6 Online Project Based Learning Resources for Science and Math

Posted by David Wetzel

Project Based Learning

Project based learning offers a dynamic approach to teaching and learning science and math. Students use this learning strategy to explore real-world problems and challenges. The following is an overview of the three online resources which have already developed projects for your use in the classroom.

Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS)

This online project based learning (PBL) resource is primarily focused on math and science through simulations, research, opportunities to collect data, reading and comprehension, interactive graphs, data displays, and online chats with other students and educators.

TELS units use Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) software and provide your students with the opportunity to:

• address in-depth science topics across all grade levels.

• practice science by creating arguments using their scientific evidence.

• investigate scientific ideas using visualizations, probe-based activities, and virtual experiments.

• make connections across multiple scientific ideas, concepts, theories, and laws.

• use a variety of communication skills for science investigations including collaboration, reading, writing, representing ideas visually, and complex visualizations.

Intel Projects

This site provides a comprehensive resource for you to design effective PBL projects. This online resource goes into detail regarding how to invoke metacognition opportunities in projects. Another unique insight which Intel provides is a lens for students to view through when completing PBL work.

Intel provides over 300 classroom PBL projects for science and math, along with other content areas and all grade levels. The PBL resources on this website do not follow a cookie cutter approach, which permits adaptation to most science and math classroom situations.

You will also find research-based resources regarding how PBL learning takes place, how to schedule PBL work, performance-based assessments, and encouraging your students to learn using critical thinking skills.

Intel Projects focus on thinking skills in the four following areas:

• Thinking Frameworks – follow the framework of Bloom’s Taxonomy, Marzano’s Taxonomy, and Howard Gardner’s Learning Styles.

• Higher Order Thinking Skills – for developing a deeper understanding of science and math content through analysis, knowledge, and metacognition.

• Beliefs and Attitudes – make the connection emotions and thinking.

• Teaching Thinking – the use of best practices for critical thinking and problem solving.

Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) MERLOT has thematic units which allow students to complete project based learning and problem solving activities. This site offers over 10,000 science and math units covering the scope of these two content areas. This resource also offers opportunities for you to share advice and expertise with colleagues. MERLOT assists in posing PBL investigations for your students, along with providing online resources for their research. This is a leading edge online resource which is continually updated through interaction with educators and students from around the world.

Additional Resources for Project Based Learning

Science Case Studies and Problem Based Learning – engages students in case studies designed to develop problem solving skills in science within a real world context to support their internalization of science knowledge.

Math Teaching Strategies the Challenge Students – four techniques are discussed regarding their ability to connect math concepts and challenging students through cases studies, applications of virtual manipulatives, writing, and interactive math tools.

Project Based Learning Viewed through a Digital Lens – giving students the opportunity to complete and present their project through a digital lens has one great advantage – student engagement. This in turn causes students to develop a more in depth understanding of concepts. When students are engaged in learning science or math which is personal to them (real world problem solving), they become more engaged in the learning process. Project based learning situations in science and math increase opportunity for students to internalize and make connections.

Why Use Technology to Teach Science and Math?

Posted by David Wetzel

Using Technology in the Classroom

As many of you may have discovered, I also found that many of my previous colleagues have little use for technology for teaching.

They are mired in excuses such as using technology is cheating, students learn best through lecture, the stresses of NCLB makes it too difficult to do anything but have students memorize facts to pass the tests, etc.

So what are the advantages of technology?

Technology has tremendous power to help students obtain, organize, manipulate, and display information. Students can use technology tools (such as word processing, database, design, and graphing software) in the same ways as do professional scientists and mathematicians.

Using technology for meaningful activities also helps integrate a variety of disciplines, more closely resembling activities that people undertake in the world beyond the classroom. For example, word processing is a real-world technology that can help students develop better writing and thinking skills.

Using the computer, students write longer, more complex sentences and are more willing to revise and edit their work; they are able to concentrate on the thoughts they want to express rather than the mechanical skills of penmanship, spelling, and grammar.

Using technology in science and math class promotes learning activities in which students work in small groups rather than in isolation or as a whole class demonstrations. The technologies used in the classroom are not those designed explicitly to teach basic skills, but rather are real-world applications that support research, design, analysis, composition, and communication.

For example using Google Docs to collaborate on science laboratory reports, data analysis, and presentation of findings.

Another example is using classroom Wikis in Science and Math for collaborating on projects and sharing their findings.

A third example is use Twitter or Skype to communicate with students in other locations to collaborate on projects and assignments.

An Example of Teacher Resistance

Three years ago I was hired by a school district to teach middle school science teachers how to integrate Calculator Based Laboratory (CBL) Probeware in their curriculum.

After four weeks of providing staff development and in-class support regarding how to use these data loggers, with the eight science teachers in the school. The science teachers began to come up with strategies and techniques on their own for integrating CBL Probeware data loggers in their lessons.

At the same time all the teachers confided in me that they had all agreed in advance that using this technology was a waste of time and that they would resist every step of the way.

I was taking back by this statement, I thought that the integration difficulties in their lessons were due to not understanding the technology.

Their minds were changed as they discovered their students were more interested in science experiments, grasped the technology quickly, better understood concepts, and were able to make connections with other concepts. The teachers also found out that they were not behind in their curriculum and students scored better, on average, on chapter tests.

Fast forward to today, CBL Probeware has expanded to all areas of the science curriculum and has also moved into the math curriculum in selected areas as real-time data loggers.

So What Does This All Mean?

Students today are more technologically literate than many of their teachers. Today’s students have grown up in the digital age; they use Facebook, they Tweet, and they use the Internet for almost everything.

Instead of resisting technology, the goal should be to harness the technological energy in students and become a guide for the best ways to use technology to learn.

Any suggestions?

David R. Wetzel, Ph.D.