other locations around the world.
Strategies for Both Science and Math
The following are examples which work well in either math or science
1. Students create a presentation about a concept and then embed their presentation in a Glogster poster.
2. Students use Voice Threads created by both teacher and other students which are embedded in a class Wiki or Blog for use to review concepts or examples:
- prior to a test or exam.
- work missed after being absent.
3. Students create a recording of a debate using one slide for pro and another for a con position.
4. Students watch a video related to a concept and add their comments, ideas, or suggestions related to the video.
5. Students use Voice Thread to create digital stories to explain ideas.
6. Students integrate documents created – presentations, word documents, spreadsheets, polls – in Google Docs within their Voice Thread presentations.
7. Back to School Night – take photos of your classroom and students working, then post on your Wiki or Blog for parents who are unable to attend.
Math Teaching Strategies
Students show multiple strategies for solving a problem. This strategy promotes student ownership, while using the language of mathematics.
For example – using a digital image of data within a table, several or all students record a different strategies or make comments about how they solved the problem using data analysis.
Have students explain a new math concept using images to support their explanation.
For example – students create a collection of geometric digital images. Then compare and contrast the images by adding their comments.
Additional math ideas:
1. How to write and solve linear equations.
2. Provide examples and explanations of various forms of display for data sets, including a stem-and-leaf plot or box-and-whisker plot; use the forms to display a single set of data or to compare with sets of data.
3. Provides examples and explanations for percents as a part of a hundred; find decimal and percent equivalents for common fractions and explain why they represent the same value; compute a given percent of a whole number.
Science Teaching Strategies
Students are studying arthropods which have an exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax, and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae. They create a digital Voice Thread of examples of these insects with explanations.
For example – Digital Insect Collection
Students create a Voice Thread presentation to communicate their findings in a science project. This strategy ensures each student within a group participates, because every student must contribute to part of the presentation using their own voice for facts and comments.
For example – Road Kill Project
Additional science ideas:
1. Provide examples of reflection and refraction along with explanations.
2. Provide examples of each type of biome found around the world.
3. Debate the issue of global warming using facts and data presented in a Voice Thread.
Using Voice Thread creates an interactive classroom which can be used in almost any science and math grade level. Teachers can use this Web 2.0 tool for digital storytelling of concepts by students, causing critical thinking, student project presentations, and even a tool for assessment.
Posted by David Wetzel
Integrating the science process skills within your teaching does not require drastic changes. It simply involves making the process of science more explicit in lessons, investigations, and activities you are already using in your curriculum.
The science process skills are the methods used for helping our students understand how we know what we know about the world in which they live. This often means going beyond a science textbook and supplementing the core-content within textbooks. It also means using your course content as a means for exposing students to the real process of science.
In the book, Nature of Science: Part, Present, and Future (2007), Lederman indicates these methods involve making explicit references to the science process skills and allowing students time to reflect on how they participated in the process of investigating science phenomena.
Explicit Teaching
Shifting from an implicit strategy of student understanding to an explicit teaching strategy, helps ensure students understand the correlation between science processes involved in an investigation.
One example - During a lab investigation involving the graphing of a large amount of data students collected:
- First ask them to first draw conclusions on the meaning of their data before graphing it.
- Then have them draw further conclusions after graphing the data.
This process emphasizes the importance of visual representation during data analysis.
Real Data
Nothing can compare when students collect real data personally or use real data from remote networks such as satellites, buoys, or seismic sensors. Using real data in the classroom in any learning process supports student learning through support for:
- inquiry and participation in the scientific method.
- effective evaluation of data uncertainties and applicability.
- using quantitative and critical thinking skills.
- understanding about physical processes, data availability, data access, and data analysis and interpretation.
Problem Based Learning
Using discrepant events in problem based learning invokes critical thinking in students as they hypothesize reasons for what they just witnessed.
Discrepant events typically focus on one scientific concept at a time to control for variables and to avoid conflicting resolutions in students’ minds. These events are created by using:
- Student Interactions: hands-on minds-on investigation (greatest sensory involvement).
- Teacher Demonstrations: student observation (least student involvement).
- Videos: show a video of a scientific event for student observation (least sensory involvement).
Project Based Learning
Project based learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems. Using this type of activity allows students the opportunity to use the science process skills to obtain a deeper knowledge of the science concept(s) they are investigating.
Scientific projects with depth, duration, and complexity challenge students and motivate them towards construction of new scientific knowledge.
These types of projects provide students with the opportunity to use both the basic and integrate science process skills as they collaborate with other students to design an experiment, observe, measure, predict, analyze and organize their data, and communicate their findings.
Tell Stories
Stories fall into two broad categories:
- Historical – which help students understand how scientific knowledge developed over time.
- Current – which help students understand scientific knowledge is a work in progress.
The use of stories results in greater student understanding through connection of science facts to hands-on science investigations. Stories also make the connection to “reasons for needing to know” science. Finally, it stimulates students’ minds to seek or produce explanations – i.e., curiosity.
The Value of these 5 Ways
We know students bring misconceptions to the science classroom and these misconceptions must be acknowledged before new, more accurate concepts can be learned.
Students need to appreciate and value science as a way of knowing. This process of science teaches our students how science works and then they are more likely to interpret a scientific story or debate with the ability to separate right from wrong.
Posted by David Wetzel
An algebra project focusing on a theme which interests students is more likely to engage them in the project, so lets take a look at sports. Many students participate in sports at some level, whether as part of a school team or a community team.
For the most part these same students do not understand the costs involved to host the sport. Also, they do not understand how much money is needed to ensure a profitable season so the sport can continue from year to year.
Sports Complex Project
This project is designed for using algebra as a basis for comparing expenses and income at a youth athletic complex to determine profitability.
Math students need to decide which fund raising activities will help their sports complex remain profitable.
The sports complex is not making enough money this year from concession stand sales to keep the complex open the last two months of this year’s sports season. The committee overseeing the sports complex project a $1,000.00 shortfall in funds to pay for lights, grass cutting, and maintenance.
Some members of the committee want to start a charging a $1.00 admission fee to everyone who enters the complex, this includes all fans and participants.
After much debate, the sports complex committee have decided to hold a carnival to avoid charging an admission fee. They also decided on the following two options for charging admission and ticket prices for the carnival.
- Option 1: $1.00 admission and $.25 per ticket.
- Option 2: no admission and $.50 per ticket.
Problem
Which of these two options will help raise enough money to avoid charging admission to everyone who uses the sports complex?
Facts needed to solve the problem:
- The sports complex committee has limited expenses to $600.00.
- An inflatable bungee run costs $250.00 to rent for rent for one day.
- A dunk tank costs $100.00 to rent for one day.
- A cotton candy machine costs $50.00 to rent for one day.
- An inflatable slide costs $100.00 to rent for one day.
Solving the Problem Complete the following to solve the problem. List at least 10 activities, including food booths, games, and rides. Other possibilities include food donations and activities which can be easily made such as a softball toss, soccer kick contest, baseball toss, basketball toss, or football toss.
Use Bubbl.us mapping software to create a organizational map to help solve the problem. Use the following as a guideline for solving the problem:
- For each option listed above, write equations to find the profit “y” of selling “x” tickets.
- What is the profit or loss for ticket sales based on attendance of 200 people, 300 people, and 400 people?
- Graph the equations.
- At what point, if any, will Option 1 and Option 2 be equal?
- Which option is the best for solving the problem and ensuring at least a $1,000.00 profit?
Alternative Solution
If Option 1 or Option 2 will not raise enough money to cover expenses and ensure enough profit to avoid an admission fee to the sports complex for everyone, what option to recommend to the sports complex committee to ensure the carnival raises enough money?
Survey
Create a survey using Google Docs Survey which which will be used to obtain a rough estimate of the number of people who will attend the carnival.
Presentation
Present your findings and recommendations to your classmates using one of the two following methods:
- Present your findings to you class using Google Docs Presentation.
- post your findings on the class Wiki for your class to view and parents can see. Ask for feedback and recommendations from all those who few your project findings on the class Wiki.
Project based learning in algebra allows students to transfer math knowledge to situations outside the classroom. Also the use of projects is often a motivational factor for students to learn algebra, as opposed to considering algebra as something they will never use in their lives.
Additional Readings on Project Based Learning in Math
Teaching Algebra: making Real World Connections
Solving Weaknesses in Math Using Project Based Learning
Pythagorean Theorem: Using Real World Applications
