Videos: Worth a Thousand Words?

A picture, of course, is worth a thousand words.  But, is a video worth a thousand words?  With absolute certainty, everyone knows the answer to this question is "maybe."

A Lengthy Video

I find it hard to justify watching a video for an entire class-period.  Even if students are filling out a worksheet tied to the video, they are only being asked Knowledge based questions.  Unless a teacher is filling in a lesson plan for a substitute teacher dedicating an entire class period seems like a misuse of time.

If it's necessary to watch an entire video there's got to a significant assessment that goes along with it.  In English or Drama class, watching and analyzing a particular interpretation of a Shakespeare play may be valuable.  I can't think of anything in science that would justify this type of time investment.

Fortunately, many of the new science videos are short but highly informative. Take a look at the Pocket Mouse video on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) website.  It's a minute long, well produced, and communicates information very well.  HHMI produces DVDs with longer segments and each portion runs for 10-15 minutes.

But, we're getting into short videos.  Videos that run longer than 20 minutes are, in most cases, time-fillers rather than the engaging material we'd hoped for.  And, the students know it.

A Short Video

Short videos, on the other hand, can help facilitate inquiry, curiosity, and discussion, all the things that we educators wake up in the morning eager to make happen.

Video segments can help students grasp difficult concepts or visualize instructions before going on to a lab. Not only do students take in the knowledge, but the surrounding time the video can be used for questioning and analysis.

Personal Experience

Perhaps I am biased based on my own experience.  I can not think of a time in my educational career where watching a lengthy video was an essential part of my understanding.  I also don't know of a single respectable teacher that does this as a regular part of their course.

So, until convinced otherwise, only short videos will make their way into my lesson plans.

NetLogo - Technology and Models

For the past week we have been learning about Ecology.  I have a number of old resources that I have been asked to use in the classroom.  With the recent talk of NGSS and STEM I was looking for ways to integrate some sort of meaningful technology into the classroom.

As I was poking through several videos on the Bozeman Science website, Paul Anderson briefly mentioned NetLogo as resource he uses in his classroom.  NetLogo is a piece of software that creates computer models of all sorts of scientific or statistical situations.  The software helps model everything from basic traffic patterns to game theory.  I found a model that helps visualize relationships between predator and prey and I was able to use it in class with great success.

The need in the classroom:

1. To quickly visualize the relationship between predator and prey over generations.
2. To quickly visualize the results of messing with the balance of predator/prey relationships.
3. To visualize and analyze the results of the corresponding data.

Gathering this type of data to has been a lengthy process in the past.  It ends up usually being too general or too painstakingly lengthy to make the exercise meaningful.  And, generating data where one of the variables changed is hypothetical and equally time-consuming.  NetLogo provided a way to quickly generate data for the situations we were looking at.

The Old Way.  *sigh*

Downloading and installing NetLogo was pretty simple.  It's a Java based program so it can be installed almost anywhere and I was impressed that it ran so smoothly on my lightweight laptop.

Here's a screenshot of the Wolf Sheep Predation model.

Shiny!

Now, here's what I'm most excited about.  The model produced data that really helped scaffold good questions.  The students were interested in the modeling and were mostly impressed at how fast data could be generated.  The data allowed me to assess the students' understanding of the principles we've been talking about in the last 4 class periods.

In each class we ran a basic simulation and we talked about the ebb and flow of both predator and prey but we were also able to play with the variables.  In one instance we had a situation where the number of sheep dipped too low and the wolves went extinct within our digital biome.  I got a reaction from a lot of the students!  I was surprised and very excited at the empathy!

After the demonstration we moved on to other classwork, but I continued to get questions about the predator/prey relationships, what-if questions, and questions about running the software themselves.  For a small investment of classroom time and an hour of my personal time I got quite a satisfying result.

Squeezing In Points: Academic Purgatory

Here's a note for Future Dan: better planning reduces student stress.

This week will be a stressful week for the students.  5 Week Grades are due on Thursday, and there is a pressure to finish the unit on evolution before starting the next 5-week session.  The pressure is only coming from a planning calendar loosely based on the effectively defunct California Science Standards.

This week: The Perfect Storm:

1. Tuesday: Quiz on Chapter 17
2. Wednesday: Essay Exam on Unit 5 - Evolution
3. Thursday: Multiple Choice Exam on Unit 5 - Evolution

I am growing increasingly skeptical of the massive unit exam typical of science courses.  The ability to assess the students' higher level learning in an intense examination in 90 minutes seems counter-productive.  Unit exams seems to promote cramming and really hinder long-term understanding.

Unit exams may have their place, but they should be more application, synthesis, or evaluation-type assessments.  

I would like to find or develop a system where there's a capstone assignment for the unit rather than a massive exam.  The capstone project would be supported by better assessments during lesson delivery. All assessments would involve an activity or a section of reading from something that piques students' interests. 

Better planning before a unit built on better assessment types can avoid cramming and the test anxiety common with antique testing methods.  Sadly, these methods are perpetuated by the always dangerous mindset of "that's always the way we've done it."

Passing Period: The Best Time to Fix a Lesson

During first period, the review of Hardy-Weinberg equations garnered a bunch of blank stares.  We expected that students would come into class with questions, but we got nothing.  I was completely unable to assess the students' comprehension.  The students who understood the concepts answered the questions quickly and got the correct answers.  The students who didn't understand it copied the answers from their sharing neighbors.  At the end of the period, my master teacher and I looked at each other and we knew that we had 5 minutes to come up with something better.

So, in the next 300 seconds, we floated a bunch of ideas ranging from more practice problems to short essays explaining each step of the equation.  But we didn't know where the students were having problems.

Then, I recommended a pop quiz.  At first, my master teacher wasn't thrilled.  She said that we didn't need more papers to grade, Scantron forms are too expensive for a super-quick assessment, and that we didn't really have time for a quiz.  I countered:  the students didn't know it wouldn't be for points, and I promised to keep it short.  I got the green light.  I was about to give the first pop quiz of my life!

It worked.

Each "question" was a logical step of a rather basic Hardy Weinberg equation.  The "quiz" part of "pop quiz" set the right tone in class.  After the initial wave of groans, the students were quiet and attentive.  As the students wrote out out their answers, I was able to walk around and look at their work.

I got the information I needed and spent about 10 minutes addressing the weak points in the students' problem solving.

Reflection
I realized on the way home that this is something I'll not be able to do every day.  This was an emergency assessment piece and a pop quiz will lose its "pop" if done too much.  It worked in a pinch and it's something I'll come back to if I manage to get myself into a bind again.

The students needed another set of practice problems to really solidify the concept.  They wouldn't like it, but it would have been best for them.

Assignment review is an essential part of the learning process.  The next time I teach a difficult concept, I'll need to be much more rigid, providing a step-by-step guide.  Once students get -a- method, they can then take the logical leaps that streamline the process.  Once this happens, they're ready for the next application.  This will be in the back of my mind when I get together with my peers to review the pacing calendar.

Crabby Graphs

A lot has happened since my days in science class.  Even in college, we used peppered moths as the example of natural selection.  Peppered moths have been hammered into our minds.  I rather like our peppered moth friends, but it's also nice to mix things up.

Enter pocket mice and freshwater crabs.  Like the peppered moths, both pocket mice and freshwater crabs demonstrate natural selection in their coloration.  Last week, we used pocket mice as the last activity to solidify the concepts of natural selection; this week we will add data to the concept of natural selection as we look at populations of freshwater crabs.

Today's activity will revolve around specific types of selection in relation to environmental changes of freshwater crabs.  We will cover directional selection, disruptive selection, and stabilizing selection.  Towards the end of the period the students will be looking at data and will be graphing  phenotype frequencies (light to dark coloration) to determine the type of selection in a specific scenario.

Today's Goal:  Students will understand the concepts of directional selection, disruptive selection, and stabilizing selection.  Given phenotype frequency over time, students will be able to graph data and determine the type of selection for a given scenario.

Here's a shot of the whiteboard:

Handing Back Papers: A Strategy

Before I ever stepped foot into a classroom, I knew that strategy was key and that I'd need to think through everything.  Little did I know how much this "everything" would entail.  Today I learned that, yes, I even needed a strategy for handing back assignments.

I was eager to hand my first batch of graded lab reports back to the students, and I was interested to see how they would react.  As is the custom of the class, I handed the papers back at the beginning of the period.  This may not be the best method.  There was a sense of frustration in the class and we hadn't even started class yet.  Most of the students did well; the bell curve was toward the higher B, low A range.  But, not all of the students performed as they expected.

The next time we have papers to hand back, I think I will wait until the end of class.  Even if the students did well and their grades met their expectation, there's an element of distraction where the students are eager to review and compare results.

I may have found an even better way.  Despite being graded and recorded, the assignment still has instructional value.

Even though I added comments to their papers, there may be an even greater benefit to explaining answers in class once the papers are handed back.

There is a lot of instruction that happens before and during the lab, but simply because the papers are turned in and the students can't update their answers doesn't mean that the assignment has no further instructional value.  Sometimes that "Aha!" moment comes after a failure; it is often here that the student is ready to learn.

For next time, here's the plan:

• Low-Point Assignments - Hand back at the end of the period and be available for questions.
• Mid- to High-Point Assignment - Make the time in my next lesson plan to spend a few minutes reviewing questions, especially the ones that were commonly missed.

Today's Whiteboards: Why You Can't Roll Your Tongue

Some people can roll their tongues into a taco shape.  Others can't.  Some people are pretty tall.  Others are short.  Today's lesson will cover some of the reasons for these alleles.

After a short activity on the evolution of the pocket mouse, we're going to begin chapter 16: Evolution of Populations.

I've got a nifty PowerPoint, but I've also got my powers of whiteboard wizardry.  Below is a snapshot of the whiteboard I'll be using to teach Single Gene Traits (tongue rolling) and Polygenic Traits (height).

Evernote - An Earnest Attempt to Organize Everything

I'm sold.  Evernote is excellent!  So far, anyway.  I have been using it exclusively for about two weeks now, and I have found it incredibly helpful as I start a number of new things this year.

First, I set up a section for getting some things done this year.  I have a daily template I set up to help me move forward on reading, health goals, and general betterment.

I have also found it a -great- help in organizing notes and projects for the teaching credential program I'm going through.  I have a stack dedicated to each class and a notebook dedicated to projects.

I am also using it for unit planning, lesson planning, and making notes...so many notes.

The best part of Evernote is that it's cloud-based.  I use Evernote primarily on my laptop.  But, all my notes are available on my iPhone.  Anything in Evernote is on my iPhone.  This includes my schedule, notes, PDFs, and pictures.  I used Evernote as a central depository for notes I took to study for the Earth and Planetary Science CSET last weekend.  I didn't have to carry around a notebook or text books.  I had it all in my pocket.

I'm looking for more ways to implement Evernote in the classroom, and I'll try and add my thoughts here as they come up.