WOW!!!!! Now thats SMART!!!!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know, I attended a SMART board training for beginners, and all I have got to say is WOW!!!!!! Simply put, your classroom comes alive through this technology! Interactive, fun, and exciting instruction has now arrived! I cannot wait to enter a classroom just so I can teach incorporating this into my everyday curriculum!!!!! I love it, can't wait until next month's intermediate session!!!
If you know nothing about SMART boards these sessions are a MUST!!!

CBC Who??????????? ABCD What????????????

We are learning the proper way to write objectives. Learning to write objectives in the MSMC format is sooooooooooooooooo very hard for me! We have the CBC-Condition, Behavior, and Criteria; ABCD-Audience, Behavior, Condition, and Degree. These are to help guide us when we are forming our objectives.
                                    

Objectives need to be worded a certain way: Given (a task or material) the student will (verb from Bloom's Taxonomy) with (an expected level of performance).
There are aims, goals, and objectives.

Aims are general statements that guide or lead you to an educational action. Aims are usually written based on the National Standards and these are not directly assessable.

Goals are statements that are more specific than aims but more general than objectives, and should be based on the NY State Standards Key Ideas.

Objectives are usually detailed statements of educational intention which define very specific outcomes formulated based on the appropriate performance indicator, and these are measurable.

                                             

WHY is it so hard for me to grasp? I get it, but I don't... it takes me so long to form an objective. I hope I get the hang of it fast! Yikes!!!!
Practice Makes Perfect----I hope    
 

Science Circus "The Greatest Show on Earth"

Our whole class had to construct individual science circus activity centers in our classroom this week. Each of us went around the room as students and teachers to experiment and evaluate each other's stations.
                                                        

We all had great ideas and experiments and all of them were successful!!! We gave each other constructive criticism including critiquing our own work stations. This was extremely valuable because you learn from your peers and through experience; this assignment combined both of those concepts together. By us doing everyone's activities including our own, we could see what works and what doesn't. All of us noticed things that needed improvement in our very own activities, and this week it is our duty to revise and resubmit our assignments.

  I think having our peers give us feedback, and us critiquing our own work is a great strategy to learn and develop. You grow from experience, and after all, practice makes perfect!!                                                                                                      

Why do you like to hide from me?!

I have been keeping a moon phase journal for the past three weeks now. Sometimes I can see part of the moon & sometimes I can see most of ---if not all of the moon

For some reason the moon likes to hide from me!!!! Every couple of days after I am used to taking pictures of the moon in one spot in the sky, the moon drives to another spot far away from where it was just the night before?!

 

Making Connections: Can you connect science to your world???

I only have two memories of ever studying scientific topics that related to my local environment in grade school except in elementary school I remember going to the planetarium at the local high school. It was the best trip ever! We learned all about astronomy and our universe, and it was all life like, almost as if we were watching the evening sky inside of a school. I also recall studying scientific topics in my Earth science class here at MSMC. We were learning about different rocks (like slate, gneiss, schist, etc). My professor even told us to look when we were driving up 84, to take notice of the rock on the side of the highway, going towards Connecticut, and how we could see each one of these types of rocks right there on the side of the highway!!! Really neat stuff, I was able to see in person what we were learning about in class, it's really nice when that happens!                                                                                                         

According to constructivist theory, by linking science to student’s own individual “larger pictures” we not only promote learning, but we also help them use science thinking to comprehend events that happen in their daily lives more in depth. We are living in an increasingly complex world- one that requires us to be vigilant, decisive, and considerate about our immediate environment. Those who understand scientific ideas in the context of their daily lives have a head start in dealing with the issues that their lives present. By relating science to these students’ daily lives we can construct school science experiences that will encourage their involvement.    

                                                                 

Howard Gardner has suggested another intelligence, and no, I do not think that there is more than one type of intelligence, I could be wrong. This whole idea of naturalistic intelligence seems to be a subject that a person may have more experience or knowledge in, not a different level or kind of intelligence. I would have to do some research to find out more information about this to better decide my view on this.

In my view, the most important reason to teach children about green science is for them to learn to love the earth we live in and take care of it. I believe with the amount of technology in this world today, our children are growing up in a different world than we did. I believe green science is imperative for the future of our earth.

 

We need to teach students to appreciate nature and understand it through all means of life, including energy conservation. If we raise our children with the right ideas about going green, the earth’s future is brighter.     

                                                        

I remember my field trips and believe they were meaningful, which is why they are in my memory. They could have been more meaningful if there were more of them, or done more often. Field trips to students are meaningful because it is fun to go on trip instead of sitting in a classroom all day. These are the ways we can experience life with our class in real life situations, not just on a board or in a text book.

 

XtRaNoRmAl.......or AbNoRmal........

My partner Faith and I had to interview a scientist. The scientist we interviewed happened to be a science teacher.  
 The interview was very interesting; she was very casual and down to earth. The interview was a great experience to ask questions related to the field, and to investigate what kind of teaching methods she practiced.
                                                                    
To our disappointment she isn't into technology, nor does she integrate it into her instruction
 this made us feel upset and disappointed because we have learned just how vital technology is in the classroom!
After the interview, we took our dialog and created a movie on Xtranormal.com. It is a fun site that allows you to create and publish your own animated movie!
                                                                              
We really had a lot of fun with this, entering all of the movements and background settings, as well as entering the dialogue and creating body language to go along with the scenario. This is something I will definitely be using as a teacher with my class!!! Besides the monetary issue at the end of our creation this was an overall fantastic project! Dr. Smirnova even allowed me to not only display our movie, but also to walk my fellow classmates through the movie making process on Xtranormal.com
It felt good to share our hard work with everyone in the class, and it excited me to be able to show everyone all about the program!
Here is the link to one of the versions of our interview with a scientist, due to technical difficulties, our original was not able to be published; luckily Dr. Smirnova helped us in creating this version of the interview:
CLICK HERE to see: An Interview with a Scientist

The Everchanging World Wide Web...Can You Keep Up???

                                             

So many things to learn never enough time! Today's class was simply amazing and informative to say the least! Dr. Smirnova held another IROC conference in the beginning of class, a surprise to all of us! Our class was filled with 30-40 eager individuals wanting to know more about WEB 2.0!!!! Many examples of what topics were discussed are:  social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, and remixes. Let's get together and COLLABORATE!!!!!!!!!!! What a wonderful world of technology, and who better to teach us than Dr. Smirnova! One of the most unique points of this conference was the power point presentation used. Dr. Smirnova had the whole room learning together on individual computers, adding and editing items throughout the presentation!                                                                                                                                                         

Yes, all 30-40 attendees were typing into the presentation, and all responses were being shown on the main board! She even had friends around the world adding comments during this seminar! AMAZING! I knew Google Docs allowed you to collaborate with partners to do work apart from each other, I had no idea how huge this really was until this class!!!!!! Think about it! As a teacher, I can have my students all participate actively from their homes all at once on one central document or presentation! Truly an eye opening experience for myself as a future educator!
 
Another class where I left armed with more knowledge than when I first walked in!



                                                      

 

Let's Get it Popping......Or Not

       Last class we collaborated in groups conducting experiments with balloons. Dr. Smirnova demonstrated brushing on 'magic' blue water on top of a balloon, then poking the balloon with a needle and it not popping. It was up to the class to figure it out how and why!!!!

        This activity was really a lot of fun. My group conducted a total of 5 experiments. We tried to look at every aspect of how, what and why. We were given 5 balloons, a pin, and a beaker filled with 'magic' blue water with a wire brush inside of it.

       This activity was a way of Dr. Smirnova showing us as students what our students would be doing. She didn't give us any hints, just gave us the tools to solve the problem ourselves.

 

We had to form a hypothesis before we even got started. In the end, our hypothesis was proved to be wrong, and we discovered the liquid had nothing to do with it at all!!! It was the area of the balloon--either the top center or the bottom center of the balloon wouldn't make the balloon pop if that is where the pin is pushed in!!!!

                                                                  

          I am definitely excited to conduct experiments in my own classroom oneday!!  



                                  CLICK HERE!!!!! to see the PPT Presentation!!               

To Learn is.........hmmmmmmmm :/

Last class we discussed Bloom's Taxonomy, and the changes from nouns to verbs. We discussed this because this should be a guideline for us teachers while we are lesson planning. We discussed the 5 'E' Lessons Learning Cycle for how to plan properly to fully ensure our students are being instructed the best possible way: Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, Evaluation.

 

Teachers new and old really need to take a look at their curriculum and utilize the tools that are available to all of us!!! Standing in front of a class lecturing is a thing of the past!

Be more effective-be more creative!!! The time is NOW to change the way you make your students think!!!!!

To give or not to give, that is the Question!

            Chapter three in our book made us really reflect upon teachers giving students the answers to problems while doing work and what kind of things students may be doing while completing assignments.

            Teachers are facilitators, they are mediators, they are there to scaffold their students learning. Teachers need to encourage their students to think and experiment with their work. Teachers need to let students know that having alternative conceptions is not such a bad thing! There are  no wrong answers!! The story about Mr. Wilson not letting the students know they were using the wrong procedure is a perfect example of this.

              He was there to guide them through the activity, by allowing them to have the freedom to explore and experiment on their own. If he had stopped and told them, he would be taking that freedom and exploration of their own ideas away from them. He is promoting the development of the children’s own ideas, not discourage them from doing their own thinking!!!!

Do students do what??????

YES THEY DO!!!!!!!!!

I myself, as a student, have written something in an essay and on an exam because I thought it was the answer the teacher wanted. I have done this numerous times, especially in two history classes I took. Both teachers were passionate about the areas of history they were teaching us about, and both had certain views which favored certain ideas. Naturally, I wrote about the things they showed favoritism for to be sure I got the grade. I believe this is very common for students to do.
 

Artifacts of nature are all around me!!!

I am surrounded by several types of trees; from them, I could bring in bark, seeds, leaves, branches etc.; science is everywhere!!!!!
It's even in you and me!!!!!!!!!